Kettle logic ( French: la logique du chaudron) is a rhetorical device wherein one uses multiple arguments to defend a point, but the arguments are inconsistent with each other.
Jacques Derrida uses this expression in reference to the humorous "kettle-story" related by Sigmund Freud in The Interpretation of Dreams (1900) and Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious (1905).
The name logique du chaudron comes from Jacques Derrida [1] from an example used by Sigmund Freud for the analysis of "Irma's dream" in The Interpretation of Dreams [2] and in his Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious. [3]
Freud relates the story of a man who was accused by his neighbour of having returned a kettle in a damaged condition and the three arguments he offers.
Though the three arguments are inconsistent, Freud notes that it is so much the better, as if even one is found to be true then the man must be acquitted.
The kettle "logic" of the dream-work is related to what Freud calls the embarrassment-dream of being naked, in which contradictory opposites are yoked together in the dream. [4] Freud said that in a dream, incompatible (contradictory) ideas are simultaneously admitted. [5] [6] [7]
The peculiarities of the logic of the dream-work can be seen taking place almost from the beginning of The Interpretation of Dreams. [...] This "kettle logic," as Derrida calls it,11 exemplifies the logic of the dream-work. It is likewise with that found in what Freud calls the embarrassment-dream of being naked. [...] Here, then, there is a logic that yokes contradictory opposites together in the dream.
Contradictory thoughts [widersprechende Gedanken] do not try to eliminate one another, but continue side by side, and often combine to form condensation-products, as though no contradiction existed. [...] The suppressed psychic material, which in the waking state has been prevented from expression and cut off from internal perception by the mutual neutralization of contradictory attitudes [durch die gegensätzliche Erledigung der Widersprüche], finds ways and means, under the sway of compromise-formations, of obtruding itself on consciousness during the night.
Flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo.*(2)
At any rate, the interpretation of dreams is the via regia to a knowledge of the unconscious element in out psychic life.
[...] *(2) If I cannot influence the gods, I will stir up Acheron.
Kettle logic ( French: la logique du chaudron) is a rhetorical device wherein one uses multiple arguments to defend a point, but the arguments are inconsistent with each other.
Jacques Derrida uses this expression in reference to the humorous "kettle-story" related by Sigmund Freud in The Interpretation of Dreams (1900) and Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious (1905).
The name logique du chaudron comes from Jacques Derrida [1] from an example used by Sigmund Freud for the analysis of "Irma's dream" in The Interpretation of Dreams [2] and in his Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious. [3]
Freud relates the story of a man who was accused by his neighbour of having returned a kettle in a damaged condition and the three arguments he offers.
Though the three arguments are inconsistent, Freud notes that it is so much the better, as if even one is found to be true then the man must be acquitted.
The kettle "logic" of the dream-work is related to what Freud calls the embarrassment-dream of being naked, in which contradictory opposites are yoked together in the dream. [4] Freud said that in a dream, incompatible (contradictory) ideas are simultaneously admitted. [5] [6] [7]
The peculiarities of the logic of the dream-work can be seen taking place almost from the beginning of The Interpretation of Dreams. [...] This "kettle logic," as Derrida calls it,11 exemplifies the logic of the dream-work. It is likewise with that found in what Freud calls the embarrassment-dream of being naked. [...] Here, then, there is a logic that yokes contradictory opposites together in the dream.
Contradictory thoughts [widersprechende Gedanken] do not try to eliminate one another, but continue side by side, and often combine to form condensation-products, as though no contradiction existed. [...] The suppressed psychic material, which in the waking state has been prevented from expression and cut off from internal perception by the mutual neutralization of contradictory attitudes [durch die gegensätzliche Erledigung der Widersprüche], finds ways and means, under the sway of compromise-formations, of obtruding itself on consciousness during the night.
Flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo.*(2)
At any rate, the interpretation of dreams is the via regia to a knowledge of the unconscious element in out psychic life.
[...] *(2) If I cannot influence the gods, I will stir up Acheron.