“But at least I tried”

Source: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Last update May 22, 2020. History

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Ken Kesey 103
novelist 1935–2001

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Context: Scientific language, which Korzybski used as his model of sane language, is almost exclusively extensional and denotative, or at least tries to be. The language of the mentally ill, most obviously "un-sane," is almost totally intensional and connotative. This is the language that does not correspond to anything "out there," and this is, in fact, how and perhaps even why the user is mentally ill. Korzybski's concern with keeping the conscious "connection" or correspondence between language and verifiable referents is, for all practical purposes, paralleled by the process of psychotherapy. In this process, which is largely "just talk," the purpose is to foster closer and more accurate correspondence between the patient's language and externally verifiable meanings. As a semanticist would say, the process of psychotherapy is aimed at shifting the patient's word choices from those having a highly intensional, connotative meanings to others carrying more denotative meanings. A person suffering from paranoid schizophrenia might use perfectly "correct" English in an unassailably "logical" way, but the problem with his language is that it does not correspond to anything "out there."

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“For thee I'll trace in verses which I write
Some sketches, paintings which indeed are light,
And if the prize of pleasing thee I do not bear away,
At least, the honour I shall have of having tried I say.”

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Je vais t'entretenir de moindres aventures,
Te tracer en ces vers de légères peintures;
Et si de t'agréer je n'emporte le prix,
J'aurai du moins d'honneur de l'avoir entrepris.
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