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younes
hi there
hi there.
1.whats gist of this sentence?"Well he’s not at all a doctrinaire"
2.and gist of this part"let alone forty"
ASHBROOK: Thank heavens for the first century! Thank heavens for water.
I’m trying to think what sets you apart … I noted here, reading in your
background, you’ve been in psychoanalysis for forty-six years with the
same Freudian psychoanalyst. Is that key to your mental health? To the
joy you find at eighty?
SACKS: Well he’s not at all a doctrinaire, but he certainly knows me very
well, and I think he likes me, which helps me like myself, which I
haven’t always done. And again, I think I’m lucky there, and more than
lucky. I have had a lot of impulsive and destructive trades with drugs,
and other ways, and my friends didn’t expect me to make thirty, let
alone forty, and I think it’s partly due to the good analyst that I’ve
actually reached eighty.
2019年9月4日 21:58
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Answers · 2
I found this definition of doctrinaire which was exactly opposite to my educated guess: "seeking to impose a doctrine in all circumstances without regard to practical considerations." (syn. - dogmatic, rigid, inflexible, uncompromising, unyielding, holding fixed views, adamant, insistent, pontifical;)
2019年9月5日
Hi Younes,
So I understand that the context you quoted is an interview? Which means we can't expect complete sentences in everything said. But Sacks is saying that the psychoanalyst he sees is not a strict believer in Freudian theories -- he does not follow the "doctrine" of Freud. "Doctrinaire" is an adjective, so the complete sentence would be 'He's not at all a doctrinaire psychoanalyst", but it would also be grammatical and natural to drop the article: "He's not at all doctrinaire."
Then Sacks is talking about how his friends thought he would die young, that he would not turn thirty, and that forty, surviving another ten years after that, seemed impossible -- surely he would not survive until that age!
2019年9月5日
