“Cricket and Psychoanalysis: “Both test cricket and psychoanalysis are out of tune with a world that demands quick results. That’s our loss, argues former England cricket captain Mike Brearley, now Britain’s leading psychoanalyst.” (Prospect Magazine)
Tag Archives: Sports
The secret benefits of fandom
“…[A] few scholars have started to suggest that there may …be another kind of benefit from big-time sports. There’s a catch, though: the team has to be good. In a forthcoming paper, economist Michael Davis and the psychologist Christian End say that having a winning NFL football team increases the incomes of the people who live and work in its hometown by as much as $120 a year. And while the study doesn’t identify exactly what causes the boost, the authors point to psychological literature suggesting that winning fans are at once harder workers and bigger spenders. In short, buoyed by the team’s success, we work longer hours, take bigger risks, and shop more avidly, all of which helps the local economy.” (Boston Globe)
In other words, just another way of making you a better cog in the machine. Didn’t Marx say that spectator sports is the opiate of the masses, or something like that?
