Katie Roiphe (born in 1968), a professor at New York University, has taken a public stand in her article "Why Professors Should Never Have Affairs With Their Students" at Slate Magazine online. I support her stand by drawing on Walter J. Ong's characterization of the professor-student relationship as a fiduciary relationship. But I also discuss certain other matters she raises.

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Duluth, Minnesota (OpEdNews) May 22, 2015: Katie Roiphe (born in 1968) understands that men of various ages may like to have sex with young women, and in principle, she is not against that. However, in her article "Why Professors Should Never Have Affairs With Their Students" at Slate Magazine online (dated May 21, 2015), she finally articulates why professors should never have affairs with students. Good for her. It's great that she has finally figured this out and said so in print.

Roiphe is herself a professor at New York University. She recognizes that "[i]n the classroom intellectual crushes are useful."

In the context of psychotherapy, this kind of crush is known as transference. In the context of psychotherapy, the psychotherapist today is now expected to carry this crush/projection responsibly -- rather than attempt to have an affair with the client.

Roiphe even says, "I feel for some of my students a kind of love, but it's something more parental, more protective than romantic love."

In the context of psychotherapy, Roiphe's "kind of love" "for some of [her] students" is known as counter-transference. In the context of psychotherapy, the psychotherapist today is expected to act responsibly toward the client, rather than act out his or her crush by having an affair with the client.

Unfortunately, the fashionable feminist Roiphe works with a time-stamped framework. She characterizes certain male professor lotharios as engaging in "the most boring and conventional fantasies of a prefeminist time" -- such as the fantasies involved in the 1956 Broadway musical and the 1964 Hollywood movie "My Fair Lady," based on George Bernard Shaw's 1913 play "Pygmalion."

In Ovid's "Metamorphoses," Pygmalion is a sculptor who falls in love with a statue he has sculpted.

But in Shaw's play "Pygmalion," the male Pygmalion-like character is a professor. Roiphe is writing about male professors. Surely it is relevant that Shaw made his Pygmalion-like character a professor

Even though Roiphe explicitly dismisses "the most boring and conventional fantasies of prefeminist time," surely it is relevant that "My Fair Lady" was a hit on Broadway, as was the movie subsequently.

Surely "the most boring and conventional fantasies" in "My Fair Lady" expressed fantasies not just about male professors but also about female students in the late 1950s and the 1960s -- Roiphe's "prefeminst time."

Roiphe seems to imply that male professor Lotharios wouldn't want to be seen as retrograde enough to indulge in in fantasies from "prefeminist time." Anti-60s conservatives are anti-60s. Feminists are anti-prefeminist time. Long ago, Christians made it fashionable to refer to B.C. and A.D., which fashionable biblical scholars have updated to B.C.E and C.E. (meaning, respectively, Before the Common Era and the Common Era).

But Roiphe is silent about the role of young women students who get involved in affairs with male professors. Surely young women students who have affairs with their male professors may feel that they have made a romantic conquest.

In any event, it may be a fantasy for Roiphe to think that we should disregard "the most boring and conventional fantasies of prefeminist time."

The fantasies in "My Fair Lady" may express deeper psychodynamics than Roiphe imagines. After all, the American and British cultural conditioning that shaped the fantasies express in "My Fair Lady" in the late 1950s and the 1960s may be at work still in American and British culture today, despite the obvious cultural impact of the feminist wave in the 1970s and subsequently.

Roiphe points out, correctly in my estimate, that "there's a cheap frisson to the incest taboo . . . yet most of us manage to resist it."

Like Roiphe, I do not recommend acting out incest.

However, it strikes me that male professor Lotharios today who have affairs with undergraduate women students are thereby acting out psychological incest symbolically, even if the young women students are not young enough to be the male professors' daughters.

I know, I know, love affairs between a male professor and an undergraduate woman student occasionally lead the two of them to get married.

Nevertheless, for male professors, affairs with undergraduate young women students involve symbolic psychological incest.

In theory, symbolic psychological incest can be deeply satisfying and rewarding, provided that we do not act it out with real persons.

Yes, I agree with Roiphe's characterization that the "kind of love" that she "feel[s] for some of [her] students" involves "something more parental, more protective than romantic love."

In the words of Walter J. Ong, S.J. (1912-2033), the professor-student relationship involves a fiduciary relationship. He makes this point in his "[MLA] Presidential Address 1978: The Human Nature of Professionalism" in the journal PMLA: PUBLICATIONS OF THE MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION, volume 94, number 3 (May 1979): pages 385-394.

At times, however, fantasies may be used to explore symbolic psychological incest.

No doubt Shaw's play "Pygmalion" and "My Fair Lady" involved fantasies that explored symbolic psychological incest.

No doubt the psychodynamics involved in fantasies that explore symbolic psychological incest need to be explored further.

In the book MYSTERIUM CONJUNCTIONIS: AN INQUIRY INTO THE SEPARATION AND SYNTHESIS OF PSYCHIC OPPOSITIES IN ALCHEMY (2nd ed., 1970; orig. German ed. in two parts, 1955 and 1956), C. G. Jung, M.D. (1875-1961), discusses numerous alchemists' fantasies of symbolic psychological incest.

In my estimate, those alchemists' fantasies of symbolic psychological incest bespeak the psychodynamics of deep processes in the human psyche.

Symbolically, the psychodynamics of deep processes in the human psyche involve the masculine dimension of the human psyche and the feminine dimension of the human psyche.

Now, Beatrice Bruteau claims that we in contemporary American and Western culture are undergoing the emergence of the new feminine era in the human psyche.

However, if she is right about the new feminine era in the human psyche emerging in contemporary American and Western culture today, then we should expect fantasies of symbolic psychological incest also to emerge in men's psyches, as such fantasies emerged in the male alchemists' psyches.

Now, the ancient Egyptian incest story of Isis and Osiris emerged out of what Bruteau refers to as the paleo-feminine are in the human psyche. As that story goes, Isis reconstructs Osiris, except for one key missing part, after he has been torn apart and the parts of his body scattered far and wide.

Needless to say, it doesn't sound like it would have been fun to be Osiris and have your body torn apart and the parts scattered far and wide.

But the point of the story is that Isis, who symbolically represents the feminine dimension of the human psyche, is capable of reconstructing Osiris after he has been deconstructed, so to speak.

Now, it strikes me that what psychiatrists and clinical psychologists refer to as depression involves the feminine dimension of the human psyche overpowering ego-consciousness.

If we interpret Osiris as symbolically representing ego-consciousness, then we would have to interpret Isis' reconstructing of Osiris as a strong symbolic representation of the feminine dimension of the human psyche, the dimension that Bruteau claims is emerging in the new feminine era in the human psyche in contemporary American and Western culture.

Authors Website: http://www.d.umn.edu/~tfarrell

Authors Bio:

Thomas James Farrell is professor emeritus of writing studies at the University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD). He started teaching at UMD in Fall 1987, and he retired from UMD at the end of May 2009. He was born in 1944. He holds three degrees from Saint Louis University (SLU): B.A. in English, 1966; M.A.(T) in English 1968; Ph.D.in higher education, 1974. On May 16, 1969, the editors of the SLU student newspaper named him Man of the Year, an honor customarily conferred on an administrator or a faculty member, not on a graduate student -- nor on a woman up to that time. He is the proud author of the book WALTER ONG'S CONTRIBUTIONS TO CULTURAL STUDIES: THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE WORD AND I-THOU COMMUNICATION (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2000; 2nd ed. 2009, forthcoming). The first edition won the 2001 Marshall McLuhan Award for Outstanding Book in the Field of Media Ecology conferred by the Media Ecology Association. For further information about his education and his publications, see his UMD homepage: Click here to visit Dr. Farrell's homepage.

On September 10 and 22, 2009, he discussed Walter Ong's work on the blog radio talk show "Ethics Talk" that is hosted by Hope May in philosophy at Central Michigan University. Each hour-long show has been archived and is available for people who missed the live broadcast to listen to. Here are the website addresses for the two archived shows:

Click here to listen the Technologizing of the Word Interview

Click here to listen the Ramus, Method & The Decay of Dialogue Interview