Cathectic:
Of or pertaining to a connection that is charged with emotional energy. [YourDictionary.com]
Noted in “A Nobel Prize winner’s brilliant tirade against mortality,” Becca Rothfeld, WaPo:
[Elias] Canetti is a peculiar writer, difficult to categorize or even characterize. His sole novel, “Auto-da-Fé” (1935), is a nightmarish fable about a cathectic bibliophile. It is a brutal and disorienting book, reminiscent of the writings of Franz Kafka (whom Canetti admired) and Samuel Beckett (toward whom he was more ambivalent). But his most famous achievement, the monumental “Crowds and Power” (1960), is an idiosyncratic work of poetic anthropology unlike anything else in world literature. Canetti cites legends and rituals from an astonishing range of cultures as he seeks to demonstrate that crowds are the antidote to humanity’s primordial fear of touch. Many of his conclusions are dubious. Is it really true that crowds are equalizing forces that raze all hierarchy, or that they grow practically of their own accord, or that those who outlive others relish the victory over the dead implicit in their very survival? Yet the literal truth or falsity of the pronouncements in “Crowds and Power” is beside the point: Regardless of its plausibility, it has the stern and enthralling authority of a myth or a religious text. Canetti’s memoirs are something else again. In his sparkling recollections of a bygone Europe, he invented a lighter genre for himself.
Sounds rather fascinating.
