The Self-Psychological Significance of Trivia

One of the most important elements of any psychoanalytic inquiry occurs when the analyst turns inward and begins to reflect on his own reactions to a given behavior. While the importance of this self-reflective tendency has generally been acknowledged in therapeutic work with individuals-no one doubts the value of the analysis of countertransference, for example-and in theory construction-Freud's masterwork on dream interpretation remains the model-it has received much less explicit attention in psychoanalytic approaches to cultural phenomena. One rarely finds much discussion devoted directly to the relationship between an analyst's personal reflections and his later theory on the psychological significance of some particular cultural practice. This is regrettable, I think, for it is the psychoanalyst's ability to use himself as a methodological tool that lends a certain depth and richness to his understanding and helps to differentiate it from other social science perspectives. What I hope to do in this brief note then is illustrate the link between theory construction and personal reflection through the analysis of a current cultural practice-more specifically, a cultural fad-namely, our interest in trivia. This note will also illustrate the usefulness of viewing a cultural fad as a symptom, a reflection, and an expression of, as well as a defensive/reparative effort to control and mitigate, the needs and anxieties characteristic of the members of a culture at a given period in their history (cf. Beisel, 1985).

Over the past several years, our interest in trivia has quite literally exploded. Although an interest in trivia existed in earlier generations, certainly none before our own has become so preoccupied with it and so systematically developed it. Today, there are trivia games for those interested in sports, travel, celebrities, entertainment, music, rock music, and the Beatles; there are television, Time, magazine, and dictionary trivia