paranoid

[victor steinbok]

Schwartz died in isolation in 1966, so if he did utter that line, it was
long before that.

Here's one from 1967 that may send people on a wild goose chase:

http://goo.gl/HbiQm
Journal of the APA, 1967
[p. 427]

> Just as Freud pointed out that there is a kernel of truth behind even a
> paranoiddelusion (no connection intended!), so I submit that there are facts
> behind these strongly held opinions which we would do well to look into--but
> not in order to declare our demise.


I did trace the Kissinger attribution to three articles in 1977--Cincinnati
magazine (review of Wheeler's Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics), an article in
Newsweek (attributing the quip to an anonymous "presidential aide" who uses
it repeatedly) and Time (directly quoting Kissinger).

1977 is not a coincidence. William Safire connects the dots:

http://goo.gl/aUrl4
Full Disclosure. By William Safire. 1977
p. 432

> 'Even a paranoid has some real enemies,' he quoted his favourite bit of
> Freudian wisdom.


Of course, it's not Kissinger who says it in the book. But the connection is
highly likely--at least, there is a connection between Safire and Kissinger.
(There are some 1974-5 GB sources that also attribute the expression to
Kissinger or to Nixon aides, but the dates are suspect.)

Schwartz studied for a Ph.D. in Philosophy, so he might have been
paraphrasing Freud as well.

There may also be an intermediary:


http://goo.gl/1eLDE
Herman Kahnsciousness: the megaton ideas of the one-man think tank. By
Hermann Kahn. 1973

> But even a paranoid can have real enemies, as the graffeatist said.



There are quite a few people who used this line between 1966 and 1977, but
the sources are fairly obscure (one has "Even a paranoid Caucasoid has real
enemies"), including, as Garson pointed out, buttons spotted in 1973 and in
1967 (Sept. 22, 1967 NYT and here http://goo.gl/XP7Hb ). On the other hand,
a number of sources on Zionism (the real version--not the paranoid
straw-man), including accounts of the Yom Kippur War also mention the line,
particularly in connection with Kissinger. And the expression popped up a
few times in journal articles on the Nixon administration.

The reason I am going through all this is not to establish Kissinger's
primacy in this at all. What I wanted to verify is that, unlike all the
quotes attributed to Mark Twain that he never uttered, Kissinger actually
used the very words attributed to him, even he was not the first to do so.
Still, this puts me no closer to finding the original source of the Schwartz
attribution, although we now also have Freud and his interpreters to contend
with.

Harvey Greenberg used the same line to describe Maltese Falcon in his Movies
on Your Mind (1975). It also popped up in 1971 in the New York magazine
competition for "heavy-handed proverbs" (full issue in GB). In his 1978
biography of Schwartz, James Atlas mentions the line only once, describing
it as "Delmore's most famous epigram", but he also fails to give a citation.

The line also shows up in The Atlantic in 1967 (some article on hippies, but
the snippet does not show the text). It's possible, I suppose, that, like
Kissinger, Schwartz used the expression with some regularity, making it
familiar, yet unrecorded.

VS-)

On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 12:45 AM, Garson O'Toole
<adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com>wrote:

>
> Sorry for all the posts reporting incremental progress. I will take a
> break from posting.
>
> Here is verified cite in the New York Times that mentions a button
> with a variant of the saying in 1967.
>
> Cite: 1967 September 22, New York Times, Psychedelic Show Open in
> Queens by McCandlish Phillips, Page 52, New York. (ProQuest)
>
> Otherwise, one must be content with psychedelic shopping bags, buttons
> ("Even Paranoids Have Real Enemies"), various corporeal grotesqueries
> and such slogans as "Everything is a part of everything is a part of .
> . ."
>
>
> Here is an unverified Google Books match that might be in 1966. It
> also refers to a button I think.
>
> Christianity today: Volume 11; Volume 11
> 1966 - Snippet view
> They further advise: "Reality Is Good Sometimes for Kicks But Don't
> Let It Get You Down," and "Even Paranoids Have Real Enemies." If we
> evangelicals were to hop on the button-wagon, we might sport such
> slogans as "Why Be a COCU-nut? ...

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