Electra

Electra (pronounced ih-lek-truh)

(1) In Greek mythology, (also as Elektra or Laodice), any of several mythical women, most famously as the daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra; she incited her brother Orestes to avenge the death of their father by killing his murderess Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus.

(2) In Astronomy, one of the six visible stars in the Pleiades.

(3) A female given name from Ancient Greek (now rare).

(4) In psychoanalytic theory, as “Electra complex”, a young girl's sub-conscious competition with her mother for her father's affection.  Still much associated Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), the term was in 1913 coined by Carl Jung (1875–1961) but Freud, proprietorial in such matters, added layers to his “Oedipus complex” (originally detailing a son's sexual attitude towards his mother and concomitant hostility toward his father) publishing the refinement as the “feminine Oedipus attitude”.  It can (generously) be interpreted as Freud’s contribution to gender-equality.

First century BC (of the name, although the literary tradition stretched back several millenia): From the Ancient Greek Ἠλέκτρα (Ēléktra (literally “shining bright)), from ἤλεκτρον (ḗlektron) (amber) and related to ἠλέκτωρ (ēléktōr) (shining sun; beaming sun).  Although etymologists regard the possibility as dubious, there may be a connection with the Sanskrit उल्का (ulkā́) (meteor) and/or the Latin Vulcānus (god of fire and metalworking) and the Ancient Greek ἥλιος (hḗlios) (sun).  The ultimate source may even be pre-Greek so it’s not surprising the exacting lexicographers list the origin as “uncertain”.  The Latin noun ēlectra was the nominative/accusative/vocative plural of ēlectrum (from Ancient Greek ḗlektron) and the best known adaptation was electrum (amber; an alloy of gold and silver, used in Antiquity and now specifically a natural alloy with between 20 and 50 per cent silver (once commonly called “German silver plate).  Electra is a proper noun; the noun plural is Electras (about the only use of the plural form is of sopranos or Buicks).

The legend of Electra (Ηλέκτρα)

While some of the myths of Antiquity have a unique storyline and there are characters who appear in a single role with a known lineage, in many cases the tales are tangled and figures from one myth may appear in others with different parents and children.  As an example, consider the literary career of Electra who variously was (1) One of the daughters of Oceanus and Tethys, who married Thaumas and then gave birth to Iris and to the Harpies; (2) One of Persephone's companions and was present when she was carried off by Hades; (3) One of the Pléiades.  Zeus fathered her child Dardanus who left Samothrace and went to the Troad, where he founded the royal dynasty of Troy.  Electra had another son, Iasion.  Electra is also said to have had a third son, named Emathion, who ruled over Samothrace, but more frequently this third child of hers by Zeus is named as Harmonia; (4) In the Italian version of Electra's legend, she was the wife of the Etruscan King Corythus and Dardanus and Iasion were born in Italy; (4) Electra is also linked to the legend of the Palladium.  She was later transformed with her sisters into the constellation of the Pleiades.

Elektra (Frankfurt, 1953).

The 1967 recording of Richard Strauss's (1864–1949) Elektra with Swedish soprano Birgit Nilsson (1918–2005) and the Wiener Philharmoniker (Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra) under Hungarian-British conductor, Sir Georg Solti (1912–1997) is regarded still by many critics as the finest studio recording.  Given the virtuosity on show, it's hard to argue but among the opera cognoscenti there’s a faction that insists Electra's hatreds and lust for vengeance were never better captured than in the 1953 recording with German soprano Inge Borkh (1921–2018) and the Sinfonieorchester dem Hessischen Rundfunk (Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra of the state of Hesse), under German composer and conductor Kurt Schröder (1888–1962), a release noted also for German mezzo-soprano Christa Ludwig's (1928–2021) appearance as first maid.  In all the repertoire of opera, Electra is one of the roles demanding much range from a soprano and listeners can choose the Electra they prefer: technical ecstasy or thrilling intensity.

Most famously however she was (6) the daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra.  After Agamemnon was murdered by Aegisthus and Clytemnestra, Electra was treated as a slave, spared only on the intervention of her mother.  In some accounts Electra saved her brother (the young Orestes) by entrusting him to their old tutor who took him away from Mycenae.  To prevent her giving birth to a son who might avenge her father, Electra was either married to a peasant who lived far from the city, or, having been betrothed to Castor and then Polymestor, was imprisoned at Mycenae.  On Orestes' return, she recognized him at Agamemnon's tomb and played an active part in the assassination of Aegisthus and Clytemnestra. When the Erinyes pursued Orestes for this crime, she devoted herself to his welfare.  In Euripides' Orestes she fought at her brother's side against the local populace who wanted the murderers condemned to death.  Electra was the main character in Sophocles' (now lost) Aletes: when Orestes and Pylades went to Tauris, rumours started at Mycenae that they had died, and that Electra's sister Iphigenia had killed Orestes.  Aegisthus's son Aletes assumed the throne and Electra went to Delphi, where she met Iphigenia who had gone there with Orestes.  Electra was about to blind her when she saw her brother.  Electra and Orestes returned to Mycenae and killed Aletes.  Electra married Pylades and went with him to Phocis; their children were Medon (3) and Strophius.

Electracy

Actor Carmen Electra (stage name of Tara Leigh Patrick, b 1972) and Lindsay Lohan (b 1986), The Art of Elysium Launches Betty and Veronica Apparel Line in Association with Miramax Films and Archie Comics, Beverly Hills, California, May 2004.

Electracy is the “skill and facility necessary to exploit the potential of modern electronic media”, a idea that has come to attract more attention after the disclosures of AI (Artificial Intelligence) systems “going rogue”, something of interest not only because of the reported events but the suspicion there have likely been many more “undisclosed incidents”.  First appearing in Teletheory (1989), the concept of electracy was constructed by US literary theorist Professor Gregory Ulmer (b 1944, then holding the chair in the Department of English at the University of Florida and a professorship of Electronic Languages and Cybermedia at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland) and it appeared at a time when the internet had expanded beyond the US.  What had come to be known as the internet (until circa 2016 often with an initial capital) had been restricted mostly to universities, the military and some government agencies but by the late 1980s it had extended to research institutions in the UK, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Japan but looked nothing like whate the www (world wide web) would transform it to in the following decade.  According to Professor Ulmer, electracy was “to digital media what literacy is to print”, the concept encompassing the broader cultural, institutional, pedagogical, and ideological implications inherent in “…the major societal transition from print to electronic media”.  A portmanteau word, the construct was electr(icity) + trac(e) + -y with “trace” used in the sense made famous by French philosopher Jacques Derrida (1930-2004).  Trace was a core concept in Derridian deconstruction; it denoted the principle that every sign, word, or present experience carries within it the mark of what it is absent, not present, and different from itself.  Instead of meaning coming from a pure, self-contained origin or a direct connection to reality, the trace means that every “present meaning” is already inhabited by the “ghost” of other “past and future signs”.  Unlike some of the concepts from deconstruction and other forks of postmodernism, la trace could, at the definitional level, be understood by most.

Jung, Freud and the Electra complex

The pioneers of psychoanalysis gathered at Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts, September 1909. Front Row (left to Right): Sigmund Freud, Granville Stanley Hall (1844–1924) & Carl Jung.  Back Row (left to right): Sándor Ferenczi (1873–1933), Ernest Jones (1879–1958) & Abraham Arden Brill (1874–1948).

The group photograph was shot during a conference on psychology hosted by Dr Hall, then president of Clark University and the first in the US to earn a doctorate in the discipline.  Although even then psychoanalysis was established in the US, the conference would prove a landmark and trigger not only a wealth of publications but also the legitimization of the field to the extent departments of psychology began to proliferate in US institutions.  This was Freud's only trip to the US, a place where his influence would for generations be profound but, within half a decade, his estrangement from Jung had begun, producing the profession’s most famous schism that to some extent endures to this day.

Although in the public consciousness Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) does seem to loom over psychiatry and his theories continue to flavour the writing of at least some clinicians and academics, the editors of the APA's (American Psychiatric Association) DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) have moved on and in mainstream contemporary psychiatry, the Freudian “feminine Oedipus attitude” seems to be regarded primarily as a historical psychoanalytic concept rather than an acknowledged human developmental process or a psychiatric diagnosis.  It was Carl Jung (1875–1961) who coined the term “Electra complex” and explicitly Freud rejected it, not because he dismissed the notion but because his original conception was of his “Oedipus complex” as something applicable to both sexes and it was only later he constructed a more intricate model of female psychosexual development, thus the need for his term: “feminine Oedipus attitude”.

Electra Receiving the Ashes of her Brother, Orestes (circa 1927). oil on canvas by Jean-Baptiste Joseph Wicar (1762–1834), Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, Massachusetts, USA.

In Freud’s construct of female development: (1) the mother was the primary love object until (2) the child discovers the anatomical difference between the sexes, thus developing (3) what Freud styled “penis envy”, leading her to (4) blame her mother for rendering her with what she perceives as a “deficiency”, something that compelled her to (5) shift her affections towards her father meaning she (6) became her mother’s competitor for the father’s affection before (7) eventually identifying with her mother and accepting the defined “feminine role”.  Freud seems not to have commented on whether he was annoyed by Jung’s “Electra complex” becoming one of the most popular pieces of jargon to leak from the profession to popular discourse but he’d made clear his thoughts, writing in From the History of an Infantile Neurosis (the Wolfman case history) (1918) that he saw “no progress or advantage” in introducing the term and did not advocate its use.  That presumably was a clinician’s considered view though there’s no reason to suspect Austrian neurologists are any less prone than the rest of us to professional jealousy and in little more than a decade his position significantly had shifted; by 1931 Freud was arguing the pre-Oedipal attachment of girls to their mothers was much more important in than his earlier formulations had suggested.  So, although among Freudians, neo-Freudians and the wider community, his particular take on the Electra complex retains a following, the theory wasn’t a single, fixed proposition.

The Return of Orestes (from Electra by Sophocles) (1782), oil on canvas by John Downman (1749–1824), National Trust Collections, Hinton Ampner, Alresford.

The figure at the far left is Charles James Fox (1749–1806), a British Whig statesman whose career in politics endured for some four decades; he’s best remembered for his part in the Fox-North coalition government (April-December 1883 with Lord North (1732-1792)), dismissed by a then not quite mad George III (1738–1820; King of the UK 1760-1820) after the loss of the American colonies.  The episode was of note in the development of Westminster parliamentary conventions because the coalition had taken office despite the king’s opposition and when George III a few months later took the opportunity to “clear out that rotten crew”, it would be the last time the sovereign’s reserve powers would be invoked to sack a prime minister until in 1975 Sir John Kerr (1914–1991; Governor-General of Australia 1974-1977) sundered the commission of Gough Whitlam (1916–2014; Prime Minister of Australia 1972-1975), proving the royal prerogative still existed (although paradoxically perhaps now only in the hands of a monarch’s representative rather than their own).  There had been William IV’s (1765–1837; King of the UK 1830-1837) in 1834 dismissing Lord Melbourne (1779–1848; prime minister of the UK 1834 & 1835-1841) but historians seem to treat that more as a “gentlemen’s agreement” and most of those few Australians who by 1975 much thought about such things probably believed the days of meddling viceroys were done.

Fox’s other (and far-reaching) contribution to political evolution was that in refusing to serve in the administration of Lord Shelburne (1737-1805; Prime Minister of the UK 1782–1783), he accelerated the morphing of the Tory faction into a formalized party and no prime minister since Shelburne has attempted to govern without the support of a party.  In the literature, the relationship between George III and Fox often was described as “mutual antipathy” but “mutual hatred” better describes things and there have been few loathings so well documented as public knowledge, the king in a letter to North as early as 1775 saying of Fox he had: “…cast off every principle of common honour and honesty ... [a man who is] as contemptible as he is odious ... [and has an] aversion to all restraints.”  It was deeply personal view because the king attributed this dissolute lifestyle of his son and heir (George IV (1762–1830) King of the UK 1820-1830) to Fox’s corrosive influence.  Despite that, Fox’s appearance in the painting was likely playful rather than political, the artist often including public figures in his works with no overt purpose; Downman was not a “political artist”.

APA Dictionary of Psychology; the APA also publishes a concise edition.

Despite’s Freud’s place in the history of the profession and his continue presence within factions in mainstream psychiatric science, in the “standard” diagnostic literature (the DSM & the WHO's (World Health Organization’s) ICD (International Classification of Diseases)), there are only traces of his legacy.  The DSM-5-TR (2022) is the APA’s most comprehensive diagnostic classification system yet and it includes no mention of the Electra complex, feminine Oedipus complex, penis-envy syndrome, or Oedipal developmental stage, either as diagnoses or as elements in diagnostic criteria and that reflects the path of the modern (ie post 1980) DSM’s evolution as concepts not technically diagnoses came gradually to be removed or renamed, the framework shifting from the classic psychoanalytic explanations of psychopathology Freud, Jung and others had pioneered in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  That doesn’t imply parent–child attachment, identification, rivalry and such has been downgraded in importance, indeed the volume of literature would suggest the opposite; it means just that modern developmental psychology studies these things extensively but generally without Freud's specific (and still famous) assumptions.  Less well-known than the DSM, the APA also publishes a psychology dictionary in which the Oedipus complex is discussed as a concept of classical psychoanalytic theory, noting that contemporary psychoanalytic thinking substantially has reduced its centrality and instead focuses more on empirical findings about earlier mother–child relationships.

Electra and the Chorus bearing vessels for libation on the tomb of Agamemnon (undated), illustration from The Choephori by Aeschylus (circa 525-circa 456 BC), pencil, pen and ink on paper by John Flaxman (1755–1826), an English sculptor and draughtsman in the neoclassical tradition, Royal Academy of Arts, London.

In modern parlance all that might suggest “Freud was cancelled by the DSM”.  That would be overstating things but it’s true than prior to the DSM-III (1980), the earlier editions (DSM-I (1952) & DSM-II (1968)) conceptualized mental disorders predominantly in psychodynamic terms with psychoanalytic concepts consequently afforded some prominence although despite the emphasis, neither the Oedipus or Electra complexes were ever listed in the DSM as a diagnosis; they were theoretical explanations of personality development and psychopathology rather than a disorder with diagnostic criteria.  It was in DSM-III the change really began, the editors deliberately moving psychiatric classification toward operationalized diagnostic criteria and away from competing psychodynamic theories, one consequence being explicit mention of the Oedipal theories disappeared from the DSM's diagnostic architecture; the threads could still be detected but that required prior knowledge, a not unreasonable assumption given the publication at the time tended circulate mostly within the profession; its high public profile would come later.  Psychoanalysis however has not disappeared and there are psychoanalytic theorists who continue to use Oedipal language meaning the concepts not infrequently appear in the literature although that does not imply modern psychiatry universally has empirically validated Freud's theory.

So if “Freud was cancelled” is the wrong phrase, it’s necessary to nominate one better and either “somewhat restricted” or “much diminished” better capture what happened (certainly if what’s being discussed is the DSM rather than psychiatry or psychotherapy as a whole).  Prior to the DSM-III, disorders commonly were described in terms of underlying psychological mechanisms and conflicts, emphasizing the primacy of psychoanalytic theory as an important influence in both DSM-I & DSM-II.  It was DSM-III that was the watershed in that it built the framework upon which all subsequent editions have been constructed, up to the current DSM-5-TR.  A major break from what had been established (reflecting a generational change in the profession), DSM-III introduced explicit operational diagnostic criteria and deliberately adopted an approach intended to be neutral concerning etiology (the establishment of a cause, origin, or reason for something).  Henceforth, the DSM would describe what a disorder looked like rather than discuss theories explaining why it manifested.

Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual, Third Edition (PDM-3, 2026).  The PDM is less popular with a general readership because it focuses on “why we’re mad” while the DSM defines exactly “how we’re mad” and offers hints on what to do about it.  The PDM is however useful for those who (in themselves or others) detect madness but wish to determine just when & why the instability began.

However, just because Freud's metapsychology ceased explicitly to appear in the DSM’s organizing framework doesn’t mean Freud has no influence on contemporary psychiatry; a number of the concepts he developed or modified have, to varying degrees, survived including unconscious processes; defense mechanisms; transference and countertransference; the importance of early relationships; attachment and interpersonal development and (vitally) the idea that psychological processes can operate outside conscious awareness.  As that implies, much modern work has been built Freudian concepts that became mainstream orthodoxy.  What happened was those concepts have been reformulated or interpolated into broader psychological theories, rather than being accepted simply because Freud proposed them and, in a nod to Freud’s seminal role, there is now the PDM (Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual, first published in 2006 and now in its third edition (2026)) which, able to be read as a complement to the DSM or a stand-alone title, deliberately incorporates psychodynamic concepts.  That the DSM & PDM peacefully can co-exist does indicate why it’s at least misleading to speak of Freud being “cancelled”; it was more that the DSM was becoming a different sort of publication and Freud needed a new home.

Buick Electra

1973 Buick Electra 225 Custom Four-door Hardtop.

Richard Nixon's (1913-1994; VPOTUS 1953-1961 and POTUS 1969-1974) last full-year in office, 1973 was the last “good year” of the old US economy but events in the Middle East that October would trigger the first oil shock and legislation would impose on cars battering-ram like bumpers and crude emission control devices that impaired driveability reduced power and increased fuel consumption.  It’s remarkable behemoths like the Electra lasted another three seasons.

Over six generations, GM’s (General Motors) Buick division produced the Electra between 1959 and 1990.  For its whole existence the Electra was the flagship of division’s full-size line and, at various points, was available with just about every style of coachwork Detroit offered in the era including two & four-door hardtops, four door sedans, two door convertibles and five door station wagons.  While there were no four-door convertibles, or station wagons with two-doors or in hardtop configuration, some coach-builders used also the platform as the basis of ambulances, limousines or hearses.  The best-known of the breed was the Electra 225 that gained its name from being an impressive 225 inches (5.715 m) in length and while dimensions continue commonly to be used as product descriptions in many industries, explicit mention of length does seem rare in cars although allusions were once common (SWB, LWB, EWB, an appended “L” etc). The Maybach revival used “57” (5.7 m long) & “62” (6.2 m) and some of the Land Rovers were designated according to the wheelbase in inches (88, 110 etc); there was the Ford GT40 but that was about height.  The classic Electra 225s (they wouldn’t always measure 225 inches stem to stern but the name stuck) were built on the GM corporate C platform and although part of the “great down-sizing” in 1977, it retained the RWD (rear-wheel-drive) configuration until 1985 when, along with the equivalent ranges built by Cadillac, Oldsmobile, Pontiac & Chevrolet, the “full-size” lines shifted to FWD (front-wheel-drive).  The most famous Electra 225 was a 1966 four-door hardtop in which the actor Jayne Mansfield (1933–1967) was killed after the car slammed into the back of a stationary truck;  the protective “Mansfield bars” on trucks are named after her.  Because of the name, it was used for the Buick Electra E5, a battery electric mid-size crossover SUV manufactured since 2023 in China by SAIC-GM under the Buick brand.

Powered clamshell tailgate on 1971 Buick Estate Wagon.  The 1971 Estate used the Electra platform and was Buick's first full-sized station wagon since 1953.  It was a very cool feature.  

A footnote in the Electra’s history is the powered clamshell tailgate used on the Estate Wagon between 1971 and 1976.  Built on a 127 inch (3.23 m) wheelbase, the Estate Wagons truly were large machines and the clamshell tailgate appeared on all GM’s big wagons in the era, the novelties being the powered rear glass sliding up into the roof as the tailgate slid into a recess under the cargo floor; very cool.  The power tailgate (the first ever seen on station wagons) was operated by switches on the instrument panel or a key switch on the rear quarter panel but while wagons had the powered glass, the powered tailgate was optional and, if the manual version, there was a small handle on the tailgate and an additional chrome “ring” with “flippers” around the keyhole.  The apparatus operated by turning the key to raise the glass into the roof cavity with the tailgate lowered by turning the chrome ring.  A clever design of the type engineers really would have enjoyed perfecting, the tailgate used counter-weights of sizes & springs of tension (a la garage doors) calculated exactly to allow the structure to drop under the force of gravity while demanding only a light action manually to raise it; it was a case-study in the difference between mass & weight (mass x gravity).  Although heavy and intricate, the system proved admirably reliable but the design wasn’t carried over to the new generation of smaller station wagons because, in the unforgiving new world, there was a quest to reduce weight in the hunt for improved fuel economy and lower exhaust emissions.

Lockheed Electra

TEAL Lockheed L-188 Electra ZK-TEB 1963 (left) & 1965 (right).  The TEAL livery was retained when the corporate name was changed in 1965, the aircraft not immediately re-painted, “Air New Zealand” replacing “TEAL JET PROP” on the fuselage as required by the rules of the Convention on International Civil Aviation (better known as the “Chicago Convention” (1944).

The airline TEAL (Tasman Empire Airways Limited) emerged from the Tasman Sea Agreement, an intergovernmental treaty between the Australia, New Zealand and the UK, concluded in London early in 1940.  The purpose of the operation was to provide for the trans-Tasman traffic of passengers, cargo and mail, something disrupted by the outbreak of World War II (1939-1945).  In the manner of a number of wartime agreements, the treaty contained a sunset clause stipulating a termination within three months of the end of the war with Germany but such was the state of post-war civil aviation that arrangements were carried over, the pre-war practices not returning to the trans-Tasman route until 1954.  As part of that re-organization, the shareholdings, previously spread between the New Zealand Government (20%), Union Airways (19%), BOAC (38%) and Qantas (23%), were dissolved and the two governments assumed co-ownership until 1961 when both decided to maintain separate national carriers, TEAL and Qantas, the relationship having been strained since the Australians had insisted TEAL order the turboprop Lockheed Electra to maintain fleet standardization with Qantas while the New Zealanders wanted to upgrade to jets.  In 1965, TEAL was re-named Air New Zealand.

Two Lockheed P-3 Orions of the Japanese SDF (Self-Defense Force), on anti-submarine patrol over the Sea of Japan.

The naming of the sea is contested.  Japan asserts “Sea of Japan” has since the early 1800s been the internationally accepted term while the RoK (Republic of Korea (South Korea)) claims “East Sea” predates the period of Japanese colonial rule and the DPRK (Democratic Republic of Korea (North Korea)) Korea advocates use of “East Sea of Korea”.  Unlike the Electra L-188 on which it was based, the Orion proved a great commercial success and between 1960-1990 over 750 were built, the aircraft adopted by over 20 countries; some remain in service.  The distinctive “tail “stinger” is a “MAD boom”, used for the magnetic anomaly detection (MAD) of submarines.

Re-cycling a name the company had in the 1930s used for a smaller airliner, US manufacturer Lockheed between 1957-1961 built 170 Electra L-188s, the first large turboprop airliner built in the US.  With a number of unique design features that made it suitable for use on short runways or airfields located at high altitudes, there should have been great scope for international sales but a combination of two well-publicized crashes (caused by a design fault in the engine-mounts) and the new generation of jet aircraft suppressed demand meaning production ended a decade earlier than planned.  Ironically, whether in passenger service or as the freighters many were later converted into, the Electra proved robust, reliable and provided stellar service to many operators as late as the 1990s, the airframe also serving as the basis for the Lockheed P-3 Orion maritime patrol aircraft that saw service with many nations.  The Electra’s darkest chapter was that a flight of three was purchased by the military junta that between 1976-1983 ruled Argentina and, during the “Dirty War” (1974-1973) the three flew missions to dump some of the detenidos-desaparecidos (detained-disappeared), political opponents of the regime, of which there may have been as many as 25,000) into the South Atlantic Ocean.  The Argentine Navy’s Electra’s proved ideal for the gruesome task because they were configured with wide cargo doors.

Encyclopedist

Encyclopedist (pronounced en-sahy-kluh-pee-dist)

(1) A compiler of or contributor to an encyclopedia.

(2) One of the collaborators fn the French Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des Sciences, des Arts, et des Métiers (now almost always used with initial capital letter).

(3) A dismissive term applied by KGB specialists to generalists.

1645–1655: The construct was encycloped(ia) + -ist.  Encyclopedia was attested from the 1530s, from the New Latin encyclopaedia (general education), from the Renaissance Ancient Greek ἐγκυκλοπαιδεία (enkuklopaideía) (education in the circle of arts and sciences (literally “training in a circle”)), a mistaken univerbated form of the Koine Greek ἐγκύκλιος παιδείᾱ (enkúklios paideíā) (education in the circle of arts and sciences, the construct being ἐγκύκλιος (enkúklios) (circular (also “general”)) + παιδείᾱ (paideíā) (child-rearing, education), from pais (genitive paidos (child).  The modern sense of a "reference work arranged alphabetically" is from 1640s, the origin most associated with the French Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des Sciences, des Arts, et des Métiers (Systematic Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts, and Crafts (1751-1772)).  Encyclopedism (or encyclopaedism) is the related noun and encyclopaedist the alternative spelling, the Latin form surviving as a variant because many of the most famous printed volumes had Latin names; as the printed editions fade from use, except in historic references, encyclopedia is now by far the prevalent spelling.  The adjective encyclopedic dates from 1816 while the truncation cyclopaedia is attested from 1728.  

The -ist suffix was from the Middle English -ist & -iste, from the Old French -iste and the Latin -ista, from the Ancient Greek -ιστής (-istḗs), from -ίζω (-ízō) (the -ize & -ise verbal suffix) and -τής (-tḗs) (the agent-noun suffix).  It was added to nouns to denote various senses of association such as (1) a person who studies or practices a particular discipline, (2), one who uses a device of some kind, (3) one who engages in a particular type of activity, (4) one who suffers from a specific condition or syndrome, (5) one who subscribes to a particular theological doctrine or religious denomination, (6) one who has a certain ideology or set of beliefs, (7) one who owns or manages something and (8), a person who holds very particular views (often applied to those thought most offensive).  The original Encyclopedists (encyclopaedists in historic British use) were the French Encyclopédistes, members of the Société des gens de lettres (a literary association) who between 1751-1765 contributed entries for the Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des Sciences, des Arts, et des Métiers, published between 1751-1772, edited by noted art critic Denis Diderot (1713–1784) and (until 1759 when one of his entries triggered an amusing ecclesiastical turf-war), mathematician & musicologist Jean-Baptiste le Rond d'Alembert (1717–1783).  Encyclopedist is a noun; the noun plural is encyclopedists.

Opening pages of Lindsay Lohan's entry at encyclopedia.com.

Confusingly, “cyclopedia” and “encyclopedia” mean the exact same thing, cyclopedia a long less common spelling although one that in a niche in publishing did persist into the twenty-first century.  First known to have appeared in 1728, according to the usually practice in English where shorter forms are preferred with the unnecessary discarded, “cyclopedia” should have prevailed but as Henry Fowler (1858–1933) pointed out in his authoritative A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926): “The longer forms [encyclopaedia & encyclopaedic] are in themselves better” simply on the basis of an established pattern of use although he did note “cyclopaedic is becoming the more usual form for the adjective”.  That adjectival preference didn’t last into the modern age and etymologists attribute the decline in use of cyclopaedic and its related forms to the Encyclopædia Britannica (Latin for “British Encyclopædia”) becoming for more than a century a cultural reference in much of the English-speaking world.  First published in 1768, the 15^th and final printed edition appeared in 2010, spanning some 33,000 pages over 32 volumes and complete sets often are offered for sale.

For those who can remember the ways thing used to be done: Britannica 1990 edition.

This 1990 edition comprised 29 volumes plus 2-volume index, three (1990, 1991 & 1992) annuals (updates issued between full-editions) and a Propaedia Outline of Knowledge.  Volumes 1-12 were written in the Micropaedia Ready Reference section and volumes 13-29 in the Micropaedia Knowledge in Depth section.  All this weighed in at 68 kg (150 lb).  With search engines, for the end user, information became “weightless” although, to deliver facts (and cat videos) to hand-held devices, around the planet, every second, much mass must be displaced.

For anyone with a bookshelf to fill they’re a visually impressive sight and doubtlessly some have bought sets for “interior decoration” but it would appear supply now exceeds demand, not everyone in the modern age seeing the aesthetic value in several feet of leather spines though there was a time when many found them useful.  Old Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), writing in 1965 to the famously undomesticated author Ronald William “R.W.” Clark (1916–1987) recounted that from conversations with Aldous Huxley (1894–1963): “You could always tell by his conversation which volume of the Encyclopedia Britanica he’d been reading.  One day it would be Alps, Andes and Apennines, and the next it would be Himalayas and the Hippocratic Oath.”  Huxley certainly enjoyed “showing off” but for those who didn’t grow up in a time when the answer to just about any question of fact was but seconds away after a few taps on a screen, it must be difficult to imagine what it was like in the “pre-interconnected” age.  Before the internet, it could take days and much effort to find the answer to a question and sometimes, the answer proved elusive and one just gave up because it was too hard.  Those with access to a set of “the Britannica” of course had an advantage although the information within obviously was current only up to a certain date, thus the attraction of annual almanacs that were a collection of facts, figures and such covering much of what had changed in the most recent twelvemonth.  In a sense, among many, a collective amnesia seems to have overtaken the land because many of those who lived before search engines (let alone AI (artificial intelligence)) seem not to appreciate how profound, within barely a generation, has been the change.  Still, since 2016, the encyclopaedia has appeared online at Britannica.com so the content remains in a now more easily accessible (and current) form although it's now just one tiny corner-store in a market it once dominated.  If any one factor encouraged the survival of  the word “cyclopaedia”, it was the popularity of Pears' Cyclopaedia, a single-volume encyclopaedia published in the UK by the Pears' Soap Company (1807); it first appeared in 1879, the year of Queen Victoria’s (1819–1901; Queen of the UK 1837-1901) Diamond Jubilee.  Obviously less comprehensive than the Britannica, Pears’ found a niche in being convenient and oriented towards what most people wanted to know most of the time including an atlas, gazetteer & medical dictionary with sections devoted to topics as diverse as commerce, history, science, religion and literature.  After 1953 Pears' editions became annual but, from the early 1990s (the www (world wide web) emerged in 1992 and became mainstream in 1995-1996), sales tended down and succumbing to the inevitable, the last appeared in 2017.

KGB identity card, issued in 1982 for British SIS (MI6) defector Kim Philby (1912–1988).

The Soviet Union’s (USSR) KGB (Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti, literally “Committee for State Security” but better understood as “political police”) was the last of an alphabet-soup of similar agencies (Cheka, GPU, OGPU, NKGB, NKVD, SMERSH & MGB) which, building on the models of the many secret-police forces maintained by Tsarist Russia (1547-1917), was responsible for the USSR’s internal security and, beyond its borders, espionage, counter espionage and a range of activities conducted in support of Soviet foreign policy (including that not disclosed and that sometimes denied).  In post-Soviet Russia, the KGB evolved into the FSB (Federal Security Service), former comrade Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (b 1952; president or prime minister of Russia since 1999) honing his skills in the KGB, an institution he is believed to have joined in 1975.

“Lubtanka building”, Lubyanka Square, Meshchansky, Moscow, Russia.

In Soviet times, citizens referred to the building as “the Lubyanka”, a term in synecdochic use referencing the KGB specifically and the state’s sprawling internal security apparatus generally.  After 1918, the yellow-brick building was for decades headquarters of various organs of the Soviet and Russian security services since 1918 (most infamously the KGB, 1954-1991) and it became notoriously especially for the cells in which were conducted interrogations, torture and the executions.  The legend grew the cells were in the basement but that was an illusion, the prison complex actually the windowless top floor, those detained disorientated by the “basement-like” environment.  In a sign of changed times, under the comparatively less repressive regime of comrade Leonid Brezhnev (1906–1982; Soviet leader 1964-1982), architects were commissioned to re-model the prison into the KGB staff cafeteria.  After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, a museum was opened within the Lubyanka but the political winds have since again blown from the east and access is now highly restricted.  The word became a cultural reference point also in the West and one of the jocular nicknames for the headquarters for the UK's SIS is “London Lubyanka”; sited on the banks of the Thames, descriptions of the building include “fortress-like” & “North Koreaish” but the eclectic mix of styles, shapes & structures has aged well. 

As an internal security agency, the KGB (like its predecessors) was always formidable and usually effective in the suppression of dissent but in espionage and counter-espionage, the record was patchy and increasingly so as the Cold War (1947-1991) drew to its (anti-) climax.  Most of the celebrated successes happened either before the Cold War began or in its early years, the number and usefulness of ideologically motivated defectors and traitors from the West sharply declining after comrade Khrushchev’s (Nikita Khrushchev (1894–1971; Soviet leader 1953-1964) “Secret Speech” at the 1956 Communist Party Congress in which he denounced comrade Stalin's (Joseph Stalin 1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) repressions and purges, laying bare the nature of the his regime.  The speech didn’t long stay secret, the transcripts leaked to the West convincing all but the few most devoted of the “useful idiots” their faith had been misplaced and the god had failed.  After the interventions in Hungary that same year and Czechoslovakia in 1968, idea of a Soviet-like future became still less appealing, not only in the West but also among the disillusioned in the USSR and its satellite states.

Decline: Soviet real per capita GDP growth 1960-1985.  Nostalgic as he may be for the empire of the old USSR, even Mr Putin admits the economic system simply didn't work.

However, whatever the decline in the metrics, the KGB continued to grow, reflecting the need to increase surveillance and internal control in order for the party to maintain its authority over a system in which occasional periods of stagnation were the only good news in what was, in retrospect, a system in the throes of terminal decline.  By the mid-1970s, in the Moscow region alone, the KGB establishment stood at some 50,000 (greater than the combined workforce of their Cold War opponent’s CIA & FBI (the US Central Intelligence Agency & Federal Bureau of Investigation) although other Western nations also maintained large security operations of spies and analysts) and of the total force of half a million-odd, some 220,000 guarded the USSR’s borders, not from fear of invasion by a foreign power but to discourage escape attempts.  Once an organization with a relatively simple structure which, as late as the early 1960s, was administered through three directorates, the KGB grew to encompass a dozen, reflecting in part the geographical division of the country by 1980 in 21 departments when once there had been eight.  If there was one dominated theme in the government of the late Soviet Union it was a burgeoning bureaucracy, the upper echelons staffed increasingly by party apparatchiks with little knowledge of intelligence or espionage (the USSR’s equivalent of the MBA-CEO class in the West).  These the experienced operators disparagingly called “encyclopedists”, the idea being they knew just a little bit about many things and, being empire-builders as industrious as their imperialist lackey counterparts, fiefdoms proliferated.  Apart from the documented decrease in efficiency, the growth of the KGB, like that of the armed forces, the party and the military-industrial complex, absorbed (unproductively), a rising share of the USSR’s diminishing financial resources at a time of failing health care, food shortages and a general decline in living standards, one former KGB general (Oleg Kalugin (b 1934)) later telling the joke which circulated within the organization: The USSR was “the Congo with rockets”.  In living standards, the flagship of the second-world was tending towards the third and the structural imbalances fed off themselves, an economic viscous circle that led to the economic and moral bankruptcy which doomed the USSR.  Late in 1991, the KGB was dissolved, having out-lasted the party by just weeks although, in the years since, the successor organizations in both Russia and the states within its sphere of influence have sometimes devolved towards the past.

Comrade Andropov.

General Kalugin did however give credit where it was due.  The KGB in 1979 had spies well-placed inside the intelligence apparatuses of a number of countries and one of these agents provided the information the wife of a Soviet diplomat had with some frequency been observed having sex with the family’s large pet (male) dog.  The KGB agents were a worldly lot and might have had a chuckle before turning a blind eye but the source advised there were plans to obtain video evidence with which the diplomat could be blackmailed.  So sensitive was the matter that discussions involved the head of KGB himself, Yuri Andropov (1914–1984; head of KGB 1967-1982, Soviet leader 1982-1984).  Unable simply to recall the couple lest it compromise the source and, in a nice touch, not wishing to burden the husband with the knowledge of his wife’s unusual predilection for canine-intimacy, no solution seemed immediately obvious until, after for some time sitting in silence, comrade Andropov suggested: “Kill the dog”.  All agreed this was a good idea so it was arranged for a KGB technician to visit the house on some pretext to slip the hound some poisoned meat.  The dose turned out to be wrong so instead of killing the beast, just its hind quarters became paralyzed although that obviously solved the problem; a tactical failure but a strategic success.  It was a minor event in a long career and it's believed it played no part in comrade Andropov being the last leader of the USSR but one.

Malia Nummerdor mugshot.  Lots of stuff happens in Florida.

Less inclined to understanding and forgiveness than the KGB’s apparatchiks were one husband in Florida and the officers of the Charlotte County Sheriff’s Office.  In September 2026, Rupert Murdoch’s (b 1931) tabloid New York Post reported a husband’s bedroom security camera (said to be visible and displaying a blinking red light when recording) had captured scenes of his wife performing “a disgusting act” with the family dog.  The man had installed the camera in an attempt to find who was pilfering from a coin jar so the sight of his wife enjoying bestiality with his dog would have been at least a surprise.  Mother of two Malia Nummerdor (b 1989) was arrested and charged with “engaging in sexual contact with an animal”, the sheriff’s office confirming the footage revealed Ms Nummerdor was “nude from the waist down, positioned with the dog in a manner consistent with sexual activity”.

Police interviewed the suspect who “acknowledged the video showed her with the dog, but denied there was any sexual contact – claiming that she was just petting it.”  In the report of interview filed, the investigating detective described her answers as “contradictory”.  Predictably, a case that sounded like something from the front page of NRS (normally reliable source) National Enquirer attracted much public interest and friends of Ms Nummerdor launched a fundraiser to assist her with legal expenses, claiming she was “set up by her spouse”.  Helpfully, one acquaintance revealed: “I went to school with her, and she never rubbed me as a weirdo.  She is very pretty.  I don’t think she would have trouble finding a human being to be intimate with.  Of course, that alone doesn’t prove anything, but I think it’s important to remember that the person being portrayed online is someone who has people who knew her before these allegations.” while another concluded “I feel there is much more to the story.”

Trope

Trope (pronounced trohp)

(1) In art and literature, any literary or rhetorical device, as metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony, that consists in the use of words in other than their literal sense and which tends to become a motif.

(2) In rhetoric, a figure of speech in which words or phrases are used with a non-literal or figurative meaning, such as a metaphor.

(3) In geometry, a tangent space meeting a quartic surface in a conic or the reciprocal of a node on a surface (archaic).

(4) In music, a short cadence at the end of the melody in some early music; a pair of complementary hexachords in twelve-tone technique.

(5) In the rituals of Judaism, a chanting (cantillation) pattern, or one of the marks that represents it.

(6) In medieval Christianity (and preserved in the rituals of certain factions in Roman Catholicism), either a phrase or verse added to the Mass when sung by a choir or a phrase, sentence, or verse formerly interpolated in a liturgical text to amplify or embellish.

(7) In Athenian philosophy, any of the ten arguments used in scepticism to refute dogmatism.

(8) In Santayanian philosophy, the principle of organization according to which matter moves to form an object during the various stages of its existence.

(9) In metaphysics, a particular instance of a property, as contrasted with a universal.

1525–1535: From the Latin tropus (a figure of speech (in rhetoric)) from the Ancient Greek τρόπος (trópos) (a turn, direction, course, way; manner, fashion; a mode in music; a mode or mood in logic (in rhetoric, "a turn or figure of speech)) and related to τροπή (tropḗ) (solstice; trope; turn) and τρέπειν (trépein) (to turn).  Root was the primitive Indo-European trep (to turn), related also to the Sanskrit trapate (is ashamed, confused, literally "turns away in shame") which Latin picked up trepit (he turns), the Latin adoption in the figurative.  The meaning is now understood as something more diffuse but technically, in rhetoric, a trope was "a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is used in a sense other than the usual definition".  In English, the word is found often in combined form (such as heliotrope) and occurs also in concrete nouns that correspond to abstract nouns ending in -tropy or -tropism.  Trope is a noun & verb, troper, tropist, tropology & tropism are nouns and tropey is an adjective; the noun plural is tropes.

Use of the noun “tropism” is now generalized but in literary history it’s used in the sense of the “technique” (really more a concept) attributed to the Russian-born French-Jewish novelist and lawyer Nathalie Sarraute (1900-1999).  An exercise in abstract thought, madame Sarraute’s approach was to refer to mental and imaginative life as perceived by her and, thus perceived, it comprised (literally) millions of tiny little responses to innumerable stimuli, the classic example being her experimental narrative Tropismes (begun in 1932 but not published until 1939).  In that, with a most unconventional use of language, she “translated” her “vision of reality” into a construct of a “different reality”, the book consisting of 24 short vignettes, capturing brief scenes, described in intricate detail; it was compared by one modern critic to “a MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) machine able to scan what the brain is doing to construct perceptions and render it all sequentially in text.”  The work came to be regarded as proto nouveau roman (“new novel”, an originally French literary movement that emerged in the mid-1950s); it was described by Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980) as un chef-d'œuvre (a masterpiece) and the Paris-based newapaper Le Monde included it in their “100 Books of the Century”.  The title of Tropismes was a botanical reference, tropisms being stimuli to plant growth and this idea madame Sarraute applied to human thought processes, tropisms imagined as “interior movements that precede and prepare our words and actions, at the limits of our consciousness.”

Tropisms (first edition of the English language edition (1963)).

In reading Tropisms, some mental gymnastics are demanded because among the mysteries of the abstract and imaginary are interspersed the real and living; with often no clear break between where one ends and the other starts, it can be helpful to re-read the odd passage.  Even in 1939 when the French language edition first was published, that “modernist” approach hardly was new but it wasn't yet part of mainstream literature.  That “slurring between” what's “real” and what's not adds to the experience and, within the internal logic of the author's premise, probably is essential but the traditionalists of the pre-Nouveau Roman world likely have dismissed the “blurring” as a technical flaw.  After the “very modern” novelist Sir Martin Amis (1949–2023) told one interviewer people “should read my books twice” fully to understand them, his father (Sir Kingsley Amis (1922–1995)), possibly with a glance at the Booker on his shelf, observed: “Well that means the little shit has failed doesn't it?”

One can see why it seduced Sartre but the idea of the Nouveau Roman becoming fashionable didn’t at the time appeal to most of the “reading for pleasure” segment of the market (ie those who paid for and read novels rather than “deconstructing” them in seminar rooms).  For a mainstream readership, the conventions of the nineteenth century novel (beginning, middle, end; plots; characters, right & wrong etc) that seemed dreary to literary theorists were the essence of fiction and to replace these with “cold, meticulous descriptions of external objects” seemed hardly “literature”; for “that sort of thing”, there were repair manuals and political science tracts.  Read however on its own terms and not as an “exemplar of a genre”, Tropismes can be compelling in the way a half-century before, those prepared to spend time looking from different angles at the work of the early cubists must have found fascinating new insights.

Nu descendant un escalier n° 2 (Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2), oil on canvas by Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968), Philadelphia Museum of Art,  Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  The Spanish illustrate the meaning of “enigmatic” with the example “of meeting a man on the stairs and being unable to tell if he's going-up or coming down”.  One could describe Tropisms as: “an enigmatic work”.   

Just as the cubists could depict the human form simultaneously in the way the brain might separately process the sight viewed in different aspects, what Nathalie Sarraute did was explore spaces variously unremarkably mundane or threateningly claustrophobic, populated with dream-like figures, her idea being of the mind working in the almost animalistic, pre-verbal, “instinctual movements” she thought arose from human unconscious.  These she said, “constitute the secret source of our existence” and the old existentialist Sartre concurred, saying: “it is existence itself”.  Even Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955), fond of the novels of Anthony Trollope (1815-1882) and unlikely to have found much of worth in nouveau roman, in a way, thought like Sarraute and Sartre.  In 1949, after a minor stroke, his personal physician (Lord Moran (Charles Wilson), 1882-1977; President of the RCP (Royal College of Physicians) 1941-1949), seeking to reassure his patient the consequences were minor, explained: “…there was no paralysis; it had only cut off the nutrition of certain central cells concerned with sensation”, adding, in the clinician’s reductionist way: “Sensation doesn’t matter.”  Churchill at once interrupted: “Life is sensation; sensation is life.”

Visitatio Sepulchri Double Bass Sheet Music by Sir James MacMillan (b 1959).

In modern use, “trope” continues to be used to denote any rhetorical or figurative device but the history was varied, one special use occurring during the Middle Ages when it came to be applied to a verbal amplification of the liturgical text used Church rituals.  Regionally, there were likely a few (now lost) but the best–documented of such interpolations was the Quem quaeritis trope preceding Easter Sunday's Introit.  The Latin phrase Quem quaeritis (Whom do you seek?) was used as the opening line (of four) in the Easter liturgical dialogue introduced during the tenth century and which came to be the basic structural element in what became a vast body of medieval liturgical drama (known also as isitatio sepulchri (Visit to the tomb)).  From this perhaps unpromising ecclesiastical origin came the rebirth of European theatre as it developed into a dramatized form (detached from the sacred Liturgy); what was genuinely a new genre became a trope of great significance in the evolution of European drama.  The Easter Introit (a short musical piece or chant sung at the start of an Easter service) was in a sense “ready-made” for adaptation and proved in the hands of many authors ideal for elaboration into the dialogues that were the basis of an entire school of liturgical drama.  Although never long pieces, so influential was their form the English literary critic and Shakespearean scholar Sir Edmund Kerchever “E.K.” Chambers (1866–1954) devoted many pages to tracing their lineage in his two volume The Mediaeval Stage (1903), a work long overshadowed by his four-volume The Elizabethan Stage (1923) but which benefited from the latter-day revival of interest in and re-assessment of the period dubbed the “Late Middle Ages”.

DVD covers: (The Parent Trap (1998), Freaky Friday (2003) and I Know Who Killed Me (2007).  

When younger, Lindsay Lohan's signature trope was playing dual roles (The Parent Trap, Freaky Friday and I Know Who Killed Me while during her “troubled Hollywood starlet” phase” (2007-2012) she became emblematic of the “downward spiral” trope.  In 2022, she appeared in Falling for Christmas, a Netflix take on the "Christmas movie trope".  Although the scripts for tropes have long followed an algorithm, the studios are said now to be using a predictive form of AI (artificial intelligence) to hone the generation of whatever should have the most audience appeal (an approach with a history in popular music pre-dating AI).  The flesh & blood screen-writers (most of whom have for decades driven cars and made their toast using products manufactured in plants where machines (industrial robots) substantially have displaced the human labor content) are are unlikely ultimately to succeed in keeping AI out of their profession; in the medium term, their future may lie in the creation of the quirky and bizarre (in the pop-culture ecosystem, that's a niche to inhabit until AI also perfects those tropes and at marginal cost).  Indeed, what's predictable is the emergence of the "obviously not AI generated" trope although, presumably, it's a matter of time until machines master also that genre.  For the formulaic stuff (most commercial screen product), the studios are likely to find the AI path "better, cheaper, faster" and the history of US industrial relations suggests these imperatives will prove irresistible.  It's doubtful whether, over the last 40-odd years, many screen-writers gave much thought to the blue-collar workers displaced by robots from assembly lines; it's likely they were just delighted by cheap toasters and better-built cars.  Whether the quality of what ends up on screen will much be improved by AI remains to be seen but the studios will benefit from lower production costs while hoping those rendered redundant will find ways to generate sufficient disposable income to be able to pay to watch what the machines are making.       

Of the Stage 5 Clinger trope, most sources cite the origin as the movie Wedding Crashers (2005) although there are claims it merely popularized the use; without earlier citations however, the source must be assumed to be the film.  As a technical point, a stage one clinger isn’t initially labelled as such, the term applied retrospectively after syndrome is diagnosed.  If men are smart or lucky, they’ll by stage two realize what is happening but some men are so stupid things don't "click" until stage four.  While in movie there was no discussion of stages other than “5”, by implication that was most extreme and memes soon fleshed out 1-4.  Although unverified, the following cautionary tale reputedly was written by Bill Clinton:

SC1, the Stage 1 Clinger: She seems fine

First date went well, she was attentive, interested, and even sometimes got the drinks.  Best of all, she made breakfast!.  Afterwards, the text messages were fun and flirtatious.

SC2, the Stage 2 Clinger: Hunter and game

The text messages become frequent and your first impression was of course positive but, in retrospect, that was the first first hint of the lure / engage / trap strategy of the lone hunter, the point of a lure being to tempt prey and "lure them into a false sense of security".  Lures are of course used because they work and, before long, you'll be exchanging texts with her, most of which will demand little more than agreeing with her about innocuous topics like the weather or the day's traffic.  She has engaged her prey.  When the conversational dynamic has achieved the required level of "naturalness", she’ll suggest a second date and will extract a commitment to a specific time / date / place.  That will be soon.  At this point, an escape still is simple but appears not necessary because a second date seems hardly a threat.

"I've got a stage five clinger", Wedding Crashers (2005).         

SC3, the Stage 3 Clinger: Tactical Manoeuvres

The second day was maybe something you'd not wish to repeat because there was a creepiness in the way she knew so much about your life.  Of course, in the age of social media, such "biodata mining" is hardly a challenge but her knowledge seemed so comprehensive as to suggest the skills of a stalker.  The most dopey men at this point are flattered because they enjoy a date in which about the only topic of conversation was themselves but the more socially sophisticated should at this point sense danger.  The mistake is to continue the engagement by agreeing to a third date, even if thought a clever ploy by not confirming a time; at this point, delusions remain comforting.  Within hours, text messages become frequent to the point of nuisance; you check Facebook and find she's friended everybody one knows while on Instagram she's posted positive comments on your posts.  Needing time to think, you ignore the texting and eventually it goes quiet… for about an hour.  Then she phones.  By being terse to the point of brutish, it can now be ended but many men allow themselves to be trapped into a third date, usually with the illusion they'll use the event to end things.  The S3C stage frequently is the point of no return and exactly when you should have acquainted yourself with the tale of Julius Caesar (100-44 BC; Roman general and dictator of Rome 49-44 BC) crossing the Rubicon and pondered whether to cast the di or cut your losses and run.      

SC4, the Stage 4 Clinger: The circling vulture

By stage four, clinging has slurred effortlessly into stalking and S4C is likely to send your mother flowers on her birthday and attempts at avoidance will prompt texting and calling from other phones.  SC4s who drive are even more of a threat because, wherever you go, she can follow; you'll "run into her" at the most improbable places and usually she’ll suggest taking advantage of the coincidence by going to lunch, dinner or whatever else might be close.  No matter how studiously you might watch the rear-view mirror, she’ll hunt you down and find you.

S5C, the Stage 5 Clinger: Thrill of the kill

A "cheater's" Volvo C30 (2006-2013).  Over dark blue, a stark white "CHEATER" probably is a better contrast the the traditionally preferred red or lurid fuchsia.

The "Cheater Car" phenomenon is due often to wanton philandering but also in some instances because S5C-APCs seek to "dissuade the competition"; Hell hath no fury like a S5C-APC.  In the days of solid machines like the 140/160 (1966-1975) and 240/260 series (1974-1993) series cars, it was once accepted, as a sociological reality, no Volvo ever would suffer the fate but clearly, both Volvos and their ownership profile have changed.  While obviously not desirable, some vehicles have suffered more.

At this point, her life is scheduled around you, even to the point where she may now work in the same building; she expects to have lunch with you every day and a drink after work whenever possible.  Should you try to avoid these meetings, emotional meltdowns (sometimes in public) ensue, the only way to avoid a scene being to agree.  Your friends will start asking you out as a couple and tell one how lucky you are to have her because "she’s wonderful"; the most helpful will hint "she's too good for you" and "you won't do any better".  They know that because they've invited her to their dinner parties where she talks about your plans together.  The S5C can also be APC ("actual psycho-chick", the two not synonymous but there’s frequent overlap).  Pursuing another relationship (even in desperation a fake one) as in an attempt to dissuade her brings its own problems; the S5C-APC will spray-paint CHEATER on their car (usually in some reddish hue but black or white also are used, the required contrast depending on the car's color; these are APC conventions of use).  At this point, faking your own death begins to seem a good tactic.

Cling on and no matter what, never let go: Victorious S5C crooked Hillary Clinton (b 1947; US secretary of state 2009-2013) and Bill Clinton (b 1946; POTUS 1993-2001) under gloomy skies for the formal dedication of the William J Clinton Presidential Center, Little Rock, Arkansas, November 2004.  

The significance of dividing the path of the clinger into stages is it’s vital to extricate yourself from their clutches at the earliest stage possible; it needs to be remembered progression can be rapid, some clingers so adept at the art they're able to skip one or even two stages.  The longer delayed the excision, the harder it becomes and if allowed to reach the later stages, one may be stuck with her forever, the hunter has been captured by the game and for that, you can’t blame her: You're trapped and it's all your fault; you have only yourself to blame.