26 August 2004

The sad, sad world of Freud's children

I just finished reading Harold Bloom's The Anxiety of Influence, and once again, I'm glad I don't live in the world that Freud and his disciples claim we live in. In that world, it seems, happiness can either be simple material safety or it can be sadistic pleasure, but transcendence is always a simple extension of one or the other. In that world one can hold one's father in esteem, but underneath, one has either killed and replaced the father or has failed to do so. In that world only utter autonomy is success, and in Bloom's book, that usually means alienation and madness. No, I think I'd rather live in a Trinitarian world in which the Father and the Son are eternally bound by caritas rather than being locked in a struggle to kill or castrate one another.

I know I had a dream last night, but between getting the dog pooped and fed, using the facilities myself, and navigating from the bed to the computer, I've forgotten it. I know that it involved number, and I remember a sensation that the number was entirely too high, but that's all I can recall. This forgetting happens nearly every morning; I wish I could remember, but I suppose this morning's blog writing demonstrates that that's going to be harder than I anticipated...

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