the more I realize his brilliance (and insanity, yes, of course), and his endless devotion to form(ulas). Alright, I'll be a bit more specific. Today I read
Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905/1924). I don't need to remind anyone, including those who have never read Freud proper, that his ideas are endlessly complex. However, I see his overarching argument as quite simple: everyone's life adheres to a universal Form, while each individual's life takes on its own unique form. In other words,
the Form of human life manifests differently in each individual. From here other things follow. For just one example, Freud assumes that we can learn this Form, and that by knowing this Form we can sometimes cure neuroses. Of course neither Freud himself nor any Freudians, at least to my knowledge, would use this language. Yet I'm beginning to believe that he might be seen in these terms. Let's look at just one of Freud's sentences (albeit in translation) closely: "It seems, however, that the sexual life of children usually emerges in a form accessible to observation round about the third or fourth year." (261, Freud Reader) The first tie to form is obviously the use of the word itself. Yet Freud assumes a form prior to this manifest one which becomes "accessible to observation." Freud's diction reveals that this apriori form might be said to be a latent Form, one which Freud imagines will inevitably manifest itself (in one form or another), and usually at a specific time. "The sexual life of children," as a phrase, blankets all difference between children, treating them as a whole on a lexical level. The fact that Freud holds that he can talk of "the sexual life of children" at all shows that they all share the same sexual story, or rather that their sexual stories take somehow similar forms. Similar sentences occur throughout Freud's writings--"infantile sexual activity may assume a variety of different forms" (267) for one example--and the Oedipal story itself speaks to my claim. I don't think that my thinking through this question changes our understanding of Freud's actual teachings or what has been said of him per se, but rather frames his thought in a way in which I, at least, can see it anew. What if we saw Freud as an exceptionally talented close reader, but always self-subjected to Form like a weary Plato?
Labels: form, formalism, freud, musings, psychology, sexuality, why I'll never be an academic
