A Short Passage from Freud’s “An Autobiographical Study”

It sometimes seems to me that the most remarkable and astonishing mistake I’ve ever heard of is the belief that growing old is a bad thing and that youth is the best time of your life.

Yes, there are probably other whoppers like it, maybe even more absurd. Maybe the pretensions of the elites that are becoming more obviously tragic and deserved, have equal rank, but this particular one stands out for me now.

The immediate case before me is my recent re-reading of Sigmund Freud’s little book, “An Autobiographical Study,” and especially a short passage in which he recounts what he believes are his two contributions to the understanding of sexuality. The book as a whole is Freud’s 130-page reflection and summation of his life’s work as he approaches his end.

I’ve read this little book a few times over the course of the last fifty years, and paid attention to his other books which are necessary to understand it. And this particular passage below now seems to me to be so trivial, such a simple restatement of the longtime youthful delusion, that it’s a great joke – awful yet funny at the same time. Have a look, p. 70:

In the first place, sexuality is divorced from its too close connection with the genitals and is regarded as a more comprehensive bodily function, having pleasure as its goal and only secondarily coming to serve the ends of reproduction. In the second place the sexual impulses are regarded as including all of those merely affectionate and friendly impulses to which usage applies the exceedingly ambiguous word “love.” I do not, however, regard these two extensions as innovations but rather restorations: they signify the removal of inexpedient limitations of the concept into which we had allowed ourselves to be led.

It’s effectively a restatement of the reverse, upside-down, reality that entails Donald Trump as the President of the United States. It's the selfish, solipsistic, egotistic position and Freud used his life to refine and promote it. 

But I more deeply see as I grow older that this position is error and horror, and that getting out of selfishness is much more truthful and fun!