If you went “beyond the pleasure principle,” where would you be going, and with whom?
(a) the Italian Renaissance with Vasari
(b) the Spanish Inquisition with Loyola
(c) the French Revolution with Saint-Just
(d) the Trojan War with Agamemnon
(e) the American century with Henry Ford
Extra credit:
Although this question has no correct answer, the question mattered to Freud because
(1) The patient’s answer would indicate whether she was an Alice or a Mabel.
(2) When the tide ebbs you can see which bathers are naked.
(3) He had set out to refute Henry Ford’s line that “history is bunk”
(4) He knew that “the present is a future that came through” (Frank O’Hara”)
(5) He was certain that the Great War would have been prevented had they heeded his counsel.
Freud: “Sooner or later God, death, and Hitler turn up in so-called intellectual conversation. I have noticed this in Vienna, in London. It happens with such frequency that one wonders whether ideas, and even a personage emblematic of an idea, exist as words without substance — a kind of currency that will not buy you a cup of coffee. “
Happy birthday, Sigi! and you too, Willie Mays! Stellar brothers, sons of May 6. And Robespierre was born today, too!
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Author: The Best American Poetry
