Freud

Could it be true that young people today know next to nothing about Freud? You could truthfully say I know next to nothing about him, but still alive is my wish to know everything about him, warts an' all. I've read more about him, than read his actual works. At one time Freud was an American cultural icon. Movies, the Hitchcock thriller with Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck was consciously, and with relish, shot psychoanalytically, as a series of self-discoveries about the past, leading to freedom of the will.

I read the sadest journal entry I've ever read this morning. A writer who attributes their agony and creative blocks to not being inspired enough by the writing of writers who came before her. The truth, according to the tenets of the education culture in which I grew up, is that creative blocks are a result of an unexamined life. Freud argued most persuasively that creative freedom is a result of being fully cognisant of the minutia of our entire life.

So, I have a new reading goal: the actual works of Freud. Even his most merciless critics agree that Freud wrote extremely well. On that ground alone I look forward to the task. 

Barry