Freud and the Ideal Self 219
And no one needs Sigmund Freud anymore. For Freud took the
Soul State seriously. He feared it and, in some mea sure, was drawn
to it. With impressive integrity, he examined it as closely as he could
and deci ded fi nally that the allure of the Soul was too dangerous
for men and women to face. Aspirations to the Soul State did far
more harm than good. What we have called the Soul is the seat of
illusion for Freud, illusion of the most destructive sort. Freud spent
his intellectual energies attempting to demystify the Soul, yes. But
he did something else as well. He put forward a version of the Self
that is, in a certain way, an ideal. He off ered a vision of Self that es-
chews unity of being, dangerous joy, fullness, and existence out-
side time. He makes re sis tance to these states of being a major virtue.
He makes living within the State of Self— which means living in the
state of disjunction and the state of confl ict— the goal of life. The
ability to say no to the ideal, and to do so with awareness of what is
being lost, is what makes the Freudian individual what one might
call a hero of Self. Freudian man is the antiheroic hero. Yet, as Philip
Rieff drily puts it, “To be busy, spirited, and self- confi dent is a goal
that will inspire only those who have resigned the ghosts of older
and nobler inspirations” (55).
Freud has been described in many ways over time: he is the dis-
coverer of the unconscious, the founder of a new therapy, the archae-
ologist of the inner life. But perhaps the best way to think about
him within the context of this inquiry is as a theorist of intoxica-
tion. Yes, Freud broods constantly on the ways human beings suc-
ceed in medicating themselves. He refl ects on how we turn away
from reality, or what he calls reality, in the interest of inhabiting
another, less painful, state. Most of us are slaves to the plea sure
princi ple, Freud says. And when we cannot fi nd plea sure on our
own—it is ver y hard to fi nd—we do what we can to achieve the next
best thing, which is the annulment of pain.