224 Ideals in the Modern World
The fundamental condition of life for Freud is anxiety, the feeling
that arises from confl ict with the outside world and also from in-
ternal confl ict. Aristotle said that the basic feeling of being alive is
an ongoing mild unpleasantness. Freud can tell us why. The sense
of unpleasant inner tension that we all feel most of the time is the
result, according to Freud, of the confl ict going on beneath the level
of awareness. We are not one person, but three people, forever in a
state of inner tension, though—if we are sane— not quite a state of
inner turmoil. Usually the civil war within is something of a cold
war: the id and the super- ego do their work quietly and clandes-
tinely. But tension is the order of the day.
Still, at vari ous points, the confl ict of agencies produces stresses
that are nearly impossible to bear. The inner being rebels; the sub-
ject dissolves in depression or is left incapacitated by anxiety. He
develops a set of symptoms that disrupt everyday life: he cannot
leave the house; he cannot sit down at the table without washing his
hands again, then again; she is afraid of sex, and she is afraid of con-
fl ict, and she is afraid of herself. What has happened, from Freud’s
perspective, is often that one of the agencies has overwhelmed the
rest. The superego has reduced the poor ego to a scared fraction of
what it was, and self- hating depression begins. The ego senses that
the id is reaching tidal- wave strength, so stay inside, stay confi ned—
don’t risk an explosion of desire out in the world. Face it: to be
human hurts. We are always, even at the best of times, in a state of
unhappiness simply because we cannot decide who we are (we are
multiple) and what we want (we want too many things and at the
same time do not want them).
Freud’s solution to the prob lem of relative imbalance is, in its way,
a moving one. He cannot do anything to help fi x an absolute im-
balance; when one inner force has overrun the others, symmetry is
completely lost and the sense of reality (Freud calls it the reality
princi ple) is overthrown. Freud cannot cure psychosis. Schizo-