Freud and the Ideal Self 225
phre nia breaks his heart— this much is clear— but he can do
nothing about it. For the psyche that has fallen out of balance with
itself there is a solution. Talk. Words. Freud believes that expressing
one’s desires honestly (even if the desire at hand is the superego’s
desire to overwhelm or obliterate desire) can create partial libera-
tion. Let us underline that word— partial. There is no full freedom
in Freud’s world of the Self— though there is the illusion of freedom,
which is very costly.
But articulation brings a relaxation of tension. To know oneself,
to the degree that one can, and to express that knowledge in words
of one’s own devising, can melt inner tension (a little) and unbind
the energies that are caught in fruitless confl ict. Why should this
be so? It is not clear. Perhaps it is because expression brings some
mea sure of compassion from ourselves for ourselves. Perhaps artic-
ulation, however uncertain and stumbling, can be a way of making
art (however fl awed) of our state and allowing ourselves the earned
plea sure of detachment. Maybe someone (such as the therapist)
hearing our words and believing them and sympathizing reminds
us of a fundamental truth: all human beings suff er, all of us live in
pain, there is no one who escapes. It is hard to suff er. It is harder to
believe that one has been selected especially for suff ering and that
one suff ers along. Expression breaks the barrier of aloneness—or at
last so Freud suggests.
Where id was there ego shall be, Freud famously said. He meant
that consciousness could colonize that which resists expression
so the self can achieve some stability. From self- knowledge might
arise the power to love and to work. We might add a corollary to
Freud’s famous dictum about ego and id. Where superego was there
ego shall be. That is to say, with eff ort— and the well- timed relax-
ation of eff ort—we might allow the superego, which is most of the
time unconscious, to be heard. There is a paradox here: Freud be-
lieves that the superego actually operates “through the medium