Freud and the Ideal Self 227
after noon, and a critic at night. The true Freudian must also divide
his days. He must leave some time for the satisfactions of the ego,
some for the id, and even some (of a judiciously limited sort) for the
often- tyrannical superego. He must make promises. The agency
held in abeyance during a given interlude should understand that in
time it will have its satisfactions. To break a promise with the id or
superego is perhaps like breaking a promise to a child. One is never
wholly forgiven.
The psyche must know how to make deals. In other words, the
ego must know how to make deals: it must understand how to give
something to the other, more archaic forces that dwell inside and
also to leave something over for itself. The ego, in the healthy indi-
vidual, has to be the great negotiator, the grand broker, without ever
losing the understanding that the agencies with which is does busi-
ness can never really be pleased (or fully trusted). There is always
discontent; there will always be troughs of depression; anxiety is a
constant presence in the best- regulated life. The most adept broker
of the psyche feels the strain— and perhaps, anxiety being the
grinding constant force that it is, he eventually perishes from it.
Freud considers the riddle of being in terms of free and bound
energy. If we bind all our energy, committing it to one end and
another through the making of deals, we may feel a certain level of
contentment. We might form a judicious bud get of the psyche—
allocating a certain amount of libido to love, a certain amount to
work, a certain quotient to family and friends. We might carefully
calculate the time needed to relax and recharge. We may, like a
shrewd prime minister, try to satisfy all the constituencies of the
Self. If we give every indwelling devil his due, they will perhaps
relax their insistences.
But if we bind all our internal energy, there will be nothing left
to respond to immediate life. There will be no pre sent for us, be-
cause everything will already be committed. Free energy is the