228 Ideals in the Modern World
energy of freedom: it allows us to make new choices, take new
branches in the path, even to have fresh perceptions. Making
comprehensive internal deals binds free energy and renders us
more quiescent. The price of sanity— fully and intelligently bound
energy— can be staleness and inertia, which is a form of suff ering
in its own right. And because of the dynamics of repression, we
can never do what Socrates commended and know ourselves. So
even the most adroit dealmaker is likely to be deceived and humili-
ated time after time.
What then is to be done? Freud’s implicit answer is simple but
demanding. One must, fi nally, live with it. One must understand
that tension and disunity are the essential conditions of life and
that fi nally, as skillful as we may be as managers of the psyche, we
will never feel very well for very long. People go into analy sis, or
pick up a volume of Freud, thinking that it might help them to be-
come happy. But truly there is no such thing as happiness—at least
not in any protracted form. Freud defi nes plea sure as the sudden re-
lease of tension. The stronger and the more prolonged the tension,
the greater the plea sure. For we are creatures that can only note
extraordinary changes, and even when they are for the better, we
cannot enjoy them long. A human being, as Dostoyevsky suggest-
ed— and Freud would concur—is an animal who can get used to
things. We ought to get used to the fact that, as Freud says in Civiliza-
tion and Its Discontents, we are not designed to be happy. So we need
to accept our unhappiness and deal with it. We need to get used to
the fact that we are (at best) the animals who get used to things.
People come to Freud and his heirs wishing to be cured— wishing
to be reborn, cleansed, made new, as John did for Jesus with the
waters. But this is not a tenable wish. A Freudian individual lives
within the borders of the Self and does not expect great things. He
knows himself well enough to create some internal stability, though
it will never take the form of harmony— too much of the Self is un-