Freud and the Ideal Self 245
ideals is no longer therapy. Therapy can have many values, but they
will never be idealistic. All therapies are about learning to live with
half a loaf.
Freud fi ghts ethically. He shows you exactly what he is doing and
he tells you why. The Soul State is not worth the risk it entails. Re-
ligion and love create more grief than good, and Freud can tell you
why this is so. His values are overt. His conclusions are there to be
proved on the pulse, as Keats would have it. Freud engages in open
mental fi ght with the culture of Soul.
In our current state there is no such open strug gle. Self has won
the battle and does not need apologetics. It does not require com-
plex philosophical justifi cations. Freud is irrelevant because Freud
has won— though the terms of the victory would no doubt fi ll him
with loathing.
Freud commended a self- aware, literate, and deliberative life
beyond illusion. But to have any mea sure of depth, it turns out, a
human being must take “illusions” like compassion and courage se-
riously. One must work through the blandishments they off er and
then decide to live without them in a life that may be severe but is
full of integrity. The modern—or are we now to call him the
postmodern?– individual has fi gured out matters diff erently. He
does not have to live beyond courage and compassion in a life of dif-
fi cult renunciation. He can possess these ideals almost as fully as
his pre de ces sors could, but without the risk. The world of TV and
entertainment and other media can provide him with the illusion
of possessing Soul. But the possession comes without risk. He can
have the satisfactions of the Self in relative safety. He can risk little
and live a long time. But he can also, in his displaced way, possess
the life of the Soul. He can have his cake and gorge himself sick on
it too.