organization, greater plurality and sophistication. Freud’s eros
is, in essence, the force of human development.
We do not have Freud’s essay on sublimation; he de-
stroyed what he wrote of it. Sublimation, which would account
for why we often prefer harder and more complex forms of
symbolic satisfaction to easier ones, was Freud’s greatest stum-
bling block. The problem of sublimation is related to a ques-
tion concerning the therapeutic process, which works (when
it does) through the patient’s conviction of having made
progress, of having figured something out. Progress in therapy
takes the form of increased knowledge, rather than mere re-
covery of a lost source of pleasure. In effect, knowledge be-
comes a new cause of enjoyment; and more sophisticated
knowledge satisfies more strongly, or convincingly. Therapy
requires a basic form of sublimation: thinking and talking
about a problem rather than acting it out for neurotic satisfac-
tion. Derrida’s treatment of Freud, by ignoring the question of
why and how Freud’s therapy works, skirts the issue that was
always central to him. If we fail to attend to it, the point of
Freud’s discovery is lost.
It is telling that Derrida brings Plato and Freud together
inThe Post Card.The two are in some ways similar. Plato and
Freud are united by the fact that both founded disciplines or
institutions: philosophy and psychoanalysis. Writing on both,
Derrida slights the institutional aspect of their thought. That
is, he fails to consider Plato’s overriding concern with the (usu-
ally unwelcome) place of the philosopher in his society. And he
rarely mentions Freud’s role as the champion of psychoanaly-
sis, surrounded by a hostile world that clings defensively to
smooth pieties and outworn creeds.
Because he neglects their sense of disciplinary mission,
Derrida also neglects another bond between Plato and Freud,
Plato, Austin, Nietzsche, Freud 179