Energy is the eternal delight

Energy is the eternal delight

Freud is convinced that our human essence lies in infantile Xuality. "Our noble illusion, fostered by our higher aspirations, that we are all soul and no body, set in motion one or another of the number of mechanisms of intellectual flight whenever the topic of Xuality is taken seriously…we slip into the evasion of abhorrence or amusement. We are likely to withdraw our willingness to listen when we are told that infantile Xuality is polymorphous perverse."

Polymorphous means assuming various forms. The infant's Xuality is polymorphous perverse because the infant finds pleasure with all aspects of his or her body and such is perverse from an adult view because Xuality for the adult is narrowed only to genital organization. Thus, infantile Xuality is perverse to the adult view whereas the adult view is perverse to the infantile view.

To be objective about matters of Xuality is difficult but very important; if we adults are to learn something about why we behave as we do we must push aside our first instinct to be amused by or to take intellectual flight from an analysis of Freud's views.

William Blake (1757-1827) the great English poet said "Energy is the only life, and is from the body…Energy is Eternal Delight". Freud might be well considered, not as an inventor of frivolous-novelties, but as the inventor of a rational and scientific view of matters that have bedeviled the imagination of poets and philosophers throughout both the Romantic as well as the Modern intellectual era.

For two thousand years our monotheistic culture has tried to turn wo/man into an ascetic animal, strict self-denial has been the message for entry into heaven, however, lurking in the unconscious is the energy to deny this goal because the child has tasted the fruit of the tree of life. "Thus Freud's doctrine of infantile Xuality, rightly understood, is essentially a scientific reformulation and reaffirmation of the religious and poetical theme of the innocence of childhood." Freud is not, however, saying that we can return to that early innocence, he is saying that childhood remains wo/man's indestructible goal.

Quotes from "Life against Death" by Norman Brown