Using Freud responsibly

Freud is such a problem.

Partly this is because he was right, and partly it is because he was grossly, irredeemably wrong. Oftentimes in the same essay. And partly it is because his disciples and intellectual descendants have reified his ideas, transforming them from theories into universal truths. (Not that Freud himself did not contribute to that tendency with his pontifical--in fact, patriarchal--stance.)

And any truth Freud has to offer is most assuredly not universal.

But that doesn't mean he isn't thought-provoking and it doesn't mean he can't be illuminating. It just means you have to approach him with caution and an independent mind.

Case in point: I started reading Frederick Karl's biography of Kafka, Franz Kafka: Representative Man: Prague, Germans, Jews, and the Crisis of Modernism and very shortly thereafter posted a plaintive call for better biographies. Happily, perverse_idyll suggested Ernst Pawel's The Nightmare of Reason: A Life of Franz Kafka. I haven't finished Pawel yet, but I've found an oddly illuminating point of comparison which I think will demonstrate why I found Karl unreadable and Pawel compelling.

First, from Karl:
( this is where I started yelling )

Compare with:
( the analogous opening move from Pawel )

( And then I go on talking for a while )

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WORKS CITED
Karl, Frederick. Franz Kafka: Representative Man: Prague, Germans, Jews, and the Crisis of Modernism. 1991. New York: Fromm International Publishing Corporation, 1993.

Pawel, Ernst. The Nightmare of Reason: A Life of Franz Kafka. New York: Farrar Strauss Giroux, 1984.

I'm afraid of my page proofs.

My page proofs are Trent Reznor.

The upside of this metaphor is that I get to be David Bowie.