Come Watson, the Game's Afoot

Freud introduces Chapter 6 of Beyond the Pleasure Principle this way: “What follows is speculation, which the reader will consider or dismiss according to his individual predilection. It is further an attempt to follow out an idea consistently, out of curiosity to see where it will lead.” I love both of those statements! In his first sentence Freud authorizes the reader to feel free to accept or reject the argument presented according to the individual’s preference, partiality, penchant, or inclination. Accept or reject what you will, Freud declares, it is, of course, of not much interest to me whichever path you choose. By the writing, in the writing, I am enjoying some pleasure. And while he writes, Freud lives even if he writes about death. Maybe the writing pursues Death even like the detectives in the novels and TV shows I so enjoy.
           And so the second sentence justifies the first. Freud isn’t terribly interested where in thought that idea might lead him. The writing is a form of play and even, perhaps, playful. Writing is itself a school, a learning environment where the writer might find something for which he did not know he was looking. The discovery will bring pleasure. Freud’s comment here reminds me of Montaigne’s declaration: “And if no one reads me, have I wasted my time, entertaining myself for so many idle hours with such useful and agreeable thoughts?” For Montaigne in his leisure hours his writing serves as entertainment as he follows an idea to some destination. Writing is a pleasure. Freud, too, sees writing as a gratifying means of thinking through an idea to its unknown and unanticipated end.

Now that I am retired, and have been so these past four years, I enjoy many leisure hours and often I fill them with writing. As did Freud and Montaigne, I enjoy the freedom to unravel the thread of an idea to see where it may lead me. Once I was concerned with who had read me, who would read me, who should have read me, but at present, midway through my eighth decade, those concerns have fallen away, thankfully. I do not have to influence anyone and have no need to expand my curriculum vitae.  Of course, I’m going to post this on my blog and so I am careful to use correct grammar and spelling, though I can admit that there have been  lapses over the years. I am yet concerned with style if I can be said to have one, and I do labor over the text word by word and sentence by sentence. Eventually one hopes the world might see . . . and then, as Freud says, any reader might “consider or dismiss” as they wish. Emily Dickinson might have hidden her poems in a trunk, but she had first sent not a few to Thomas Higginson in the hopes of getting published. When he proved not helpful as mentor or promoter, she stopped attempting to put her poems out into the world. She wrote almost wholly for herself . . . but, she must have worked religiously on her poems, and if she did not publish during her lifetime, she also did not destroy her work. Perhaps one doesn’t write without an external audience in mind. Maybe journals, commonplace books, diaries (but not then so much) are meant to be privately kept, and I have thousands of pages of journals placed in the archives and on shelves in my home in which editing has been done and even before the pen touched the page. Why write anything if it isn’t meant to be seen . . . or, I consider as Freud’s second sentence avers, perhaps writing is the exercise of following an idea . . . if not consistently then certainly, and as Montaigne suggests, to do so with pleasure. And if no one reads what I may and may not publish, if I have entertained myself I have not wasted my time with what I have considered such useful and agreeable thoughts.                                                                                                    

 And then at the conclusion of chapter 6 Freud writes, “It may be asked whether and how far I am myself convinced of the truth of the hypotheses that I have been set out in these pages. My answer would be that I am not convinced myself and that I do not seek to persuade other people to believe in them. Or more precisely, that I do not know how far I believe in them.” Come Watson, the game’s afoot!