‘When the inner life is not easily disturbed it has achieved what is to Freud as nearly ideal a condition as he can imagine. There is something Oriental in the Freudian ethic.’
In light of the controversy over its authorship, UD, beachside, is revisiting The Mind of the Moralist.
And go figure. As she reads Sontag’s/Rieff’s/Freud’s repeated … mantra that we simply cannot reconcile, and are stupidly self-destructive to try to reconcile, instinct and civilization, UD experiences a vivid memory of Agnieszka Osiecka – an alcoholic – raising a very full glass at a lunch table in Hanka and Jerzy Soltan’s Cambridge house. This would have been a few years before her death in 1997.
“To the continued success of our hopeless cause!” she shouted to the gathering, and we all laughed.