Freud’s most important ideas finally may have less to do with the repression of sexual impulses (which explains neither the past discontents of our civilization nor the present ones), than with ambivalence. It is their capacity to reverse feelings that is the human problem and hope. What hope there is derives from Freud’s assumption that human nature is not so much a hierarchy of high-low, and good-bad, as his predecessors believed, but rather a jostling democracy of contending predispositions, deposited in every nature in roughly equal intensities. Where there is love, there is the lurking eventuality of hatred. Where there is ambition, there is the ironic desire for failure. Although he wishes not to know it, a sore loser may be sore mainly because he almost won and is reacting against his wish to lose.
American sociologist (1922–2006)
Philip Rieff (December 15, 1922 – July 1, 2006) was an American sociologist and cultural critic, who taught sociology at the University of Pennsylvania from 1961 until 1992. He was the author of books on Sigmund Freud and his legacy.
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Rieff
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Since no firm social standards for treatment have yet been erected, some grave ambiguities persist regarding the question of just who should be treated. There may be a kindness that is neurotic, if it develops out of unconscious compulsions, and a cruelty that is normal, if it is freely and consciously determined upon. So far as sainthood is determined by unconscious and uncontrolled motives, it is neurotic; so far as sinning, as usually understood, is determined by conscious and rational choice, it is normal. One difficulty with the criteria of rationality and consciousness is that Eichmann, for instance, might well be considered quite without need of treatment. He knew what he was doing; indeed, he wanted to be a great success in his career. Freud was honest enough to discover that there was no inherent relation between normality and the norm, such as had been established, in the age of political and religious man, through the mediating myth that there were natural laws. The analytic attitude has discovered no natural harmony of goals, no hierarchy of value inscribed upon the universe.