Few works elicit such hearty laughter as those of these “men of science” like Max Nordau and Cesare Lombroso, who arrogate to themselves the role of pontiffs of human lucidity and supreme judges of mental sanity. Finally, one should admire them for their audacity in packing the greatest geniuses of human history, from Mozart to Shakespeare, and calling them all degenerate lunatics. They are the real fathers of modern psychiatry, which has in the jester the perfect model of mental sanity. An ordinary man can easily identify the original as sick, but it takes a visionary to see in creativity itself a mental disorder. Like talented clowns, these men deserve from us nothing but effusive applause and enormous gratitude.
Tag: psychology
Early Adulthood
Early adulthood is a critical phase because the young man is pressured to make decisions with long-lasting consequences without having made up his mind firmly enough, or, in some cases, without having the personality to take charge of the decisions made. Added to this is the frequent case of financial dependence, which ends up leading to submission to advice and opinions. Thus, he almost always gives in to the supposed “wisdom of the elders”, when in truth this is only useful to him as long as it is in conformity with what he truly wants for himself. Otherwise, such advice will only be the push into the abyss that will cause him the most severe regret he has ever experienced—regret, however, necessary for him to mature, and realize that only a life in which the consequences suffered are the fruit of personal choices is worth living. The amusing thing, in short, is that in most cases a few more years would be enough for decisions to be made in a more sensible way; but no, for some reason they have to be made hastily, perhaps because the mistake itself is fundamental.
The Flame of Vocation
Perhaps it is really impossible to explain to an imbecile indoctrinated in psychoanalysis, who has devoted his entire life to the meanest interests, cultivated the most futile relationships, and has never witnessed a noble act, a courageous act of assumption that goes against what is convenient what this flame is, this active impulse that, once manifested in the spirit, draws a dividing line in the life of the one who experiences it. And it is also inevitable that a subject like the former uses the lens he possesses to judge others’ actions: how else could he do it? So the insult itself is inevitable, and perhaps has to be forgiven because it originates from an involuntary and insurmountable misunderstanding. On one side, we have an unbreakable resolution, a spirit willing to the ultimate consequences and to give up everything for the mission that seems to him the purpose of existence; we have a transformation sometimes so complete that it nullifies any identification with the past. On the other side, we have an ordinary man.
There Is Nothing More Comfortable for the Inconsequent…
There is nothing more comfortable for the inconsequent, the coward, the immature and the scoundrel than Freud’s ideas, which attribute human action either to an uncontrollable impulse or to unconscious conditioning, always exempting the individual from responsibility for his own actions. The fault, then, is never in the being that deliberately chooses, because he can never do so, since he is dominated by superior forces from which he can never free himself. Freud’s enormous success stems mainly from the fact that he greatly stimulated the human propensity to victimization, which is infinitely more comfortable than the thankless path of maturity. If psychoanalysis were not obscene, it would be fair to compare it to a grandmother incapable of giving her innocent grandchild any treatment other than that of rubbing her hand on his head and giving him a piece of sponge cake.