“Everything in the world revolves around sex, except sex, which revolves around power” is a phrase often attributed to… Sigmund Freud. Oddly enough, it is also attributed to him Oscar Wilde. On social networks – a contemporary version of the apocryphal Gospels – we can see from time to time that the authorship alternates.
In fact, the phrase does not belong to Freud. We do not find it anywhere in his works. He’s not Wilde either. It seems that the attribution to the latter stems from the writer’s reference Michael Cunningham (Author of the famous novel Watchesamong others), but it is likely that he himself also succumbed to the influence of viral spread.
This phrase is certainly attributed to Wilde. In the case of the artist, we can say that what is trustworthy is more effective than the truth. There’s an old sketch of the Monty Python comedians, in which they act out a meeting at Oscar Wilde’s house: one by one, the (invented) phrases are puns and sharp comebacks similar to this.
Perhaps it should be said that this phrase, which is not Oscar Wilde’s, is as much Oscar Wilde’s as it is the other phrase he said and wrote. The fact that he did not say or write that is just a minor detail. Or the license of cosmogony, which does not detract from literary certainty, and which is more honest and realistic – to speak a little like Borges.
In a possible world, Oscar Wilde could have said this phrase to reflect something typical of Freudian thought. However, the universe loves anachronisms: Wilde dies in the same year that Freud was published Interpretation of dreams. These other small details do not prevent them from being contemporary.
Interpretation of dreams
E-book
What we can be sure of is that Freud actually read Wilde. There is even a legend – also widespread – that he had a portrait of himself in his library. This is a very unlikely fact. It is difficult to imagine Freud’s room filled with small antique sculptures and a portrait of the writer.
There is also another myth going around that Wilde would have dedicated his tragedy to Freud Salome. This information is impossible directly, because the opera dates back to 1893 and at that time Freud was neither the discoverer of the unconscious nor the founder of psychoanalysis. It would take a few years for him to propose his sexual theory.
But why do we insist on linking them? There are many psychoanalysts who have devoted studies to the writer’s works. along with Dostoevsky It should be the authors’ primary reference for analytical listening training. Like Shakespeare, of course.
Within the framework of literary criticism, there are many authors who have devoted studies to the intersection between Dorian Gray and the category of narcissism, that image in which a person likes to recognize himself, from a specific and external perspective, but it does not correspond to the basis of his motivation.
As I said before, what we can be sure of is that Freud read Wilde. Perhaps the legend of the presence of a picture of the writer in the psychoanalyst’s library comes from a reference to the presence of a copy of The Picture of Dorian Gray on one of the many shelves…
I write this last line and a specific thought comes to mind: Go to the catalog page of the Freud Library, compiled and edited by Keith Davies and Gerhard Fichtner in 2004 for the Freud Museum in London. To my surprise, there they are Dostoevsky and ShakespeareBut there is no work for Wilde.
How can we be sure that Freud read Oscar Wilde? Maybe I was so naive that I gave in to the myth? Is it possible that Freud never read the picture? Does this confirm the hypothesis that Freud was an old conservative and was not interested in any of the literature of his time?
A malicious argument, intended only to save disappointment, could be the assumption that the London library does not contain all the copies, but only those that Freud was able to transfer with the Second War…
…But the truth is that one might also suspect that he had copies of Wilde before going to London, and to make matters worse, if he did, did he throw them away? Did he think little of them? Now, if we can be certain that Freud read Wilde, it is because of two clear references in his work.
The first is an early book. In a 1910 addition to the edition Psychopathology of everyday lifeFreud talks about forgetting her name as the lady does not remember the name of the psychiatrist JungBut other people, the first of whom looks very beautiful for her age.
Also remember names Wild and NietzscheWhich brings her back to talking about mental illnesses and she says: “You Freudians, by searching so much for the causes of mental illnesses, will become like that.” He immediately adds that Wilde had relations with the young man (Jungen Lüten). There is the reference that was missing: Jung in German means young man.
What is interesting about this reference is that Freud gives an example in which his name is opposite the name of his dissident student, to be consistent with Wilde and Nietzsche. Freud’s admiration for the latter is certain. To paraphrase a song by The Smiths, we can assume that Freud said: “Keats and Yeats are on your side, while Wilde (and Nietzsche) are on mine.” Next to patients.
Incidentally, regarding homosexuality, it is documented that in the 1930s Freud was among the intellectuals who signed a petition to remove it from the penal code as a crime. It can be said that Freud was a conservative, but not that he was a reactionary.
Freud’s second reference to Wilde is more interesting. It is in one of the most important articles of his books: The Evil One. This text is valuable not only because it provides a complementary idea to the idea of narcissism, but also because it is a basic reference for forming an idea of Freud’s position on art.
There he says: “Even a real ghost, like the one in Oscar Wilde’s The Canterville Ghost, must lose its power, at least the power of causing terror, when the author allows himself to have pleasure by mocking and teasing it.”
We cannot be sure that Freud read the picture, but we can be sure that he read this great story. Moreover, it is notable that Freud celebrates a technical source of the story, which combines horror and pleasure. As he has already suggested in his other texts on art, the value of a writer lies in his ability to recreate the aesthetic distance that allows the reader to play and not just remain trapped in emotional reading.
This is an idea later supported by Freud in his book Beyond the Pleasure Principle, when he stated that play could make hatred coincide with rest, in the same way that when one thinks of crucifixion, one feels not only fear, but also pity or respect.
We can be sure that Freud read Wilde. And also I like him. Everything else is variations in which fiction justifies its truth. Inaccurate, but true.