Percy-L: Literary, Religious, Scientific, and Philosophical Discussion of Walker Percy

[Wade Riddick <wriddick AT usa.net>]

> You (and many others on this list) probably already know it, but even the title
> appears to be ironic, given what you say about the content of the book. In Freud's
> early work he thought of drives as biologically driven to preserve the species,
> borrowing rather directly from Darwin. After World War I, Freud changed his theory
> and postulated the existence of a thanatos drive, a drive toward death and
> destruction that undid the positive direction of the eros drive. Freud's later theory
> never caught on in psychiatry or psychology;

I would say there is a great deal that's self-destructive in the eros drive itself if you want to think of it as lust for something material.  Indeed, it's acknowledged in science.  Organisms with gonads don't live as long as those without.  Many genes we carry serve the species well at our own expense.  Philanthropy is a good example.  It's reinforced both through society norms and institutions and through genetics - and, indeed, genetics can serve to enforce selfish behavior as well.  Genetics mixes a wide variety of strategies in different individuals.  This older way of thinking just isn't how behavioral biology works anymore.  As usual, this will take several decades to trickle down into the humanities.  A lot of professors still talk about left brain/right brain distinctions and things are far, far more complicated than that.


> But Percy evidently wanted us to think that modern psychiatry had itself
> fallen into the grips of the very drive in which it did not want to believe.

That's probably correct.