EXCLUSIVE: Sigmund Freud Analyzes the SOTU

The whole world... and eternity... were watching

(Through “sources,” I managed to obtain this exclusive interview for this Substack. All rights reserved.)

RS: Dr. Freud, I understand you watched the State of the Union. That’s surprising.

SF: I don’t have much to do in eternity. I’ve already read quite a few books.

RS: Eternity? It looks as if you’re still in your Vienna study.

SF: God works in mysterious ways. I didn’t always believe in Him, if you recall “Moses and Monotheism,” but we live and learn. Or in my case, die and learn.

RS: And you watched on Fox? Isn’t that biased?

SF: (shrugs) They had the best cameraman. When your President lauded the valor of an old soldier, he focused on the face of Senator Blumenthal, who stole it. It didn’t take Sigmund Freud to read his expression.

RS: And when President Trump said of the Democrats, “These people are crazy!”… What did you think of that?

SF: “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”

RS: You’ve said that before.

SF: In another context, yes.

RS: So you think they are crazy. How’d that happen?

SF: From what I called “the narcissism of small differences.”

RS: Which is?

SF: A common enough occurrence at many dinner tables. Family members, wittingly or not, gradually assert positions—not all that different from those of the others, but enough—from their own egotistical needs and desires, with the deliberately obscured intention of singling themselves out, of taking control, and continue to do so over time until the original normative family position changes, sometimes for the better but more often for the worse.

RS: You’re saying this is the same pattern but writ large?

SF: Indeed… and with possibly catastrophic results. What was, not so long ago, your Democratic Party is pretty much what your Republican Party is today. Social programs and reforms that originally made some sense kept expanding, when a number of Democrats, impelled by this form of narcissism, demanded more and more, building on each other, until reaching the absurdities we see today in the realms of sexuality and identity, among others, that depart from any version of reality and make their holders seem, well, “crazy,” as Donald Trump put it in layman’s terms.… No doubt you read Carlyle on the French Revolution. It’s the prototype.

RS: Democrats are today’s Jacobins?

SF: So far, no guillotines, but beware… Unfortunately, the Republicans aren’t much better, only on the margins. Your entire Congress reeks of corruption. You can even smell it up here.

RS: You’re very critical.

SF: It’s nothing compared to what I would say about myself… my life’s work.

RS: (pauses, digesting this stunning admission). Care to enlighten us?

SF: Why not? No place better than a Substack. I vastly prefer them to traditional journalism. I won’t miss a day of Glenn Reynolds or Don Surber. There are others. But to your question… (frowns) Most of what I said that was true was apparent long ago from the Greeks, Shakespeare, and others. Psychoanalysis itself, however, as I halfway admitted in “Analysis Terminable and Interminable,” is a failure, for reasons that are obvious from the end of that title…. Worse, my professed belief that I would be superseded scientifically through pharmaceutical means—drugs—to correct human depression was even more wrong. It’s become clear that SSRIs from Prozac onwards present more dangers than cures—and they are addictive.

RS: So how do we “make it through the night”?

SF: Ah, Sinatra… Old blue eyes knew it wasn’t easy…. (sighs) Well, first off, limit alcohol and, pace Aldous Huxley, no drugs period. To improve life… cognitive therapy, but only for a few weeks. After, it loses value… meditation, as long as it’s not too cultish… and religion, of course. I know that now…. And, needless to say, plenty of exercise to trigger those chemicals God put in your body to make life better… (wanly) Wish I could do that.

RS: You can’t exercise in heaven?

SF: If that’s where I am… In any case, I have trouble. Too many cigars are bad for you. That’s the one thing about which your brilliant Dennis Prager is wrong, though I understand you’ve dedicated your new book to him.

RS: (astonished) You’ve read it?

SF: It’s on my bucket list. But don’t expect a quick response. The list is rather long. Remember that opening line from Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress”? “Had we had but world enough, and time…”? Well, I have eternity. I hope you can wait.