Freud summarized his epic observations thus:<\/p>\n
I propose to describe how the universal narcissism of men. their self-love, has up to the present suffered three severe blows from the researches of science.<\/p>\n
a. In the early stages of his researches, man believed at first that his dwelling-place, the earth, was the stationary centre of the universe, with the sun, moon and planets circling round it. In this he was na\u00efvely following the dictates of his sense-perceptions, for he felt no movement of the earth, and wherever he had an unimpeded view he found himself in the centre of a circle that enclosed the external world. The central position of the earth, moreover, was a token to him of the dominating part played by it in the universe and appeared to fit in very well with his inclination to regard himself as lord of the world.
\nThe destruction of this narcissistic illusion is associated in our minds with the name and work of Copernicus in the sixteenth century. But long before his day the Pythagoreans had already cast doubts on the privileged position of the earth, and in the third century\u00a0BC\u00a0Aristarchus of Samos had declared that the earth was much smaller than the sun and moved round that celestial body. Even the great discovery of Copernicus, therefore, had already been made before him. When this discovery achieved general recognition, the self-love of mankind suffered its first blow, the\u00a0cosmological\u00a0one.<\/p>\n
b. \u00a0In the course of the development of civilization man acquired a dominating position over his fellow-creatures in the animal kingdom. Not content with this supremacy, however, he began to place a gulf between his nature and theirs. He denied the possession of reason to them, and to himself he attributed an immortal soul, and made claims to a divine descent which permitted him to break the bond of community between him and the animal kingdom. Curiously enough, this piece of arrogance is still foreign to children, just as it is to primitive and primaeval man. It is the result of a later, more pretentious stage of development.<\/p>\n
[…]<\/p>\n
We all know that little more than half a century ago the researches of Charles Darwin and his collaborators and fore-runners put an end to this presumption on the part of man. Man is not a being different from animals or superior to them; he himself is of animal descent, being more closely related to some species and more distantly to others. The acquisitions he has subsequently made have not succeeded in effacing the evidences, both in his physical structure and in his mental dispositions, of his parity with them. This was the second, the\u00a0biological\u00a0blow to human narcissism.<\/p>\n
c. The third blow, which is psychological in nature, is probably the most wounding.
\nAlthough thus humbled in his external relations, man feels himself to be supreme within his own mind. Somewhere in the core of his ego he has developed an organ of observation to keep a watch on his impulses and actions and see whether they harmonize with its demands.<\/p>\n
[…]
\ntwo discoveries \u2013 that the life of our sexual instincts cannot be wholly tamed, and that mental processes are in themselves unconscious and only reach the ego and come under its control through incomplete and untrustworthy perceptions \u2013 these two discoveries amount to a statement that\u00a0the ego is not master in its own house.\u00a0Together they represent the third blow to man\u2019s self-love, what I may call the\u00a0psychological\u00a0one. No wonder, then, that the ego does not look favourably upon psycho-analysis and obstinately refuses to believe in it.
\n(\u2018A Difficulty in the Path of Psycho-Analysis\u2019, 1917)<\/p>\n
Copernicus forced us to realize that the earth revolves around the sun. Darwin helped us to recognize that we cannot trace our ancestry back to\u00a0Adam and Eve. And Freud insisted that we do not\u00a0control our own minds. These three revolutions\u00a0constitute an overwhelming attack on the narcissistic concept of man as centre of the universe.<\/p>\n
The experience of being a grandiose baby, who\u00a0comes to regard himself or herself as the exalted\u00a0child of a deity, and who believes the planet earth\u00a0to be the best address in the universe, may be\u00a0pleasurable at some level. But eventually, in order\u00a0to come to terms with the life that we do have as\u00a0ordinary, hard-working, ageing people of finite\u00a0means and capacities, we must abandon our\u00a0infantile, megalomaniacal, narcissistic self-image,\u00a0and learn how to be one of billions of fellow citizens, in a large solar system, all of whom will one\u00a0day die. As Freud explained:
\nJust as a planet revolves around a central body as well as rotating on its own axis, so the human individual takes part in the course of development of mankind at the same time as he pursues his own path in life. But to our dull eyes the play of forces in the heavens seems fixed in a never-changing order; in the field of organic life we can still see how the forces contend with one another, and how the effects of the conflict are continually changing. So, also, the two urges, the one towards personal happiness and the other towards union with other human beings, must struggle with each other in every individual; and so, also, the two processes of individual and of cultural development must stand in hostile opposition to each other and mutually dispute the ground.
\n(Civilization and its Discontents, 1930)<\/p>\n
In order to be mentally healthy, one must aspire\u00a0towards greater creativity of course, but, similarly,\u00a0one must also come to accept the fact that how-\u00a0ever brilliant one\u2019s paintings, poetry, musical\u00a0compositions or scientific experiments; however\u00a0stunning one\u2019s face and figure; however large\u00a0one\u2019s wallet; someone else will always outdo us.\u00a0Freud observed that when confronted with great\u00a0writers such as Rudyard Kipling, Mark Twain and\u00a0\u00c9mile Zola, inter alia, we cannot avoid \u2018the feeling\u00a0of one\u2019s own smallness in the face of their greatness\u2019.<\/p>\n
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Life Lessons from Freud <\/strong><\/em> Freud summarized his epic observations thus: I propose to describe how the universal narcissism of men. their self-love, has up to the present suffered three severe blows from the researches of science. a. 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\nBrett Kahr<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"