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Rethink
Freud – A Brief Note on the Pleasure of the Organic
Clemens Krauss
Sigmund Freud’s image of a mouth kissing itself recalls both the dilemma
of love and sexuality and the eternal circuit of existence.
Today
we are aware of the fact that the process of life and death is nothing
more than metabolism. With time, we become victim to apoptosis (the
naturally programmed death of the cell) and the extinction of some 100
billion cells. Hence we are carnal, edible and doomed to decay. The
process of death starts with the demise of the brain cells.
The
muscles and vital organs soon follow. Fingernails and hairs continue to
grow for up to 48 hours after the onset of this process. Together with
neuronal cells, consciousness, and therefore the subjective being, dies.
What remains is just a colourless void (probably identical to what
existed before birth). The period between these two voids, however
(let’s call it being), can serve individually for a partial overcoming
of one’s finality. We have the chance to reproduce ourselves
biologically and intellectually, thus consigning something beyond
ourselves. One can leave texts, images, thoughts, ideas, money or
children. But those are nothing more than strategies to outsmart the
inevitable decay prior to the return to endlessness. In German language
the word “verwesen” (decay) contents the past tense of “sein” (to be).
But
what does it matter, after all? Aren’t love and sex, thoughts and
emotions, also organic? In order to experience feelings, for instance,
you need particular neurotransmitters; in order to have sex, you need
the appropriate organic systems. Therefore, these phenomena exist only
as the result of organic processes. An entire personality, even its
identity, consists in the metabolic performance of an organic system.
After all, even Sigmund Freud was nothing but a collection of 100
billion cells. |
