In Renunciation, I wrote briefly about my favourite idea in Freud. Civilization is built on renunciation, on social frustration. In rich societies, this loss is compensated for economically. Work sucks; to compensate we get BMWs, iPhones, sophisticated cancer treatment. Compensation makes civilizations.
In Yoga, Emmanuel Carrère summarizes Freud beautifully:
Psychological health, according to Freud, means being able to love and to work.
[…]
Freud offers a second definition of mental health, as striking as the first: it is when one is no longer susceptible to neurotic misery, only to ordinary misery. Neurotic misery is the kind we create for ourselves, in a dreadfully repetitive form, whereas ordinary misery is what life has in store for us, in forms as diverse as they are unpredictable.1
It’s our natural state, as humans, to be unhappy. No one is happy. The goal is to limit neurotic unhappiness. We’re dual, love is the positive aspect of psychological health, being able to tolerate work is the negative aspect of psychological health.
Yoga was initially supposed to be about yoga, but it ended up being about Carrère’s bipolar disorder diagnostic, what the diagnostic involves, before concluding that meditation is “pissing when you piss and shitting when you shit.” Pretty much the definition of mindfulness. Tautological but profound. The deepest insights in life are tautological. Knowledge is overrated, the key is acceptance; courage to accept. To be clear, that does not mean laziness. In Camus’ famous words: “The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” I don’t want to minimize science, science is fundamental, but acceptance comes first, science comes second. Second place isn’t bad after all. Only after acceptance can we get to work.
The book points to two other cool ideas:
“Yoga is the silencing of the modifications of the mind”. Maybe that is not that great. I can’t just “silence” the vrittis forever. Maybe this quietism works for some, but it doesn’t work for everyone. Abandonment of the will, calm acceptance of things as they are; when all is said and done, that does not work for everyone. Some want a more active approach.
Point 1 is even more the case if you are a writer, like Carrère. There’s a spectacular tension between shutting down the vrittis and exploring them, stimulating them to excess, to write up a good story. Imagine you are at a Yoga retreat. You can focus on yoga stuff, or you can instead conjure up a spicy story, but you can’t do both. I think that’s correct. To be clear, no matter what your job is, you can’t just shut the vrittis. There’s the camusian struggle, which sometimes you can put on the side by shutting the vrittis, but not always.
Footnotes
“La santé psychique, selon Freud, c’est d’être capable d’aimer et de travailler”
…
“Freud a une seconde définition de la santé psychique, aussi éclatante que la première : c’est qu’on n’offre plus de prise au malheur névrotique, seulement au malheur ordinaire. Le malheur névrotique, c’est celui qu’on se fabrique soi-même, sous une forme affreusement répétitive, le malheur ordinaire celui que vous réserve la vie sous des formes aussi diverses qu’imprévisibles.”↩︎