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I was a long-distance runner in 12th grade and broke Columbia High School's cross-country record (12:30 for 2 1/2 miles). 

University of Pennsylvania offered me a full scholarship (room, board and tuition). But I would have been expected to carry on running. I had had enough of that. I'd been running since I was four-years old.

I visited Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, and was entranced by the seriousness of the teachers and students.

I was a freshman in a special "Western Civilization" class taught by Norman O. Brown. He had at that very moment published Life against Death: The Psychoanalytic Meaning of History. Of course, I had no idea that book would turn out to be one of the seminal books of the 20th Century.

I was in an early class with approximately twelve other students. We were reading Aristotle's Politics. There was a passage on one of the first pages: "All communities aim at some good, but the polis aims at the highest good because it is the most complete form of association." I remember the phrase as, "Everyone joins the polis to lead the good life."

I raised my hand and said, "What about masochism?" Brown was excited and ran to the blackboard and wrote the word "MASOCHISM"

The students congratulated me on the way out of class. I immediately ran to the bookstore and purchased A Primer of Freudian Psychology. A few weeks later we were instructed to keep a "thought notebook," which we handed in. Brown had very positive comments about what I wrote.

I WAS DOOMED. THERE WAS NO ESCAPE. THIS BECAME MY LIFE'S WORK: TO DEVELOP A PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY OF CULTURE. This Newsletter (and the others you've been reading her) descend from that fateful moment.

NORMAN O. BROWN and the Psychoanalysis of Culture.

Richard A Koenigsberg and the Psychoanalysis of Culture.



Amazon.com : life against death norman o brown

A Primer Of Freudian Psychology - Google Books