Freud has something challenging and provoking to say about virtually every human aspiration. I learned that if I wanted to affirm any consequential ideal, I had to talk my way past Freud. He was—and is—a perpetual challenge and goad.
事实上,对人类的每一种渴望,弗洛伊德都说了一些富有挑战的和发人深思的话。我毎次汫话都必须在弗洛伊德有关观点的基础上再努力往前探索。他过去是——现在依然是——永恒的挑战和鞭策。
The battle is to make such writers one’s own, to winnow them out and to find their essential truths. We need to see where they fall short and where they exceed the mark, and then to develop them a little, as the ideas themselves, one comes to see, actually developed others. In reading, I continue to look for one thing—to be influenced, to learn something new, to be thrown off my course and onto another, better way.
你们的战斗就是将这些作家为己所用、展开筛选、找到关键真理。我们需要找到他们的欠缺以及优越之处,然后试着更进一步,正如人们所知的这些观念本身事实上就是另外一些观念的发展。在阅读的时候,我继续寻找的是——接受影响、学习新东西、摆脱窠臼进入另外一个更好的轨道。
Right now, if you’re going to get a real education, you may have to be aggressive and assertive.
现在,如果你们想要获得选正的教育,你们必须积极进取,自信果敢。
Your professors will give you some fine books to read, and they’ll probably help you understand them. What they won’t do, for reasons that perplex me, is to ask you if the books contain truths you could live your lives by. That will be up to you. You must put the question to yourself.
你们的教授会让你们阅读一些好书,并且很可能会帮助你们进行理解。但是他们不会问你们书里是否包含了能让你们安身立命的真理,至于他们为什么不这样做,我也很费解。这个问题得看你们自己,你们必须自己解决这个问题。