Day and Night: Separated?

Day 4:

In general, for the seeker, I think it's important to look at the "return to Freud" trend which has dominated critical theory and even the social sciences over the past few years.

This is based on a refreshing reappraisal of his work. Many people (feminists included) have noted upon rereading Freud, that his approach is a great deal more subtle and "tough minded" than was popularly thought.

Particularly in works like "Civilization and its Discontents," and especially "Beyond the Pleasure Principle," Freud repeatedly indicates how the logic of the psyche operates in "compromise formation" like a palimpsest. A palimpsest is defined by Webster as:

Main Entry:
pa·limp·sest 
Pronunciation:
\ˈpa-ləm(p)-ˌsest, pə-ˈlim(p)-\
Function:
noun
Etymology:
Latin palimpsestus, from Greek palimpsēstos scraped again, from palin + psēn to rub, scrape; akin to Sanskritpsāti, babhasti he chews
Date:
1825
1 : writing material (as a parchment or tablet) used one or more times after earlier writing has been erased
2 : something having usually diverse layers or aspects apparent beneath the surface 

So, when Freud talks about "the death drive" and "the life drive" (i.e., traditionally thought to be an  binary which is analogous to thanatos vs. eros, anxiety vs. rest, inertia vs. the second law of thermodynamics, death vs. sex) he is not describing two mutually independent drives.

Quite the contrary!

Freud says if the psycho-logic operates like a palimpsest, in compromise formation, then our minds are always (must always) wrestle with paradox: the paradox of self-destruction emerging from our most creative instincts and similarly creativity emerging from our most aggressive impulses. How we act out these strange bedfellows on the mind is dependent largely, according to Freud, on cultural context.

Interestingly, as a side-result of the renewed serious attention paid to Freud, Jung has completely disappeared from the academic radar screen. He is seen as little more than a new age symbolist, a deck of tarot cards. In all my undergrad and grad classes, I haven't once heard his name mentioned with anything but dismissal. 

That’s a shame. I hope Jung finds a similar renaissance. In fact, I know more than one physicist who secretly enjoys reading Jung.