CONCEPTUALIZING LIVED E XPERIENCE: MAILER AS AN INTELLECTUAL. (2024)

If a writer really wants to be serious he has to become anintellectual, and yet nothing is harder. --Norman Mailer, qtd. in Norman Mailer a Double Life (128)This need for redemption on the part of past epochs who have directedtheir expectations to us is reminiscent of the figure familiar in boththe Jewish and Protestant mysticism of man's responsibility for thefate of a God who, in the act of creation, relinquished his omnipotencein favor of human freedom, putting us on an equal footing with himself. --Jurgen Habermas, The Philosophical

Discourse of Modernity (14)

INTRODUCTION

My intention in this essay is twofold. To begin with, I would liketo provide a brief account of what being an intellectual has signifiedfor nearly two centuries. Then I will articulate how Mailer as anintellectual raises day-to-day experiences in the lifeworld toconceptual and symbolic levels. This articulation shall constitute theframework for an intellectual within the parameters of an existentialphenomenology, as I understand it. Ultimately, I believe, this proposedintuitive process will constitute an intellectual methodology and itsinherent discourse, which in turn endows our world with theoretical andsymbolic dimensions of universality. I see these dimensions evolve atthe intersection of our human subjective-objective lived experiences inthe interstices of the lifeworld we inhabit. In this fashion, thelifeworld distinguishes itself from naive realism and solipsism byabsorbing both within itself in an intellectual vision of humanexistence. This somewhat modified definition of the so-called"classical intellectual" will allow me to explore how NormanMailer partakes of his own intricate existential phenomenology as theframework of his own endeavors as an intellectual in various subtle andcomplex ways.

My definitional search should make apparent how Mailer raised hisconcrete particular experiences by his educational formation andexceptional imagination onto the plane of intellectual discourse. Thisintellectual transformation of his lived instinctual experiences enabledMailer to establish strategies to offer heuristic and hermeneuticapproaches to his work as a writer. Such strategies led to Mailer'shighly novel and distinctive responses to problems of yearning to openup an unlimited space of acquiring knowledge.

Consequently, in his essays and in his fiction, Mailer'spractices reveal his idiosyncratic imaginative vision as a primal butunusually intellectual vision of the lifeworld. His imagination oftenpropels itself forward by seemingly raw instinctual energies, seekingexplosive fulfillment of sexual desires that constitute the powerful ifrepressed unconscious forces of the id for Freud. In this regard, inspite of his progressive modernist time-consciousness, one might callMailer's sense of time as an essayist and novelistregressive-progressive. Here again, Mailer remains faithful to hissignificant intellectual pattern of dialectical integration ofopposites, which here weds the determinacy of the instincts and theprogressive indeterminacy of creative imagination within the frameworkof the "mind of an outlaw."

I would say that Mailer's creative vision of the humanexistence surfaces from the depth of the lifeworld. Hence, histheoretical concerns issue forth from an experiential perspective of thelifeworld. My proposed definition of Mailer as intellectual derives fromthe ability of our consciousness to double on itself as it were andoffer its constituting intended objects of the life-world in theirabsence as conceptual and symbolic images.

In this sense, concepts and symbols will make evident Mailer'simmersion in the specificity and particularity of objects of ourperception on the one hand and the subjective conceptual and symbolicgenerality of concepts on the other. Mailer goes beyond thesubject-object dichotomies toward a Hegelian dialectical synthesis ofopposites. Conceptualized everyday lived experiences enable him toestablish a constant and consistent exploratory and interpretiveapproach to being an intellectual. Inevitably, the intellectualenterprise so perceived makes its way to Mailer's idiosyncraticresponse to problems of knowing as an-open-ended adventure in initiatinga creative epistemology in his writings. As an approach, it holds thepromise of divulging how Mailer understood being simultaneously a writerof fiction and an intellectual essayist and journalist, who functionedas a passionate sociocultural and politically interventionistintellectual. I should think a specific mode of human existence wouldemerge from within the interstices of such a study. It would makemanifest Mailer's intellectual manner of embracing our lifeworld asa boundless series of existential modalities of having, doing, andbeing.

Lastly, I shall provide an example of Mailer's intellectualpractice by discussing his brief theoretical article on Sigmund Freud.The "Freud" essay appears in the recent publication of aselection of Mailer's essays, Mind of an Outlaw, adroitly chosenand edited by Mailer scholar Phillip Sipiora. In spite of its brevity, Ithink of "Freud" as an apocryphon, a form of Jewish and earlyChristian secret writing, where the concealed text was perhaps moresignificant than the unconcealed one, because it would be given over tosilence, a kind of unsurpassable mystical language in its own right. Itrust it will help make known how Mailer in the early stages of hiscareer as an essayist applied his intellectual formation. I hope thisconceptual or intellectual formation along with his hyperactive strengthof imagination will make manifest the later tactics, techniques, anddevices that he employed to practice the art of the essay as well as thenovel. I believe that my analysis of "Freud" will also showhow Mailer skillfully transforms himself into a public intellectual ashe deals with subjects of simultaneous interest to specialists incertain disciplines as well as the public in general.

AN EXCURSUS: THE ORIGIN AND DEFINITION OF THE INTELLECTUAL

In the study of the intellectual proposed in the precedingsections, the immediate difficulty is an etymological one, because theintellectual has become a word that has gathered many layers ofsignifications. One needs to peel off its aggregation of political,historical, sociopolitical, and geographic deposits of meanings andconnotations. Generally, since the middle of the nineteenth centuryvarious societies and cultures have recognized the presence of distincttypes of distinguishable individuals emerging among them. They havecollectively characterized these individuals as intellectuals. I wouldsay then that intellectuals primarily deal conceptually or theoreticallywith the perceptual images of objects of our consciousness in unlimitedexperiences of our lifeworld. In other words, the intellectual movesfrom the primary concrete and objective given of human consciousness tothe secondary theoretical sphere of concepts. Therefore, there is inintellectual discourses a continuous movement from the actual andparticular to the ever-expanding plane of the abstract, general, anduniversal. This movement does so based on how intellectuals,individually and collectively obtain a body of knowledge in their chosenfield, say, in various expanses of philosophy, mathematics, natural andsocial sciences, and humanities.

Accorded high status, position, and agency, most intellectuals gaincommensurate measures of power resulting from theory and practice ofknowledge they have gained. However, this exercise of power does notalways produce its effects unchallenged. The intellectual'sexercise of power is often difficult or attenuated, because it issubject to controversy, debate, and contestation by the so-calledconservative elite in the existing established institutions and theireconomic and sociocultural structures. Conservatives are often evenfiercely antagonistic toward progressive intellectuals who threatentheir advantages in a given society, and refuse to accept their roleexcept as employees in what Jean-Paul Sartre has referred to as"technicians of practical knowledge" (Between Existentialismand Marxism 286). As a result, in our contemporary society conservativecritics vociferously challenge the legitimacy and status ofintellectuals. Toward the end of his life, I believe that Mailerexperienced this noticeable attenuation of the intellectuals'effectiveness in the United States.

Now the salient question for those who engage in intellectualactivities would be whose interest does their knowledge as power serve,as Michel Foucault formulated it? In answering this question, I amgreatly indebted to Jean-Paul Sartre's compelling views in hismagisterial long essay "In Defense of Intellectuals" inBetween Existentialism and Marxism (228-285). Following Sartre'soverall reflections on this subject, it would appear to me that theproblematic of the intellectual's validity in exercising theuniversality of his or her knowledge as power moves along two divergentpractices. Each of them imposes certain demands, responsibilities, andobligations on the intellectual, which are often inordinately exigent.The first demands the intellectual to admit his or her specific debt andallegiance to the ruling power elite in a given society. As a class,they have created the institutions of higher learning, which provide theintellectual's culture of educational formation, as it was true,say, in Mailer's case with his Harvard education. Thus, the rulingelite insist that the intellectual support their inherited,conventional, normative value system. Resonating in a number of economicand socio-cultural registers in the conventional system requires thatthe intellectual recognize this obligation and repay it by fullysupporting it.

Evidently, this is the position that a doctrinaire"conservative" might take toward an intellectual. The idealintellectual for such a conservative would be a man or woman ofknowledge who might adapt and therefore become an educated, content,salaried employee. Thus, such an employee's mode ofconceptualization, symbolic articulation, and ideology tends to relateunswervingly to the established power. The "technicians ofpractical knowledge," as specialists and experts, mightconsequently belong to all fields. They might hold positions ofresponsibility and in humanities social sciences as academics, writers,and scholars; and in sciences as physicians, clinicians, mathematicians,architects, researchers, consultants, and so forth. From thisperspective, there cannot be a true working class intellectual, thedockworker conservative social philosopher Eric Hoffer, for example,notwithstanding.

In stark contrast to the stunted intellectual as technicians ofpractical knowledge, one might argue, as Sartre does, that whatconstitutes the foundation of an intellectual's epistemologicalformation is originally always and everywhere inherently conceptual andsymbolic. As suggested in the preceding sections, theintellectual's formation begins with the desire to seek aninterminable universal epistemology. This continual conceptualpossibility materializes at the site where the concrete and theparticular appear in consciousness as perceptual images and obtain theirpower-thrust toward the conceptual, symbolic images of universalconcerns. The ensemble of these perceptual concrete images transformedinto their conceptual immaterial counterparts set in motion a series ofreflections. However, not being at all an essentialist view of theworld, these conceptual and symbolic reconstructions of our world leadto disclosures of theoretical knowledge of our world as it constantlyevolves, never forgetting its point of departure in reality of perceivedparticular objects. In their most complete form, these theoreticaldisclosures achieve universal status, as is, say, true of the concept ofgravity in physics, or mathematical proof of the existence of blackholes in astronomy or an artistic or literary works such asShakespeare's plays in their totality. In each case, they makeavailable to us perfect examples of the Hegelian formulation ofconcrete-particular-universal.

Consequently, many thinkers and critics assert that such conceptualand symbolic, epistemic acts initiate their wholeness and fulfillment asa genuine universal practice. Such acts simultaneously anchor themselvesat the crossroads of theoretical and practical knowledge as theycomprehensively work toward the worldwide common good. This definitionof the intellectual unveils to us the limitless dimension of theintellectual as the possessor of conceptual-symbolic knowledge in itsintrinsic universality. Of necessity, such an intellectual alwaysconsciously and fully participates in matters sociopolitical andintervenes publicly on the side of universal transformative freedom andbetterment for all.

Accordingly, such an engaged or committed intellectual inevitablyreveals a durable cultural, socio-political contestatory,interventionist dimension to it. It is of interest to mention thatSartre's definition of the intellectual shapes up somewhere betweenexistentialism and Marxism. However, they radically diverge on thecentrality of the individual's total existential freedom of choiceon the one hand and the predetermined dialectic of history and itscollectivism on the other. It is in this light that I shall study Maileras a practicing intellectual. However, there is sufficient evidence thatMailer reversed Sartre's evolution from existentialism to a Marxismmodified by his own existentialism.

AN ATTEMPT TO PROVIDE A PHENOMENOLOGICAL-EXISTENTIAL DEFINITION OFTHE INTELLECTUAL

If you are going to be a writer, sooner or later you write abouteverything--the places you went--the people who double-crossedyou--how the weather was--the ladies you f*cked--your wins and yourlosses--and those funny times when you mistakenly thought the world wasmade for you.Ernest Hemingway, qtd. by A. E. Hotchner in The Good Life According toHemingway (19)

Now, it might be helpful to offer briefly my own approach todefining Mailer as an intellectual informed by existentialphenomenology, which derives from my own culture of reading. I must doso for the simple reason that it has both influenced and illuminated myown view of Mailer as an exceptional but complex, often contradictory,and controversial intellectual. From this perspective, what follows isthe prospect of intellectual articulation of the dialectical synthesisof the intellectual and the instinctive that unfolds within thelifeworld as the sum total of often opaque and contradictory livedexperiences in Mailer's work.

Typically, on the conceptual plane, this synthesis makes itselfintelligible as a yearning for knowledge through linguistics andlanguage arts, and the language of mathematics and the sciences withtheir own well-developed lexicon and syntax as numbers, formulas, andeventually significations of maximal importance in more advanced formssuch as differential calculus. One might call it a maximalist view ofintellectuality as intentional conceptual acts, enlivened by instinctualforces. From this vantage point, a clearing appears for articulating theHegelian dialectical process of progressing from particular to theuniversal through our lived experiences transformed into lexical,syntactic, and semantic grammar, linguistics, and language arts in thehumanities. Similar universalizing processes of our experiences occur inthe language of mathematics and the sciences with their ownwell-developed lexicon of numbers, syntactic formulas, and eventuallysignifications of maximal importance.

I would suggest that aggregates of such a search for conceptual andsymbolic images based on the concreteness and particularity of livedexperience constitute the core of Norman Mailer's work as a man,writer, and intellectual. At his best, Mailer uses conceptual images togenerate potentially unending zone(s) of freedom for theoreticallyinterpretive acts. A byproduct of this mode of conceptual thinkingfrequently transforms an intellectual into a polymath. He or she does soto the chagrin of conservative critics and analysts who see themexclusively as dangerous meddlers, thorny incompetent dilettantes orworst, charlatans. However, they bring an invaluable interdisciplinaryor multidisciplinary, interpretive articulateness to our comprehensionof different fields of knowledge. And I place Mailer and Gore Vidalamong them. Consequently, the intellectual can legitimately deal withvital matters not only in the humanities but also in social, political,economic, and physical and life sciences. The interpretive element ofintellectual activities brings forth new knowledge, which at its mostfully realized mode makes manifest a measure of special incandescentprimacy. One perceives it as the presence of a quality of conceptuallight, which makes imaginative vision possible, in its broadest sense.Perhaps one can call it the ambient glow of compelling love of knowledgeat its most intense, which unites the knower and the known.Nevertheless, with all due respect to Sartre, which in my case isimmense, my view of the intellectual, which clearly would includeMailer, somewhat differs from Sartre's. From my point of view,intellectual commitment does not necessarily always imply constantactive political engagement or militancy on the side of freedom andjustice as it does for Sartre, as undoubtedly admirable as suchcommitment might be.

MAILER AS INTELLECTUAL, INTUITIVE ADVENTURER IN CONCEPTUALIZING THELIFEWORLD

Early and late, Mailer gravitated to incompatibles. J. Michael Lennon, Norman Mailer: A Double Life (7)In order to write about life, first you must live it! Ernest Hemingway, qtd. by A. E. Hotchner in The Good Life According to Hemingway (12)

Now it is essential to situate Mailer precisely in the spectrumbetween the so-called "conservative anti-intellectualism" of,for example, Paul Johnson in his Intellectuals: From Marx and Tolstoy toSartre, Chomsky, and my modified, Sartre-inspired existentialphenomenology of the concept of the engaged or committed publicintellectual--which Johnson so bitterly disparaged. Clearly, it isfutile to try finding any resemblance between Mailer theessayist-journalist and a conservative critic such as Johnson. It wouldbe also difficult, perhaps even impossible, to find commonalitiesbetween on the one hand a conservative Catholic thinker and writer suchas Mailer's friend-and-foe William F. Buckley, and or on the otherthe linguist and progressive intellectual like the formidable NoamChomsky.

So, locating Mailer within conventional definitions of theintellectual is problematic. It is so because Mailer transgresses theparameters of a comprehensive series of commonly agreed-upon andrecognized boundaries sanctioned as intransgressible or the law.Furthermore, in the context of Mailer's consciousness of Jewish Law(halakhah), the implications of it will be prodigious and consequential.So Mailer as an intellectual "outlaw" often exhibits aboundless transgressive mind at work. His mind is wont to go beyond thegenerally approved and specifically prohibited. His intellect stretchesover expanses of the forbidden and taboo in a never-ending search fortruth of his lived experiences as a fearsome tangled web of good andevil. Sometimes it might even give the impression of the pathological,but it always mainly marks strong, creative, and groundbreaking modes ofthought and action purposes.

At first glance, based on some of his comments, one is tempted tothink that Mailer intellectually wishes to be an inheritor of KarlMarx's mode of thought, albeit in a general sort of way. In theessay "The White Negro" (1957), he could write a long,effective, lyrical, and reverential sentence such as the following aboutMarx's Das Kapital:

It is almost beyond the imagination to conceive of a work in which thedrama of human energy is engaged, and a theory of its social currentsand dissipations, its imprisonments, expressions, and its tragic wastesare fitted into some gigantic synthesis of human action where the bodyof Marxist thought, and particularly the epic grandeur of Das Kapital(that first of the major psychologies to approach the mystery of socialcruelty so simply and practically as to say that we are a collectivebody of humans whose life-energy is wasted, displaced, and procedurallystolen as it passes from one of us to another)--where particularly theepic grandeur of Das Kapital would find its place to an even moregod-like view of human justice and injustice, in some more excruciatingvision of those intimate and institutional processes which lead to ourcreations and disasters, our growth, our attrition, and our rebellion.(Mind 65)

I would pronounce this a charismatic sentence, in the multiplesignifications and nuances of this adjective. It is an elegiac ode tosocial justice, which almost possesses a touch of Joycean or Faulkneriansyntactic exuberance and opulence. Just the same, its unusual appeal onlexical and syntactic planes is pure Mailer at his best. It partakes oftheory and remains impressively so, but it is also lyrical, andpersuasive, ending authoritatively in semantic configurations andassociations in the reader's mind. Mailer finds concepts of justiceand injustice to be rooted in stolen human life-energy.

Mailer deftly connects his sentence with the psychological"mystery of social cruelty" in its economic as well as socialimplications of it in a hugely affecting and consequential way. It isreminiscent of Eric Fromm's efforts to bring together Marxisteconomic alienation and psychosocial alienation. Exhibiting a certainbrilliance and impassioned resonance Mailer produces in one sentence anexample of his own best theoretical writing. Since life-energy is theessence of life, the notion of stolen life-energy hints at a livedexperience of death in the midst of life, a criminal if not indeed anevil theft. In a word, Mailer's view of Marxism acquires anontological dimension, which is objectively persuasive conceptually andmoving emotionally--whether one is for or against Marxism as a theory.

Two years later, in 1959, Mailer begins his essay "FromSurplus Value to Mass Media" with a reference to Das Kapital,perhaps to show again a conceptual continuity and general theoreticalsolidarity with Marxism:

No one can work his way through Das Kapital without etching on his mindforever the knowledge that profit must come from loss--the lost energyof one human being paying for the comfort of another; if the processhas become ten times more subtle, complex, and untraceable in themodern economy, and conceivably a hundred times more resistant to thecareful analysis of the isolated radical, it is perhaps now necessarythat some of us be so brash as to cut a trail of speculation acrosssubjects as vast as the title of this piece. (Mind 66)

The preceding is another striking long sentence, which intends togo to the heart of a fundamental and seemingly intractable socioeconomicunfairness. Again, Mailer underlines the theme of the loss of one humanbeing's life-energy for the luxury of another. He sees in this amode of ontological loss, the archetype of a sort of aninstitutionalized and legitimized callousness toward human existence.Mailer asserts that an isolated radical can no longer speculativelystudy and analyze this form of socioeconomic unreasonable and unethicalgreed. He suggests it is "perhaps now necessary that some of us beso brash as to cut a trail of speculation across subjects as vast as thetitle of this piece," an impetuous task that would ostensiblytransform whoever undertakes it into a neo-Marxist intellectual. Onemight ask, is it not sufficient now to conclude that a brash bourgeoisnovelist, essayist and journalist such as Mailer himself was already agenuine and a very articulate Marxist intellectual? It would at leastappear so.

Yet I am inclined neither to modify this conclusion nor to abandonit altogether. It would seem to me Mailer's Marxist tendencies aremore problematic than they would be manifest at first glance. Hence, Iam hesitant to consider Mailer as a Marxist intellectual, pure andsimple. An intellectual, yes; but a Marxist, I am not so certain., Why,one might ask? I would answer for the simple reason that one cannotplace Mailer on the roster of intellectuals of direct Marxist heritagein spite of his appreciation of Marx's philosophical andtheoretical mastery. That list would legitimately include such as theHungarian Gyorgy Lukacs (1885-1975), the Italian Antonio Gramsci(1891-1937), the French Henri Lefebvre (1901-1991) and Louis Althusser(1918-1990), and the German-American philosopher and sociologist HerbertMarcuse (1898-1979), who was Mailer's contemporary, and Frenchphilosopher Alain Badiou (1937-), just to mention a few names. They areall radically different from Mailer. For them, being a Marxisttheoretician and intellectual was a fulltime, lifelong, exigent, andsole activity. Rightly or wrongly, for them it was a demanding,all-consuming adherence. It required a theoretical purity that wasexclusionary and discarded all other activities and modes of thought.Additionally, their intellectual militancy sequestered them--or so itwould seem to me.

As early as 1955, in his essay "What I Think of ArtisticFreedom," Mailer writes, "For years I have been alternatelyattracted to Marxism and anarchism, and in the tension between the two Isuppose I have found the themes for my novels" (Mind 21). And he isoff travelling along the long hard road of Hegelian dialectic, choosingto veer off the well-charted and explicit Marxist dialectic ofmaterialism and its corresponding dialectic of history. This sporadicjourneying back and forth between Marxism and anarchism or betweenrevolutionary Marxist determinism of matters socioeconomic andpreoccupations with ethical considerations such as individual freedomand self-determination as individual sovereignty defy restrictions. Ittakes Mailer from Marx to Mikhail Bakunin. On the way back, it placeshim in a general sort of way within the dialectical province ofexistential-Marxism in expounded by in his Critique of DialecticalReason, Volume 1, Theory of Practical Ensembles (Critique de la raisondialectique Tome I: Theorie des ensembles pratiques 1960). At thatjuncture, Mailer always exercises the freedom to remain an exceptionrather than the rule.

Thus in Mailer's mind, the Marxist dialectic discloses a newcombinatory historical dialectic ethics and the moral exigencies ofanarchism as a political philosophy dealing with freedom as well associoeconomic inequalities. He had the genius of integrating in his mindtwo polar approaches to revolutionary change. Regardless of their sharedconcern for socioeconomic justice, I believe Marxism and anarchism areextreme opposites in theory and practice. There is the dogmatism andpreordained rigid demands of orthodox Marxist philosophy as dialecticsof matter, socioeconomic discourses, and tactical revolutionaryanalyses. At the other extreme, there is the insistence on undogmatic,self-governing anti-statist anarchist philosophy embedded inrevolutionary acts within the more inward looking ethical concerns aboutliberty and justice. Mailer believed he had dialectically synthesizedthe two contrasting, revolutionary ideas, at least for himself. Thisdialectical synthesis would enable him to initiate a dialogue betweenMarxism and anarchism. This dialectical reconciliatory dialogue gave thespirited themes of his novels and essays and organized his worldview inits mutable totality. His worldview now surfaces from the depth of hisnew relentlessly changing dialectics, establishing shifting horizons weassociate with Mailer in matters philosophical, psychological, andsociopolitical. Even in his religious thought, Mailer held close toManicheanism, a heritage of Zoroastrianism, as well as agnosticJudo-Christian beliefs in irreconcilable dualities of supernaturalforces. Darkness and light and the Devil and the Good Lord would playsignifying roles in his eschatology. In the war between good and evil,Mailer believed human commitment to forces of good should determinedlystrengthen the divine.

Freely chosen human action as liberating is what attracts Mailer toanarchism, which deems most governmental and organizational power asimposing illegitimate dictatorial restraints on the citizens of a givencountry and therefore defies such restrictions, by violence if need be.Total individual freedom as liberty and responsibility therefore becomesits primary goal. Incidentally, this is precisely where libertarianismand anarchism asymptotically brush against each other. Withresponsibility added to such individual autonomy, it approximates theuneasy marriage of existentialism and Marxism as a new form oflibertarian socialism, maximizing individual freedom as the grantor ofliberation for all. Sartre supported libertarian socialism as a specificschool of political thought emerging in the middle ground betweenexistentialism and Marxism. For Mailer, this new imaginative vision of"alternating" between orthodox Marxism and anarchism declaresan uneasy and contingent adherence captious to both. I qualifyMailer's conditional and provisional adherence to Marxism andanarchy is maximally subtle and nuanced, because it finds its way intohis novels by an ensemble of interpretive conceptual strategies andfictional techniques, particularly in his early works Naked and theDead, Barbary Shore, and The Deer Park. These strategies and techniqueswould be of much interest to Mailer's theory of fiction. Theirdetections and elaborations would make a fine subject for dissertationsby young scholars.

Mailer tells us, "The genius of Marx was that he was a mysticas well as a rationalist, and the intellectual deterioration ofSocialism, not to mention the mental petrification of Stalinism, comesfrom denying the mystical element in Marxism and championing therational" (Mind of An Outlaw, 23: emphasis added). I find it anaudacious and judicious theoretical sentence, which in turn makesmanifest young Mailer's own virtuoso intellectual performance athis thoughtful and brashest best. He engages in speculative thinkingthat places Marx at the intersections of rationalism and mysticism. Italso underlines Mailer's proclivities toward performing as anenchanting dialectician. He conjoins two philosophical schools ofthought that are seemingly unequivocally antithetical.

It would appear to me that Mailer in his essays ceaselessly isseeking to acquire modes of never-ending transformative knowledge. Hismixture of curiosity and love of knowledge empower him to set up aninterpretive epistemology (hermeneutics) and linguistic solutions(heuristics), which he intends to be transformational and redemptive.Marxism is only acceptable to Mailer the novelist to the extent it caninduce effective change in the human condition to make it more just.However, it can only do so if it acquires powers of such as Mailerattributes to mysticism, which can liberate the power accorded tointuition and creative imagination in a just society as it moves in themode of Hegelian dialectic from the concrete and particular to thegeneral, universal, and the infinite. Lennon tells us Mailer became"fascinated by the mysticism of the Hasidim. In the early in 1960s,he wrote six columns for Commentary, reflecting on folk storiescollected by Martin Buber that centered on the Hasidim's dialectic,which Mailer said, 'placed madness next to practicality,illumination side by side with duty, and arrogance in bed withhumility'" (Norman Mailer: A Double Life 7).

I should think it reasonable to suspect that in referring to Marxas a mystic Mailer was aware of the Hasidic mysticism belief indialectical polarities as well as the Kabbalistic concept of "EinSof" (no limit or end, pure transcendence). Ein Sof demarcates thetranscendent horizon of human life, which includes the unknown and theunknowable. Is it possible that Mailer speculated that Marx too had beenaware of the Kabbalistic concept of Ein Sof. Why not? After all, is itnot conceivable that the concept of Ein Sof inspired Marx's utopianconcept of a future "worker's paradise," integrating theheaven and the earth in freedom from economic injustice? Moreover, fromMailer's viewpoint, couldn't Ein Sof also be the ground ofpossibility of emergence and a clearing of ethical socialism? My answeris yes. I believe Mailer theoretically extended his worldview to theday-today experiences of the lifeworld with his prolific activities as anovelist, essayist, journalist, sociopolitical commentator, provocateur,and interventionist as a public intellectual.

Mailer blames the intellectual decline of socialism in general andspecifically the reification of creative forces of thought andimagination in Stalinism on putting the emphasis conclusively onrationalist element in Marx's philosophical thought at the expenseof its conceptual transcendence as mysticism--all that is beyond merelyrational intelligibility. Here, one might understand mysticism asopenness to the infinite hiddenness of existence or mysteries beyondwhat our senses ordinary reveal. This openness and the revelations itmight make to those whose minds are open to it are what the Frenchphenomenology designates as disponibilite or availability to thevisibility and comprehension of the invisible mysteries in livedexperiences of the arts, politics, economics, religion, and sexuality.Mailer accurately detected the loss of life-energy of ideas, intuition,imagination, and creativity in Stalinism and by extension allauthoritarian systems.

J. Michael Lennon quotes Mailer as saying that to his first wifeBeatrice (Bea) Silverman "'any concept of absolutes or staticcustom is absurd'" (Norman Mailer: A Double Life, 44). I tendto think he might have said the same thing about himself. Thus, presentto all his ideas were always their opposites. Contradictions in thelifeworld forced Mailer to think against himself, as it did for Sartre.They deepened their intellectual interests by against their own dogmaticideas. For both, it became a modality of finding a way out ofstultifying obsessions with constant vexing problem of shoring up whatthey had already thought and written. So embracing a synthesis ofcontradictory, conflicting, incompatible new ideas and lived experiencesprevented them from being stuck in repetitive ideas and practices;therefore, they remained free to be always on the move as writers andintellectuals and evolve.

On the whole I would propose that one might refer to Mailer not somuch as a self-proclaimed and contradictory Marxist-anarchist but ratheras a Hegelian dialectician of extreme opposites as the placentaproviding nutrient and eliminating waste of his fetal new ideas. For thesake of further clarity, allow me to add that the dialectics ofmaterialism affirms evolution of matter becomes aware of itself throughthe mediation of human consciousness. In this vision of existence, acertain mode of determinate materiality of all that exist rules supreme.However, Mailer sets forth a hermeneutic of historical dialectic asbeing open-ended by drawing from what was for him a type of Marxistmysticism again an improbable but interesting Mailerian synthesis. Inpractice, for Mailer the dialectic of history is applicable to thespheres of economy, politics, sociology, and cultural demystification,but it is human consciousness that effects changes as transcendencerather than preordained historical materialism. Therefore, I wouldargue, that for Mailer the historical processes were collective humanchoices, which give his ideas a Sartrean existential framework. Mailercomprehends the necessity of historical change, but it has to fulfillitself through freedom of choice through human acts of creativeimagination.

II

CIVILIZATION CONTRA INSTINCTS: MAILER'S "FREUD"(CIRCA MID-1950S)

Freud had no flair for the mystical. Norman Mailer, "Freud," in Mind of an Outlaw" (10)Freud's youth, that is to say, from the age of four, was that of animmigrant, a resident alien. And psychoanalysis is first and foremosta psychology of, and for, immigrants (people who can never quitesettle); not a Jewish science, as Freud feared, but an immigrantscience for a world in which, for political and economic reasons, therewere to be more and more immigrants. Adam Phillips, Becoming Freud (30-31)In the new Eden (was there already one? I doubt it) there'll be noforbidden tree, All trees trees of life. Father Ernesto Cardenal, "Cantiga 15; Nostalgia for Paradise" in Cosmic Canticle (139)

PSYCHOANALYSIS AND FREUD'S STATUS AS A LOWER-MIDDLE-EUROPEANJEW IN VIENNA

The premise of Mailer's brief essay "Freud" is ashort but also radical critique of Freudian psychoanalytic rationale ofbecoming aware of instinctual forces in order to control them throughthe psychical divisions of conscious ego and unconscious super-ego. Thisgoal would eventually realize itself through the processes ofsophisticated sublimation and acculturation, which would safeguard thesum total of human social developments as civilization. Mailer deems thecore of Freudian psychoanalytic concept of management of rebelliousprimal instinctual forces as a remedial measure for neurosis, whichwould also be tantamount to a betrayal and inevitable surrender tosocietal conventions at the expense of the libido or life-enhancingprimeval energies. He asserts that this psychoanalytic reconciliationwith societal norms requires the subjugation of all transgressiveinstincts to ever-increasing rational restrictions of seeking pleasureand barring the transcendent fulfillment of desires within the realm oflived experiences.

As a modernist writer, Mailer shared the modernism'stime-consciousness as future-oriented; that is to say, he wasprogressive. Surprisingly, there was something deeply atavistic inMailer's thinking on returning to Darwin's theory of evolutionand the role played by sovereign untrammeled instinctual forces in it.He dreamed of bursting energetic dawns, spectacular twilights, and wilddark orgiastic ancient evenings of human history. In this regard, inspite of his modernism one might call Mailer's time-consciousnesssimultaneously regressive-progressive, which follows his pattern ofchallenging dialectical integration of opposites.

It is entirely true that Freud did seek to come to grips with theunconscious obsessive-compulsive power of instincts--particularly thesexual instincts, which he designated as libido or Eros. He did so byputting in motion dialogic, associative techniques of analysis to bringabout attendant conscious awareness of them. He believed the consciousrealization of unconscious instinctual demands would reduce theindividual's unmanageable antisocial obsessive-compulsive thoughtsand behavior. A new narrative would then emerge and replace the neuroticone. The new narrative would have a new lexicon, syntax, and semantics,maintaining, strengthening, and furthering the development of theindividual within the dominant and pervasive values of civilization.Nevertheless, from Mailer's thoroughly noncompliant viewpoint as anintellectual novelist and essayist, Freud's psychoanalytic positionwas too compliant and conservative. Mailer writes:

For Freud it was unthinkable not to have a civilization--no matter whatprice must be paid in individual suffering, in neurosis, in thealienation of man from his instincts, the alternative--a return tobarbarism, to the primitive, was simply beyond the cultural shaping ofFreud's life. As a lower-middle-class European Jew who rose inbourgeois society, he was not only the mirror but finally the essenceof German culture. (Mind 9)

French phenomenologist Paul Ricoeur found in Marxist analysis andFreudian psychoanalysis the basis of what he designated as"hermeneutics of suspicion." Marxist analysis searches for thetrue origin of an individual's characteristics in his or hereconomic class background. Psychoanalysis does so by exploring theindividual's unconscious as the repository of forbidden andconsequently suppressed desires. It is of much interest that Mailerchoses to combine the two and apply Marxist analysis as hermeneuticsuspicion to the Father of psychoanalysis Sigmund (in German victory,protection) Schlomo (peaceful in Hebrew) Freud (peace in German)himself. As his first, middle and last name suggest, Freud was avictorious peacemaker. Mailer, however, essentially sees Freud in hisyouth as belonging to a lower-middle-class Jewish family, cautiously anddutifully entering and rising in the German bourgeois culture of histime in Vienna. I must confess that I had never seen Freud in thislight. Personally, I have never thought of Freud as a timid, adherentsoul. To the contrary, as the Father of psychoanalysis, he continuouslysymbolizes for me a revolutionary thinker and theorist, opening upenormous vistas to the mysteries and vagaries of a dynamic unconscious.The Freudian concept of the unconscious opened the deterministichegemony of rational consciousness to the indeterminacy of theunconscious and the vast terrains of dreams and their interpretations.He did for the psychology of subjective experiences what Albert Einsteindid for physics. No matter how one looks at it, it is a maximallyrevolutionary theoretical adventure. Generation after generation hasfound a courageous thinker in Freud, who bravely follows the logic ofhis groundbreaking thought on the controversial domain of the mysteriousunconscious and its indirect but forceful effects on our lives.

FREUD AS AN IMMIGRANT IN VIENNESE SOCIETY

Still, after all is said and done, it is of considerable interestto point out that contemporary psychoanalysts--such as AdamPhillips--would agree with Mailer's perspective on Freud. Nearlyseven decades after Mailer's statements about the fundamentalconservative characteristics of Freudian psychoanalytic theory, Phillipsobserves that

Indeed to be a Jew of Freud's class and aspiration involved thesedivided allegiances; the all-too identifiable Jew and the Viennesecitizen had to coexist. Jewish modernity, the historian Leora Batnitzkywrites, involved "the dissolution of the political agency of thecorporate Jewish community and the concurrent shift of political agencyto the individual Jew who became a citizen of modern nation-state."Once outside the so-called corporate Jewish community, with itsseparate, more inward-looking culture, the Jew was a citizen for whomcitizenship was radically unfamiliar. This was the threshold thatFreud--who was to radically redescribe the whole notion of agency--wasliving in his twenties. (Becoming Freud 57-58)

Phillips shares Mailer's analysis on an important personalaspect of Freud's theory and practice of psychoanalysis. In the"Freud" essay, Mailer considers the Freudian psychoanalyticconcept of acculturation to pose a grave danger to human instinctiveforces, which he asserts to be essential in motivating and invigoratingunlimited human imaginative endeavors. He writes, that "Freud wasnot born to become a respected young neurologist in Viennese medicalsociety; it took the application of his early ambition, the subjugationof a good part of his more rebellious instincts, to acquire thetraining, the habits, and the manners of a Viennese doctor" (Mind9-10).

The concept of psychoanalytic status quo was not what Mailer wasseeking. His creative instincts chose exceptionality over normality andthe norm. He believed the instincts invigorate the individual'saudacious lived experiences and essentially enliven the human lifeworldwhile the status-quo discourages and finally deadens our senilities andsensibilities. Therefore, ego consciousness has to make a prodigiouseffort to accommodate the rebel's perilous desires such asuncontrolled lust and violence. It would have to do so with muchmalleability and tolerance to blunt retribution from a threatenedsuper-ego, which often would cause psychic disequilibrium and neurosis.To a certain extent, that is also the goal of Freudian psychoanalysis,or so I think.

Mailer was aware that the expansion of self-consciousnessrecognizes and makes a place for instincts would be a relentless psychicnecessity. He sought an ego-consciousness that approximated the id,where the instincts reside in the unconscious as desires unfulfilled.Because a desire satisfied is no longer a desire; that is to say, desireis a fundamental lack, in the Lacanian meaning of the word. Thus, the idconstitutes unsatisfied and ultimately insatiable desires, which makesitself known and felt as repetition compulsion. Mailer criticizes Freudfor his conservatism, even careerism, in spite of Freud'sgroundbreaking discovery of the unconscious, which determinate realityand the surreptitious role in introducing something akin to advances inquantum theory. Freud's theory of the unconscious subverts ourepistemo-logical narrative of the supremacy of consciously perceivedreality as determinate and predictable. Yet Mailer fears that Freudianpsychoanalysis is an attempt to counteract, or worse, to neuter ourprimal instincts to strengthen further social and cultural controls onindividual human psyche. He tells us that Freud's conservativerationalism, ethicism, and conventionalism brought us the "gloomyethics of psychoanalysis" (Mind 10, emphasis added). Mailer fearsthe outcome of such "melancholy ethics" to be the waning ofhuman instinctual dynamism of Eros as libidinal vitality of uninhibitedsexual drive, aggression, and violence. He tells us that the outcome ofsuch "war upon instincts which was the progressive rationale of thenineteenth century, the--for so long it seemed victorious--achievementsof the Victorian period, was blown beyond recognition in theconcentration camps and the atomic bomb" (Mind 11).

Mailer concludes that individual or sociocultural attempts to blockindomitable instinctual life forces residing in the id do not make themfade into the twilight of the psyche. Just the opposite happens: itmakes them to reappear allied with the death drive, often masqueradingas the false bloody sunrise of a new day that is essentially anexistential tragedy. As such, he believes it does incalculable damage tothe human lifeworld. Mailer asks that one comprehend this seeminglyincomprehensible concept of the death drive interlinking oppositeinstincts connected with Eros and Thanatos. Ever the superbdialectician, Mailer suggests a dialectical synthesis in which forces ofprogressive, violent creation should find equal status in aco-existential synthesis in Freudian concept of sublimation andacculturation as social cohesion. If this exigent psychic cohabitationcan realize itself through courageous freedom of instinctual creativity,an acceptable mixture of creative visions and dreams along withtolerable nightmares will develop. This synthesis will then be the proofof the triumph of plasticity of an all-surpassing Nietzschean humanmind. If not, there will be apocalyptic chaos and night, either for aparticular individual and a society, or in our atomic age for the humanrace as whole, ushering in a mindboggling post-human world.

FREUD AND THE CONCEPT OF ALIENATION

The human subject that Freud will describe in psychoanalysis will be aperson with little autonomy, subjected to forces he can for the mostpart neither control nor understand. A figure traumatized bysociability.Adam Philips, Becoming Freud (30-31)

For Mailer, what infused Freudian psychoanalysis with conservativeor reactionary penchants was Freud's attentiveness to the necessityof maintaining the integrity of civilization. For Freud, civilizationrepresented the history of human cooperative social achievements intheir totality in any given society. Accordingly, he wished to be anintegral and essential part of it. Hence, for Mailer the aim of Freudianpsychoanalysis was to tame and finally reconcile in a variety oftheoretical methods and practical techniques the insubordinateinstinctive thoughts and actions of individuals. But in thisreconciliation between neurotic symptoms and strong instinctualimpulses, something was lost. From Mailer's viewpoint,psychoanalysis sided with the fragmented societal and cultural normsagainst the desires of the estranged rebellious, individuals residingwithin its fold as aliens to change their society. The Freudianpsychoanalyst as an "alienist," to use the old designation,helps to illuminate the mental state of the alienated, the residentalien as immigrant to come to grips with his or her profound sense ofalienation. However, this sense of alterity, a received perception ofnonbelonging made one's own does not involve any societaltransformation as it does in Marxism. In successful cases, thisostensible feeling of nonbelonging and the desire to fit in somehow andbelong finds strategies to work out a practicable compromise problems ifnot an ultimate and definitive cure.

Freudian psychoanalysis was a serious attempt to find a languagethat would enable the alienated neurotic individual to enter into aviable conciliatory dialogue with the unconscious his or her other half.In short, psychoanalysis attempted to enable the immigrant to livemindfully in the fullness of Zen here-and-now rather than the nostalgiaof then-and-there. In the widest signification of being-here-and now,the individual found the promise of repatriation with the seeminglyirrecoverable lost country infancy and its irreversible temporality asthe past. Psychoanalysis would achieve this resolution by enabling theanalysand to regain access to repressed wishes unconscious andinstinctual motivations responsible for his or her Otherness in society.At its best, psychoanalysis was a twofold, simultaneous dialogicenterprise: one between the analyst and the analysand and the other thedialogue between the analysand and the weird or eerie language of his orher unconscious. If effective, this twin dialogue would result inestablishing a truce between the beleaguered ego, caught as it is in thepsychic sphere of joint oppositional forces of superego--as inheritedbody of conventional morality, and the beleaguered and the unconsciouswith its instinctual disruptive energies. Freud deemed it necessary tooffer us these structural divisions of the psyche as emerging sites ofnew narratives, whose language would reveal to us the dynamics of ourown psyche. Inherently, these endless new narratives would also includethe existence and disclosures of enmeshing primal life and deathinstincts and the necessity of acculturation and sublimation of theinstinctual to protect civilization against its destruction.

Nevertheless, Mailer perceived all these foundational structuraldivisions of the psyche as means of coercive psychical determinism. Hepointed out Freud's failure to be a transcendental philosopher,that is, a revolutionary mystic in his psychical concept of alienationas Marx was about the worker's alienation from the product of hisor her labor. Mailer wrote, "Mysticism has the nasty faculty ofjoining one's public and private life, it presents as its ultimatethreat the subordination of reason to instinct, even as society rulesinstinct by reason" (Mind 11). Mailer further argues: "Societywas sick, Freud could see it, but out of necessity the answer for himwas to redefine the nature of man in such a way as to keep societyintact and Freud in his study and consulting room" (Mind 10).

Mailer's statement might sound harsh and unfair. Just thesame, nearly half a century after his statement, English psychoanalystAdam Phillips in a long but perceptive sentence points out:

Indeed Freud's writing between 1898 and 1905, as it exposed repressed,forbidden forms of sociability--the buried-alive lives of modernpeople, the inexoricability of their ambitions and theirsexuality--created a panic that psychoanalysis, beginning with Freud,could only recover from, ironically, through repressing the discoveriesof psychoanalysis itself. It would need something as strong as aputative as a Death Instinct--first mooted in Beyond the PleasurePrinciple in 1920--and a daemonic repetition compulsion to counter andcondemn the extravagant vital energies, the sexual energies Freud wasfinding in his most disturbed patients. So much aliveness in modernindividuals--and in psychoanalysis itself--required its antidote. Onthe one hand there was neurosis, but on the other hand there could bepsychoanalysis especially in its overinstitutionalized forms. (BecomingFreud 147, emphasis added)

Evidently, Phillips historically situates Freudian psychoanalysiswithin the desire for law (halakhah) that informs Jewish communities indiaspora with its roots in the corpus of Written and Oral civil andreligious law inherited from the Written and Oral Torah. Indeed Phillipsasserts, "After 1906 it became increasingly clear thatpsychoanalysis, ironically, was to be a profession more obsessed byenforcing its own rules of theory and practice than by wondering whatrules are being used for. In the traditional Jewish way, desire for thelaw would trump all other desires" (Becoming Freud 147-48).Alternatively, as Mailer put it "pure psychoanalysis was austere,unrelenting" (10 Mind).

III MAILER AS A PSYCHOLOGICALLY VISCERAL AND APPETITIVE WRITER

If one believes in a dynamic unconscious, as I do, it would becompelling to ask, what was at the core of Mailer's unconsciousopposition to Freudian psychoanalysis as being for him intolerablyreactionary? I would suggest that Mailer was a visceral writer andintellectual. Now this statement might appear contradictory,particularly in relation to Mailer's intellectuality, whichordinarily refers to a vibrant, rigorous nonvisceral conceptualthinking. Hence, it requires some explanation. Here, I am inclined todraw from the erudite and extremely probing work of neuropsychologistsMark Solms and Oliver Turnbull on the brain, the mind, and theconnections they make between neurology and subjective lived experienceas the basis of Freudian psychoanalysis. I view what they say asinformative in what I put forward on Mailer's unconscious reactionto Freudian psychoanalysis.

Solms and Turnbull write, "the operation of viscera is ofcritical importance for understanding the 'inner world' in thepsychological sense too (i.e., the world of subjective experience)"(The Brain and the Inner World 28). From this viewpoint, the viscerainextricably unite body and mind, or psyche and soma. This integrativeoperation is of significance because "it forms the basis of ourbasic emotions or'drives' (as Freud called them)" (TheBrain and the Inner World 28). Thus, from a neuropsychoanalyticperspective, the psyche embodies itself through an exhaustivelymultifaceted relationship to the brain as a body organ that is aware ofitself.

In the light of the preceeding definition of viscera, one mightcall Mailer a visceral writer. To the extent that he founded hisunderstanding of the inner and outer world in his "gut"reactions, as the colloquial expression has it, the adjective visceralsuits Mailer's personality, or so it would seem to me. He wasindeed visceral both intellectually as well as creatively. It gave hisimaginative vision at once a certain intuitive energy, wholeness, andthe openness to unending lived experiences. To put it in morepsychoanalytic language, his comprehension of himself, the other, andthe environing world was psychosomatic. Here, by psychosomatic I am notreferring to its pejorative designation as a syndrome of psychophysicaldisorders and ailments. I am using the substantive psychosoma and theadjective psychosomatic to indicate precisely an inseparable,interactive oneness of mind and body in its largest active meaning. Itwould thus cancel the mind-body dichotomy altogether and endow the bodyits rightful place as the corporeal expression of our psyche. Thisunitive concept makes human inner experiences more abundantly whole andentire in their connection with the outer world. Within this framework,the psychosomatic approach delineates primal biological processinvolving perceptions, emotions, and cognitions and so on. It offers usa sort of expanded de facto visceral biopsychology, in which the biologyand physiology of our psyche keeps its transcending structure intact andextends to the materiality of our body.

This unitive psychosomatic or visceral perception constitutes avast intricacy, because it derives its compulsive vitality frominstincts. Solms and Turnbull tell us that the appetitive and seekingtype of individuals thrive on this visceral perception. Once again, Iwould place Mailer high within the combination of internally connectedvisceral and appetitive category. Solms and Turnbull call it the"Seeking system" with a "LUST subsystem," asneuroscientist Jaak Panksepp designates it.

The authors closely associate "SEEKING system" with theterms 'curiosity,' 'interest,' and"expectancy.' "This system provides arousal and energythat activates our interest in the world around" (The Brain and theInner World 115). They add that the SEEKING system and Lust subsystemalso "promote exploratory behavior" (119). They further add,"The Lust subsystem has a longer history as being called a'pleasure,' 'reward,' or 'reinforcement'system," which "produce org*smic feelings" (The Brain andthe Inner World 119). The authors state, "The SEEKING and LUSTsubsystems are designed to promote learning, and they motivate us toacquire the skills that are necessary to meet our inner needs in theoutside world" (The Brain and the Inner World 121). The SEEKINGsystem also motivates violent contact sports such as boxing, footballand the martial arts while the Lust subsystem stimulates seekinguninhibited org*smic pleasure, addiction to alcohol, methamphetaminesand other recreational drugs such heroin, marijuana and so on.

For a considerably long time, I have maintained, pace Freud, that aprimal drive for knowledge precedes or at least coincides with sexualdrive as lust. Lust organizes a particular and basic corporeal andorg*smic search for knowledge and pleasure as curiosity. Its source liesin the initial infantile desire of getting to know the mother'sbody through tactile, visual, aural, olfactory, and gustatory (throughbreastfeeding) senses. The Bible amply recognizes it as "carnalknowledge," which as Freud has so admirably shown makes an immenseconscious and unconscious epistemology available to us as infantilesensations that affect later stages of our sexuality. It takes gropingof the mother's body to exploring the mysteries of one's ownbody in its relation to the other's body. Carnal knowledge ushersin discovering erotic pleasures that, never totally satisfied, persist.It might also initiate encounters with unexpected mysteries of love thatgo beyond carnal oneness with the other, which to a twilit awareness ofcosmic connection with the universe in its infinity, which delightmystics such as Mailer. The embodied psyche in sexuality in thelifeworld can become a part of a surpassing presence to the cosmic worldthat lies beyond discursive knowledge, beloved by the mystics, andsought by Mailer with his mystic tendencies as a modern writer.

Along with Mailer, high on the list of visceral, appetitive writerswho fall within SEEKING system and Lust subsystem with a Nietzscheanwill to power, I would put D. H. Lawrence, Ernest Hemingway, HenryMiller, Jim Harrison, and the Francophone Belgian writer GeorgesSimenon, just to mention a few that readily come to mind. In variousextents, they all chose their primal raw instincts of sexuality andviolence to fulfill their explosively real and sublimated sexual desiresbeyond the normative standards of Freudian psychoanalysis. Similar toMailer, in this regard, in spite of their progressive modernisttime-consciousness, they all shared an atavistic desire for the primevalinstinctive life. It would provide an antidote to what Mailer tells us"we feel [as] anxiety because we are driven by unconscious impulseswhich are socially unacceptable" and that we feel dread as "arepetition of infantile helplessness" (Mind 12). They all remainfaithful to a fundamental pattern of dialectical integration ofopposites, which weds the determinacy of the instincts and theprogressive indeterminacy of the creative imagination within theliberating framework of the "mind of an outlaw."

WORKS CITED

Cardenal, Ernesto. Cosmic Canticle. Trans. John Lyons. Willimantic,CT: Curbstone Press, 1993. Print.

Habermas, Jurgen. Trans Frederick G. Laurence. The PhilosophicalDiscourse of Modernity. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1990.Print.

Hotchner, A. E. The Good Life According to Hemingway. New York:Harper Collins, 2008. Print.

Lennon, Michael J. Norman Mailer: A Double Life. New York:Simon& Schuster, 2013. Print.

Mailer, Norman. Mind of an Outlaw: Selected Essays of NormanMailer. Ed. Phillip Sipiora. New York: Random House, 2013. Print.

Phillips, Adam. Becoming Freud: The Making of a Psychoanalyst. NewHaven: Yale UP, 2014. Print.

Sartre, Jean-Paul. Trans. John Matthews. Between Existentialism andMarxism. London:Verso, 2008. Print.

Solms, Mark, and Oliver Turnbull. The Brain and the Inner World: AnIntroduction to Neuroscience of Subjective Experience. New York: OtherPress, 2002. Print.