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phant approval of the denial of inscrutable, humiliating complexes. And
everything is made so much more reassuring for us by our recognition
that the work is obviously done from the
inside,
by one who knows, and
not by a mere novelist. In the end, the victim, back in the arms of a
prodigiously loving husband, is on her way to a suspicious recovery and
both the patient and the psychiatrist seem to agree that the unfortunate
woman was just "tired." In view of the fact that Miss Ward has pub–
licly admitted her book to be autobiographical and in the light of the
censorship and optimism that make it valueless, I should say, quite
seriously, that the author is much too close to her material. She has
everywhere shunned the kind of analysis that would make such a book
illuminating.
ELIZABETH HARDWICK
MAN WITHOUT SUPER-EGO
ART AND SoCIAL NATURE.
By Paul Goodman. Vinca Publishing Company.
T
HE BEST comment on Paul Goodman has been made by Goodman
himself in PARTISAN REVIEW, February 1941. When a reader ex–
pressed puzzlement at Goodman's claim to be at once an Aristotelian,
Marxist, and Kantian (Freud and Rousseau have since been added to
the list), Goodman replied:
"I can assure you that any contradictions among them
have managed to thrive in my own head without the least
pause to my animal spirits."
This is so aptly put that further criticism seems almost superogatory.
I see no reason for not taking Goodman at his word: indeed nothing
could bring the least pause to his animal spirits. Since, however, the
intelligence is concerned at contradictions, we may also take it that Good–
man's "ideas" (he is never, in fact, at a loss for any) are the product of
these indefatigable animal spirits, and without any discoverable connec–
tion with the intelligence. Freud long ago showed that contradictions
mean nothing to the id.
Goodman's latest intellectual contribution is on the subject of
sexual emancipation. To be sure, sexual emancipation is not a new cause,
but Goodman's novelty is to have married it to the social revolution and
advanced a positive program of action.
If
we systematically introduce
children to sexual experience, he tells us, we shall get the revolution.
Of course, no bold experimental program can be refuted
a priori,
but
it does seem to me that there are some difficulties here: Stalin, for
example, is not a child, and I do not know that there are any children
on the board of directors of General Motors, U.S. Steel, or the Chase
National Bank. But Goodman may have in mind a gradual and longterm
program: if we introduce to sexual practices the children of capitalists
