EUGENE GOODHEART
395
conscious," Trilling begins somewhat deviously with a question
about the loss of authority that narrative has suffered in the contem–
porary period. His real objective is to account for psychoanalysis's
recent failure to command credence. According to Trilling, the fail–
ure lies with the fact that psychoanalysis depends upon narrative,
and narrative has come to be seen as a fictional construction that
betrays the authenticity of unconscious life. Trilling's exposition of
the connection between psychoanalysis and narrative is cryptic and
unsatisfying, but it does serve to introduce the theme of authenticity,
which Trilling sees as the basis for the new revolutionary conscious–
ness . Sartre is the crucial figure, having provided in the second
chapter of
Being and Nothingness
the most powerful formulation of the
theme. And his role is a curious one, because he opposes authentic–
ity to the unconscious or at least to the psychoanalytic unconscious.
Sartre's objection to the psychoanalytic unconscious is twofold:
ontological and moral. Ontologically, Sartre doubts its existence,
because the id (Freud's version of the unconscious) can be known
only by hypothesis; it cannot be directly observed. Morally, Sartre
objects to Freud's division of the psychic whole into two, a condition
that contributes to what Sartre considers the gravest of modern sins,
bad faith . The division of the psyche enables the ego to displace
responsibility to the id. Since the ego cannot control the id, it cannot
be charged with responsibility for behavior which proceeds from the
unconscious. Trilling quotes Sartre: "I
am
the ego, but 1
am not
the
id , which is to say, 'I am my own psychic phenomena insofar as 1
establish them in their conscious reality.''' Sartre believes in the
theoretical possibility of a coherent, unitary self in which appearance
and reality ·authentically coincide, though psychic division seems
t~e
condition of actual life . Trilling defends psychoanalysis against the
charge of bad faith by pointing to its effort to overcome the dualism :
"Wherever id was , there ego should be"; the ego must learn to
assume responsibility for the id .
But Sartre's picture of the psychoanalytic self as a duality or as
a series of dualities remains essentially accurate. His rejection of the
duality from the side of consciousness is the obverse of the Marcusan
or Brownian rejection from the side of unconsciousness. The desire
for unified consciousness notwithstanding, psychoanalytic "authen–
ticity" entails an irreducible duality of being .
The split subject means perpetual struggle - it means, among
other things , that the self must negotiate a dual loyalty to itself and
to civilization. Trilling's commitment to the psychoanalytic split sub-
