Freud

So now I live in Chicago. I'm not quite settled in, but I'm getting there. It's hard to become attached to a neighborhood where I don't know anyone and don't really have anything specific to do (and also having happened to encounter only rude or unhelpful people), so I've spent most of my days inside my apartment, reading Freud in preparation for my upcoming academic year, which is too bad, since the weather is so great and I only have one more week before classes start.

If I had come straight from undergraduate school (and hadn't had my experience overseas or any revelations about science or truth; in short, if I were still an evangelical Christian), I think I would have literally gone home before classes even started after reading Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. What I can't imagine is that this program is full of over a hundred other people who aren't offended by Freud's openness about sexuality, but I hope in this case that the unimaginable is true.

Freud was never even mentioned at my undergraduate university, let alone made an author worthy of study or consideration, and while I'm not yet convinced he is worthy of too much study, I'm at least grateful to become acquainted with his work. His ideas have obviously become an integral part of our culture, and it's nice to know the foundations on which so many people are working. Also, I like the idea of psychoanalytic criticism of literature, I think it's fun and interesting, but since I've also started to believe that the ways in which we behave are arbitrary and unnecessary, if biologically and causally determined, it's hard to take such criticism too seriously.

Now, I've never studied Freud and I'm extremely unsure of my scholarly ability, but what seems clear is that while his ideas may in many cases be helpful in describing the effects of modern culture on individual sexuality (and overall behavior), they don't do anything to answer the questions of whether things are this way of necessity; whether they are this way across all cultures, classes and races; or whether this is better or worse than other ways of behaving (as far as either individual happiness or the advancement of culture and society). Am I wrong, or does that seem to be the central problem? (Totally ignoring the fact that he had no empirical evidence or basis for his theories about the sexuality of children or women or that his focus on male genetalia as opposed to female seems to be a serious oversight.)

What I'm also troubled by is the pairing of these Freud books with Romeo & Juliet and The Canterbury Tales for my class. Sure, I do think there's something to analyzing these works in light of Freud's theories of psychological and sexual development, but I feel like it comes short of saying anything very important. It seems like it would be as helpful as analyzing literary texts in light of Christianity; that is to say, completely unhelpful and irrelevant for actually trying to get at a real understanding of something.

Help me figure this out.