The Pleasure Principle: Freudian Sex Advice With Bambi: Mother Unapproved Liaisons, With Special Guest Slash

Q: Dear Miss Shlomovich,

My mother doesn’t approve of my man. Which I know is bullshit, but being the good Jewish girl I am, I can’t help but take her obnoxious perspective into consideration. I’m happy and the sex is great and I get off on the vile things he makes me do. He just doesn’t fit the mold that I would have pictured for myself, let alone my mother’s dreams of my future. I just want to know why I’m so adamantly pursuing this and ignoring the ideal my mother suggests that I guess I don’t think would be so heinous.

Sarah, Brooklyn

A: You’ve given me little to work with here in the way of specifics, so I’m gonna have to make assumptions about said “vile things” you two are engaging in. In Sexuality and the Psychology of Love, the good doctor examines,

Above all, the coprophilic elements in the instinct have proved incompatible with our aesthetic ideas, probably since the time when man developed an upright posture and so removed his organ of smell from the ground; a considerable proportion of the sadistic elements belonging to the erotic instinct have to be abandoned. All such developmental processes, however, relate only to the upper layers of the complicated structure. The fundamental processes which promote erotic excitation remain always the same. Excremental things are all too intimately and inseparably bound up with sexual things; the position of the genital organs–inter urnias et faeces–remains the decisive and unchangeable factor. One might say, modifying a well-known saying of the great Napoleon’s, “Anatomy is destiny.” The genitals themselves have not undergone the development of the rest of the human form in the direction of beauty; they have retained their animal cast; and so even to-day love, too, is in essence as animal as it ever was. The erotic instincts are hard to mould; training of them achieves now too much, now too little. What culture tries to make out of them seems attainable only at the cost of a sensible loss of pleasure; the persistence of the impulses that are not enrolled in adult sexual activity makes itself felt in an absence of satisfaction.

He wrote that shit in 1912. God bless. Whether you’re making your mother or your monkeybrain proud, always keep your big picture satisfaction in mind. As Freud observes, it’s hard to keep the complicated, modern, sadistic woman completely gravy. Rather than using your fuel worrying about fitting your naughty into preconceived cultural molds, resign to your designs while keeping checks on everything else. Still getting to work on time and reading the news on the daily while you satisfy that beast? Mazel tov, you’re gold.

In regards to your mother’s specific vision for you, that you are a nice Jewish girl respectful of the matriarchy is probably as ingrained in you as your fate to get wet over drek. As long as you don’t suffer from it, keep what she’s got to say in mind on a logical level. But as I like to say, the hole in your sheets is no place for your mother’s guilt to linger. Do you think that your mother will ever understand that the key to your heart is a shitstain on your chest (figuratively speaking or otherwise)? Maybe keep her out of that loop. If, all things considered, dirty play trumps bagging a nice boy you could bring home to the rents, don’t beat yourself up about it, and commit to your happy factor confidently. Since you have a morsel of respect for your ma’s POV, stick to other kosher topics that don’t channel her inner matchmaker.

In conclusion, just heed the advice of Freud’s fellow Jewish sage Saul Hudson who gave us one of the greatest odes to the confusion of love in rockdom:

And when your fears subside
And shadows still remain, ohhh yeahhh
I know that you can love me
When there’s no one left to blame
So never mind the darkness
We still can find a way
‘Cause nothin’ lasts forever
Even cold November rain