Stoicism

The stoic philosophers believed that man’s life is governed by fate, much of which is downright unpleasant, but that one of these fates is to be presented with choices daily. In the good life this free will is exercised according to high ethical principles. Because the stoics held out at least some hope for free will and a good life, they are also called “therapeutic” philosophers, and that is why someone like Admiral Stockdale found solace reading Epictitus in a POW camp. (My entire knowledge of stoicism was gained over a whisky in 40 minutes talking to Professor Gareth Williams at a Columbia alumni cocktail party, so take it for what it’s worth.)

Now let’s talk about “therapy” as we understand it in 2007. This involves a small office off the lobby of an apartment building on West End Avenue, where one sits on a loveseat across from a person with a notepad saying things like, “And how do you feel about what your mother said on the phone last night?” No fate, no universal design, just a couple of defenseless parents who managed to prepare you for adulthood by screwing you up, and who still get a dig in whenever they can.

(As an aside, the only poem I can recite is the one by Philip Larkin that starts: “They f*** you up, your mum and dad, they may not mean to, but they do/They fill you with the faults they had, and add some extra just for you.”)

Given Freud’s dominance, it should be no surprise that art in the 20th century became increasingly obsessed with the traumatic youthful experiences that turned protagonists into tragic figures. I’m referring to Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, and, yes, Barbra Streisand, the queen of therapy, who a couple of years ago actually reenacted her therapy sessions in a concert at MSG. I’m not kidding, you can look it up. Barbra’s movie “The Prince of Tides” has stuck in my mind as the apex of “Freudian drama,” where the Nick Nolte character, after finally confronting the rape he suffered as a child — with the help of a heroic psychoanalyst played, natch, by La Streisand — is suddenly freed from all his angst. The movie ends with him sailing off in the sun, “cured.” Very, very silly if you watch it today, in the age of Prozac and chemical depression.

So let’s focus on a character that does feel totally contemporary: Tony Soprano. During the course of the series we see that he is of course a product of his environment, but we also learn that his mother was a borderline personality and his father was bipolar. In the classic episode when Tony learns about his father’s condition, he explains to Dr. Melfi that nothing he has done is his fault because it was all preprogrammed into his brain — i.e., “fated.” He assuages his guilt by denying the existence of free will, but Melfi refuses to let him off that easy, arguing that he nevertheless makes choices every day.

A work that confronts nature vs. nurture in an even more disturbing context is the novel “We Need to Talk About Kevin,” by Lionel Shriver, written from the perspective of a mother whose son is a Columbine-style school murderer. While the narrator details precisely her failings as a mother, she also shows the child as malevolent from birth, leaving the reader with no pat, Streisandian “answers”. Anyone who has had kids knows that they exhibit clear personality traits as babies, well before you can even begin the long, elaborate process of screwing them up.

Thus post-modern literature, created with full knowledge of Freud, DNA, Prozac, etc., requires the author to depict his key characters as products both of nature and nurture: i.e., Tony Soprano, not Nick Nolte the Prince of Tides. Chemical preprogramming is our “fate,” but we do have free will. In this way our art is closer to the world of the Classics than the one depicted in 20th century drama.

Not to mention my own little novel in the context of a great work like the Sopranos, but “The Education of Rick Green, Esq.” which was published in 1995, also attempted to address the nature/nurture question. Probably the book that had the biggest influence on mine was “Listening to Prozac,” which I think should be required reading in writing courses — not that anyone asked me.