Notes on the Desk of Sigmund Freud

I’m almost certain that the last time I mentioned Sigmund Freud was in my writing health exercise from 2004, “Basic Black: The Funky Sutra.” Here in the rasx() context, Freud is very, very important because of one thing: Freud (I’m almost certain) was the first European (after whatever the Greeks might have had) to formally name ‘anatomical’ parts of the unseen parts of a human being. It does not matter here that he was “right” about his names and parts, what’s important here is that he tried the dance move at all.

It is an error for self-described, “African intellectuals” to assume that this ability to see invisible parts of human being with names like “Id, ego, and super-ego” was easily available to Westerners and our Four Humors. This is both an insult to the hard work of Sigmund Freud (and I am not Freudian) and, yes, here we go again: Africa. Let’s take a closer look at most of the “statues” on Sigmund Freud’s desk… I need to get a better picture than the etching shown here.

The idea that the human being is made up of named components working together in a system likened to a family comes from Africa. So when we see a “statue” from a traditionally successful African society, we might be seeing a symbol representing a component that works with other symbols. In the case of the Old Kingdom of the Nile Valley, this is exactly what we are seeing. This should explain why a separate field of psychology was not necessary in ancient Africa (but Africa certainly needs that shit now).

For those of us coming from our father’s Christianity, we might have seen the phrase “let us go down” when The Lord announces movement. Does not this seem strange to us English speakers that The Lord is so plural? Shouldn’t The Lord be singular?

So my daring assertion is that those African “statues” from ancient Egypt on Freud’s desk was not some trivial decoration of typical European plays with exoticism. Those “trinkets” were profound intellectual inspirations.

What I have written here is utterly outrageous—even to people living right now in the 21^st century—even to Black people of the sad future. Well, here is yet another reason why you and I are not friends…

I am probably incorrect when crediting Ashra Kwesi for showing me what was on Freud’s desk. It might actually have been Runoko Rashidi—but Runoko was the brother that said what happened in Egypt 5000 years ago ain’t got a damn thing to do with the Black man today. So Runoko connecting ancient Egypt with modern Freud might not have been his thang… Regardless of how this idea came to me, my ability to process this information definitely comes from the Queen Mother of SHIGI UAT. You can listen to her 2004 streaming audio presentation in “LIBRadio Sampler: Divine Conversations.”

rasx()