The True Genius

What is it like to be a true genius?

Ernest Becker writes:

"...Rank showed that the true genius has an immense problem that other men do not. He has to earn his value as a person from his work, which means that his work has to carry the burden of justifying him. . What does 'justifying' mean for man? It means transcending death by qualifying for immortality...The uniqueness of the genius also cuts off his roots. He is a phenomenon that was not foreshadowed; he doesn't seem to have any traceable debts to the qualities of others; he seems to have sprung self-generated out of nature. We might say that he has the purest causa sui project: He is truly without a family, the father of himself....

"But now the problem of the causa sui project of the genius. In the normal Oedipal project the person internalizes his parents, and the superego they embody., that is the culture at large. But the genius cannot do this because his project is unique.; it cannot be filled up by the parents or the culture at large. It is created specifically by a renunciation of the parents, a renunciation of what they represent,and even of their own concrete persons -- at least in fantasy -- as there doesn't seem to be anything in them that caused the genius. Here we see where the genius gets his extra burden of guilt: he has renounced the father both spiritually and physically. This act gives him extra anxiety becaused now he is vulnerable in his turn, as he has no one to stand on. He is alonbe in his freedom. Guiklt is a function of fear, as Rank said."

Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death (1983: 109-110)

Freud fainted twice during mortality-salience inductions. He accused Jung of projecting "death wishes" on him. Freud had severely unresolved issues about death, sex and immature religious frameworks and personal resistance to belief in religion and God.