Perversely Permissive Extroverted Superego

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Not to go into this too awfully much, but acquiring permission is a bit weird for me. My shrink says it’s due to a ‘punitive extroverted superego’. Which is to say that there are always more reasons to not do something than to do something. When it drives me too much toward inertia I have to create for myself a counteractive force, a ‘permissive extroverted superego’, if you will. Which doesn’t always do that much good since you could imagine a seagull painter using the same excuse to make yet another dreary, bland seagull painting. So it has to be a ‘perversely permissive extroverted superego’, a kind of combination fuckedupness-barometer / permission-giver who, with one eye winking permission, has the other eye turned critically toward whatever’s goofy enough, fucked-up enough and sincere enough to be worth doing.

- Richard Hawkins



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