Alain de Botton, to judge from his new novel The Course of Love, is trying to be the Freud for our day, the Facebookers’ Freud. For a book that presents itself as an affirmation of married love, it is rather bleak. And the bleakness echoes that of the Viennese know-it-all. Freud, remember, said that our sex drive makes life basically tragic. To have orderly lives, we must renounce our desire for promiscuous fun. To be mentally healthy, we must be honest about this; we must admit the force of our primal instinct, and not deny it or suppress it too rigidly, or we go neurotic. But we must suppress it.
The funny thing about de Botton is that he comes to such conclusions against the grain of his temperament, which is doggedly upbeat. The world is an intricately fascinating place, he keeps saying – there is so much to be curious (his favourite word) about.
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