Theo Hobson Theo Hobson

Alain de Botton offers Freudian bleakness to the Facebook generation

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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.

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