ABSTRACT
The most creative young men and women, and the closest politically to the tradition of philosophical anarchism – they were anti-leader, anti-structure, ultra-participant and as ‘fluid’ in their politics as in their lifestyles – claimed to live for and through their friendships. The Ancients, of course, immediately came to mind, Plato and Aristotle pre-eminently, because there was a regular association between creativity, intelligence and living-in- friendships — beyond family, and as gadflies against the State. Friendship barely appears in Freud’s own writings, and by implication it is inferior to other, grander passions. Friends are first sons, then equals, their quality a derivative of their coinciding ties to the leader. The ‘British School’ can be credited with shifting emphasis from the Oedipal triangle, where all is urgent desire and intense rivalry to the two-person dilemma of ‘separation’, child from mother.
