On knowing and not knowing your best interests.

When people act in their own best interests they don’t in fact know what their best interests
are, or whether their best interests are what actually matters most to them.

In Freud’s view no one can be wholehearted about anything because everyone is unconscious
of and resistant to his heart’s desire. Because what we desire is forbidden to us we have to
work hard not to know what it is (if we are asked what we are working on, we can say that we
are working on our ignorance).

• If we speak in Freud’s language, which is surprisingly useful here, the ego is the part of ourselves that wants safety and survival, and as much pleasure as is compatible with
• this,

• and the id the part of ourselves that wants sensual satisfaction whatever the cost.

To put it differently, there is a part of ourselves that has no interest in our best interests, if
our best interests are taken to be our own survival. It isn’t that a part of ourselves prefers risk to safety, it is that a part of ourselves doesn’t use this vocabulary; it is not that a part of ourselves
 is self-destructive, it is that a part of ourselves has no regard for whether our actions are destructive or constructive. Indeed, the notion of self-destructive behaviour itself presumes
not merely that we know what constructive behaviour is, but that that is what we most want
(or what at our best we most want).

source: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n03/adam-phillips/in-praise-of-difficult-children