From Piggy Chops to Golden Siggie | The Screenstor and the Surgeon ❤️

The Danger of Believing That You Know Enough!

On Sigmund Freud | The Father of Psychoanalysis

#onhisbirthdaytoday

6th May 2026

& Applying Sigmund Freud to Priyanka Chopra!

Or in other words…

Applying Siggie to Piggy!

This morning, in Campus, the Deans, VPs and Officials of the College had a very long and rewarding meeting with our Principal. In the meeting our Principal was highlighting on UGC’s emphasis on the importance of Continuous Professional Development (CPD) - which encompasses all the learning activities that professionals engage in - over and beyond their initial academic qualifications to ensure that their practice remains relevant and effective!

It was such a delightful coincidence because just this morning, I was listening to a lovely speech by Piggy Chops – aka Priyanka Chopra on a similar topic!

And this – ladies and gentlemen - takes us to the theme of today’s blogpost, and... here we go! 😊

Well, I’ve always admired screenstors (my little portmanteau of silver screen and actor) 😊who double up as readers and writers!

Call it a quaint little idiosyncrasy of mine – but I’ve had this crazy weird admiration for actors who take time to read a lot and write a lot, not as part of their profession, but out of sheer passion!

Art for heart’s sake! 😊

The list is eclectic! But these are a few of my favourite actors-cum-authors - 😊

Here goes –

Girish Karnad, Twinkle Khanna, Kalki Koechlin, Naseeruddin Shah, Anupam Kher, Tom Hanks, Priyanka Chopra, to name just a few.

And yes, I’ve admired Piggy Chops a lot not only for her best-selling memoir – Unfinished, but also for her speeches as well! Yess! There’s something about Priyanka’s speeches that have a telling effect on the viewer/listener! – maybe that’s because she is able to have the commanding presence of a seasoned orator, while at the same time, she gives you the expressions and the body language of a girl next door, telling you a story! Do please take time to watch a few of her speeches.

There was one such speech by Piggy Chops on YouTube that Prof. Dinesh had shared with me yesterday, and the first thing I listened to - early this morning! That’s when I decided that I should do a little post on it today.

And hence this post. 😊

On an aside, yesterday, I remember having discussed HERE on our blog - some of the core concepts of Kierkegaard and Karl Marx, the Father of Existentialism and the Father of Communism, respectively – on their birthdays yesterday!

We saw that, they both were “philosophical surgeons” who diagnosed the modern human condition – especially its weaknesses and sicknesses!

In like fashion, Sigmund Freud is a “psychological surgeon” who in like manner, diagnosed the modern human condition – and also provided an entirely new vocabulary for making sense of that human condition! 

In other words, if Society was the Text for Marx, and the Individual was the Text for Kierkegaard, the Mind was the Text for Freud! 😊

So the purpose of this post then, is two-fold!

Firstly, to give some excerpts from Priyanka Chopra’s inspiring speech, and then to apply Freud’s concepts to four of the important points that I found so engrossing and worth analysing – the Freudian way – in Priyanka’s speech.

Well, Priyanka’s speech opens with an impactful premise!

The most dangerous person is one who stops learning, she says, and adds, “The moment you decide you know enough, you stop growing and become replaceable. The world changes every second, and holding onto outdated knowledge that you gained during your school days or UG days or PG days, leaves you behind even while the rest of the world adapts to newer knowledge systems, she adds.

Priyanka then gives real-life examples from the most successful people in the world - such as Elon Musk, Oprah Winfrey, and Warren Buffett! They all share one common trait - they never stop learning!

Education isn’t just about reading books; it is found in conversations, experiences, and the lessons hidden within personal failures. And for this, she uses the analogy of a baby learning to walk. Babies fall repeatedly but never quit because they don’t understand the concept of failure.

Even we can adopt this same mindset by adding the word “yet” to our vocabulary. Instead of saying, “I am not good at this,” we should say, “I am not good at this yet,” which acknowledges that growth is possible.

She then exhorts people to investing in the mind instead of investing a lot in material possessions. People readily spend thousands on designer clothes, luxury bags, and the latest sneakers to look successful, but the same people very often hesitate to invest in a book or in learning a new course.

Priyanka reminds us that fashion fades and money can be lost, but knowledge is a permanent luxury that continuously appreciates in value and opens doors that a designer outfit never could.

I particularly liked the way in which she ‘reframes’ the concept of failure.

Failure is not the opposite of success! Instead, it is a necessary ingredient of success, she says.

She highlights the example of Thomas Edison, who didn’t see his attempts at creating the lightbulb as thousands of failures, but as finding thousands of ways that didn’t work.

Failure, hence, is simply life’s way of refining you and building your resilience to become a better version of yourself, she adds.

The icing on the cake is the part where she says that, the fastest way to master anything is to teach it! Sharing your knowledge with others literally forces you to organise your thoughts, simplifies your understanding, and multiplies the impact of what you have learned,

she signs off!

Now for the literary takeaways, as usual - 😊

Well, today happens to be Sigmund Freud’s birthday. He was called Golden Siggie by his mother.

So after Piggy, let’s focus on Siggie! 😊

Analysing Piggy’s speech through a psychoanalytic lens offers some fabulous learning for us!

I would just like to take four of the core points in Piggy’s speech –

resisting stagnation,

delaying gratification,

investing in the mind, and

sharing you knowledge with others

and try and connect them with a few of Freud’s foundational concepts.

Freud foregrounded the fact that, human behaviour is driven by two opposing forces - Eros (the life instinct, encompassing survival, propagation, and creative growth) and Thanatos (the death drive, a return to a state of stasis, rest, and zero tension).

Alluding to Piggy’s first point then - the moment a person decides they “know enough” and stops learning, they are surrendering to Thanatos – the death drive, a state of stagnation, leading to cognitive decline - 

Lifelong learning, therefore, is the ultimate expression of Eros – the life instinct - the active, continuous generation of new mental pathways!

Alluding next to Piggy’s second point - according to Freud, the Id operates strictly on the basis of the Pleasure Principle, demanding immediate gratification and throwing a tantrum (a theatrish behaviour) 😊 when frustrated! To Freud, then, one should journey away from the Pleasure Principle (that requires instant gratification), to the Reality Principle, which allows a person to delay gratification, endure discomfort, and thereby understand the long-term demands of the external world!

Now, alluding to Priyanka’s third point, where she notes that people spend thousands of rupees on expensive, luxury items to look successful, but they hesitate much-o-much when it comes to investing in a book or learning a new course that builds actual wealth and knowledge - 

In this scenario, a kinda Freudian displacement occurs – where the deep-seated desire for self-worth, is displaced onto superficial luxury goods. Rather than doing the rigorous internal work of intellectual development, the individual seeks a shortcut, using expensive material items as a psychic defence mechanism to project an illusion of success. True education dismantles this displacement by forcing the individual to build internal, permanent value rather than relying on external, fading commodities.

Finally, alluding to Piggy’s exhortation of mastery through teaching, where she says that, teaching and the sharing of knowledge literally forces us to organise our thoughts coherently and thereby accelerates our own learning - 

In the same vein, applying Freud here - the act of mentoring or teaching or sharing one’s knowledge with others could be called sublimation - a mature defence mechanism where socially unacceptable impulses or internal anxieties are transformed into socially acceptable, productive actions!

True intellectual rigour then, lies in –

resisting stagnation,

delaying gratification,

investing in the mind, and

sharing you knowledge with others!

Say Piggy and Siggie! 😊