Subaghraj

Photo: The Hart Crane Memorial, Cleveland, Ohio. Financed by Peter Putnam. Peter Putnam believed the mind’s fundamental goal wasn’t to solve problems or pursue pleasure, but simply to repeat itself. Not in the mechanical sense, but existentially—to restore its own pattern after disruption. In his unpublished theory of mind, he imagined a system that, when perturbed by the environment, learns to act on that environment in such a way that it gets perturbed back into its original state. Repetition wasn’t just survival—it was identity maintenance. It was being. Seen in light of his life, this idea becomes something more than metaphysics. Putnam was a queer man born into a prominent, powerful family. His mother, Mildred, was extremely wealthy, and his father, George Palmer Putnam, was a famous publisher and the widower of Amelia Earhart. But the family home was cold, controlling, and shaped by status. Peter never fit. His theories were too abstract, his language too dense, his identity too...