To Do and to Have

The mistake is closely connected to the first; it consists in taking psychological investigation to be finished once we have reached the concrete set of empirical desires. In this way, a man can be said to be defined by the bundle of tendencies that empirical observation has been able to establish. The irreducible unification that we need to encounter, which is Flaubert, which we are asking the biographers to reveal to us, is therefore the unification of an original project, a unification that must be revealed to us in the form of a non-substantial absolute. The same may be said about the observations of the Catholic novelists who immediately see, in carnal love, its surpassing towards God or, in Don Juan, ‘a man who is never satisfied’ or, in sin, ‘a place empty of God’. The goal of psychoanalysis is to decipher man&s;s empirical behaviour, i.e. to place in full daylight the revelations each behaviour contains, to determine them conceptually.

Artistic and Creative Research · Earthquake and Disaster Impact Studies · Educational Leadership and Practices · History