JeanPaul_Sartre_JeanPaul_Sartre_Basic_Writing

250Jean-Paul Sartre: Basic Writingsbetween the signification and the consciousness—which need not astonish us sincethat is just what it was made for. Better still, they will say, in the majority of cases weare struggling, in our conscious spontaneity, against the development of emotionalmanifestations; we are trying to master our fear, to calm our anger, to restrain ourweeping. Thus we have not only no consciousness of any finality of emotion, we arealso rejecting emotion with all our strength and it invades us in spite of ourselves. Aphenomenological description of emotion ought to resolve their contradictions.BEING AND NOTHINGNESSDoing and havingExistential psychoanalysisIt is not enough in fact to draw up a list of behavior patterns, of drives and inclinations,it is necessary also to decipher them; that is, it is necessary to know how to questionthem. This research can be conducted only according to the rules of a specific method.It is this method which we call existential psychoanalysis.The principle of this psychoanalysis is that man is a totality and not a collection.Consequently he expresses himself as a whole in even his most insignificant and hismost superficial behavior. In other words there is not a taste, a mannerism, or anhuman act which is not revealing.The goal of psychoanalysis is to decipher the empirical behavior patterns of man;that is to bring out in the open the revelations which each one of them contains and tofix them conceptually.Its point of departure is experience; its pillar of support is the fundamental,preontological comprehension which man has of the human person. Although themajority of people can well ignore the indications contained in a gesture, a word, a signand can look with scorn on the revelation which they carry, each human individualnevertheless possesses a priori the meaning of the revelatory value of thesemanifestations and is capable of deciphering them, at least if he is aided and guided bya helping hand. Here as elsewhere, truth is not encountered by chance; it does notbelong to a domain where one must seek it without ever having any presentiment of itslocation, as one can go to look for the source of the Nile or of the Niger. It belongs apriori to human comprehension and the essential task is an hermeneutic; that is, adeciphering, a determination, and a conceptualization.Its method is comparative. Since each example of human conduct symbolizes in its