JeanPaul_Sartre_JeanPaul_Sartre_Basic_Writing

Psychoanalysis251own manner the fundamental choice which must be brought to light, and since at thesame time each one disguises this choice under its occasional character and its historicalopportunity, only the comparison of these acts of conduct can effect the emergence ofthe unique revelation which they all express in a different way. The first outline of thismethod has been furnished for us by the psychoanalysis of Freud and his disciples.For this reason it will be profitable here to indicate more specifically the points whereexistential psychoanalysis will be inspired by psychoanalysis proper and those whereit will radically differ from it.Both kinds of psychoanalysis consider all objectively discernible manifestationsof “psychic life” as symbols maintaining symbolic relations to the fundamental, totalstructures which constitute the individual person. Both consider that there are noprimary givens such as hereditary dispositions, character, etc. Existential psychoanalysisrecognizes nothing before the original upsurge of human freedom; empiricalpsychoanalysis holds that the original affectivity of the individual is virgin wax beforeits history. The libido is nothing besides its concrete fixations, save for a permanentpossibility of fixing anything whatsoever upon anything whatsoever. Both considerthe human being as a perpetual, searching, historization. Rather than uncoveringstatic, constant givens they discover the meaning, orientation, and adventures of thishistory. Due to this fact both consider man in the world and do not imagine that onecan question the being of a man without taking into account all his situation.Psychological investigations aim at reconstituting the life of the subject from birth tothe moment of the cure; they utilize all the objective documentation which they canfind; letters, witnesses, intimate diaries, “social” information of every kind. Whatthey aim at restoring is less a pure psychic event than a twofold structure: the crucialevent of infancy and the psychic crystallization around this event. Here again we haveto do with a situation. Each “historical” fact from this point of view will be consideredat once as a factor of the psychic evolution and as a symbol of that evolution. For it isnothing in itself. It operates only according to the way in which it is taken and thisvery manner of taking it expresses symbolically the internal disposition of the individual.Empirical psychoanalysis and existential psychoanalysis both search within anexisting situation for a fundamental attitude which can not be expressed by simple,logical definitions because it is prior to all logic, and which requires reconstructionaccording to the laws of specific syntheses. Empirical psychoanalysis seeks todetermine the complex, the very name of which indicates the polyvalence of all themeanings which are referred back to it. Existential psychoanalysis seeks to determinethe original choice. This original choice operating in the face of the world and being a