JeanPaul_Sartre_JeanPaul_Sartre_Basic_Writing

256Jean-Paul Sartre: Basic Writingshas never had any knowledge of it? At most he will be able to judge that thepsychoanalytic explanation of his case is a probable hypothesis, which derives itsprobability from the number of behavior patterns which it explains. His relation tothis interpretation is that of a third party, that of the psychoanalyst himself; he has noprivileged position. And if he believes in the probability of the psychoanalytichypothesis, is this simple belief, which lives in the limits of his consciousness, able toeffect the breakdown of the barriers which dam up the unconscious tendencies? Thepsychoanalyst doubtless has some obscure picture of an abrupt coincidence ofconscious and unconscious. But he has removed all methods of conceiving of thiscoincidence in any positive sense.Still, the enlightenment of the subject is a fact. There is an intuition here which isaccompanied by evidence. The subject guided by the psychoanalyst does more andbetter than to give his agreement to an hypothesis; he touches it, he sees what it is.This is truly understandable only if the subject has never ceased being conscious of hisdeep tendencies; better yet, only if these drives are not distinguished from his consciousself. In this case as we have seen, the traditional psychoanalytic interpretation doesnot cause him to attain consciousness of what he is; it causes him to attain knowledgeof what he is. It is existential psychoanalysis then which claims the final intuition ofthe subject as decisive.This comparison allows us to understand better what an existential psychoanalysismust be if it is entitled to exist. It is a method destined to bring to light, in a strictlyobjective form, the subjective choice by which each living person makes himself aperson; that is, makes known to himself what he is. Since what the method seeks is achoice of being at the same time as a being, it must reduce particular behavior patternsto fundamental relations—not of sexuality or of the will to power, but of being—which are expressed in this behavior. It is then guided from the start toward acomprehension of being and must not assign itself any other goal than to discoverbeing and the mode of being of the being confronting this being. It is forbidden to stopbefore attaining this goal. It will utilize the comprehension of being which characterizesthe investigator inasmuch as he is himself a human reality; and as it seeks to detachbeing from its symbolic expressions, it will have to rediscover each time on the basisof a comparative study of acts and attitudes, a symbol destined to decipher them. Itscriterion of success will be the number of facts which its hypothesis permits it toexplain and to unify as well as the self-evident intuition of the irreducibility of the endattained. To this criterion will be added in all cases where it is possible, the decisivetestimony of the subject. The results thus achieved—that is, the ultimate ends of the