On Giving Up

Freud's work starts from the position that, for better and for worse with no way, by definition, of knowing the consequences; with no way of knowing beforehand what matters need to be curious about our curiosity. We have, as he showed us through psychoanalysis, our curiosity and our morality to be going on from, and our curiosity about them (our cu

Freud shows us how the hide-and-seek of modern lives works; and that hide-and-seek may be an enlivening way of describing our lives. And that hide-and-seek may make us curious about other ways of describing our lives; and curious about why hide-and-seek has become such a compelling picture.

It is the assumption of the censorship that we prefer safety to danger, closedness to openness, the familiar to the strange. So Freud says, think of the censor as your most important conversational partner rather than the tyrant you are always managing. Where there was sovereignty, there can be mutual exchange; where there is tyranny an experiment