Psychoanalysis converts each behavior’s hidden revelation into conceptual form

Evidence

This comparison allows us to understand better what an existential psychoanalysis must be if it is entitled to exist. It is a method destined to bring to light, in a strictly objective form, the subjective choice by which each living person makes himself a person; that is, makes known to himself what he is. Since what the method seeks is a choice of being at the same time as a being, it must reduce particular behavior patterns to 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 a comprehension of being and must not assign itself any other goal than to discover being and the mode of being of the being confronting this being. It is forbidden to stop before attaining this goal. It will utilize the comprehension of being which characterizes the investigator inasmuch as he is himself a human reality; and as it seeks to detach being from its symbolic expressions, it will have to rediscover each time on the basis’ of a comparative study of acts and attitudes, a symbol destined to decipher them. Its criterion of success will be the number of facts which its hypothesis permits it to explain and to unify as well as the self-evident intuition of the irreducibility of the end attained. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1346 (#expands, via linked claim)

The transformation from list to personality is accomplished in the following way. Some of the things subjects said are assumed to have historical truth, to be realistic accounts of past events and so a genetic dimension is added. Some of the things subjects said are understood literally, others are interpreted as revelations of unconscious wishes and so a dimension of psychological “depth” is added. Some of the things subjects said are set alongside other things with which they are in conflict and so dynamic forces are added. The construction as a whole is guided by a general blueprint of human personality, the blueprint is psychoanalytic theory. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 527 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

To escape from these difficulties people gladly have recourse to the unconscious. In the psychoanalytical interpretation, for example, they use the hypothesis of a censor, conceived as a line of demarcation with customs, passport division, currency control, etc., to reestablish the duality of the deceiver and the deceived. Here instinct or, if you prefer, original drives and complexes of drives constituted by our individual history, make up reality. It is neither true nor false since it does not exist for itself. It simply is, exactly like this table, which is neither true nor false in itself but simply real. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 282 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Psychoanalysis explains self-deception as a lie without a liar — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 283; Freudian and existential analyses both treat acts as symbols of deeper structures; Existential psychoanalysis decodes behavior to reveal each person’s fundamental choice of being. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1346 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Existential psychoanalysis decodes behavior to reveal each person’s fundamental choice of being. #expands (0.85) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1346
• Psychoanalytic theory converts correlated interview data into a personality structure #exemplifies (0.80) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 527
• The Freudian unconscious reintroduces a deceiver-deceived duality rather than explaining bad faith #complicates (0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 282