Voluntary self-reform can succeed on symptoms without altering the fundamental project.

Evidence

It is therefore possible for me as regards errors concerning myself to impose upon myself reflectively—i.e., on the voluntary plane—projects which contradict my initial project without, however, fundamentally modifying the initial project. Thus, for example, if my initial project aims at choosing myself as inferior in the midst of others (what is called the inferiority complex), and if stuttering, for example, is a behavior which is understood and interpreted in terms of the primary project, I can for social reasons and through a misunderstanding of my own choice of inferiority decide to cure myself of stuttering. I can even succeed in it, yet without having ceased to feel myself and to will myself to be inferior. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1132

Categorization

• XREF: The stuttering example shows how the fundamental project so determines behavior that remedying one symptom only displaces it — the displacement mechanics echo psychoanalytic symptom-shifting, which Sartre is implicitly subverting. — connects to: Administered satisfaction produces voluntary compliance without terror. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 333; Individuals can take practical steps now to improve their condition; Individualized self-improvement solutions block collective confrontation of structural crisis — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror…, 1074 (+1 more)
• SEED: The ‘displaced infirmity’ phenomenon — curing one symptom and watching another appear — is a sharp angle for an essay on why surface-level self-improvement never touches the underlying project.
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that voluntary self-reform is ‘profoundly inefficacious’ against the fundamental project, and that the new infirmity recomposes itself around the unchanged end, is a dense insight worth sitting with.

Broader Connections

• Administered satisfaction produces voluntary compliance without terror. #exemplifies (0.85) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 333
• Individualized self-improvement solutions block collective confrontation of structural crisis #complicates (0.80) — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 1074
• Burnout is the pathology of voluntary self-exploitation, not lost sovereignty #expands (0.78) — Byung-Chul Han, The Burnout Society, 119
• Individuals can take practical steps now to improve their condition #qualifies (0.70)