“The path that leads from the persona to the self, from the adult to the outlaw, consists of learning to distinguish between false desire and true desire, or superficial desire and profound desire, or obsessive desire and free passion, … or illusory needs and real needs.”
Source: The Passionate Life (1983), p. 138
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Sam Keen 56
author, professor, and philosopher 1931Related quotes
“If I had a desire, it would be to be free from desire.”
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“You see, true learning takes energy, passion, a burning desire.”
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“What little girls learn is not the desire for the other, but the desire to be desired.”
Source: The Beauty Myth (1991), Chapter 5 : 'Sex', p. 157
Context: The books and films they see survey from the young boy's point of view his first touch of a girl's thighs, his first glimpse of her breasts. The girls sit listening, absorbing, their familiar breasts estranged as if they were not part of their bodies, their thighs crossed self-consciously, learning how to leave their bodies and watch them from the outside. Since their bodies are seen from the point of view of strangeness and desire, it is no wonder that what should be familiar, felt to be whole, becomes estranged and divided into parts. What little girls learn is not the desire for the other, but the desire to be desired. Girls learn to watch their sex along with the boys; that takes up the space that should be devoted to finding out about what they are wanting, and reading and writing about it, seeking it and getting it.
“Prohibition of desire leads to desire for prohibition.”
Source: Slavoj Žižek: Wokeness, Psychoanalysis, and Quantum Mechanics | Robinson's Podcast. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxmZ4AVac7U
§ II
1910s, At the Feet of the Master (1911)