"All psychoanalysts systematically refuse the idea of choice and its corollary, the notion of value; and herein lies the intrinsic weakness of the system." (55)
"The existent is a sexed body; in its relations with other existents that are also sexed bodies, sexuality is thus always involved; but as the body and sexuality are concrete expressions of existence, it is also from here that their significance can be ascertained: without this perspective, psyschoanalysis takes unexplained facts for granted... Sexuality must not be taken as an irreducible given; the existent possesses a more primary 'quest for being'; sexuality is only one of these aspects." (55)
"Work, war, play, and art define ways of being in the world that cannot be reduced to any others; they bring to light features that impinge on those that sexuality reveals; it is both through them and through these erotic experiences that the individual chooses himself." (56)
"It is impossible to account for this without starting from an existential fact: the subject's tendency toward alienation; the anxiety of his freedom leads the subject to search for himself in things, which is a way to flee from himself... Primitive people alienate themselves in their mana, their totem; civilized people in their individual souls, their egos, their names, their possessions, and their work: here is the first temptation of inauthenticity. (57)
"For us woman is defined as a human being in search of values within a world of values, a world where it is indispensable to understand the economic and social structure; we will study her from an existential point of view, taking into account her total situation." (61)
Simone de Beauvoir, "The Pyschoanalytical Point of View" in The Second Sex, trans. Constance Borde and Sheila Malvany-Chevallier (New York: Vintage Books, 2011).
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