« We have experienced, we sometimes find emotions as intense as those we felt as children, when we dived, lying on the ground, on a bed, in a book to get lost, to forget our identity, our present, our family. »

« Meaning does not object to nonsense. By going to a hard time, by 'breaking our heads' we will end up giving him meaning to this nonsense. Sense opposes informed, meaningless. (p. 87) »

« Psychology Magazine: You write: "Separate oneself: a task as painful as it is inevitable and even necessary for those who do not agree to stay put and who has the desire to move forward, to go ahead of what, not being oneself, is likely to be to come." Is that really about changing? J.-B. Pontalis: Yes, it's going out of what's known about yourself. That's what I've always been looking for. Before becoming a psychoanalyst, I was a philosophy teacher. One day— I was 29 years old - a student from hypokhâgne said to me, "They are your classes, but you feel like you don't really believe them." At the time, it didn't make much effect on me, but then I realized that she was telling the truth: I was fluent in language, speech, but I didn't live my words. First I had to get away from my masters, especially Sartre who, though generous, was so overwhelming... By separating from Sartre, then from Lacan, each time I separated, "taken" from who I was at the time and the concepts that carried me then - you know, we can also find ourselves locked in concepts. It was a long time before I really recognized myself in my word, in what I was writing. Thus, there is for everyone to free themselves from the different identifications that mark his life. This is what it is, to be alive: to try not to remain frozen in an age, in a position, and also to be able to navigate, to go back and forth in the different periods of his life: to find the child in itself, his part of femininity, his adolescent revolt... Then, all ages are telescoped, as in dreams, where an element of the vigil and memories of the very first years mix. The important thing is that it moves. »