“... fantastic diagnoses and cures; Freud’s almost unreserved reports on the progress of his own self-analysis together with his theoretical speculations at a time when most of the tenets of psychoanalysis were maturing in his mind, not to mention his use of Fliess as an object of analysis – all these are aspects of a collaborative enterprise unique in ...”

“... of signalling the emotional necessity of a new physical wound is to make it, shockingly, virtually self-inflicted. (Tristan drops his sword at the end of Act Two and lets the treacherous Melot run him through.) Amfortas had already been seduced by Kundry – Klingsor’s spear just made that wound literal. In Wagner’s misogynistic logic a woman, who ...”

“... the adults politely call ‘affection’ is often irresistible to the child’s profoundly sensual self. It is this, along with their intense, sometimes daunting suffering, that adults find most unsettling about small children; their suffering can make the adults distraught, but their erotic pleasure always makes the adults awkward and uncertain. The ...”

“... of putatively occult phenomena. Since the late 1880s Flournoy, whose deceptively chivalrous, self-effacing manner concealed a penetrating forensic intelligence, had eagerly sought a medium on whom to test his evolving theories about the relationship between trance phenomena and the psychopathology of the unconscious. Introduced to Smith in 1895, he at ...”

“... they are branded in me. Long before I read Nietzsche, I was offended by the slavishness of this self-abasement. The belittling of the human, the superstitious fear and the blackmail, seemed almost pagan to me. Augustine, the great early theologian, the North African bishop heavily influenced by Neoplatonism, is in many ways the patron saint of this pagan ...”

“... on, we find that Section 2340A might need to be violated anyway in conditions of ‘necessity or self-defence’: all of this to argue against the possibility of criminal liability on the part of US interrogators. Guantanamo protocols begin with polite questioning – ‘the detainee should be provided a chair and the environment should be generally ...”

“... The heroes of Albert Camus’s books can be quite annoying: surly, self-dramatising Hamlets who like to think of themselves as strong, silent loners, wise to human folly. But although they are often arrogant, self-absorbed and predictable, they are also susceptible to the weather, and happy to be upstaged by unseasonable storms, torpid nights, fierce sunlight, or the chance of a swim in the limpid sea ...”

“... This man has a discerning eye for the details of attractive female presentation: he can see her self through her clothes, not just her body and income. Catherine, in turn, inwardly admires the set of Henry’s hat and the capes of his greatcoat. The sexual appeal of dress was not an appropriate topic for public conversation between men and women, but in ...”

“... by his obscene and irrational father, Abraham, could be taken as an analogy for the state of self-imposed tutelage Kant wanted society to escape. Prudently, the Prussian royal censor banned him from writing about religion again.Kant wasn’t the first to find the story troubling. Commentators looked for ambiguity in God’s command – did he really mean ...”

“... and over is what makes a style distinctive, but it also leaves a writer vulnerable to parody, or self-parody. Parker homes in on the mannerisms that characterise ‘mezzo-Hemingways’ and Woolf’s ‘weaker sisters’, while May Sinclair is chastised for turning out books ‘with one hand tied behind her and a buttered crumpet in the other’. The one ...”

“... to conclude that if that were the case, one’s teeth would chatter constantly – out of sheer self-reflexive existential fear and trembling. (Subtext in these opening paragraphs: having inordinate if not Martin Amis-like dental bills of late – on top of all the moving expenses – have decided to come out as auto-odontophobe.) Life really would be ...”

“... a narrator with Less than Zero, along with several other characters, a distinctive and highly self-conscious prose style, a time of year, and a milieu of urban self-abuse and disaffection. But there is nothing straightforward about the relationship between the books. I’m glad to have the connection made for ...”

“... reasons and seem to have been less inclined to treasure them for the instruction of posterity. Self-censoring, modest women may even have consigned the lot to the fireplace. Sex was more important than rank in determining epistolary competence in the 17th century. My own research confirms Whyman’s impression that even in the early 18th ...”

“... rich, beautiful, aristocratic, young – are driven by Sehnsucht and restlessness to pursue self-apotheosis and the meaning of life in exotic lands. Macaulay thought that Byronism was finished by 1830, but in Disraeli it ran much deeper and lasted much longer. His father, a literary antiquarian, had been admired by Byron, and would die in the arms of ...”

“... and ‘the dilettante tone has charm after the sweeping statements, the safe marble gestures, the self-importance – “I stand with the People and Government of Spain”’ – of Authors Take Sides. Apart from Robert Boyd, the crusaders in Greene’s story were members of the elite, semi-secret society of Cambridge students and graduates known as the ...”