ABSTRACT
The penumbra of associations surrounding the word "exploration" seemed to me to involve romantic ideas of unknown, wild, and virgin lands, a compass in the author's hand, a survival kit. In the process of trying to find the North on her compass, a starting point from which to orient herself, the subject of ethics came into view. The subject of values—their detailed scrutiny, their development in the psychoanalytic process, the challenge they represent—is one that constantly interests and concerns her in her work as a psychoanalyst. Psychoanalysis under the guidance of its creator, and beyond the ethics it shares with science in general, "virtually inaugurated a new era of human ethics". Freud did not describe the internal world as a generator of meanings in our relation with the external world, and he visualized the relationship between human beings and culture as a submissive one.
