ABSTRACT
The deepest preoccupations and concerns of 'human nature' – or at least, the ways in which they are expressed and experienced — vary with the times and circumstances in which human beings find themselves. It is certainly not easy to penetrate behind the mythical world in an attempt to find out why our investment in it is so heavy and so extensive: on the whole, it allows itself to be talked about, so to speak, only in its own terms and in its own myth-creating language. Whether it be with oneself or others, honesty is threatening, and in any case few people are capable of achieving it even if they want to. The all-pervasive threat of annihilation means that we have to armour ourselves against the dangers of relationship, cultivate an indifference towards tenderness so that we are anaesthetized to the pain its withdrawal can inflict.
