ABSTRACT
To be satisfied is to have one's needs or desires fulfilled, and even to have accomplished the will's revenge against time and so against time's mocking statement “It was.” But etymologically it means to make something suffice, to make enough, and the root sa appears ominously also in the words “sad,” “sated,” and “satire.” To be satisfied is to be sated and to be sad, to be self-satirized, and we can recall Freud's melancholy reflection that for the human psyche there can be no satisfaction in satisfaction anyway.
