ABSTRACT
Freud implicitly and Proust explicitly, set themselves up as resolute adversaries of the theory of Wahlverwandschaften, of elective affinities. And as Jaloux has noted, they reply to the idea that there can be truly sincere "love at first sight," by a radical scepticism. Another point upon which our two authors are in secret agreement–but it is fundamentally the same–is that of the relationship between love and suffering; between desire and anguish. And in Proust we would also find many deep reflections on this dark and poignant problem. Proust evidently thinks that love, before it attaches itself to anyone, is essentially anxiety, and that when this anxiety is increased by an exterior, fortuitous cause, it becomes so very intolerable that it suddenly resolves itself into love, which is then turned toward the being whom chance places within our reach at that moment.
