ABSTRACT
Ethical reflection, at least of the standard type, only furthers the confusion. I correctly judge myself to be an unkind person, and correctly judge that it would be better for me to be a kinder and more generous person. I may even take a course on virtue ethics at university, sign up for various good-works projects. Most likely, I will only end up more depressed at how feeble my efforts are. Or I may end up with a brittle false self: pretending to be kind, while a bitter lack of generosity gnaws away inside me. My problem is that my kindness – or lack of it – is not my most basic problem. Insofar as I assume it is, I mislead myself. For my unkindness is itself being held in place by fantasies that link me to my father – fantasies of which I am unaware. At the deepest level, the question for me is not whether to be kind or unkind, but whether I shall live my father’s life as though it were my fate. The question is not so much what I am like as who I am.
