On Rousseau

The Birth of the Modern Deviant:
Obsession in Rousseau's Confessions





In the opening page of the Confessions (1782), Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) describes how he was born in Geneva to a lower middle class family without financial security, without a strong constitution, and without even the physical presence of his mother, who died in childbirth. Nevertheless, in spite of these enormous obstacles, he eventually achieved such fame that he came to be known throughout Europe simply as 'Jean-Jacques'. In fact, his work came to be incorporated as part of the Enlightenment philosophy which proclaimed the formation of a new subject, the individual self. As it shall be seen, it is of the utmost importance to analyze how he views himself, for an appreciation of his philosophy of the self will lay the foundation for a complete understanding of his autobiography.

Rousseau begins the Confessions with a series of boastful remarks concerning his singular accomplishment, the composition of the autobiography of the world's most unique individual:



I have resolved on an enterprise which has no precedent, and which, once complete, will have no imitator. My purpose is to display to my kind a portrait in every way true to nature, and the man I will portray will be myself. But I am unlike anyone I have ever met; I will even venture to say that I am like no one in the whole world. I may be not better, but at least I am different. Whether Nature did well or ill in breaking the mould in which she formed me, is a question which can only be resolved after the reading of my book.



With these words, Rousseau sets himself apart from the rest of humanity, affirming his being as one that is wholly unique, as one that "broke the mould." This uniqueness was always present in his life, even during his childhood. He claims that, as a child, his emotional and intellectual faculties were advanced well beyond his years and, as a result, his was "no true childhood." Only after reaching adulthood was he able to act in accordance with the maturity he had felt since childhood. He challenges those skeptics who would doubt his claims to have been born with the maturity of an adult, citing his ability to read novels starting from age six as proof of his precociousness.

Although he had numerous difficulties to contend with, Rousseau describes his childhood as a time when he was treated as if he were the dauphin prince himself; he was loved by everyone around him, smothered with praise and lavish affection: "No royal child could be more scrupulously cared for than I was in my early years." An overprotected child, he spent his youth mostly in solitude, without any companions his own age: "Never once," Rousseau writes, "was I allowed to run out alone into the road with the other children." He remembers how during this period, his desires, on those rare occasions when he actually desired something, were instantly gratified and, after a time, "it never came into my head to have any." In this passage, he blames his lack of desire on his childhood, where his every wish was instantly gratified: he blames this phenomenon on the fact that he was raised in such a sheltered and isolated fashion. Without a doubt, it also had a considerable effect on the formation of his personality:



Such were the first affections of my dawning years; and thus there began to form in me, or to display itself for the first time, a heart at once proud and affectionate, and a character at once effeminate and inflexible, which by wavering between weakness and courage, between self-indulgence and virtue, he throughout my life set me in conflict with myself, to such effect that abstinence and enjoyment, pleasure and prudence have alike eluded me.



This tendency towards self-contradiction is an intrinsic component of Rousseau's psychological makeup, as can be seen in this passage where he brags of his liberty from fear while suggesting, simultaneously, that fear is the principle motivating factor in his life. He displays another side of his personality when he speaks of the modesty of his financial goals; as he sees it, the things in life which provide the most happiness are not to be found for sale in the marketplace; indeed, money is not to be looked at as inherently valuable in itself. He prides himself on the fact that he has ignored the whole economy of buying and selling, despite the fact the money has such an enormous status. However, he admits that, on occasion, he has felt covetous and miserly, and he has been most scrupulous in his dealings with money; this admission reveals yet another contradiction in his character, "the combination of an almost sordid avarice with the greatest contempt of money." Obviously, in spite of what he says about not being motivated by guilt, when it comes to money he is motivated by an overwhelming sense of shame; he regards the exchange of money as a 'secret pleasure'. This idea of the secret pleasure will occur again when we look at his view of sexuality. One might surmise that Rousseau's tendency to contradict himself was a psychological reaction to a childhood where the development of his desires was stunted; this protraction of his ability to desire may be seen as the cause for the deformed character of his personal psychology and the reason why, throughout his life, despite all his accomplishments, he was never able to achieve satisfaction, as these things were only substitutes for that absent figure, the love of his departed mother. Perhaps, too, the early death of his mother is also responsible for his obsessive need to praise his own individuality, to celebrate himself by glorying in his intellectual achievements.

Seeing himself as the center of the universe made Rousseau hard to get along with; he claims to be a most unmanageable person and a man who, because of his passionate temperament, has no regard for "restraint, respect, fear or decorum." He goes on to give the reader a detailed portrait of his personality:



I am cynical, bold, violent, and daring. No shame can stop me, no fear of danger alarm me. Except for the one object in my mind the universe for me is non-existent. But all this lasts for only a moment; and the next moment plunges me into complete annihilation. Catch me in a calm mood, I am all indolence and timidity. Everything alarms me, everything discourages me. I am frightened by a buzzing fly. I am too lazy to speak a word or make a gesture. So much am I a slave to fears and shames that I long to vanish from mortal sight. If action is necessary, I do not know what to do; if anyone looks at me I drop my eyes. When roused by passion, I can sometimes find the right words to say, but in ordinary conversation I can find none, none at all. I find conversation unbearable owing to the very fact that I am obliged to speak.



The reader is not surprised to learn that such a unique being as Rousseau has a doubly-unique range of feelings: "I felt before I thought," he says, re-affirming his uniqueness as he speaks of the overwhelming importance he ascribes to his feelings. In another passage he acknowledges the enormous weight of this component of his personality.



I have only one faithful guide on which I can count; the succession of feelings which have marked the development of my being... I easily ignore my fortunes, but I cannot forget my faults, and still less my genuine feelings. ...I may omit and transpose facts, or make mistakes in dates; but I cannot go wrong about what I have felt, or about what my feelings have led me to do; and these are the chief subjects of my story. The true object of my confessions is to reveal my inner thoughts exactly in all the situations of my life. It is the history of my soul I have promised to recount, and to write it faithfully I have no need of other memories; it is enough if I enter again into my inner self, as I have done till now.



However, this privilege he gives to his feelings is a double-edged sword, for instead of blaming his material, physical and emotional impoverishment for his misfortunes, he blames the extremely sensitive nature of his heart: "[My heart] has been the cause of all the misfortunes of my life." In Ann Hartle's opinion, the reason for Rousseau's obsession with originality may be found by investigating his concept of the state of nature as, to him, the original state vouches for the authenticity of one's being; this is precisely what Rousseau intends to do in writing his autobiography, to legitimize himself by confessing his life of sinfulness. However, while the Confessions is not a call to return to an originary social order, nevertheless, in those passages where Rousseau claims himself to be a man according to nature, he suggests that there is something within his own being which the savage enjoys and which the man of culture lacks. Rousseau's obsession with recovering this idealized state of nature, a state which promises to bring him "within the isolated self-sufficiency of the essentially private self," may be seen as an expession of his wish to return to the state of infancy. Describing the curious emotional state of his youth, he says:



I had no idea of the facts, but I was already familiar with every feeling. I had grasped nothing; I had sensed everything. These confused emotions which I experienced one after another, did not warp my reasoning powers in any way, for as yet I had none. But they shaped them after a special pattern, giving me the strangest and most romantic notions about human life, which neither experience nor reflection has ever succeeded in curing me of.



With this statement, Rousseau sets the standard by which his text is to be judged; one might even say that, in the case of the Confessions, one's critical judgment of the text does not rest on the accuracy of the memories described, nor does it depend on the historical truth behind the narrative: the text will be judged according to how well it reflects Rousseau's inner life, not whether the narrative contains empirically verifiable evidence or historically accurate information. So, too, it is not a matter of how accurately the narrative imitates life, but how well the memories recorded in the text reflect the workings of Rousseau's dynamic emotional psychology. The importance he gives to his feelings is closely related to his conception of memory; the two are intimately related, as it is the feelings that determine which memories will be recorded, and which parts of his life are to be preserved.



I am writing entirely from memory, without notes or materials to call things to my mind. There are some events which are as vivid as if they had just occured. But there are some gaps and blanks which I cannot fill except by means of a narrative as muddled as the memory...may therefore have made mistakes at times... But over anything that is relevant to the subject I am certain of being exact and faithful.



Here Rousseau makes an important qualification, both for the truth of his narrative and for his conception of the memory; as he sees it, although his narrative may be susceptible to faults in chronology, names, dates, and other defecits of memory, it is the feelings expressed which give rise to the validity and credibiliy of his autobiography. "My function is to tell the truth, not to make people believe it"; one can interpret this statement as a warning: here he tells the reader not to expect the Confessions to be written by Rousseau the political theorist [The Social Contract (1762)] or Rousseau the sociologist [Discourse on the Origin of Inequality (1755)] or the educator [Emile (1762)] but by Rousseau, the fiction-writer. As he sees it, the function of his narrative is simply to convey in a straightforward, honest manner, his thoughts about his feelings and perceptions. With this statement he declares that he does not intend to present the reader with an argument carefully reasoned from the facts of his memory. In this way, too, he gives the reader an impression of himself as an objective presenter of the facts when he declares his impartiality in interpreting his experiences. As Rousseau presents it, the role of an author is simply to relate his memories which, he tells us, may be colored by the feelings and emotional reactions these memories have produced. The passage above can also stand as another example of how Rousseau, again and again, gives priority to feelings over fact. Combining all of the above textual evidence, one realizes that the Confessions are to be seen as a work of fiction. None of these propositions, neither his emotional precociousness, nor his intellectual maturity, neither his curious epistemology which places his feelings as the truth, nor his view of the memory as, essentially, a fictional space should come as a surprise when one considers that all of these views correspond with his conception of the self and his belief in his unique individuality.

One may suppose that Rousseau sees the truthfulness of his narrative to be secondary to the primary purpose in writing the Confessions; that is, to record his emotional journey through life. He gives the reader the liberty to question the veracity of the memories he records, saying, "Here is an example of the tricks my memory plays on me...I had so completely lost the idea...that I could have sworn it was [true]." With this single violation of his position as the communicator of the facts of his existence, the reader can only speculate that if, in this case, that if Rousseau could have sworn to the accuracy of his memory, how many more breaches of authorial trust can we expect? In Hartle's opinion, while some of these mistakes are insignificant, such as errors in dates and places, other more significant errors are not to be dismissed as easily, as they are almost wholly fictitious; for Rousseau, telling all does not necessarily mean being precise about biographical data. Hartle conceptualized Rousseau's emphasis on truthfulness on the model of the penitent who confessed his sins, not be relating every detail of his life, but by selecting only those incidents which he considers to be important. The fact that he restricts himself to narrating only those actions which he must confess to, prohibiting himself from elaborating in any way which might be construed as a justification, is a technique which, again, is similar to the dialogue of the confessional booth.

With these principles of autobiographical writing in hand, Rousseau feels no need to limit his imagination. By calling his own truthfulness into question, he created an aura of complete honesty, and prevents his reader from having to do so on their own. This aura of honest sincerity is made even stronger when he confessed to the occasional lie, as it leads the reader to presume that this individual who reveals such shaming secrets about himself must be a man of integrity: "I have been able to suppose true what I knew to have been possible, never what I knew to have been false." In this sentence one is able to see how Rousseau, in promising complete candor, gives himself a license to create similar to that of the novelist, as this statement legitimizes his use of fictional truths in those instances where these fictions could, at the least, be established in the realms of possibility. However, the truth-claims of his narrative are defined, not simply by the range of the possible: Rousseau vouches that any false information contained in these pages is equivalent to the non-actual, saying, "I have told the truth. If anyone knows things contrary to what I have just exposed...he knows lies and impostures."

When one realizes how subtle this conception of the truth is for Rousseau's narrative, one may begin to wonder: if the truth which he promises us is not the accuracy of the biographer or the frankness of the penitent, then did these events actually occur, or is this an accurate representation of how he felt at the time? In Hartle's opinion, because of the unique nature of Rousseau's Confessions, readers must move away from trying to answer such questions in order to assess the text. Rousseau explains how he conceives of fiction in the Confessions in the fourth section of the Reveries of the Solitary Walker (1782) where, immediately following a passage on the composition of the Confessions, Rousseau launches into a discussion on lying:



To lie without advantage or disadvantage to oneself or others is not to lie; it is not a falsehood, but fiction. ... There is the line which must not be crossed, but everything which although opposed to truth does not affect justice in any way is no more than fictionm and I confess that anyone who holds a mere fiction against himself as a lie has a more tender conscience than I have.



With this statement Rousseau acknowledges that he has occasionally sacrificed the truth of his life, creating fictions which are deemed to be necessary, as long as his text profits by these fictional embellishments; by using these principles, his narrative is enabled to convey his personality to a greater extent than by simply relating the facts of his existence. So, for Rousseau, any autobiography is but a product of the imaginary, a fictionalized account. The nature of Rousseau's project is unprecedented in the history of Western literature; neither Augustine's Confessions (c. 400) nor Montaigne's Essays (1588) can match Rousseau in his desire to reveal himself in his entirety before the public, lapsing over none of the faults of his character. Hartle believes that in the end, this idea of what is, primarily, the truth of one's life being mixed with a secondary, fictive, quality of one's account does not invalidate his text, for this admixture of truth and fiction does not prevent him from realizing the truth of his soul or his sharing it with others. In this last judgment, one read the Confessions in order to become acquainted with Rousseau's being, not to learn about the history of the Englightenment era; realizing this, one has no right to demand what was important to Rousseau ought to be what was important to history. It is to their discredit that previous critics of Rousseau have mistaken the fabricated Rousseau of the Confessions for the real Rousseau. However, what is most relevant for my purposes is not this 'real' Rousseau, but the narrator of the Confessions.

The reader is told how Rousseau's idyllic childhood was broken with a single event which caused him to lose his faith in other people. After one of the servants discovers that all of the teeth have been broken off of Mlle Lambercier's comb, Rousseau is accused of this mischief, since he was the only one present at the time. Despite all of his protests to the contrary, he is blamed for having committed the deed. "This was the first time I was convicted of a downright lie," he says. Although his misdeed deserved punishment, his refusal to admit wrongdoing was seen as a second, and potentially more critical offense that needed correction. Refusing to make any sort of confession, Rousseau was able to escape punishment, as "force had to yield before the diabolical obstinacy of a child." Fifty years after this incident, he shows us that he is still a child, vowing, "I declare before Heaven that I was not guilty. I had not broken, not so much as touched, the comb." This event marks the end of his childhood: "Thus ended the serenity of my childish life. From that moment I never again enjoyed pure happiness." In the coming years he would become familiar with dishonest and immorality: "...I learnt to convet in silence, to conceal, to dissimulate, to lie, and finally to steal." His further intellectual development only served to make him even more of a deviant. Now fighting with his family almost daily, Rousseau surrounded himself with a library of books which catered to his deviance, books which radically affected his personality: "...my temper became wild and taciturn. My mind was beginning to be perverted and I lived like an outlaw."

Throughout the Confessions, Rousseau speaks of himself in self-deprecating terms which not only gives the reader insight into his personality, but also provides him with a means to authenticity as a narrator. Many of the self-depractory remarks occur when he tells the reader of his sexual development; the information he gives about this dimension of his personality marks his as a sexual deviant, and this deviance is apparent from the very first mentioning of sexuality in the narrative. This incident occurs when Rousseau, while being spanked by Mlle. Lambercier, finds that the whipping is actually a pleasurable experience. In fact, as he tells us, "This punishment actually increased my affection for the inflicter." Even in his youth, he possessed a sexual persona which deviated from 'normal' standards; as he puts it, there was "[without a] doubt...some degree of precocious sexuality in all this. Certainly, he is not exaggerating here: it is uncommon for a young boy, barely more than a child, to be deriving a masochistic pleasure from his punishments. Seeing that, instead of causing pain and suffering, her punishing blows cause him to become sexually aroused, Mlle. Lambercier decides to discontinue these punishments, offering the excuse that "she found it too exhausting." Thereafter, he finds himself relocated to another room in the house, now to be "treated like a big boy." He claims that "this childish punishment...would determine my tastes and desires, my passions, my very self for the rest of my life"; as he sees it, his sexuality was constructed through his chilhood subjugation to a code of discipline which included physical abuse at the hands of his guardians and, as a result, Rousseau writes, "I kept myself pure and unsullied up until an age when even the coldest and the most backward natures have developed. ... My morals...kept my pure even after the age of puberty." In this passage, he tells us that this experience inhibited him sexually, resulting in his having kept his virginity into adulthood; in fact, he tells us, he was so inhibited, he came to use his higher moral character as an excuse for not having the courage to 'sully' himself.

One of the prime shapers of Rousseau's deviant psychology was not his sexual knowledge but his sexual non-knowledge: "Not only had I not till adolescence any clear ideas concerning sexual intercourse, but my muddled thoughts on the...subject always assumed odious and disgusting shapes." In this state he proceeded through life, living in fear of a host of enigmas, such as streetwalkers and intercourse, of which he only had vague understandings, although he felt sure they were related to that most ambiguous of acts--sex. Unsurprisingly, when he tries to conceptualize the sexual act, he finds it nothing less than sickening: "I was always reminded of the coupling of dogs, and my stomach turned at the very thought [of sex]." Indeed, so impoverished is his sexual imagination that those first experiences, the thrashing at the hands of Mlle. Lambercier became the prime source of material for his fantasy life: "Imagining no pleasures other than those I had known, I could not...direct my desires to any other form of gratification." As Rousseau informs us, because his sexual activities were so restricted, and because his sexual being was denied an external outlet, he had no choice but to reflect the sensual components of his personality back onto himself and, as a result of this inability to conceive of the sexual act but in relation to his own being, Rousseau's self-reflexive sexuality led to the creation of his obsessive-compulsive, narcissistic personality. However, in writing his sexual history, he does not feel bitterly about his first, 'perverse' sexual discoveries: "...when finally...I became a man I was preserved by that very perversity which might have been my undoing." Indeed, he credits this experience with the formation of a sexual nature which effectively prevents his interaction with women on any level, a trait which he considers to be exemplary. In addition, it causes Rousseau to believe the pleasures which he desires are impossible to find in the world; however, if they are to be found in this world, a possibility which he never ceases to yearn for, then the object of his desires would come in the form of a transcendental love, a manifestation of the divine in an earthly form. Accordingly, he imagines his ideal sexual experience in the following terms:



To fall on my knees before a masterful mistress, to obey her commands, to have to beg for her forgiveness, have been to me the most delicate of pleasures; and the more my vivid imagination heated my blood the more like a spellbound lover I looked. As can be imagined, this way of making love does not lead to rapid progress, and is not very dangerous to the virtue of the desired object. Consequently, I have possessed few women, but I have not failed to get a great degree of satisfaction in my own way, that is to say imaginatively.



It is this kind of confession, one that reveals his innermost sexual nature, which is the most exceedingly difficult to make; as he puts it, "It is the ridiculous and shameful, not one's criminal actions, that is hardest to confess." But what, specifically, is the action which Rousseau feels will bring him the most ridicule, the most shame in confessing? The answer is not to be found in any particular action he has performed, but rather, it is action which he could not bring himself to perform:



...I am certain of myself; after what I have just had the courage to say, nothing else will defeat me. How much it has cost me to make such revealations can be judged when I saw that though sometimes laboring under passions that have robbed me of my sight, of hearing, and of my senses, though sometimes trembling convulsively in my whole body in the presence of the woman I loved, I have never, during the whole course of my life been able to force myself, even in moments of extreme intimacy, to confess my peculiarities and implore her to grant me the one favor which was lacking.



Disgusted by every manifestation of love he finds in the world, Rousseau can only fantasize about fulfilling his hunger for a transcendental love. However, this is a fool's quest, for no-one he can ever meet will be able to satisfy this desire. Having such unrealistically high standards, it is not surprising that he is unsuccessful in finding an object for his love; he even begins to fear that he has no sexuality at all, but finds comfort in the sensual images his mind ceaselessly creates. It is this unhealthy sexuality, Rousseau feels, which is at the root of his melancholy personality, "...so gloomy and misanthropic...[which] arises from my too loving heart."

Rousseau's first real sexual experience is, in fact, a homosexual encounter. While he is in Geneva, preparing for his conversion to Catholicism, one of the two Moors who are also staying there begins to show signs of sexual interest in him. The Moor expressed his intentions by kissing him repeatedly, which he finds to be "most displeasing." Rousseau explains that he "put up with the kisses, saying to myself, '...it would be wrong to repulse him'." The reader may only speculate whether he 'put up' with this display of homoerotic love because of his desire not to offend, or because he actually found these kisses exciting and sexually stimulating. Although the Moor intends to seduce him, he is forced to give up the struggle, as Rousseau shows only "surprise and disgust." The story comes to a climax as Rousseau describes how the Moor finishes his act with a milky discharge; he reacts in characteristic fashion: nausea. A further illustration of the revulation he feels towards any manifestation of sexuality may be detected when he comments, "...if we appear like that to women, they must indeed my fascinated not to find us repulsive." Afterwards, Rousseau wants to tell everyone what he has witnessed; he confides in one of the principles at the Abbe who tells him, much to his surprise, not to get excited over such a trifling matter, and intimates that homosexual sex is nothing to be afraid of. However, the thought of any sex, heterosexual or homosexual, is just too much for Rousseau, who then continues to view women as the embodiments of divinity with even greater resolve, as he now feels that women deserve "a reparation for the offenses of [the male] sex, that could only be paid by the most delicate affection and personal homage." As a result of this sexual encounter, Rousseau sacrilizes the image of women to the point that any female person, even the filthiest of whores becomes, in his eyes, a holy vessel, an object of veneration.

After the potentially homosexual encounter with the Moor, Rousseau reacts in a way which indicated the sexually repressed nature of his psyche, that is, his idealization of women and his simultaneous retreat from all forms of sexuality. From this point on, Rousseau shuns all homosexuals, whereas the female form has come to be held as even more valuable than before. His vigorous heterosexuality may be seen as the by-product of his retreat from homosexuality. So, too, does his idealization of the love-object stem from his sexual repression:



This is another romantic folly which I have never been able to cure myself of, and which has combined with my natural timidity... I have loved with too much sincerity, too perfectly, to attain easy success. No passions were ever so pure and so strong as mine. Never was love so tender, genuine and disinterested. On countless occasions I would have sacrificed my happiness to that of the woman I loved. Her reputation has been dearer to me than my life, and never for all the joys of gratification have I been willing to risk her peace of mind for a single moment. Therefore I have brought so much care, so much secrecy, and so many precautions to my affairs that not one of them has ever been successful. My lack of success with women has always come from loving them too much.



As a result of his sexual inhibitions, Rousseau becomes a voyeur, living out his sexual desires vicariously; while he hides in the closet and silently watches Mme. Basile, his wishes come true as, for a few moments, he is able to observe a woman in her most private setting, her chamber-room. However, a mirror atop the chimney-piece reveals his presence: "I trembled, cried out, and threw myself down [at her feet]." Unable to utter a single sound, or even to look at her, Rousseau is unable to realize that Mme. Basile feels the same mixture of embarassment and desire as he does. For a moment they are immobile, frozen in their positions, Basile standing on the floor-mat, Rousseau at her feet with outstretched fingers, unable to work up enough courage to touch the hem of her dress. The moment ends with the slam of a door which signals the approach of a third party; Mme. Basile, in alarm, commands him to depart at once, which he does after leaving her with two passion-filled kisses. As he remembers the incident, he writes, "Never in my life had I known so tender a moment. But the opportunity I had lost did not occur again, and our young love went no further." This story is a typical Rousseauistic sexual encounter, and typifies Romantic love in general, a love which, archetypically, is defined by unconsummated love and unfulfilled desire. Mme. Basile, too, can be seen as the archetypal representation of the Romantic female figure, as she represents desire itself and the anxiety men experience when confronted with female sexuality. Far from feeling embarassment when recounting this incident, he proudly declares that the pleasure he felt in those moments he spent at the feet of Mme. Basile, "without even the courage to touch her dress," was equal to all those pleasures he had ever derived from any sexual experience.

Later, after he leaves Mme. Vercellis' house, Rousseau spends a number of weeks with his former landlady; however, this is not a restful period of his life, for he discovers three characteristics which cause him to spend his days languishing in melancholia; his health, his young age and, worst of all, his "idleness." The combination of these three qualities causes him such agitation that he degenerates into depression: "I wept and sighed and longed for a pleasure that I could not imagine but of which I nevertheless felt the lack." Indeed, he finds his condition to be so novels, he doubts that it is a feeling that has been shared by many men. In describing this state, he uses phrases such as "[an] overflowing of life...both delicious and tormenting" and "[an] intoxication of desire." When he tells us of his fantasies of the female body, it becomes obvious what stage he is going through: the hormonal shifts which accompany the onset of puberty. However, being wholly ignorant of the true nature of sex, Rousseau conceptualizes the sexual act with his imagination only; the reader must wonder what grisly machinations and perversions his hyper-sensitive mind may have considered. Disconcerted by these carnal thoughts, he describes for us a mind "in a most troublesome state of activity" and, still plagued by a guilt-ridden psyche, he represents this state with words which express his repressed sexuality; to him, this was a period of "shame" accompanied by "an evil conscience" which only served to enhance his inborn reservations. Summarizing this predicament of his youth, he says:



Imagine my ardent and lascivious temperament, my heated blood, my love-intoxicated heart, my vigour, my sound health, and my youth. Consider that in this condition, though thirsting for the love of woman, I had not yet approached one; that my imagination, need, vanity, curiosity, all combined with the burning desire to be a man and prove myself one.



The extent of Rousseau's sexual repression becomes dramatically clear when he announces the surprising fact that, throughout his entire life, he has never been able to begin a sexual relationship with a woman. In his self-deprecating manner, he tells us that, not only must the woman initiate sexual behavior, she must also forcibly coerce him in order to have sex. Knowing that this situation occurred again and again throughout his life, even with women who were willing sexual partners, one may interpret this phenomenon as being a mark of Rousseau's pathological sexual psychology.

Unable to gratify his sexual desire or even to conceive how he might do so, Rousseau ultimately descends into perversion. Finding women to be too intimidating and too threatening to confront on a real, interpersonal level, he begins lurking at night in dark, secluded areas, searching for a woman whom he can expose himself to, not to commit any violence, but simply to unburden himself of his repressed sexuality; he states the he appeared more "ridiculous [than] obscene." Rousseau lets the reader know that he realizes how bizarre this behavior is when he writes: "The absurd pleasure I got from displaying myself before their eyes is quite indescribable." However, he appears to be untroubled over the fact that he has become a sexual pervert. Untroubled, that is, until one incident, which occurs when Rousseau, hiding in the middle of a courtyard, positions himself behind a well which women often visit. When the women approach, he exposes himself, telling his readers: "I offered the girls a sight which was laughable rather than seductive." While most of the women act as if they have seen nothing, or laugh at the display of this 'horror', there is one woman who reports this incident to a man who apprehends Rousseau immediately; he is set free only after he claims to be a person of noble birth who suffers from mental derangement.

Returning from a trip to Italy, Rousseau is still virginal, physically, if not morally; however, he returns to France with a habit which, because of his sexually repressed condition, he describes as



...that dangerous means of cheating Nature, which leads in young men of my temperament to various kinds of excesses, that eventually imperils their health, their strength and sometimes their lives. This vice, which shame and timidity find so convenient, has a particular attraction for lively imaginations. It allows them to dispose, so to speak, of the whole female sex at their will, and to make any beauty who tempts them to serve their pleasure without the need of first obtaining her consent.



Clearly, he is speaking of masturbation, the practice which allows him to satisfy his desires, without ever having to make contact with another person. The next time he encounters homosexuality, while staying in Lyons, Rousseaau meets a man who, after a short conversation, proposes they masturbate together; he writes that, "[The man] had no designs of my person... All he wanted...was to have his fun and for me to have mine..." Nonetheless, the man's suggestion causes Rousseau to react with a mixture of anger and fright, before running off as quickly as possible; as a result of this incident he renounces entirely the practice of masturbation, at least for awhile. Shortly afterwards, he finds that, because he has exhausted his funds and can no longer afford the price of a room, he must sleep on a bench in the public square. Noticing Rousseau's penniless conditions, a priest approaches him, telling him he is welcome to share a bed back in his apartment. He agrees, not knowing that the priest, too, is a homosexual who, while not as aggressive as the Moor, is even more brutal than the man of Lyons, for this priest attempts to arouse Rousseau without expressing his sexual intentions. "I quickly realized his purpose, and shuddered," he says, pretending to be unfamiliar with this type of behavior. Seeing that Rousseau is not responding to his sexual advances, the priest relinquishes his desires, and the two sleep through the night. Before he leaves in the morning, the priest offers Rousseau intelligent advice on his future but, as a result of the previous night's incident, he still finds it necessary to characterize the priest as an 'evil' man.

Suspecting that readers of this confession will laugh when they read these passages on his sexual life, Rousseau justifies his behavior, saying that his all-consuming sensibilities and sensitivities, while bringing him to states of sexual despondency, have also brought him sexual pleasures the heights of which few people are able to enjoy; as Rousseau says, while "the most advanced of [my love-affairs] concluded with a kiss of the hand," the difference between his sex-life and the reader's is that "I probably had more pleasure from this affair which ended with a kiss of the hand than you will ever have from yours which...begins there." Here he brags that, because of his sexually repressed condition, there is a quantitative difference in the amount of pleasure he can find in even a simply touch, turning that quality which potentially marks his as an anomaly into a quality which underscores his uniqueness in a positive sense.

From these reflections on love and sex, it becomes clear that in regard to these matters Rousseau's thinking is split into two basic desires, one being his desire to take part in sexual relations, the other his desire to abstain from all sexual relations, which can be interpreted as a way of holding onto the identity he had discovered in his youth, when his life was an 'idyllic' retreat from the world. This impulse to regress to an earlier state in order to prevent becoming a sexual being may be taken as a sign that he has encountered an obstacle in his psychic development and, as a result, he has become 'stuck' in that narcissistic stage which normally would have been surmounted during his childhood. Rousseau corroborates this hypothesis when he describes himself as a man torn into pieces, divided by the violent opposition of his passions; indeed, he suggests that he lived a dual life. There is one incident in particular which he singles out as the most relevant to a true understanding of his character; he challenges us to "have the courage to read the next two or three pages" if we truly wish to possess "complete knowledge of Jean-Jacques Rousseau." This incident occurs when, after entering the room of a courtesan "as if it were the sanctuary of love and beauty," he sees what appears to him as a divine object, the form of a woman. However, when he realizes the nature of the services she performs, his hyperactive sensibilities cause him to grow cold, and a death-like pallor takes over his body. Sinking deeply into a state of melancholy, he withdraws from the room, weeping "like a child." What could be the cause of this emotional outburst? He gives us a reason which, unsurprisingly, is in perfect accord with his repressed sexual psychology. According to Rousseau, this latest outbreak of tears is due to the fact that, because he associates women so closely with Nature, and because he sees the woman's body as "the masterpiece of Nature," he experiences an extreme emotional reaction when he sees such a 'masterpiece' being abused in this way. He then goes on to list a series of indubitable assumptions he has in regard to the female sex; they are: a) that every woman is the work of a divine creator; b) that every woman possesses four distinct qualities in equal measure, goodness, generosity, beauty and charm; and c) that every woman is fit to be lord and master over other men and, in addition, every instrument of power ought to be at her disposal.

However, Rousseau does not hide from women forever; when he enters the household and Mme. de Warens, he finds the woman with whom he will have his first true relationship, Mme. de Warens herself. She is a woman whose unusually view of sexuality was shaped largely by her first lover, M. de Tavel, who viewed sexual relations as non-meaningful actions, and who saw monogomy as an unrealistic expectation. According to Tavel, the wife ought to be the one who ought to bear the burden of responsibility for the well-being of the marriage, the one to "preserve her husband's peace of mind." In the end, Tavel convinced her that martial infidelity was an insignificant trifle. Reflecting of Mme. de Warens, Rousseau comments on his feelings:



Without desiring to possess her...she robbed me of the desire to possess other women. ...I viewed anything that might distract my attention to her as a misfortune. ... By calling her Mama and treating her [like] a son, I had grown to look on myself as such; ...that is the real cause of my lack of eagerness to possess her... ...my first feelings for her, though no stronger, were more voluptuous. ... In short, I loved her too much to desire her.



Not long after joining the household, Rousseau begins to long for Mme. de Warens' embrace. Aroused by the thought that this single-minded woman has only one desire, that is, the desire to give pleasure to others, Rousseau begins to obsess over the idea of holding her in his arms, or, rather, the thought of being held in the arms of his mother. If such a fantasy came true, Rousseau imagines, he would be rid of all of his desires forever. In his opinion, it is this state of all-consuming love-sickness, a sickness intensified by the absence of a love-object, which is responsible for his mental disturbance. So, "devoured alternately by desires and by fears," this object-less love causes his psyche to develop into that of a madman.

After Rousseau has begun his relationship with Mme. de Warens, he finds out that, indeed, she is a woman who holds an extremely liberal view of sexuality; in fact, her views were so liberal that she was beyond any traditional code of sexual morality, nor was she subject to those moral standards which prohibitied an individual from having sexual relations with multiple partners. Seeing nothing particularly 'sacred' about the act of sexual intercourse, Mme. de Warens was able to treat sex as if it were a normal human experience, not as an idealized event whose divine nature prohibited her from acting in the same way she would at any other time. Rousseau marvels at the fact that, while engaged in conversation, she could pause in order to have sex, and then resume the conversation without feeling that there was anything amiss. However, at first this liberal view of sex did not sit well with him. Huizinga tells us that, initially, he was shocked by her view of sexuality, and her sexually aggressive manner came as such a surprise that it reduced him, for a time, to impotence. Even when he had accepted her views of sex, their love-affair was never particularly sexual. Rousseau tells of how Mamma baldly confronted him with the prospect of beginning his first adult sexual relationship in terms which were "better calculated to instruct than to seduce me...laying down conditions...and giving me eight days to consider them." After he first made love to Mamma, he was reduced to such a grief-stricken state that her bosom was wet with his tears; instead of feeling sexual satisfaction for the first time, Rousseau feels as if he has committed incest. Meanwhile, Mamma remains calm and soothing, looking neither regretful nor reproachful.

In addition, the names they have for one another, 'Little one' and 'Mamma', plus the fact that he seems to treasure this name-giving are signs that indicate that this relationship, far from being a relationship between two adults, is actually a reproduction of the mother-son relationship, a relationship which he had been denied.



The two names...express the tone of our behavior, the simplicity of our habits and...the relation between our hearts. ...if there was a sexual side of my attachment to her...[it] only made it more enchanting. I was intoxicated with delight at having a young and pretty mamma whom I loved to caress.



The two of them played the roles of mother and child in their sexual relationship: "I was intoxicated with delight at having a young...Mamma whom I loved to caress. ...she never thought of grudging me kisses or the tender caresses of a mother." Mamma herself was a unique figure in his life: "...the only person with whom I never suffered from that inability to find words." It is obvious that he has taken his affection for his natural mother and projected it onto this woman. This indicated the full extent of his sexual neurosis: Rousseau's sexuality has become so malformed that he perceived all women through the same figure, that of the mother. One of the chief incidents which define his obsessive psychology occurs when, after he became very close with his Mamma, he recounts how he always desires to be with her alone, to speak with her privately without the disturbance of any third party. Yet, each time he is in private possession of her, their isolation would always be broken by the entrance of someone else, forcing him to storm off into another room in dejection and fury. There, in the ante-chamber, Rousseau waits impatiently for the visitors to depart, wondering why such commoners should monopolize his Mamma while he, the genius, stands waiting. In this state of anticipation, he experiences a most singular feeling:



I only felt the full strength of my attachment to her when she was out of my sight. When I could see her I was merely happy. But my disquiet when she was away was almost painful. My inability to live without her caused me outbreaks of tenderness which often concluded with tears.



This statement reveals the basic psychological principle which determines Rousseau's mind, that is, a mind which regards the physical absence of an object as full presence in memory. With this statement the reader begins to learn one of his most distinctive points regarding memory. In another passage, when Rousseau is staying in the summerhouse attached to the garden rented by Mamma, he tells us: "Sometimes I left her, to give myself over to her there and think of her with greater pleasure...to leave her in order to love her better." In this passage, Rousseau tells the reader that he sees his immaterial memories as being more dynamic and alive than the physical objects themselves. This principle works in the opposite sense as well, for he finds himself drawn away from his 'Mamma' so that he is able to focus his mind on her: "I only left her in order to think of her." The only reason he finds it necessary to leave Mme. de Warens is to concentrate on his fantasy-image of her, rather than be with her on a real level. In fact, it might even be said that, because Rousseau is so dissociated from the real, he is not in love with her at all; he is in such a state of sexual woe that it would be impossible to feel love in a true sense. This absence-as-presence concept is similar to his whole-hearted belief in the validity of his feelings, in that these traits indicate a greated affinity with psychological experiences, either in the form of memories or feelings, than with the actual objects themselves. He points this out himself, saying, "I am more interested in memories of things than the things themselves."

As a result of his identification of Mme. de Warens with his missing mother figure, Rousseau is unable to endure her absence for even a brief time. In addition, he tells us of his "extravagances" as a lover and of his bizarre behavior due to this love-sickness which, psychologically, can never be satiated: kissing the bed simply because she slept there the previous night, touching curtains and furniture because she has recently touched them, he feels that to walk the same floor that she previously has walked on is to tread on sacred ground. So besieged by the violent love-sickness is Rousseau that he continues this pattern of eccentric behavior which, initially, occuring only in her absence, now continues even in her presence. For example, he mentions an incident where while having a meal with Mamma, he exclaims that he has seen a hair on a bit of food she has put in her mouth. Spitting the food back out, she watches as Rousseau sticks his face in the plate and greedily consumes the food, all in the name of love.

After a time, Rousseau discontinues all sexual relations with Mamma, inwardly commending himself for his integrity, self-discipline, and his ability to put duty before pleasure; he feels that by relinquishing sexual pleasures they will ensure the continuance of their love for each other. Indeed, his love for Mamma has become more important than life itself; he tells the reader that he would prefer to meet his death before he would degrade the love he has for her. He refuses to do anything that would debase her in any way. In these instances, the reader can detect the transformation of the young man named Rousseau into the holy St. Jean-Jacques, the man of such utter moral character that he is able to renounce his desire for these normal human activities. He prides himself on these actions which, to him, represent the noble quality of his character, saying that this kind of noble behavior comes as a great boon for the soul, in that it then becomes easier for a person to commit additional actions even more virtuous still. After the excision of his sex-drive, he tells us, "[He] became another man...with no other thought but of guiding my conduct henceforth with the laws of virtue." It is without a doubt that Rousseau was on his way to becoming another man: after successfully renouncing this central component of his life, he found it easier and easier to renounce all of those desires and needs which the average human being feels.

To illustrate this last point, he relates an incident which occurs when, in order to clear his mind of his obsessive thoughts of Mamma, he decides to go for a walk. Just as he has resigned himself to the fact that his relationship with Mamma is not to become what he wants it to be, he finds that he is flooded with a wave of sense impressions:



The sound of the bells...the song of the birds, the beauty of the day, the calm of the countryside, the scattered country dwellings...all these produced so vivid an impression upon me...that I saw myself transported to that happy time and place in which my heart would possess everything it could desire...yet without so much as a thought of sensual pleasure.



Rousseau says that he felt as if he had received a premonition of the future, a premonition which, he tells us, writing from the vantage point of history, did indeed come to be true. While reflecting of the 'waking dream', Rousseau makes yet another statement which reveals the workings of his mind: "And what has struck me most about my memory of this dream...is that eventually I found things exactly as I had imagined them. ...a waking man's dream [was] a prophetic vision ... Alas, my most lasting happiness was in a dream." Here one can see that Rousseau is a holy man in the sense that he is continually presented with these beatific visions of the future, yet he is also a condemned man in the sense that, as soon as he tried to take hold of these visions, he must immediately return to earth, falling back into the present. As can be seen from these passages, Rousseau's transition to sainthood was accompanied by a series of metaphysical experiences which come in the form of a revelation, a revelation which told him that true happiness was not to be found in this world.

When Rousseau returns to the house of Mme. de Warens after a prolonged absence, he finds that she has taken a new lover, a lover whom he describes as both "vain and stupid." Shocked, Rousseau tells us how he reacted to the news: "Suddenly my whole being was thrown completely upside down. ... In one moment I saw the happy future...vanished forever." Throwing himself at her feet, he bursts into tears, crying, "No Mamma, I love you too much to degrade you. Possession of you is too dear to be shared." Again, he claims that he would prefer to die a thousand times over rather than degrade his 'true' love by finding a new object for his pleasure. Ultimately, Rousseau is forced to reconcile himself to this new role in his relationship with Mamma: "I never saw my beloved Mamma again except with the eyes of a true son." His genuine interest in coming to know his new 'step-father' may be interpreted as his attempt to find a substitute figure for the set of parents which he was denied; however, fearing the power of this powerful new 'Papa', he proves to be unsuccessful in this endeavor too. After a time, he feels completely displaced, "isolated and alone in that same house in which I had formerly been the centre."

Just as he attempts to expand the individual's relationship to his sexual desires, Rousseau attempts to do much the same for the spiritual desires of humanity. In his opinion, the formation of the modern self requires the secularization of human society and the simultaneous abandonment of religion. In this new, enlightened era, "one should not talk to children about religion if one hopes one day they will have some." For Rousseau, Catholicism and all of its accoutrements, the church, the priest and the processional bells, do not inspire peace and serenity; rather, he confronts them with "a shiver of terror and alarm." Yet at the same time, he feels that to abjure one religion and to acquire another, even if one has made the right decision, is to decieve the Holy Spirit, an action which "deserves the contempt of humankind." Although he was often scornful of religion, he admits that religous thoughts consistently played a great role in his life. He finds every religious system he encounters to be disagreeable, that is, until he meets his Mamma. According to her system, which Rousseau quickly absorbs, it is the believers who create God by painting Him in accordance with their own nature, which accounts for the reason why some people see God as good, while others see him as evil, and why some people "wish to damn the whole world [to Hell]" while others "hardly believe in such a place." As for Mamma, she did not believe in Hell, original sin or the Last Judgment. In addition, Mamma believed that the Church was filled with ideologues, men for whom ideology had taken the place of thinking. To Mamma, Jesus Christ was not divine but was a man who died in order to stress the need for us to love each other. Yet, despite of all her heretical beliefs, Rousseau feels that Mamma was a good Catholic, for she adhered to the code of Christian morality as well as anyone.

Rousseau's radical interpretation of Christianity carries over into the way he constructs his autobiography, as his persona adopts many of the features of this new code of morality. Two other passages in the Confessions can be seen as attacks on the moral standards of society. In the first story, he explains how he went to the opera with his friend, M. de Francueil. After Francueil purchased two tickets, Rousseau went back to the ticket-seller's booth and returned the ticket for the money Francueil had paid. Although the money rightfully belonged to his friend, this does not stop him from walking off contentedly, leaving his friend back at the opera, wondering what happened to Jean-Jacques. Seeking to justify stealing from his friend, Rousseau says that "...there are moments of a kind of delirium, in which men cannot be judged by what they do." As he sees it, there are moments when the individual is not accountable for his actions, a notion which has been incorporated into the concept of the modern self: persons in a state of severe emotional or mental distress are not to be held accountable, either morally or legally, for their actions in the same way as a 'sane' person. Looking back to the Confessions, one can see how he begins to undermine the concept of the unitary self when he rationalizes his actions with this idea, the possibility of being unlike oneself, which threatens to destroy the notion of a permanent, unchanging self-identity which is necessary for the continual maintenance of one's existence.

A second incident in which Rousseau exploits another person in order to reveal how those social standards which impose a morally valid code of conduct are frequently constituted through discrepancies and deceptions occurs after the death of Mme. de Vercellis. Rousseau, perhaps to show his displeasure at not having been included in the will, steals a pink and silver ribbon which is soon found in his possession. Not wanting to be held responsible for his misdoing, he accuses Marion of having stolen it. When Marion is summoned, Rousseau continues to assert this fabrication in spite of her persistence please for him to tell the truth. Unable to decide which person is guilty, the Comte de la Roque dismisses the incident, predicting that the guilty party would be punished with a bad conscience. When Rousseau reflects on the situation, he says, "His prediction was not wide off the mark. Not a day passes in which it is not fulfilled. ... I do not know what happened to [her], but she cannot possibly have found it easy to get a good situation after that," he says, mocking the idea that, through a capricious desire to accuse, he has subjected Marion to a life of "misery and friendlessness." Reflecting on the overwhelming cruelty of this deed, Rousseau appears to take pleasure in the idea that, had he acquitted her of any misdoing, as he could have done with a single word, he would have saved her from her life of misery and grief. In this passage he makes light of the idea that one's social standing is determined according to one's morally correct actions and one's moral goodness; he suggests that there is no sense in judging one's moral standing according to one's social position, as there is no correspondence between moral character and social class, nor is there an essential quality which may be said to be 'morally right.' Rather, for individuals such as Marion, it was the capriciousness of fate (and a mischevious little man), and the circumstances she found herself thrown into which was responsible in her decline in social standing.

In these incidents with Marion and Francueil, one sees that what Rousseau enjoys most is drawing our attention to those moral horizons which society sees as the limits of experience. He asks the reader to join him in taking pleasure in transgressing these limits, as he does when he attacks the moral convictions of his day, many of which were upheld by the authoritarian apparatus of Christian ideology. Many of his stories have to do with the renunciation of the Christian ideals of goodness, charity and honesty and, indeed, he never ceases fighting his moral struggles, the expansion of moral possibilities available to individuals in his society. Considering sexuality and religion from the standpoint of the culturally accepted norms of moral conduct, Rousseau reconceptualizes the individual as what is, in effect, a synthesis of both good and evil, both morality and immorality; this idea promotes the belief that human beings, if they are to advance, must move beyond this opposition of good and evil: the individual who has unified these two sides may be said to have moved beyond traditional ways of thinking and acting, on the way to forging a new morality, to becoming one's own master. Paul de Man confirms this last point, interpreting Rousseau as implying that the moral values of both good and evil can be displaced through the utilization of a type of language which has an unwavering commitment to the truth.

Portraying himself as a man who has lived life to its fullest, Rousseau suggests that his personality is not constrained to either good or evil; rather, he doles himself out a large portion from both sides of the opposition, boastfully claiming to have "...displayed myself as I was, as vile and despicable when my behavior was such, as good, generous, and noble when I was so." In making this type of public confession, telling of those parts of life which were practically unspeakable in his day, and by acknowledging the fundamentally sexual nature of human beings, the Confessions is important as a document of liberation--sexual, social and spiritual. This is accomplished to a great extent, through his branding human beings as agents of desire for, when he reduces himself to a libidinal instinct, Rousseau promoted a new conception of human nature. In addition, by characterizing himself as a "unique" individual, Rousseau-the-author creates a separate narrative space for Rousseau-the-subject, a space which sanctifies his inclinations towards marginal states of being and gives honor to the peculiarities of his personality. He wears these peculiarities with pride, for they allow him to stand out as 'unique' from the crowd: his existence as an individual is affirmed through these peculiarities, his lack of refinements, his great sensitivity, and his disconnections from the 'normal' world. This space could be called the super-moral narrative space, for it is in this space that Rousseau's philosophy of individualism has its origins, where a new conception of morality is to be formed.

However, one might wonder where, specifically, are we to locate the site of origin for this super-moral personality? An answer may be found through examining a passage where Rousseau speaks of his indiscriminate method of choosing the memories which have been recorded in his narrative:



By relating to [the reader] all that has happened to me, all that I have done, all that I have felt, I cannot lead him into error, unless willfully... His task is to assemble these elements and to assess the being who is made up of them. The summing up must be of his, and if he comes to the wrong conclusions, the fault will be of his own making. But...it is not enough for my story to be truthful, it must be detailed as well. It is not for me to judge the relative importance of events; I must relate them all, and leave the selection to [the reader]... I have only one thing to fear in this enterprise; not that I may say too much or tell untruths, but that I may not tell everything and may conceal the truth.



Despite his claims not to have been selective, one suspects this statement to be false, knowing that an autobiography is, above all, a work of literary craftsmanship. Like any piece of fiction, its success rest of the author's ability to compose a narrative with words, an act which implies that the autobiography is indivisible from its principle of selectivity, as the writer selects a set of life-experiences from a vast number of memories available. However, what if Rousseau is taken at his word? What if he was as non-selective in his method of composition as he claims? Although, in Reveries of the Solitary Walker, Rousseau writes that throughout his life, his most prominent desire was to live the life of a writer, by no means does he believe that this quality is something which everyone ought to possess; he regards the experience of the inner self as, ultimately, a danger to society. The idea that Rousseau was as non-selective as he claims to have been may be strengthened by noting his emphasis on his feelings as the ultimate value for the truth of his autobiography; this indicates a wish to return back to that time where one's mental processes are dominated by the sensations one has of one's own existence, as in the infantile state. It is in this early stage of human development that one's life is dominated by feelings. By privileging feelings over empirical truth, he requests that these feelings again dominate his text, just has they had controlled his life during infancy.

Dominated by an impulse to regress, Rousseau's Confessions are a call to return to an earlier state of affairs where life was simpler and more fulfilling. This, then, is the secret of his obsessional desire to reconcile the idea of a fixed, stabilized originary state with the concept of an eternally changing present. In de Man's opinion, Rousseau's method of literary production, his emphasis on his feelings, his straightforward manner of narrative his life, and his reluctance to digress into any explanation which would justify the actions he took, all help to institute a type of ethical equilibrium in his text. However, although an aura of ethical serenity may be found to emanate from the Confessions, the most serene moments occur when he discovers the process through which he is redeemed: writing. It is in this 'natural' state of communication through clarity, honesty and truth that Rousseau finds that, like the child he is, he cannot prevent himself from sharing the immoral ideas he has conceived.