Most of us encounter words and their meanings through a sense of opposition and conflict. We are usually either “this” or “that,” and are almost always certain about being this or that, passionately defending what we think and what we are.

To think psychoanalytically is a different way of thinking. It means that when I see the bright side of a belief that stands in opposition to my own, only after genuinely understanding that luminous side do I look again at the shadow of the opposing belief. In this way we can distinguish the shadow of each idea from its light, and establish a fluid dialectic in the mind among the shadow of our own thought, the shadow of the opposing thought, and the light within both, so as to reach a more complex understanding of concepts.

Perhaps the first principle of wisdom is to exempt nothing from our questioning—especially that which we are completely certain is right. But perhaps a higher level of knowing is to become capable of agreeing with something in everything, even with what opposes us, so that at a still higher level we may see the world’s actual shadows more clearly and rise courageously to struggle against them, while simultaneously rescuing the luminous side of ideas, human beings, and the world. This is my definition of love.

Aydin Areta