Thinking decisively, speaking and writing with certainty and self-righteousness, and continually congratulating ourselves are easy. Thinking psychoanalytically and entering the dialectic of opposing concepts is far more difficult, because “psychoanalytic thinking” always asks about its own hidden half and its own shadow. Most of us approach words and their meanings with a sense of opposition and conflict. We are usually either “this” or “that,” and almost always certain of being one or the other, vigorously defending what we think and what we are. If we are “this,” we attack “those,” and vice versa. We live on the assumption that concepts are separated by an eternal, irreconcilable opposition. Thinking psychoanalytically is a different method of thought. It means looking at a concept, moving from its light and illumination towards its darkness and shadow, then turning to the concept that opposes it and travelling the same path again. By doing this—seeing the luminous side of the antithesis to what we believe, while also asking about the dark side and shadow of our own belief—we can escape the trap of superficial seeing and superficial thinking and surrender ourselves to the greater depth of concepts and their internal dialectic. For example, if you believe in “this,” instead of constructing a straw man from the ideas of those who believe in “that” and then attacking and defeating your own construction, honestly try to see the luminous side of the belief that conflicts with yours. Only after genuinely understanding its luminous side should you look again at the shadow of that opposing belief, so that you can distinguish the shadow of each idea from its light and establish in your mind a fluid dialectic between the shadow of your own thought, the shadow of the opposing thought, and the light within both, moving towards a more complex understanding of concepts. This resembles, instead of waging war against opposing concepts in anger and with a desire to defeat them, trying to see the shadow and dark side of all those concepts and beliefs with the aim of rescuing their light and luminous side. We must struggle against our first and simplistic understanding of all opposing concepts in order to become reconciled with a fuller conception of them. This moves us away from superficial thinking and allows contradiction and harmony, as primordial forces of nature, to appear simultaneously in our thinking and writing. Even if we are certain that a belief is wholly demonic, we must still search for some luminous corner within it in order to understand why others have chosen it—and also examine the dark side of our own thought, the reasons it was not chosen by those others. For me, not only thinking but “writing,” as the material embodiment of thought, is a psychoanalytic process. It resembles gradually discovering and completing the pieces of a large puzzle with increasing precision. This ceaseless movement between opposing concepts and their articulation is a journey of self-discovery along the timeless world of ideas. Perhaps the first principle of wisdom is to spare nothing from our questioning, especially what we are entirely certain is correct and justified. Yet a higher level of knowing may be to agree, in some sense, with everything—even what opposes us—so that at a still higher level we can see the real shadows of the world more precisely and courageously rise to struggle against them, while at the same time rescuing the luminous side of ideas, human beings and the world. This is my definition of love. Aydin Areta