Open-mouthed and Wide-eyed: Psychoanalytic Reflections on Curiosity

Elemental Aim

This aim refers to inquisitiveness and inquiries regarding the most basic nuts and bolts of the issue at hand, which, at the beginning of life, is life itself. Thus, early examples of elemental curiosity might involve a growing child’s asking her father if boys do “number two” standing up or wanting to know the word for penis or vagina, or asking where babies come from, or even how to tie shoelaces or why should one say “sorry” and “thank you.” The purpose of such curiosity is to gather useful information, pacify phrase-specific emotional and cognitive needs, and accrue knowledge necessary for alloplastic or autoplastic adaptation to life (Hartmann 1939). It should be clarified, however, that the deployment of elemental curiosity is not restricted to children. A mature adult, while attempting to acquire a new skill (e.g., playing golf) or learn an unfamiliar language can (indeed, must) also display this form of curiosity. ²

Exploratory Aim

This aim of curiosity is directed toward fathoming the physical and sensate aspects of the human (e.g., mother’s face, one’s own hands) and nonhuman environment. Manifest early on in the infant’s searching interest in the corporeal features of its mother, and also those of the milk bottle, toys, and pacifier, exploratory curiosity persists throughout life. It forms the basis of scientific probing, of innovative feats of engineering and architecture, and, on a less exalted level, of interest in travel and geographical discoveries. Unlike elemental curiosity, which is aimed at building one’s self, brick by experiential brick, exploratory curiosity seeks to master external reality with the power of knowledge. Moreover, it can be independent of any such agenda and help create the ego pleasures of recreation and play (Erikson 1950; Winnicott 1953, 1971).

Empathic Aim

The child’s curiosity is not merely elemental and exploratory. It also possesses an empathic aim. Dependent on the mother for his survival and immersed in an unthought awe of her “transformational” impact om him (Bollas 1979), the child wants to learn more about the mother’s subjective world. To be sure, his desire is to find nothing there but love for himself, but with the passage of time and the establishment of object constancy (Mahler, Pine, and Bergman 1975), the tenor of his curiosity changes. The mother is now experienced as a whole object (Klein 1935), a separate being unto herself, and soon, in the course of development, so is the father. To know them is better for relating to them, and relating to them increases the chances of knowing them. All this enhances the child’s sense of safety. Gaining access to the parents’ inner selves thus becomes, for the growing child, a source of self-regulation and a stepping stone toward reciprocity and mutuality in later relationships.

Existential Aim

This designation refers to the “cosmic” puzzlement that each thinking soul experiences in its encounter with life. Why are we on this planet? What is the purpose of life? Does God exist? Where did this universe come from? Where do all the solar systems, all the galaxies, end? What exists after that? Do human beings have a right to end their lives whenever they want? What happens after death? Does a frog know he’s a frog? Do trees think?

In this vein, the great Urdu poet Mirza Ghalib (1841) muses: “Subza-o-gul kahaiN se aaye haiN? / Abr kya cheez hai, hawa kya hai? [Where have all this greenery and all these flowers come from? / What actually is a cloud and, pray tell, what is air?]. Similarly, Pablo Neruda (1974, p. 3) wonders: “Hay algo mas triste en el mundo / que un tren inmóvil en la lluvia?” [Is there anything in the world sadder / than a train standing in the rain?]. Raised by poets or by philosophers, such questions are endless. Our field, psychoanalysis, has traditionally skirted them, ³ but time has come to recognize that this abdication implies an erroneous belief that matters of this sort have little impact on the inner lives of human beings.

Enactive Aim

Any of the types of curiosity mentioned above can be enlisted in the service of an emotionally driven enactment. Thus, asking truly simple (“elemental”) questions after a serious lecture can be a form of mockery. Similarly, giving in to “exploratory” curiosity can be a rationalized form of escape, intrusion, and voyeurism (more about this below, in the section on psychopathology). Just as language can serve various instinctual functions and words can stand for different bodily secretions (Sharpe 1940), so curiosity, in any form or modality, can provide avenues of instinctual discharge and for actualizing repressed relational scenarios. The fact is that curiosity can get linked with the highest and the lowest inclinations and motives in our psyche (Migdow 2008). It can become an instrument of empathy and compassion but also of violation and sadism.

The aims of curiosity having been enumerated, the objects of curiosity must next be considered. These objects include (1) the self, (2) other human beings, (3) nonhuman living beings, (4) inanimate entities, and (5) the very nature of life and death. ⁴ Toward each of these objects, curiosity can be superficial or deep and directed at their observable features or at their narrative interiority. Toward each of these objects, curiosity can be independently directed or, reflecting the unlimited cathectic mobility of the system Ucs. (Freud 1915b), be a displacement from or condensation with curiosity about objects from another category. Toward each of these objects, curiosity can have single or multiple aims. And, toward each of these objects, curiosity can carry a variable admixture of genuine inquisitiveness, empathy, and, projective identification.

Evolutionary and Biological Basis

The trait of curiosity s hardly restricted to our species. Animals too give evidence of it. This is evinced most clearly in primates, but less advanced species also seem to possess the trait. ⁵ This is not surprising, since curiosity serves the aim of survival and helps locate essential resources (food, shelter) and find healthy mating partners. The roots of human curiosity reside in the soil of the evolutionary concept neoteny, which refers to the retention of childlike characteristics by a species during its adult life.

Neoteny is a short-cut taken by evolution—a route that brings about a whole bundle of changes in one go, rather than selecting for them one by one. Evolution, by making us a more juvenile species, has made us weaker than our primate cousins, but it has also given us our child’s curiosity [and] our capacity to learn [Stafford 2016].

This internal push to learn about our environment is the basis of curiosity. The fascinating thing is that in day-to-day life human curiosity is directed not at meeting survival needs but at all sorts of random aspects of life. This suggests that curiosity might not be simply a way of satisfying hunger but might itself be a hunger. There is some support for this idea. In the human brain, curiosity seems to be treated as a pleasurable activity and is rewarded by a flood of pleasure-inducing neurotransmitters like dopamine. And it seems that the site most responsible for our sense of curiosity is the dentate gyrus of the hippocampal region of our brains (McDermott 2009).

A counterpart to the proposal that curiosity is hardwired and phylogenetically evident is that curiosity can lead to trouble and even life-threatening occurrences. For instance, if curiosity draws one into a dark cave whose inhabitants are an angry mother bear and her cubs, the consequences can be disastrous. Seen this way, the trait of curiosity could appear counterintuitive to evolutionary theory. However, such occurrences are infrequent and carry the potential for safeguarding us in the future, as well as those who learn from our mistakes. To a greater extent, the same applies to human curiosity about seemingly irrelevant and unnecessary details. ⁶ What appears random and a waste of time today can be stored up in our neural algorithms for good use tomorrow.

Autonomous Ego Functions

In contrast to the early psychoanalytic view that all ego functions are at root derived from the aim-inhibition, neutralization, or sublimation of id-instincts or, at best, from a primordial id-ego matrix, Hartmann (1939) declared that certain ego functions are not “derived from the ego’s relationship to instinctual drives as love objects, but are rather prerequisites for our conception of these” (p. 15). These functions include intelligence, thinking, perception, learning, motility, and speech. They have “primary autonomy”; that is, they develop independently of sexual and aggressive instincts. They can, however, get caught up in instinctual conflicts and lose their autonomy. Under such circumstances, instinctual forces (and their relational scenarios) can enhance or impede the unfolding, growth, exercise, and aims of these functions.

That curiosity belongs to the list of such autonomous ego functions is stated with unparalleled conviction by Nersessian (1995, 2000; Nersessian and Silvan 2007). While not discarding the early view that curiosity is a displaced derivative of sexual curiosity in childhood, Nersessian emphasized that curiosity has independent roots as well. In support of his proposal, he cited the infant and child observational studies of Mahler, Pine, and Bergman (1975), Mayes (1991), and Emde (1981, 1991), which demonstrated that curiosity is present from the earliest days of life; it is evident in the infant’s explorations and in the “seeking of the new and the assimilation of the new to the familiar” (Emde 1991, p. 29). Nersessian (1995) declared that curiosity is “an attitude or attribute of the ego, which can be clearly recognized in its function and role with the emergence of language and thought” (p. 118). His conclusion echoes Daniel Stern’s observation (1985) that from birth onward infants are constantly “evaluating,” as if asking, “Is this different from or the same as that?” In other words, there seems to be a central tendency in infants to form and test hypotheses about what is occurring in their world. Infant and child observational studies by Lichtenberg (1982, 1989, 2005) and Greenspan (1980, 2005) lend support to this idea.

So, then, is curiosity instinctual or autonomous in origin? One can take sides in this debate and go on splitting hairs. My preference is to return to Freud’s concept of “ego-instincts” (1910b, 1915a ); these (1) are aimed at self-preservation and self-seeking, (2) fulfill nonsexual and nonaggressive aims, (3) operate under the dominance of the reality principle, and (4) carry an energy of their own that is not libido but “interest.” ⁷ Viewed in this light, curiosity appears to be a function of ego-instincts, one deeply embedded in the self-protective and self-advancing needs of the human organism.

The Infant-Mother Bond

Another source of curiosity is the child’s relationship with the mother. Three cardinal issues here are (1) the child’s curiosity about the mother’s body, (2) use of the mother as an intermediate step toward wider curiosities, and (3) the mother’s facilitation of the child’s capacity to become and stay curious. The most prominent contributor in the first of these areas is Melanie Klein. She spoke of the child’s “epistemophilic instinct” (Klein 1924, 1930, 1931) as a driving force in the child’s development and of the mother’s body as the original “world” to be explored. However, her emphasis on the envious and destructive fantasies accompanying this curiosity (What is inside the mother’s body? Father’s penis? Another baby?) led her to inadequately appreciate that the child might regard the mother’s body (including its insides) as a font of knowledge and wisdom; this aspect was later emphasized by Bion (1962, 1970) and Meltzer (1986). Ready availability of pleasant contact with the mother’s body both soothes the child and excites its curiosity.

The early relationship with the mother facilitates consolidation of the child’s curiosity by making her available as a trial object for his explorations. Pulling at her hair, necklace, and glasses informs the child not only about distinctions between her accoutrements and her actual corporeal self but functions as a safe field before entering the more unpredictable world of things, plants, and animals large and small. The mother’s body serves as a practice arena, as by holding the child’s hand—literally—and directing his attention with verbal commands (“Wow! Look at this bunny rabbit!”) she guides the child’s curiosity.

In addition, by containing and processing the child’s spontaneous comments and questions, maternal reverie deepens the child’s capacity to think about thoughts themselves (Bion 1963). A memory of my childhood illustrates this interactional dynamic well.

I was about five years old. My mother was cooking something—I think it was rice, but I’m not sure—on the stove top. I was watching. And then, the lid of the aluminium pot began to rise up with the steam that was coming out from it. I asked my mother: “Ammi, why does this lid move?” She responded, “See this white thing? The one that is moving upward like a tiny little cloud?” I nodded yes. She continued, “This is called steam. It is what water turns into when heated. Being a gas, it has a tendency to move upward. So, it pushes the lid and that’s why the lid moves.” Seeing me engrossed in the conversation, she added: “Now, there was a little boy in a country called Scotland and this boy’s name was James Watt. He asked the same question you just did. And then he thought that if we heat a lot of water, and produce a lot of steam, and pass it through a tube, and connect the end of that tube to a wheel, then that steam will push the wheel to move. And that’s how the engines for the trains we travel in came about.” I was enraptured. She then added, “You are like that boy, and one day you too will do something special in this world.”

As it turns out, the James Watt story is apocryphal, most likely popularized by his son, James Watt Jr; it persists because it is easy for children to understand. More important, however, is the love that suffused the mother-child interaction in that kitchen. Even more impressive is the mother’s capacity to take the child’s curiosity seriously, elaborate the thoughts the child is not yet able to have himself, and to provide him an operative mode of thinking about thoughts. Devoid of such assistance in thinking and unsupported in his “going-on-being” (Winnicott 1956), a child will retreat into mindlessness and indifference to his own subjectivity and that of others.

Childhood Puzzlement over Sexual Matters

Here the work of Freud is paramount. He traced human curiosity to its sexual origins. In Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905), he declared:

The progressive concealment of the body which goes along with civilization keeps sexual curiosity awake. This curiosity seeks to complete the sexual object by revealing its hidden parts. It can, however, be diverted (‘sublimated’) in the direction of art, if its interest can be shifted away from the genitals on to the shape of the body as a whole

[p. 156].

In later papers too, such as “‘Civilized’ Sexual Morality and Modern Nervous Illness” (1908a) and “On the Sexual Theories of Children” (1908b), Freud linked curiosity to the child’s puzzlement over genital differences, pregnancy, and childbirth. This theme was illustrated in myriad details in his case of Little Hans (Freud 1909) and was reiterated in “Some Psychical Consequences of the Anatomical Distinction between the Sexes” (1925). Clearly, Freud tended to reduce all curiosity to the child’s interest in sexual matters, and so did his loyal followers early in the twentieth century (see, e.g., Abraham 1907, 1913; Ferenczi 1909, 1913).

To his credit, though, one must recognize that in his paper on Leonardo da Vinci, Freud (1910a) regarded the protagonist’s relentless instinct for investigation to have been “probably organic” in origin (p. 77). Even more interestingly, he acknowledged that the child’s sexual curiosity might itself be reflective of an “inborn need for established causes” (1908b, p. 212). ⁸ This later line of Freud’s thinking is in close alliance with the biological, autonomous, and ego-instinct models of curiosity proposed above.

Encouragement and Shaping during Latency

Arising from a complex interactive matrix of evolutionary imperatives, neurobiology, infant-mother interaction, and childhood sexual inquisitiveness, curiosity finds its “safest” and most pleasurable blossoming during the latency phase (six to twelve years or so of age). It is at this time that the child’s curiosity is fully and ego-syntonically directed at features of external reality. Knowing facts, memorizing historical details, mastering problems of mathematics and science, and accumulating a prideworthy store of landmarks in the world of sports or movies or stamp collecting becomes the child’s passion. School, which Erikson (1950) declares to be “a culture by itself” (p. 259), upholds and rewards the child’s curiosity and firms up the link between intellectual robustness and the child’s ego ideal. Good teachers tend to foster curiosity in their pupils. They help students observe, think, inquire, and make connections between apparently disparate clusters of information. ⁹

Excessive Curiosity

Nunberg’s detailed case report of a patient given to compulsive questioning (1961) opened the doors for the consideration that curiosity can be excessive. Nunberg traced his patient’s pathological need to know to frustrated oral drives that had resulted in intensification of the wish to witness and understand the primal scene. In a sophisticated step away from id-based reductionism, Nunberg posited that his patient’s superego reacted to the intensified drive to intrude on parental privacy by “biting off” perceptual pieces of ego, leaving it perpetually hungry for more knowledge. Afflictions of all three psychic structures (id, ego, superego) thus contributed to the patient’s excessive curiosity. ¹⁰

While Nunberg’s formulation is a masterpiece of mid-twentieth-century ego psychology, incessant questioning and the unrelenting curiosity that lies behind it might be understood somewhat differently today or, at least, be accorded additional explanations. For instance, excessive curiosity might be seen as a by-product of having grown up with a “mysterious” parent or in a family environment suffused with secrets. Not having received the “usual” amount or kind of information about one’s parents and other important family members (as might happen in the case of adopted children) can leave the child hungry for answers. Another explanation might be that faced with insurmountable hardships in childhood, a highly resilient or “invulnerable child” (Anthony 1987) increases his vigilance and curiosity to achieve a modicum of control over the given realities.

Bion (1957) offers a third explanation. He describes the triad of arrogance, curiosity, and stupidity in which the excessively inquisitive person smugly fails to recognize that his questioning might result in serious trouble. In order to make clear the relationship between the elements of this triad, Bion considers the Oedipus myth from a perspective that deems the sexual transgression secondary. Greater emphasis is placed on Oedipus’s hubris in “vowing to lay bare the truth no matter what cost” (p. 86). To be sure, the same can be extrapolated to Adam and Eve’s curiosity, which led to their expulsion from the Garden of Eden.

Finally, by putting the question as to what is “excessive” about excessive curiosity on its head, one can end up concluding that it is a depressed, physically ill, and uninvolved parent (and, later, an excessively abstinent analyst) who has mislabeled a normal amount of curiosity “excessive.”

Deficient Curiosity

The individual with this malady never asks questions, remains indifferent to people and events in his surround, and comes across as either bland or smug. These qualities play havoc with interpersonal relationships; the outcomes of such incuriosity ¹¹ range from awkward and ludicrous to cold and hurtful. Richard Nixon, for instance, is reported to have been surprised when, after five years of living in the White House, he invited his best friend (and chief of staff) Robert Haldeman for dinner in the private living quarters and the latter showed up with his wife. Nixon did not even know that his best friend of decades was married (Woodward and Bernstein 1974). Unlike the traffic cop who asked me, out of understandable provincial ignorance, “What are you?” Nixon’s incuriosity was most likely grounded in narcissism. Being self-absorbed forecloses the ability and desire to know others.

Pallor of knowledge about others and the infirm curiosity that lies behind it also accompanies racial and religious prejudice. Elsewhere I have noted (Akhtar 2007) that prejudice arises due not an to unavailability of facts but to the active jettisoning of facts that are available. To be sure, there is some postmodern slippage in the very concept of facts, but lack of knowledge still seems to play less of a role in sustaining prejudice and at times unleashing violence than does the agenda-driven repudiation of information. The “realities” invoked to justify the U.S. invasion of Iraq (notably the lie that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction) constitute one such example. It is well known that a vast majority of nations considered the American “facts” untrue. President Bush had been told as much by Ambassador Joseph Wilson (Clarke 2004; Woodward 2004), but this information was put aside in order to act on an a priori decision to wage war. Indeed, Jean Edward Smith, a biographer of Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, Ulysses S. Grant, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and George W. Bush, concludes that the dominant theme of Bush’s presidency was “a toxic blend of arrogance and incuriosity” (cited in Jablow 2016). This complacent lack of knowledge—what Jesuits call “culpable ignorance”—is evident also among current Islam-bashers, most of whom know few facts about the religion or about the demography and culture of its 1.4 billion followers.

On more personal levels, too, lack of curiosity has a deleterious impact on the self and its relationships. It does not permit the deepening of self-knowledge and keeps relationships superficial. One becomes alienated from oneself and others. But if the result of incuriosity is decidedly untoward, what gives rise to it and what sustains it? Three etiologies present themselves, though hybrid forms might exist as well. ¹² First, lack of curiosity can result from lack of “mentalization” (Fonagy and Target 1998) in general or of this or that particular content. For instance, the mislabeling, or even non-naming, of a female child’s genitals (Lerner 1976) can stifle development of the pertinent anatomical curiosity. ¹³ Generally speaking, when a child’s curiosity cannot be contained by maternal reverie, the child is reduced to defensive self-reliance and abandons curiosity (Bion 1950). In addition, culturally transmitted taboos on verbalization can lead to various areas of the mind becoming “silenced” (Fivush 2010) and devoid of curiosity.

A second source of deficient curiosity is the opposition between curiosity and narcissism, captured by Poland (2009): “Narcissism speaks of emotional investments aimed inward, while curiosity refers to those aimed outward” (p. 259). While Poland cautions against an overfastidious distinction between the two, it seems likely that excessive self-absorption diminishes interest in others. Freud’s wry observation (1914) that nothing robs one of the capacity for love more than a toothache sums this up quite well. The miscarriage of empathy that characterizes the marriages and sexuality of narcissistic individuals (Akhtar 2009, pp. 99–110) is a frequently encountered clinical phenomenon.

The third etiology of deficient curiosity is seen in association with a “higher level of character organization” (Kernberg 1970), namely those with neurotic formations around unresolved oedipal conflicts. Here the pioneering work of Freud (1905, 1908a, 1909), and his early pupils (Abraham 1908; Ferenczi 1909, 1913) is pertinent. Elucidated in the section on the developmental origins of curiosity, this line of thinking views childhood curiosity as arising from interest in the anatomical differences between the sexes, the primal scene, and pregnancy and childbirth. Anemic curiosity in adult life is thus attributed to the superego-driven inhibition of sexual curiosity. Actually, such ego blockage arises from many agendas and seeks to accomplish diverse aims. Fenichel (1945) explicated the underlying compromise formations most clearly:

A repression of sexual curiosity may block the normal interest in knowing and thinking. Often the inhibited sexual curiosity corresponds to an intense unconscious scoptophilia or stands in intimate relationship to sadistic impulses; the consequent “stupidity” may represent simultaneously an obedience to and a rebellion against the parents from whom the patient had suffered frustrations of his curiosity. . . . The “stupidity” that manifestly explores the inhibition of curiosity may unconsciously be used in various ways to satisfy this very curiosity by gaining access to scenes that would be kept secret from a “less stupid” child [p. 181]. ¹⁴

Nearly five decades later, Sarphatie (1993), a Dutch child analyst, noted two distinct ways in which such inhibitions can come about. When the child’s parents do not understand his or her “instinctual curiosity” (p. 197), the child condemns his inquisitiveness and the resulting suppression of this ego capacity can spread to nonsexual realms. The same can happen if the parents react in an overstimulating manner; the child becomes anxious and defensively wards off his epistemic pursuits.

Uneven Curiosity

Excessive and deficient curiosity can coexist. Someone can be very curious in one area and surprisingly indifferent toward another. Freud’s insatiable curiosity regarding psychology, literature, history, mythology, antiquities, for instance, was accompanied by a particular disinterest in music (Chesire 1996; Barale and Minazzi 2008). Mohammad Ali Jinnah (1876–1948), the Muslim separatist leader of mid-twentieth-century India, showed no interest in reading the Quran or in learning Urdu, the national language of Pakistan, which he helped found when the Partition was implemented and then led until his death (Akhtar and Kumar 2008). Many more examples of this sort can be adduced. Cezanne’s not attending his mother’s funeral and Rilke’s not sparing time from his poetry to attend his daughter’s wedding must be multiply determined, but a certain lack of curiosity also seems at work here.

Less illustrious individuals encountered in daily life or in doing clinical work can display a similar unevenness of curiosity. The “energic” distribution of inquisitiveness in such people is tilted toward one particular matter at the cost of others. Knowledgeable in their field of work or study, they might turn out to be shockingly ignorant of matters unrelated to it. They are simply not interested in learning other things. For some, this deliberate restriction of focus works well and productively. For others (e.g., the so-called computer-phobics), it depletes ego resources and renders life devoid of adventure.

The dynamic substrate of uneven curiosity is wide-ranging and includes cultural biases regarding what is important to know and what is not; inhibition of specific ego sectors arising out of epigenetically unfolding instinctual conflicts; and “mirror complementarity of the self” (Bach 1977), in which a curious part of the self exists side by side with an incurious part (the two might have arisen from contradictory identifications with parents of markedly different ego organizations). Similar contradictions can be found in people evincing the syndrome of identity diffusion (Kernberg 1975; Akhtar 1984).

Anachronistic Curiosity

The first among the three qualitative forms of pathological curiosity, “anachronistic curiosity,” refers to an individual’s preoccupation with questions not usually of concern to someone his age. A forty-year-old man’s wondering if the clouds or moon run along with him when he breaks into a sprint is an example. Anachronistic curiosity can be seen as the persistence of curiosity regarding “elemental aims” long after the thirst for answers in that sphere ought to have been quenched. Take another example. A thirty-year-old woman who wants to know if pregnancy results from sexual intercourse is displaying anachronistic curiosity. This is an adult asking childlike questions. Conversely, a child asking “adult” questions also shows anachronistic curiosity. A five-year-old boy asking his mother whether it is time to pay the electric bill, or a ten-year-old girl asking her parents what sort of funeral she should have, is also displaying it. ¹⁵

A host of etiological factors (e.g., parental discouragement of the child’s assertive questioning, familial and cultural taboos, delayed ego maturation) can underlie anachronistic curiosity. Of greater significance are the ways the afflicted individual manages his predicament. A common maneuver, motivated by the great shame associated with elemental ignorance, is to withdraw, remain quiet, and keep a tight lid on one’s questions. Many so-called schizoid individuals “prefer” to appear disinterested in others rather than reveal their deep puzzlement over extremely basic matters (e.g., “Do you too defecate?”; “Did you fuck your husband and is that how you got pregnant?”; “How often do you shower and how did you come up with that frequency?”; and so on).

Instinctualized Curiosity

While “the truth drive is the operative agent of curiosity” (Grotstein 2007, p. 146), an onslaught of wayward instinctual drives can readily pervert the nature of curiosity. Prominent among such scenarios are those involving voyeurism and sadism. In instances of the former, looking and looking intently become emotionally charged vehicles of curiosity. This drive to “see” tends to arise from several sources. It might compensate for a traumatizing state of premature separateness from the mother, with vision taking on the life-sustaining function of “distance contact” with her. ¹⁶ Also pertinent here is Klein’s early observation (1925) that the sexual curiosity of children is aimed not only at gaining knowledge but at exerting control over the parents.

Voyeurism that rises to the level of a sexual perversion is invariably tinged with sadism. The rage at premature separation from the mother spills into phallic-phase curiosities and oedipal competitiveness, leading to violent intrusions on parental privacy. The associated castration fear is defended by counterphobic measures, denial of sexual difference, and regression to anal themes (Freud 1905; Chasseguet-Smirgel 1984). Curiosity, under such circumstances, becomes an eroticized defilement of others (who stand for a nourishment-withholding mother and/or the parents in intercourse). To the extent that such perverse defiance of the superego is never absolute, guilt lingers in the corners of the psyche and adds a masochistic tinge to the acting out; the more one intrudes by watching, the more one feels excluded and impotent. ¹⁷ This adds fuel to the child’s rage and desire for omnipotence.

In the addiction to pornography, too, the major agenda is one of eroticized misogyny, omnipotence, and erasure of separateness. The preconscious awareness that the pervert and the pornography addict have of their psychic hollowness and lack of generative sexual prowess necessitates a measure of idealization. The eye, unable to locate the nourishing mother and intolerant of sexual difference, constantly searches for beauty as a reassurance against its depressive and paranoid anxieties. ¹⁸

Milder symptoms, especially the obsessive questioning of obscure facts, also serve instinctual aims, as they simultaneously express a need to understand corporeal matters while also denying them (Fenichel 1945). Kramer’s description of “object-coercive doubting” (1983) is also a case in point here. The result of sexual overstimulation of children by their mothers, this condition is characterized by the child’s engaging the mother in endless arguments in which she is “forced” to take the opposite side of what the child feels is true at a given moment. Their struggle “often ends in an orgasmlike fury for both, thus reenacting the earlier sexual play between them” (p. 345).

All in all, instinctualized curiosity can lead to voyeuristic perversions tinged with sadomasochism, obsessive questioning, and object-coercive doubting, as well as character traits like voracious reading and the tendency to teasingly induce curiosity in others. Displaced forms of instinctualized curiosity are evident in minor acts of prying (e.g., my friend’s wife checking the amount of the restaurant bill), and its sublimated versions are found in certain professions, prominent among them photography, archaeology, and historical research. Grinberg (1961) has suggested that a person’s interest in becoming a physician can derive from childhood curiosity regarding the mother’s bodily interior.

False Curiosity

Subscribing to the “classical” view that inquisitiveness of any kind is displaced sexual curiosity, one might regard any nonsexual curiosity as inherently false. But that is not what “false curiosity” is intended to denote here. The designation is used for inquiries that have little or nothing to do with their purported concern. False curiosity comes in two forms: benign and malignant.

Benign false curiosity is evident in the socially accepted (and expected) “corridor chatter” or “water fountain” queries like “How are you doing?” or “How was your weekend?” Such utterances act as “politeness grease,” utterances necessary for congeniality among office-mates and neighbors. This curiosity is preconsciously recognized as a mere formality by the parties in dialogue. It serves a useful purpose.

Malignant false curiosity is maliciously intended to seduce, mislead, or discombobulate others. The fraudulent psychopath, armed with exquisite “state-related empathy” (Gediman 1985), often engages his unwitting victim by a seemingly innocuous display of interest while actually he is planning to rob or otherwise exploit him. The narcissist with little actual concern for others’ subjectivity might fake interest and display curiosity while his mind is on sexually seducing or monetarily manipulating the other.

Between the extremes of “benign” and “malignant” false curiosity reside professional activities where asking misleading questions is an important part of one’s daily repertoire. The work of a detective, lawyer, spy, or undercover agent often includes such “false curiosity.”

The Analyst’s Curiosity

One clinical “gift” that comes wrapped in Freud’s 1915 paper on the unconscious is that of skeptical listening; the analyst is topographically attuned, looks for what is hidden, what is implied, what is being warded off and why. In the spirit of Freud’s archaeological metaphor, the analyst wants to dig deeper, find out more. He listens to what is being said but keeps his “third ear” (Reik 1948) open for omissions, undue emphases, negations, and unsolicited denials. In simple words, the analyst is curious. His curiosity differs from that of the neurotic or the pervert.

Through personal analysis, sexual curiosity is purged of its infantile characteristics, it is no longer of the ‘peeping Tom’ variety. Curiosity becomes adult and benevolent, because the psycho-analyst is not engaged upon a surreptitious gratification of his own immature sexuality [Sharpe 1947, p. 121].

Curiosity is central to the analyst’s therapeutic armamentarium and keeps him alert. At the same time, the analyst is told to “not direct one’s notice to anything in particular” (Freud 1912, p. 111) while listening to patients. The requirement of this “evenly suspended attention” tends to blunt the sharp edges of the analyst’s curiosity. A tension thus arises.

On the side of maintaining free-floating attention is the valuable fact that such an attitude prevents the analyst from selecting this or that bit of material and foreclosing the possibility of surprise and discovery. It also allows the analyst’s “unconscious memory” (Freud 1912, p. 112) to effortlessly capture important links between the seemingly disparate and even “irrelevant” aspects of the patient’s associations. The clinical posture accompanying this listening attitude is one of quiet receptivity and passive curiosity.

On the side of the analyst’s yielding to momentary increases in his curiosity is that it leads him to ask questions. These, in turn, “destabilize existing compromise formations . . . [and] further the development of self-observation, which is such an important concomitant cause and consequence of structural change” (Boesky 1989, p. 579). Well aware that analysts’ questions might emanate from impatience, Boesky, in a remarkable paper on this matter, notes that more often than not such inquiries are in the service of learning more and avoiding a quick conclusion. Indeed, a question can be “the emblem of the analyst’s benevolent curiosity” (p. 591). ¹⁹

A decade after Boesky’s proposals, Brenner (2000) emphasized that “in listening to a patient, one pays attention now to defense, now to what is defended against, depending on what is apparent in a patient’s communications” (p. 548). The clinical posture accompanying this listening attitude is one of direct questioning and active curiosity.

In the first mode, “curiosity is the silent partner of attention” (Nersessian 1995, p. 121). In the second, curiosity is a vocal player on the stage. Most practicing analysts attempt to strike a balance between these two clinical postures and their attendant passive and active modes of curiosity. Shifts between them are mostly smooth and barely noticeable. Finding himself biased in favor of one or the other of these postures, the analyst needs to examine his countertransference resistance to staying passively receptive or to become actively inquisitive; it might help to remember that boredom is a frequent defense against passive curiosity (Goldberg 2002b) and undue abstinence a commonly used shield to ward off active curiosity.

The tension between passive and active curiosity is more marked in the early phase of treatment, during which the analyst wishes to uphold the “fundamental rule” (Freud 1900) by interfering less in the patient’s associations and yet his lack of familiarity with the patient’s inner workings propels him to be actively curious. Nersessian (1995) notes that at the other end of the clinical work, during the termination phase, there also develops the risk of “constriction of curiosity” (p. 125) in the analyst. The analyst often ceases to be curious about the past and thus misses an opportunity for additional reconstruction.

Yet another matter to consider here is that spikes in the analyst’s “active” curiosity can also be caused by the patient’s way of presenting (or not presenting) the material. Mumbling ²⁰ and talking inaudibly can pull the analyst to ask the patient to repeat things. A pause, especially one that follows a conjunction (e.g., “and” or “but”), can shift the analyst’s curiosity from passive to active. “You want to move to New York and . . . and what?” the analyst might say. An extraanalytic encounter between patient and analysand, mention of which is blithely omitted by the patient in the next session, is yet another clinical moment eliciting the analyst’s active curiosity. A major omission in an otherwise detailed and emotionally significant narrative can have a similar impact on the analyst’s attention. I myself was made irritably curious when my last patient on September 11, 2012 (a year to the day after the 9/11 attacks) would not mention the national tragedy; I wondered if I should question the patient about this omission, but to my relief, the topic appeared in her associations toward the end of the session. The fact, though, is that the patient’s silence about 9/11 till the end of the session left me a little shaken and a little curious about my reaction. ²¹

Clearly, no fixed guideline can be established for the analyst’s shifting from passive to active curiosity. The decision to move this way or that is at times spontaneous and at other times deliberate. Under ideal circumstances, the analyst maintains curiosity about his technical choices, regardless of their form, and about the impact of his action (or inaction) on the analytic process.

The Patient’s Curiosity

The most obvious manner in which patients’ curiosity enters the clinical dialogue is via the questions they ask their analysts. The scope of such questions is large and ranges from the procedural aspects of treatment (e.g., frequency, fees, recumbent posture) through minor aspects of their shared reality (e.g., “You know the intersection between Lancaster Avenue and 34th Street?” or, referring to the renowned NFL team, “You know the Cowboys, right?”) to personal aspects of the analyst’s life (e.g., “Do you have children?” “Are your parents alive?”). Given the great variability in the nature, intensity, purpose, and extent of instinctual agendas implicit in such questions, no uniform policy for answering or not answering them should be advised (Greenson 1967; Schlesinger 2003). Each instance must be taken up individually. However, some “soft” guidelines for responding to patients’ questions do exist.

First of all, questions raised by the patient at the end of the initial evaluation, especially if they pertain to the therapeutic frame (e.g., frequency of sessions, use of the couch), should be answered in a factual manner. The analyst should not derail or mystify the patient by “interpreting” the reasons behind such questions. For instance, if a patient asks, “What is the advantage of lying on the couch?” the analyst should respond in a simple and straightforward way, keeping any exploration of fantasies and anxieties for later. The patient is not only a patient, but a consumer as well, and this should not be overlooked.

Second, a similar straightforwardness should be maintained toward questions that reflect pathic communication and are merely intended to assure a background of common reality. Thus, if a patient says, “You know Jack Nicholson, right?” the analyst might simply respond, “Yes, the actor,” and let the flow of the patient’s associations continue. To act “like a shrink” and remain silent or respond with “Why do you ask?” at such junctures can disrupt the patient’s “going-on-being” (Winnicott 1956) and iatrogenically derail the conversation.

Third, as Schlesinger (2003) succinctly puts it, “it is useful to distinguish between answering a patient’s question and responding to the patient’s act of questioning” (p. 173). By asking a question, the patient is imploring the analyst to do something and, at least for that moment, ceasing to be curious about his own self. At such junctures,

the governing principle is the logic of the interpretive process. Our first concern is for the function of the question: what is it doing here now? We could adopt as a new analytic aphorism, “A quick answer can ruin a good question.” It captures the point precisely: there is much more to understand about a question than its content, and a quick answer might preclude further inquiry. But that would be the case only if the analyst (as well as the patient) were satisfied that the quick answer had eliminated all further interest either in the question or why it had been asked just then. There is no reason, in principle, why an inquiry into the act of questioning, and into the circumstances in the stream of associations that forced the interruption and substituted the question, could not continue after the analyst offered some information by way of an answer [p. 175].

Reed (1997) warns against the “misplaced valorization of anonymity” (p. 529), noting that the unconscious is not permanently altered by external information and the patient will continue to perceive the analyst’s action to disclose (or not) a piece of personal information according to the transference fantasies active at the moment.

Fourth, some questions of the patient might better be left unanswered (e.g., “Were you sexually abused as a child?”); factually answering them can reverse the ameliorative gradient in the treatment setting, with the patient feeling the need to heal the analyst. Further, at times, firm limit-setting seems requisite for deeper exploration of the patient’s curiosity.

Clinical vignette 1: Rebecca Cohen, a young clinical psychology intern whose father was a Holocaust survivor, called me seeking psychoanalysis. Well informed about analysis, she had been given my name by an elderly analyst. While setting an appointment on the phone, she asked me, “Are you an Arab?” I responded by saying that while I was interested in her question and what lay behind it, I could not answer it on a factual basis. I added that if we were going to undertake any kind of in-depth work together, my reality was less important than what she made of it in her mind. The patient, however, persisted, saying, “Look, I am a devout Jew and an ardent Zionist. I know that if you are an Arab, your sympathies in the Israeli-Palestine conflict will be with the Palestinians. And I am not about to give my money to someone who will support terrorism against my own people.” I was taken aback by the sadomasochistic proclivity I sensed under a thin patina of ethnic rationalization. I responded by repeating what I had said and adding that if she found herself willing to tolerate ambiguity and investigate what had already begun to take place, then perhaps we could meet. Otherwise, she might have to go elsewhere. She came for her appointment and decided to enter analysis with me.

Her presenting symptom was an inability to be romantically intimate with Jewish men. Perhaps this had led the referring analyst, who was Jewish, to give her my name (and, as it turned out, a Christian analyst’s name as well). Rebecca underwent a rather stormy analysis over the following six years. Provocative limit-testing and recall through enactments pervaded the early phase. Three things then took center stage: (1) the Holocaust and her contradictory identification with her father’s “survivor’s guilt” (Niederland 1968) and his persecutors’ sadism, (2) “separation guilt” (Modell 1984) involving a depressed mother, and (3) a negative oedipal defense against guilt-ridden positive oedipal strivings. These shifts, interestingly, were associated with her changing perceptions of my ethnicity: first, an Arab (equated with a Nazi), then an Indian Muslim (a minority individual, hence equated with a Jew), and, finally, a reasonably assimilated immigrant American.

These shifting transferences and their ethnic correlates are not the main points of concern here. What is important to register is that an early “blockage” of the patient’s curiosity about the analyst led, over time, to deepening curiosity about herself.

Fifth, enhancement of patients’ curiosity about themselves is of course a crucial task in the early phase of the analysis. Comments such as “I wonder what you make of this reaction of yours,” “Let us see where this line of thinking leads us,” or, simply, “Let’s be curious about this” are commonplace measures for this purpose. Another point of intervention is when a patient asks, let us say, “Why did I get so tense while watching that movie?”; the analyst faced with such a question must resist offering an explanation and instead invite the patient to deepen his curiosity about his affective life. Yet another opportunity for such enrichment is provided by the first few enactments in the course of analysis. By maintaining equanimity and composure, the analyst can help the patient transform the frustration of his action-oriented desire into an empowered observing ego.

Clinical vignette 2: At the end of a session in the second month of her analysis, Melanie Wright, an otherwise psychologically minded young woman, got up from the couch and offered me a bag full of apples. She said she had gone apple-picking over the weekend and wanted me to have some. I was taken aback. Neither her characteristic way of being nor the material in the session had prepared me for this. I responded, “I appreciate your bringing me this gift but I cannot accept it. See, our task here is to understand, enlighten ourselves regarding your mental functioning, and thus come to grips with your difficulties. We cannot, therefore, move into actions, especially ones whose meanings are unknown to us. Now, I regret if my stance hurts your feelings, but I do not apologize because my intent is not to hurt you.” She listened carefully and nodded in agreement. I then spontaneously added, “For instance, apples. What comes to mind about apples?” She answered, “Adam’s apple! . . . Adam and Eve . . . forbidden fruit.” She smiled, blushed, and left shaking her head, saying “I understand, I understand.”

Sixth, in the middle and late-middle phases of analysis (Akhtar 2009), the patient might become able to carry the ball of self-directed curiosity by herself, raising questions and then going on to associate to them. On such occasions, the analyst’s function is largely that of “witnessing” and “respecting the patient’s essential aloneness” (Poland 2000, p. 21). Such a stance is dialectically related to interpreting; interpretation enhances self-object differentiation and thus allows for more witnessing, which in turn yields material for further interpretation. Take a look at the following material.

Clinical vignette 3: Marilyn McDonough, an attractive architect in her fifties, had sought help following an emotional crisis with one of her children. Once the acute matter was settled and the treatment began to deepen, the centrality of her own mother’s death when Marilyn was barely five years old came to the surface. A talented and industrious woman, Marilyn had devoted all her energies to raising her kids (after a tumultuous marriage ended in divorce) and to advancing in the profession she loved. She excelled at both these endeavors and, all along, the pain of her early maternal loss remained psychically sequestered—never repressed but not entirely worked through either. Later she remarried and since then maintained a reasonably satisfactory marital life.

Her analysis, for a long time, remained focused on the pervasive effects of her early loss; it colored transference anxieties, sensitivities to separation, and fear of being retraumatized by losing me. Empathic validation, provision of ample psychic space, gentle uncovering of defenses against awareness of the deep impact of the childhood tragedy, and interpretive handling of “survivor guilt” (Niederland 1968) and the resulting inhibition of healthy entitlement led to great improvement in Marilyn’s capacity to mourn. The energy thus freed up was then directed to deepening ties with her family and newer sublimations. Despite this progress, it did not preclude a repeated return to mourning the loss of her mother at a very young age. The resurgence of this material during later phases of analysis was often accompanied by new recollections and new questions.

One day in the fourth year of her analysis, Marilyn came for her session right after visiting her stepmother, Meg, in the nursing home where she had been for the past few months. Marilyn began the session by talking about how frail Meg had become and how quickly she became fatigued. Soon thoughts of Meg’s death surfaced. Marilyn sobbed. She then began wondering about Meg’s funeral. This led to the memory of the day Marilyn’s biological mother, Mary, had died. A question that had never before occurred to her now emerged. “I think I was told by my father that Mom would not be coming back from the hospital and that she had gone to heaven or something like that—I’m not sure—around three or four that afternoon. Since I was four and a half, I suppose my bedtime then must have been something like eight. The question is what did I do between four and eight?” She was adamant: “I really want to know that. I don’t know but I want to; in fact, I need to know that. What did I do? I know I used to write on the walls with crayons and carve something on the coffee table, but all that came much later, not that afternoon. Maybe I was just wandering around the house, I don’t know. But I want to know, though I’m not sure why I want to know.” As she was speaking, I found my mind wandering. I recalled that long ago I had seen Wilhelm Stekel’s monograph on wandering (1924) in a psychoanalytic library but had not actually read it. I felt a sense of loss and an aching desire to undo that loss. Taking a cue from this “concordant countertransference” (Racker 1968), and from this bit of free association of my own, I said, “Of course, you would like to link up with that missing fragment of your life. It’s natural for all of us to try to fill in the gaps in our memory to help us experience a sense of continuity. It’s like if you lose one earring and are holding on to the other of the pair; you would search for the lost one.” Marilyn responded, “But why can’t I remember?” I said, “I do not really know but think there are many possibilities. One, that you were in a state that is best called ‘forlorn’ and being only four and a half years old, could not think properly about what had happened. Two, perhaps all the grown-ups in the house were themselves preoccupied. So, left to your own meager resources, you could not feel or think clearly. And since you were not able to clearly register what was going on during those hours, you cannot recall it now. It is all a fog.” Marilyn nodded in agreement and cried. Composing herself, she said, “It is like there is a piece of a puzzle . . . something absent, something not to be found.” I responded, “Something and someone! For the very person who could have helped you ‘think’ about your mother’s death—to the extent you could— was your mother and she was gone, not to be found.” Marilyn listened peacefully. The quiet of the office encased our mutuality. Then I added, “And, of course, we also have to consider if the search for the memory of those missing four hours is a version of a search for her and if the reference includes our four ‘hours’ and the wish that I would be with you all those hours so that you never feel forlorn now.”

Reconstructive and interpretive work, in both the transference and extratransference realms, was a response to this patient’s self-directed curiosity. It helped fill the throbbing, unmentalized gap in the narrative of her trauma and linked it up with her experience in the here and now of the analysis.

Seventh, a point of technique also arises when the analyst notices a remarkable absence of curiosity in the patient. Faced with this situation, the analyst might benefit by trying to establish a differential diagnosis of this “symptom” by raising—privately, of course—the following questions. Does the patient appear to lack curiosity because he or she has already satisfied it by Googling me? Or, if this is a genuine absence of curiosity, does it reflect an ego defect or a defensive maneuver? If the former, what has foreclosed the mental space for engagement with the other? Narcissism? State-related preoccupation? If the latter variety, what is being pushed aside by this seeming aloofness? Dread of dependence? Shame at the nature of one’s questions? Fear of making the analyst uncomfortable? Besides such “silent inquiries,” the analyst must also consider whether he or she has somehow contributed—unwittingly, one hopes—to the patient’s lack of curiosity. Did the analyst show discomfort at the earliest manifestation of the patient’s curiosity, and has that discomfort taken hold of the latter’s psyche in a powerful way, now driving any analyst-related curiosity from his mind? Similar questions need to be raised about patients’ lack of curiosity about themselves. Is it defect-based, a sort of alexithymic situation? Is it defensive? Or has the patient’s curiosity become externalized altogether, manifesting here as excessive curiosity about the analyst? In such a case, the analysis runs the risk of turning into a constant verbal acting out by the patient that needs to be interrupted, either by confrontation or by a refusal to respond to the patient’s inquiries (Maldonado 2005).

Given these possibilities, how the analyst handles a striking absence of curiosity in the patient varies greatly. Most analysts strike a balance between patience and intervening; the former, an attitudinal requisite for the analyst, can be actively exercised as a specific intervention ²² ; the latter can include gentle encouragement, asking questions (Boesky 1989), or defense interpretation. Each instance has to be tackled in an individual manner guided by the analyst’s empathy and the dominant idiom of the dyad.