Adam Phillips in LRB: ‘Both the psychoanalytic idealists and the psychoanalytic realists agree that we are suffering from excessive – very frightened and frightening – self-control and are intimidated by our instinctual life.’

And: ‘Curiosity is direction without a destination, as though the questions about curiosity are always: ‘Where will it end? Will it end? ‘

Also: ‘Certainly, to be curious is to recognise that there is something we want that we are lacking; it’s a benign acknowledgment of dependence, of our inability to be self-sufficient. It confirms what we always already know: wanting is a wish to predict the future and we cannot predict the future – often or always we know too little about it.’

And: ‘Curiosity, that is to say, is the secular equivalent of an act of faith.’

You don’t know what you want to know. You may find out it’s not worth knowing.

(a sf 2280)