Georges Seurat was in a constant struggle to counter and contain the fearful and enticing fantasies of his early life. His father's troubling and mystifying double life was a fertile source of such fantasies. His finished paintings reveal his need for control, his need to contain, deeroticize, and disguise these fantasies. On the other hand, intimacy and sensuality in his drawings directly express this mysterious other world. Splits, division, and separation of public and private forces permeated his childhood, his life, his personality, and his work. His creative development of the divisionist style can be seen as a metaphor for this need to separate.