In this paper, I present a reading of Emmanuel Ghent as a writer and not merely as a theoretician. I explore the ways Ghent has worked against the latent and lurking Procrusteanism in psychoanalysis and how his distinction and blending of certain key terms—need and neediness, surrender and submission—reveal unconscious logic as paradoxical process. By taking seriously the family likenesses between psychoanalytic and related disciplines, Ghent has been able to counter the hardening of the theoretical arteries in psychoanalysis. Finally and above all, I draw attention to the way Ghent makes the word relationship sound unusually interesting again.

Towards real experiences we generally adopt a uniformly passive attitude and succumb to the influence of our material environment.

—Freud, The Uncanny

No doubt he did want to be free, but free within the framework of a ready-made universe.

—Sartre, Beaudelaire