Benjamin Constant

connection with a challenge to a duel with François du Plessis-Gouret about which he
seemed unconcerned at the time, Constant writes significantly:

I wouldn’t claim to be any braver than anyone else, but one of the

characteristics which nature has given me is a great contempt for

life, and even a secret desire to leave it, so as to avoid anything

unpleasant that might yet await me.^34

There may well have been other moments when Constant thought about

killing himself. Bowlby, quoting K.S.Adam, concludes: ‘the presence of a

consistent, stable nurturant figure of some sort seem[s] to be of great

importance in protecting against the development of significant suicidal
ideation’.^35 It would, of course, be absurd to suggest that the early loss of a

parent and the absence of communication between the surviving parent

and child are the only reasons why people might think of committing

suicide. Nor are guilt for that loss or aggression redirected against oneself
the only explanations of Constant’s character and attitudes. But taken with

the urge towards suicide his behaviour points significantly in the direction

of a chronic condition which can only fairly be called neurosis. Naturally

we are dealing not with certainty but with probability here. That

probability increases, however, when we list the special qualities and
foibles that Gustave Rudler, Georges Poulet and many others—not least

Constant himself—have found in his character:

• an obsession with death;


• 
  

  uncertainty about the future;

  
  


• 
  

  detachment, indifference to all around him;

  
  


• 
  

  a tendency to indecision.

  
  

Above all the most constantien of qualities is an oscillation between one

quality and its opposite: between a desperate desire for freedom, and

passive submission to the will of another or fate; between frenzied activity

and total inactivity; between tears and laughter; between involvement in

the affairs of the world and abnegation; between aggression and pity. And
the mind that views all this stands apart from such Pascalian contrariétés

or contradictions, critical of that of which it is a part. It is, of course,

precisely this ability to see a multitude of people within himself that is the

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