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THE MAN OF COLOR AND THE WHITE WOMAN 55

oneself to the proof in order to prove something.” I do not wish
to be loved, I adopt a defensive position. And if the love-object
insists, I will say plainly, “I do not wish to be loved.” Devaluation
of self? Indeed yes.

This lack of esteem of self as an object worthy of love has grave
consequences. For one thing, it keeps the individual in a state of profound
inner insecurity, as a result of which it inhibits or falsifi es every relation with
others. It is as something that has the right to arouse sympathy or love that
the individual is uncertain of himself. The lack of affective self-valuation
is to be found only in persons who in their early childhood suffered from a
lack of love and understanding. 22
Jean Veneuse would like to be a man like the rest, but he knows
that this position is a false one. He is a beggar. He looks for
appeasement, for permission in the white man’s eyes. For to him
there is “The Other.”
Affective self-rejection invariably brings the abandonment-neurotic to an
extremely painful and obsessive feeling of exclusion, of having no place
anywhere, of being superfl uous everywhere in an affective sense. . . . “I
am The Other” is an expression that I have heard time and again in the
language of the abandonment-neurotic. To be “The Other” is to feel that
one is always in a shaky position, to be always on guard, ready to be rejected
and . . . unconsciously doing everything needed to bring about exactly this
catastrophe.
It would be impossible to overestimate the intensity of the suffering that
accompanies such desertion states, a suffering that in one way is connected
to the fi rst experiences of rejection in childhood and that brings them back
in all their strength. . . . 23

The abandonment-neurotic demands proofs. He is not satisfi ed
with isolated statements. He has no confi dence. Before he forms
an objective relation, he exacts repeated proofs from his partner.
The essence of his attitude is “not to love in order to avoid being
abandoned.” The abandonment-neurotic is insatiable. That is

22. Guex, op. cit., pp. 31–32.
23. Ibid., pp. 35–36.

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