|
 |
|
|
|
|
Q2: I have the impression I am creating something when I am solving a problem. Q8: It means doing something basic which is the key to everything else. Q12: It is constantly discovering something new. Q19: Mathematics brings you the pleasure of creating something. Q20: Mathematics means another world in which I feel at home. |
|
|
Construction leads to the discovery of new and important things ("the key to everything else"), even to the construction of "another world". This feeling conflicts with that of the previously encountered risk of destruction. This is why I propose the following interpretation: this group of statements express the putting into action of a mechanism of reparation.
This reparation could be the "wish and the capacity for the restoration of the good object, internal and external, that is the basis of the ego's capacity to maintain love and relationships through conflicts and difficulties". It is this that seems to lie behind the first two statements. But reparation can also be fanatical in that its aim is to repair the objects in such a way that guilt and loss are never experienced.
Students may express the fear of "destruction by the mathematical object", but the anxiety about destruction may be repressed by a reaction-formation in the form of a feeling of reparation, of construction, of discovery: "By doing mathematics you are making something for yourself ... that's why we enjoy it, everyone likes to make something, I think." |
|
From the scientific stream has the feeling of creating something which came out of her, but which didn't begin with her:
<<You like making things? Yes, by doing maths, you are making something for yourself. You are making something. Well, it's for that reason ... that we enjoy it; everybody likes to make something, I think, because if one doesn't manage to make something, in the end to find ... to find peace, to have precisely the joy of having done it, 1 think that makes you do more, in any case; it makes me do more ...
Do you feel you're doing something that comes from YOU? Ah, yes! Which comes from us, Yes, like something that you think you find, or you show. Yes, because, of course, the start of a problem doesn't come from you, but after doing what has to be done, the most important things is that which has to come from you. The fantasy of childbirth, bringing with it a notion of peace, shows how the mathematical object can have energy invested in it in a very personal way when the motivation and the interest of the student is aroused.>>
|
|
|