Is Curiosity Good for Us?

Adam Phillips asks whether curiosity is a force for freedom or a danger that people rightly try to contain. He revisits the psychoanalytic idea of the superego, the internal authority that uses guilt and shame to enforce restraint. While some analysts hoped therapy could loosen this authority and help people form their own values, others argued that limits are necessary because human impulses can be destructive. Phillips suggests the superego’s deeper function is to suppress inquiry: it presents a fixed account of who we are, making guilt and shame seem beyond question and narrowing our capacity to consider competing interpretations of ourselves.

Curiosity unsettles this certainty because it begins with not knowing and may lead to unfamiliar desires, thoughts or relationships. Pursuing it means accepting dependence, appetite and consequences that cannot be predicted in advance; it is therefore a risk, not an uncomplicated virtue. People may try to control curiosity by demanding a clear purpose or a satisfying endpoint, or by letting others explore on their behalf. Culture also teaches which questions and interests are acceptable, while Freud’s emphasis on sexual curiosity both illuminates its power and makes it seem more predictable than it is. Phillips’s central point is that curiosity can expose how little we know about ourselves, but neither following it nor suppressing it is automatically right. A curious life requires tolerating uncertainty rather than assuming that either instinct or inhibition tells the whole truth.