Why do I want two opposite things at the same time?
You decide to leave, but you also want to stay. You accept an offer, yet feel a pull in the opposite direction while the words are still leaving your mouth. No one is forcing your hand. The choice is yours, but it remains unsettled.
The hand obeys
In Book VIII of the Confessions, Augustine examines this gap between decision and action and finds the structure of the will strange because of how it interacts with the body:
“The mind commands the body, and it obeys instantly; the mind commands itself, and is resisted.”
— Augustine, Confessions, Book VIII, ch. IX (tr. E. B. Pusey)
Augustine does not explain this by splitting the person into a “good” self and a “bad” self. He looks for a different source of the resistance.
Not entirely
He suggests that the failure to act happens because the will is not whole, as he writes: “But it willeth not entirely: therefore doth it not command entirely.” Only part of the person issues the command.
This leads to his conclusion: “And therefore are there two wills, for that one of them is not entire: and what the one lacketh, the other hath.”
In this view, neither desire is the “true” or complete one. Both are fragmented. Each will possesses a piece of the truth that the other lacks.
Two at once
This state differs from inconsistency, where a person changes their mind between Monday and Friday. Here, both opposing forces exist in the same moment. It is also distinct from the attraction of forbidden things, where the prohibition itself creates the desire.
In this case, the “I don’t want to” is not just a hurdle. It may hold the missing piece of the decision.
What does the part of me that resists know that the part that wants does not?
Epimelea is an app built around the existential school. The conversation carries over from one meeting to the next. The archive is encrypted on the device and belongs to the person who wrote it.
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This page is about a school of psychotherapy. It is not medical advice and not emergency help. If you are in danger right now, contact your local emergency number, or find a helpline in your country at findahelpline.com.