“ A rather similar phenomenon, varying in the extent to which it is caricatural, and often very ingenious, can be observed in certain young cinephiles who substantially change their basic opinion of the cinema, sometimes in an exuberant or dramatic way, after each film they have seen which has strongly attracted them: the new theorisation is cut each time to the precise measure of this unique and delicious film, and yet it is indispensable that it be sincerely experienced as ‘general’ to prolong and amplify, to sanction the vivid momentary pleasure they obtained on seeing the film: the id does not bring its own super-ego with it, it is not enough to be happy, or rather one cannot be perfectly happy, unless one is sure one has a right to be happy. (In the same way some men can only fully live their present love by projecting it into a mental temporality and persuading themselves that it will last throughout their lives: the contradiction of experience, the precise renewal of the same inflation vis-a-vis the next love are incapable of shaking the disposition they carry with them: for its real mechanism is almost the diametrical opposite of its apparent result: far from the strength of their love guaranteeing it a real future, the psychical representation of that future is the prior condition for the establishment of their full amorous potency in the present; the institution of marriage answers to this need and reinforces it.) ”
— CHRISTIAN METZ: THE IMAGINARY SIGNIFIER
