One of my favorite parts of reading Proust is he succeeds in putting words to seemingly unexplainable experiences or thoughts. I have always been fascinated by the virtue of self-control. We exercise it all the time; as our sense of what should be done is often different from what we feel like doing. After Swann has acknowledged that his obsession with Odette is unhealthy; he attempts to control, rationalize, and suppress his addiction to her.

I think a 12 step recovery program would be great for Swann. The first step is admitting that you are powerless to overcome your addiction. He goes back and forth between awareness and denial of his unfortunate situation. On page 436 he has decided to not deny his visits to see Odette because, “having proved to himself-or so at least he believed- that he was so easily capable of resisting it, he no longer saw any danger in postponing a plan of separation.” Basically, here he believes that he has the power to resist Odette.

On page 438 we see Swann trying to convince himself that Odette is not as alluring as he thinks she is. “It’s an odd thing, but I actually thought her ugly.” For a second he believes himself. But regardless of how she looks, his love for Odette runs so much deeper than appearance.

On page 448, Swann is obsessing over where Odette had gone… again. The narrator comes in to say that that if we hold information in our minds (in this case Swann knowing where Odette had gone) we can “dispose of them as we choose, and gives us the illusion of a sort of power over them.” This is super interesting. The justifications that feed obsession are, at the core, illusions of power.