Changes

{{Top}}| align="[[right]]" style="line-height:2.0em;text-align:justify;background-color:#fcfcfc;border:1px solid #aaa" | [[French]]: ''[[belle âme]]''; | [[German]]: ''[[schöne Seele{{Bottom}}

The "[[beautiful soul]]" is a [[stage]] in the [[dialectic]] of [[self-consciousness]] which [[Hegel]] describes in the ''[[Phenomenology of Spirit]]''.<ref>[[Hegel|Hegel, G. W. F.]] ''[[Phenomenology of Spirit]]'', trans. A. V. [[Miller]], with [[Analysis ]] of the [[Text ]] and Foreward by [[J. N. Findlay]], Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985 [1807].</ref>  The [[beautiful soul]] projects its own disorder onto the [[world ]] and attempts to [[cure]] this disorder by imposing "the law of the heart" on everyone else.

<blockquote>"[T]he ego of modern man ... has taken on its [[form ]] in the [[dialectical ]] [[impasse ]] of the ''belle âme'' who does not recognise his very own ''raison d'être'' in the disorder that he denounces in the world."<ref>{{E}} p. 70</ref></blockquote>

The [[concept ]] of the [[beautiful soul]] illustrates the way that [[neurosis|neurotics]] often deny their own [[responsibility]] for what is going on around [[them]].

Thus when [[Dora]] complains [[about ]] [[being ]] treated as an [[object]] of [[exchange ]] by the men around her, [[Freud]]'s first [[intervention ]] is to confront her with her own complicity in this exchange.<ref>{{Ec}} p. 218-19</ref>