Status Updates From What Is Existentialism?

Beauvoir's use of the term "Psychasthenia" appears to go beyond a merely clinical designation. For her, a psychasthenic struggles to act freely because they are unable to feel grounded in their action. To them, the world appears either too boundless and impersonal, or the self appears as too hollow and artificial, for grounded action to take root. Aka, their freedom collapses before it can assume itself concretely.

Beauvoir has an unusually disciplined way of following a proposition through its existential consequences.

"The task of man is one: to fashion the world by giving it a meaning. This meaning is not given ahead of time, just as the existence of each man is not justified ahead of time either." (p. 6)