THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS
PROCESSES[216]
Being a Survey of the Modern Theory and Method of
Analytical Psychology
I.—The Beginnings of Psychoanalysis
In common with other sciences, psychology had to go through
its scholastic-philosophic stage, and to some extent this has
lasted on into the present time. This philosophic psychology
has incurred our condemnation in that it decides ex cathedra
what is the nature of the soul, and whence and how it derives its
attributes. The spirit of modern scientific investigation has
summarily disposed of all these phantasies and in their place
has established an exact empiric method. We owe to this our
present-day experimental psychology or "psychophysiology,"
as the French call it. This new direction originated with
Fechner, that Janus-minded spirit, who in his remarkable
Psychophysik (1860) embarked on the mighty enterprise of
introducing the physical standpoint into the conception of
psychical phenomena. The whole idea of this work—and not
least its astonishing mistakes—proved most fruitful in results.
For Wundt, Fechner's young contemporary, carried on his
work, and it is Wundt's great erudition, enormous power of
work and genius for elaborating methods of experimental
research, which have given to modern psychology its prevailing
direction.
Until quite recently experimental psychology remained
essentially academic. The first notable attempt to utilise some
few at any rate of its innumerable experimental methods in
the service of practical psychology came from the psychiatrists
of the former Heidelberg school (Kræpelin, Aschaffenburg, etc.);
it is quite intelligible that the psychotherapists should be
the first to feel the urgent need for more exact knowledge of
psychic processes.
Next came pedagogy, making its own demands upon
psychology. Out of this has recently grown up an "experimental
pedagogy," and in this field Neumann in Germany
and Binet in France have rendered signal services. The
physician, the so-called "nerve-specialist," has the most
urgent need of psychological knowledge if he would really
help his patients, for neurotic disturbances, such as hysteria,
and all things classed as "nervousness," are of psychic origin,
and necessarily demand psychic treatment. Cold water, light,
air, electricity, magnetism, etc., are only effective temporarily,
and quite often are of no use at all. They are frequently
introduced into treatment in a not very commendable fashion,
simply because reliance is placed upon their suggestive effect.
But it is in his soul that the patient is really sick; in those
most complicated and lofty functions which we scarcely dare
to include in the province of medicine. The doctor must
needs, in such a case, be a psychologist, must needs understand
the human soul. He cannot evade the urgent demand
upon him. So he naturally turns for help to psychology, since
his psychiatry text-books have nothing to offer him. But
modern experimental psychology is very far from being able
to afford him any connected insight into the most vital
psychic processes, that is not its aim. As far as possible it
tries to isolate those simple elementary phenomena which
border on the physiological, and then study them in an isolated
state. It quite ignores the infinite variation and movement of
the mental life of the individual, and accordingly, its knowledge
and its facts are so many isolated details, uninspired by any
comprehensive idea capable of bringing them into co-ordination.
Hence it comes about that the inquirer after the secrets
of the human soul, learns rather less than nothing from experimental
psychology. He would be better advised to abandon
exact science, take off his scholar's gown, say farewell to his
study, and then, strong in manly courage, set out to wander
through the world; alike through the horrors of prisons, lunatic
asylums and hospitals, through dreary outlying taverns,
through brothels and gambling-halls, into elegant drawing-rooms,
the Stock Exchanges, socialist meetings, churches,
revival gatherings of strange religious sects, experiencing in
his own person love and hate and every kind of suffering.
He would return laden with richer knowledge than his yard-long
text-books could ever have given him, and thus equipped,
he can indeed be a physician to his patients, for he understands
the soul of man. He may be pardoned if his respect
for the "corner-stones" of experimental psychology is no
longer very considerable. There is a great gulf fixed between
what science calls "psychology," on the one hand, and what
the practice of everyday life expects from psychology on the
other.
This need became the starting-point of a new psychology
whose inception we owe first and foremost to the genius of
Sigmund Freud, of Vienna, to his researches into functional
nervous disease. The new type of psychology might be described
as "analytical psychology." Professor Bleuler has
coined the name "Deep Psychology,"[217] to indicate that the
Freudian psychology takes as its province the deeper regions,
the "hinterland" of the soul, the "unconscious." Freud
names his method of investigation "psychoanalysis."
Before we approach the matter more closely, we must first
consider the relationship of the new psychology to the earlier
science. Here we encounter a singular little farce which once
again proves the truth of Anatole France's apothegm: "Les
savants ne sont pas curieux."
The first important piece of work[218] in this new field
awakened only the faintest echo, in spite of the fact that it
offered a new and fundamental conception of the neuroses.
Certain writers expressed their approbation, and then, on the
next page, proceeded to explain their cases of hysteria in the
good old way. It was much as if a man should subscribe fully
to the idea of the earth's being spherical, and yet continue to
represent it as flat. Freud's next publications[219] were practically
unnoticed, although they contributed findings of immeasurable
importance to the domain of psychiatry. When
in 1900 he produced the first real psychological elucidation
of the dream[220] (previously there had reigned over this territory
a suitable nocturnal darkness), he was ridiculed; and when
in the middle of the last decade he began to illumine the
psychology of sexuality itself,[221] and at the same time the
"Zürich school" decided to range itself on his side, a storm
of abuse, sometimes of the coarsest kind, burst upon him,
nor has it yet ceased to rage. At the last South-West
German Congress of alienists in Baden-Baden, the adherents
of the new psychology had the pleasure of hearing Hoche,
University Professor of Psychiatry at Freiburg in Breisgau,
describe the movement in a long and much-applauded
address, as an outbreak of mental aberration among doctors.
The old proverb: "Medicus medicum non decimat" was
here quite put to shame. How carefully the question had
been studied was shewn by the naïve remark of one of the
most distinguished neurologists of Paris, which I myself heard
at the International Congress in 1907: "It is true I have not
read Freud's works (he did not happen to know any German!),
but as for his theories, they are nothing but a mauvaise
plaisanterie." Freud, dignified, masterly, once said to me,
I first became clearly conscious of the value of my discoveries
when they were met everywhere with resistance and anger;
since that time I have judged the value of my work according
to the degree of opposition provoked. It is against my sexual
theory that the greatest indignation is felt, so it would seem
therein lies my best work. Perhaps after all the real benefactors
of mankind are its false teachers, for opposition to the
false doctrine pushes men willy nilly into truth. Your truth-teller
is a pernicious fellow, he drives men into error."
The reader must now calmly accept the idea that in this
psychology he is dealing with something quite unique, if not
indeed with some altogether irrational, sectarian, or occult
wisdom; for what else could possibly provoke all the scientific
authorities to turn away on the very threshold and utterly
refuse to cross it?
Accordingly, we must look more closely into this psychology.
As long ago as Charcot's time it was recognised that
neurotic symptoms are "psychogenic," that is, that they have
their origin in the psyche. It was also known, thanks mainly
to the work of the Nancy School, that every hysterical symptom
can be exactly reproduced by means of suggestion. But how
a hysterical system arises, and its relationship to psychic
causes, were altogether unknown. In the beginning of the
eighties Dr. Breuer, an old Viennese doctor, made a discovery[222]
which was really the true starting-point of the new
psychology. He had a very intelligent young patient (a woman)
suffering from hysteria, who exhibited the following symptoms
among others: A spastic paralysis of the right arm, occasional
disturbances of consciousness or twilight-states, and
loss of the power of speech in so far as she no longer retained
any knowledge of her mother-tongue, and could only express
herself in English (so-called systematic aphasia). They sought
at that time, and still seek, in such a case to establish some
theory of anatomical disturbance, although there was just as
little disturbance in the arm-centre in the brain as in that of
any normal man who boxes another's ears. The symptomatology
of hysteria is full of anatomical impossibilities; such
as the case of the lady who had lost her hearing completely
through some hysterical malady. None the less she often
used to sing, and once when she was singing her doctor sat
down at the piano unnoticed by her and softly accompanied
her. Passing from one strophe to another he suddenly altered
the key, and she, quite unconscious of what she was doing,
sang on in the altered key. Thus she heard—yet did not hear.
The various forms of systematic blindness present similar
phenomena. We have the case of a man suffering from complete
hysterical blindness. In the course of the treatment he
recovers his sight, but at first, and for some long time, only partially:
he could see everything with one exception—people's
heads. He saw all the people around him without heads.
Thus he saw—yet did not see. From a large number of like experiences
it has long been concluded that it is only the patient's
consciousness which does not see, does not hear, but the sense-function
has nothing at all the matter with it. This state of
affairs is directly contradictory to the essence of an organic
disturbance, which always materially involves the function.
After this digression let us return to Breuer's case. Since
there was no organic cause for the disturbance, the case was
clearly to be regarded as hysterical, that is, psychogenic. Dr.
Breuer had noticed that if during her twilight-states (whether
spontaneous or artificially induced) he let the patient freely
express the reminiscences and phantasies that thronged in
upon her, her condition was afterwards much improved for
some hours. He made systematic use of this observation in her
further treatment. The patient herself invented the appropriate
name for it of "talking cure" or, in jest, "chimney sweeping."
Her illness began whilst she was nursing her dying father.
It is easy to understand that her phantasies busied themselves
mainly with this disturbing time. In the twilight-states
memories of this period reappeared with photographic fidelity,
distinct in every detail: no waking recollection is ever so
plastically and exactly reproduced. The term hypermnesia is
applied to this heightening of the power of memory, which
occurs without difficulty in certain states of contracted consciousness.
Remarkable things now came to light. Out of
the many things told, one ran somewhat as follows.[223]
On a certain night she was in a state of great anxiety about
her father's high temperature. She sat by his bed, waiting
for the surgeon who was coming from Vienna to perform an
operation. Her mother had gone out of the room for a little
while, and Anna (the patient) sat by the bed, with her right
arm hanging over the back of her chair. She fell into a kind
of waking-dream in which she saw a black snake come out
from the wall and approach the sick man, prepared to bite.
(It is very probable that some real snakes had been seen in
the fields behind the house, and that she had been frightened
by them; this would furnish the material for her hallucination.)
She wanted to drive the creature away, but felt
paralysed; her right arm, hanging over the chair, had "gone
to sleep," was anæsthetic and paretic, and as she looked
her fingers turned into little snakes with death's heads (the
nails). Probably she tried to drive the snake away with her
paralysed right hand, and thereby the anæsthesia and paralysis
became associated with the snake-hallucination. Even after
the snake had disappeared, her terror remained great. She
tried to pray, but found she had no words in any language,
until at length she managed to remember some English
nursery rhymes, and then she could go on thinking and praying
in that language.
This was the actual scene in which the paralysis and
speech-disturbance arose; the describing it served to remove
the speech-trouble, and in this same fashion the case was
finally completely cured.
I must restrict myself to this one instance. In Breuer
and Freud's book there is a wealth of similar examples. It
is easy to understand that scenes such as these make a very
strong impression, and accordingly there is an inclination to
attribute a causal significance to them in the genesis of the
symptoms. The then current conception of hysteria, arising
from the English "nervous shock" theory, which Charcot
strongly supported, came in conveniently to elucidate Breuer's
discovery, hence arose the trauma-theory maintaining that
the hysterical symptom and in so far as the symptoms comprise
the disease, hysteria itself, arises from some psychic
injury (or trauma), the effect of which is retained in the
unconscious indefinitely. Freud, working as Breuer's colleague,
amply confirmed this discovery. It was fully demonstrated
that not one out of the many hundred hysterical
symptoms came down ready made from heaven; they had
already been conditioned by past psychic experiences. To
some extent, therefore, this new conception opened up a field
of very important empirical work. But Freud's tireless
spirit of inquiry could not long rest content at this superficial
layer, since already there obtruded deeper and more difficult
problems. It is obvious enough that moments of great fear
and anxiety, such as Breuer's patient went through, would
leave behind a lasting effect, but how is it that these happenings
are themselves already deeply stamped with the mark of
morbidity? Must we suppose that the trying sick-nursing in
itself produce such a result? If so, such effects should occur
much more frequently, for there are, unfortunately, many
trying cases of sick-nursing, and the nurse's nervous constitution
is by no means always of the soundest. To this
problem medicine gives its admirable answer; the "x" in
the calculation is predisposition; there is a tendency to these
things. But for Freud the problem was, what exactly constitutes
this predisposition? This question led logically to
an investigation of all that had preceded the psychic trauma.
It is a matter of common observation that distressing scenes
have markedly different effects upon the different participants,
and that things which to some are quite indifferent
or even pleasant, such as frogs, mice, snakes, cats, excite the
greatest aversion in others. There are the cases of women
who can calmly be present at a very bad operation, but who
tremble all over with horror and nausea at the touch of a
cat. By way of illustration let me give the case of a young
lady suffering from severe hysteria following a sudden fright.[224]
She had been at a social gathering, and was on her way
home at midnight accompanied by several acquaintances,
when a carriage came up behind them at full speed. All
the others moved out of the way, but she, beside herself with
fright, ran down the middle of the road just in front of the
horses. The coachman cracked his whip and cursed and
swore in vain. She ran down the whole length of the street
till a bridge was reached. There her strength failed her, and
to escape the horses' feet in her despair she would have
jumped into the water had not passers-by prevented her.
This same lady happened to be in Petrograd during that sanguinary
Revolution of the 22nd of January, and saw a street
cleared by the volleys of soldiers. All around her people
were dropping down dead or wounded, but she retained her
calmness and self-possession, and caught sight of a door
which gave her escape into another street. These terrible
moments agitated her neither at the time nor later on. She
was quite well afterwards, indeed felt better than usual.
Essentially similar reactions can quite often be observed.
Hence it follows that the intensity of the trauma is of small
pathogenic importance; the peculiar circumstances determine
its pathogenic effect. Here, then, we have the key which
enables us to unlock at least one of the anterooms to an
understanding of predisposition. We must now ask what
were the unusual circumstances in this carriage scene? The
terror and apprehension began as soon as the lady heard the
trampling horses. For a moment she thought this portended
some terrible fate, her death, or something equally frightful;
the next, she lost all sense of what she was doing.
This powerful impression was evidently connected in some
way with the horses. The predisposition of the patient to
react in such an exaggerated fashion to a not very remarkable
incident, might result from the fact that horses had some
special significance for her. It might be suspected that she
had experienced some dangerous accident with them; this
actually turned out to be the case. When a child of about
seven years old she was out for a drive with the coachman;
the horses shied and galloped at full speed towards a steep
river-bank. The coachman jumped down, and shouted to
her to do the same, but in her extreme terror she could scarcely
bring herself to obey. She did, however, just manage to
jump out in the nick of time, whilst the horses and carriage
were dashed to pieces below. No proof is needed that such
an experience must leave a lasting impression behind it.
But it does not offer any explanation for such an exaggerated
reaction to an inadequate stimulus. So far we only know
that this later symptom had its prologue in childhood, but
its pathological aspect remains obscure. To penetrate into
the heart of such a mystery it was necessary to accumulate
further material. And the greater our experience the clearer
does it become that in all cases with such traumatic experiences
analysed up to the present, there co-exists a special kind
of disturbance which can only be described as a derangement
in the sphere of love. Not all of us give due credit to the
anomalous nature of love, reaching high as heaven, sinking
low as hell, uniting in itself all extremes of good and evil, of
lofty and low.[225]
As soon as Freud recognised this, a decisive change came
about in his view. In his earlier researches, whilst more or
less dominated by Charcot's trauma-theory, he had sought
for the origin of the neurosis in actual traumatic experiences;
but now the centre of gravity shifted to a very different point.
This is best demonstrated by reference to our case; we can
understand that horses might easily play a significant part in
the patient's life, but it is not clear why there should be this
later reaction, so exaggerated, so uncalled for. It is not her
fear of horses which forms the morbid factor in this curious
story; to get at the real truth we must remember our empirical
conclusion, that, side by side with traumatic experiences, there
is also invariably present some disturbance in the sphere of
love. We must now go on to inquire whether perhaps there is
anything unsatisfactory in this respect in the case under
review.
Our patient has a young man friend, to whom she is
thinking of becoming engaged, she loves him and expects to
be happy with him. At first nothing more is discoverable;
but the investigator must not let himself be deterred by a
negative result in the beginning of this preliminary questioning.
When the direct way does not lead to the desired end,
an indirect way may be taken. We accordingly turn our
attention back to that strange moment when she ran away in
front of the horses. We inquire who were her companions
and what kind of social gathering was it, and find it was a
farewell-party to her best friend, on her departure to a foreign
health-resort on account of a nervous breakdown. We are
told this friend is happily married and is the mother of one
child. We may well doubt the assertion that she is happy.
If she really were so, it is hardly to be supposed she would
be "nervous" and in need of a cure. When I attacked the
situation from a different vantage-ground, I learnt that our
patient—after this episode—had been taken by her friends to
the nearest safe place—her host's house. In her exhausted
state he took charge of her. When the patient came to this
part of her story, she suddenly broke off, was embarrassed,
fidgeted and tried to turn the subject. Evidently some disagreeable
reminiscences had suddenly cropped up. After obstinate
resistances had been overcome, she admitted something
very strange had happened that night. Her host had made her
a passionate declaration of love, thus occasioning a situation
that, in the absence of his wife, might well be considered both
painful and difficult. Ostensibly this declaration came upon
her like a "bolt from the blue." But a small dose of criticism
applied to such an assertion soon apprises us that these things
never do drop suddenly from the sky; they always have their
previous history. It was a task of the following weeks to dig
out piecemeal a long love-story. I will attempt to sketch in
the picture as it appeared finally.
As a child the patient was a thorough tomboy, loved boys'
boisterous games, laughed at her own sex, and would have
nothing to do with feminine ways or occupations. After
puberty, just when the sex-issue should have meant much to
her, she began to shun all society; she seemingly hated and
despised everything which could remind her even remotely
of the biological destiny of mankind, and lived in a world of
phantasy which had nothing in common with rude reality.
Thus, till her twenty-fourth year, she escaped all the little
adventures, hopes and expectations which ordinarily move a
girl at this age. But finally she got to know the two men
who were destined to destroy the thorny hedge which had
grown up around her. Mr. A. was her best friend's husband;
Mr. B. was their bachelor-friend. She liked both; but pretty
soon found B. the more sympathetic, and an intimacy grew
up between them which made an engagement seem likely.
Through her friendship with him and with Mrs. A., she often
met Mr. A. His presence excited her inexplicably, made her
nervous. Just at this time she went to a big party. All her
friends were there. She became lost in thought, and in a
reverie was playing with her ring, when suddenly it slipped
out of her hand and rolled under the table. Both men tried
to find it and Mr. B. managed to get it. With a meaning
smile he put the ring back on her finger, and said, "You
know what that means!" Overcome by some strange, irresistible
feeling, she tore the ring from her finger and flung it
out of the open window. Naturally a painful moment for all
ensued, and she soon went away, much depressed. A little
while after, so-called chance brought her for her summer
holidays to the health-resort where A. and his wife were staying.
It was then that Mrs. A. began to suffer from nerve-trouble,
and frequently felt too unwell to leave the house. So
our patient could often go out for walks alone with A. One
day they were out in a small boat. She was boisterously
merry and fell overboard. Mr. A. saved her with difficulty as
she could not swim, and he managed to lift her into the boat in
a half-unconscious state. Then he kissed her. This romantic
event wove fast the bonds between them. In self-defence she
did her best to get herself engaged to B. and to persuade herself
that she loved him. Of course this queer comedy could
not escape the sharp eye of feminine jealousy. Mrs. A., her
friend, guessed the secret, and was so much upset by it that
her nervous condition grew bad enough to necessitate her
trying a cure at a foreign health-resort. At the farewell
gathering the demon came to our patient and whispered:
"To-night he will be alone, something must happen to you
so that you can go to his house." And so indeed it came
about; her strange behaviour made her friends take her to
his house, and thus she achieved her desire.
After this explanation the reader will probably be inclined
to assume that only diabolical subtlety could think out and
set in motion such a chain of circumstances. There is no
doubt about the subtlety, but the moral evaluation is less
certain. I desire to lay special emphasis upon the fact that
the patient was in no sense conscious of the motives of this
dramatic performance. The incident apparently just came
about of itself without any conscious motive whatsoever.
But the whole previous history makes it perfectly clear that
everything was most ingeniously directed towards the other
aim; whilst the conscious self was apparently working to
bring about the engagement to Mr. B., the unconscious
compulsion to take the other road was still stronger.
So once more we must return to our original question,
whence comes the pathological, the peculiar and exaggerated
reaction to the trauma? Relying on a conclusion obtained
from other analogous experiences, we ventured the conjecture
that in the present case we had to do with a disturbance
in the love-life, in addition to the trauma. This supposition
was thoroughly borne out; the trauma, which was apparently
the cause of the illness, was merely the occasion for some
factor, till then unconscious, to manifest itself. This was
the significant erotic conflict. With this finding the trauma
loses its pathogenic significance and is replaced by a much
deeper and more comprehensive conception, which regards
the erotic conflict as the pathogenic agent. This conception
may be described as the sexual theory of the neurosis.
I am often asked why it is just the erotic conflict rather
than any other which is the cause of the neurosis. There is
but one answer to this. No one asserts that this ought
necessarily to be the case, but as a simple matter of fact it
is always found to be so, notwithstanding all the cousins and
aunts, godparents, and teachers, who rage against it. Despite
all the indignant assertions to the contrary, the problem and
conflicts of love are of fundamental importance for humanity,[226]
and with increasingly careful study, it comes out ever more
clearly that the love-life is of immensely greater importance
than the individual suspects.
As a consequence of the recognition that the true root of
the neurosis is not the trauma, but the hidden erotic conflict,
the trauma loses its pathogenic significance.
II.—The Sexual Theory.
Thus, it will be seen, the theory had to be shifted on to an
entirely different basis, for the investigation now had to face
the erotic conflict itself. Our example shows that this contains
extremely abnormal elements and cannot, primâ facie, be
compared with an ordinary love conflict. It is surprising,
indeed hardly credible, that only the postulated affection
should be conscious, whilst the real passion remained unknown
to the patient. But in this case it is beyond dispute
that the real erotic relation remained unillumined, whilst
the field of consciousness was dominated by the assumption.
If we try to formulate this fact, something like the following
proposition results: in a neurosis, two erotic tendencies exist
which stand in extreme opposition to one another, and one at
least is unconscious. Against this formula the objection can
be raised that it has obviously been derived from this one particular
case, and is therefore lacking in general validity. The
criticism will be the more readily urged because no one unpossessed
of special reasons is willing to admit that the erotic
conflict is of universal prevalence. On the contrary, it is
assumed that this conflict belongs more properly to the sphere
of novels, since it is generally depicted as something in the
nature of such wild adventures as are described by Karin
Michaelis in her "Aberrations of Marriage," or by Forel in
"The Sexual Question." But indeed this is not the case; for
we know the wildest and most moving dramas are not played
on the stage, but every day in the hearts of ordinary men and
women who pass by without exciting attention, and who betray
to the world, save through the symbol of a nervous breakdown,
nothing of the conflicts that rage within them. But what
is so difficult for the layman to grasp is the fact that in most
cases patients have no suspicion whatever of the internecine
war raging in their unconscious. But remembering that there
are many people who understand nothing at all about themselves,
we shall be less surprised at the realisation that there
are also people who are utterly unaware of their actual conflicts.
If the reader is now inclined to admit the possible
existence of pathogenic, and perhaps even of unconscious
conflicts, he will certainly protest that they are not erotic
conflicts. If this kind reader should happen himself to be
somewhat nervous, the mere suggestion will arouse his indignation,
for we are all inclined, as a result of our education
in school and at home, to cross ourselves three times where
we meet such words as "erotic" and "sexual"—and so we
are conveniently able to think that nothing of that nature
exists, or at least very seldom, and at a great distance from
ourselves. But it is just this attitude which in the first
instance brings about neurotic conflicts.
We recognise that the course of civilisation consists in
the progressive mastering of the animal element in man; it
is a process of domestication which cannot be carried through
without rebellion on the part of the animal nature still thirsting
for its liberty. Humanity forces itself to endure the restrictions
of the civilising process; but from time to time there
comes a frenzied bursting of all bonds. Antiquity had experience
of it in that wave of Dionysian orgies, surging hither
from the East, which became an essentially characteristic
element of antique culture. Its spirit was partly instrumental
in causing the numerous sects and philosophic schools
of the last century before Christ, to develop the Stoic ideal
into asceticism; and in producing from the polytheistic chaos
of those times, the ascetic twin-religions of Mithras and of
Christ. A second clearly marked wave of the Dionysian
impulse towards freedom swept over the Western world during
the Renaissance. It is difficult to judge of one's own time, but
we gain some insight if we note how the Arts are developing,
what is the prevailing type of public taste, what men read
and write, what societies they found, what "questions" are
the order of the day, and against what the Philistines are
fighting. We find in the long list of our present social
problems that the sexual question occupies by no means the
last place. It agitates men and women who would shake
the foundations of sexual morality, and throw off the burden
of moral shame which past centuries have heaped upon Eros.
The existence of these aspirations and endeavours cannot be
simply denied, or declared indefensible; they exist and are
therefore presumably not without justification. It is both more
interesting and more useful to study carefully the basic causes
of these movements than to chime in with the lamentations
of the professional mourners over morals, who prophesy with
unction the moral downfall of humanity. The moralist least
of all trusts God, for he thinks that the beautiful tree of
humanity can only thrive by dint of being pruned, bound,
and trained on a trellis, whereas Father-Sun and Mother-Earth
have combined to make it grow joyfully in accordance
with its own laws, which are full of the deepest meaning.
Serious people are aware that a very real sexual problem
does exist at the present time. The rapid development of the
towns, coupled with methods of work brought about by the
extraordinary division of labour, the increasing industrialisation
of the country and the growing security of life, combine
to deprive humanity of many opportunities of expending
emotional energy. Think of the life of the peasant, whose
work so rich and full of change, affords him unconscious satisfaction
by means of its symbolic content; a like satisfaction
the factory-hand and the clerk can never know. Think of
a life with nature; of those wonderful moments when, as lord
and fructifier, man drives the plough through the earth, and
with kingly gesture scatters the seed of the future harvest;
see his justifiable awe before the destructive power of the elements,
his joy in the fruitfulness of his wife, who gives him
daughters and sons, who mean to him increased working
power and enhanced prosperity. Alas! from all this we town-dwellers,
we modern machines, are far, far removed.
Must we not admit that we are already deprived of the
most natural and most beautiful of all satisfactions, since we
can no longer contemplate the arrival of our own seed, the
"blessing" of children, with unmixed pleasure? Marriages
where no artifices are resorted to are rare. Is this not an
all-important departure from the joys which Mother Nature
gave her first-born sons? Can such a state of affairs bring
satisfaction? Note how men slink to their work, watch their
faces at an early morning hour in the tram-cars. One of
them makes his little wheels, and another writes trivial
things which do not interest him. What wonder is it if such
men belong to as many clubs as there are days in the
week, and that among women little societies flourish, where
they pour out on some particular hero or cause those unsatisfied
desires which the man dulls at his restaurant or club,
imbibing beer and playing at being important? To these
sources of dissatisfaction is added a more serious factor.
Nature has provided defenceless, weaponless man with a great
amount of energy to enable him not merely to bear passively
the grave dangers of existence, but also to conquer them.
Mother Nature has equipped her son for tremendous hardships
and has placed a costly premium on the overcoming of
them, as Schopenhauer quite understood when he said that
"happiness is really but the termination of unhappiness."
Civilized people are, as a rule, shielded from the immediately
pressing dangers, and they are therefore daily tempted to excess,
for in man the animal always becomes rampant when he
is not constrained by fierce necessity. Are we then indeed
unrestrained? In what orgiastic festivals do we dispose of
the surplus of vital power? Our moral views do not permit
us that outlet.
But reckon up in how many directions we are met by unsatisfied
longings; the denial of procreation and begetting, for
which purpose nature has endowed us with great energy; the
unending monotony of our highly developed modern methods
of "division of labour," which excludes any interest in the
work itself; and above all our effortless security against war,
lawlessness, robbery, epidemics, infant and woman mortality—all
this gives a sum of surplus energy which must needs find
an outlet. But how? A relatively few create quasi-natural
dangers for themselves in reckless sport; many more, seeking
to find some equivalent for their more primitive energy, take
to alcoholic excess; others expend themselves in the rush of
money-making, or in the morbid performance of duties, in
perpetual over-work. By such means they try to escape a
dangerous storing-up of energy which might force mad outlets
for itself. It is for such reasons that we have to-day a sexual
question. It is in this direction that men's energy would
like to expend itself as it has done from time immemorial
in periods of security and abundance. Under such circumstances
it is not only rabbits that multiply; men and women,
too, become the sport of these accesses of nature: the sport,
because their moral views have confined them in a narrow
cage, the excessive narrowness of which was not felt so long
as harsh external necessity pressed upon them with even
greater constraint. But now the man of the cities finds
the space too circumscribed. He is surrounded by alluring
temptation, and like an invisible procureur there
slinks through society the knowledge of preventive methods
which evade all consequences. Why then moral restraint?
Out of religious consideration for an angry God? Apart
from the prevalence of widespread unbelief, even the
believing man might quietly ask himself whether, if he
himself were God, he would punish the youthful erotic uncontrol
of John and Mary with twice twenty-four years of
imprisonment and seething in boiling oil. Such ideas are
no longer compatible with our decorous conception of God.
The God of our time is necessarily much too tolerant
to make a great fuss over it; (knavishness and hypocrisy
are a thousand times worse). In this way the somewhat
ascetic and hypocritical sexual morality of our time has had
the ground cut from under its feet. Or is it the case that
we are now protected from dissoluteness by superior wisdom,
recognition of the nothingness of human happenings? Unfortunately
we are very far from that; rather does the
hypnotic power of tradition keep us in bonds, and through
cowardice and thoughtlessness and habit the herd goes tramping
on in this same path. But man possesses in the unconscious
a fine scent for the spirit of his time; he has an
inkling of his own possibilities and he feels in his innermost
heart the instability of the foundations of present-day morality,
no longer supported by living religious conviction. It is thus
the greater number of the erotic conflicts of our time originate.
Instinct thirsting for liberty thrusts itself up against the
yielding barriers of morality: men are tempted, they desire
and do not desire. And because they will not and cannot think
out to its logical conclusion what it is they really desire,
their erotic conflict is largely unconscious; whence comes
neurosis. Neurosis then is most intimately bound up with
the problem of our times and represents an unsuccessful
attempt of the individual to solve the general problem in his
own person. Neurosis is a tearing in two of the inner self.
For most men the reason of this cleavage is the fact that their
conscious self desires to hold to its moral ideal, whilst the
unconscious strives after the amoral ideal, steadfastly rejected
by the conscious self. People of this kind would like to
appear more decent than they really are. But the conflict is
often of an opposite kind. There are those who do not outwardly
live a decent life at all and do not place the slightest
constraint upon their sexuality, but in reality this is a sinful
pose assumed for goodness knows what reasons, for down
below they have a decorous soul which has somehow gone
astray in their unconscious, just as has the real immoral
nature in the case of apparently moral people. Extremes of
conduct always arouse suspicions of the opposite tendencies in
the unconscious.
It was necessary to make this general statement in order
to elucidate the idea of the "erotic conflict" in analytical
psychology, for it is the key to the conception of neurosis.
We can now proceed to consider the psychoanalytic technique.
Obviously the main problem is, how to arrive by the shortest
and best path at a knowledge of the patient's "unconscious."
The method first used was hypnotism, the patient being questioned,
on the production of spontaneous phantasies observed
while in a state of hypnotic concentration. This method is
still occasionally used, but in comparison with the present
technique is primitive and frequently unsatisfactory. A
second method, evolved by the Psychiatric Clinic, Zürich, was
the so-called association method,[227] which is chiefly of theoretic,
experimental value. Its result is an extensive, though
superficial orientation, concerning the unconscious conflict
("complex").[228] The more penetrating method is that of
dream-analysis whose discovery belongs to Sigmund Freud.[229]
Of the dream it can be said that "the stone which the
builders rejected has become the head of the corner." It is
only in modern times that the dream (that fleeting and seemingly
insignificant product of the soul), has met with such
complete contempt. Formerly it was esteemed, as a harbinger
of fate, a warning or a consolation, a messenger of the gods.
Now we use it as a messenger of the unconscious; it must
disclose to us the secrets which our unconscious self enviously
hides from our consciousness, and it does so with astonishing
completeness.
On analytical investigation it becomes plain that the
dream, as we remember it, is only a façade which conceals the
contents within the house. But if, observing certain technical
rules, we get the dreamer to talk about the details of his dream,
it soon appears that his free associations group themselves in
certain directions and round certain topics. These appear to
be of personal significance, and have a meaning which at first
sight would not be suspected. Careful comparison shows that
they are in close and subtle symbolic connection with the
dream-façade.[230] This particular complex of ideas in which all
the threads of the dream unite, is the conflict for which we are
seeking; is its particular form at the moment, conditioned by
the immediate circumstances. What is painful and incompatible
is in this way so covered up or split that we can call
it a wish-fulfilment; but we must immediately add that the
wishes fulfilled in the dream do not seem at first sight to
be our wishes, but rather the very opposite. For instance, a
daughter loves her mother tenderly, but she dreams that her
mother is dead; this causes her great grief. Such dreams,
where apparently there is no trace of any wish-fulfilment are
innumerable, and are a constant stumbling-block to our
learned critics, for—incredible dictu—they still cannot grasp
the simple distinction between the manifest and the latent
content of the dream. We must guard against such an error;
the conflict dealt with in the dream is an unconscious one,
and equally so also is the manner its solution. Our dreamer
has, as a matter of fact, the wish to get away from her mother—expressed
in the language of the unconscious, she wants
her mother to die. Now we know that a certain section of
the unconscious contains all our lost memories, and also all
those infantile impulses that cannot find any application in
adult life—a series, that is, of ruthless childish desires. We
may say that for the most part the unconscious bears an
infantile stamp; like the child's simple wish: "Daddy, when
Mummie is dead, will you marry me?" In a dream that
infantile expression of a wish is the substitute for a recent
wish to marry, which is painful to the dreamer for reasons still
undiscovered. This thought, or rather the seriousness of its
corresponding intention, is said to be "repressed into the
unconscious" and must there necessarily express itself in an
infantile way, for the material which is at the disposal of the
unconscious consists chiefly of infantile memories. As the
latest researches of the Zürich school have shown,[231] these
are not only infantile memories but also "racial" memories,
extending far beyond the limits of individual existence.
Important desires which have not been sufficiently gratified,
or have been "repressed," during the day find their
symbolic substitution in dreams. Because moral tendencies
usually predominate in waking hours, these ungratified
desires which strive to realise themselves symbolically in the
dream are, as rule, erotic ones. It is, therefore, somewhat
rash to tell dreams before one who understands, for the
symbolism is often extremely transparent to him who knows
the rules! The clearest in this respect are "anxiety-dreams"
which are so common, and which invariably symbolise a
strong erotic desire.
Often the dream apparently deals with quite irrelevant
details, thereby making a ridiculous impression; or else it is
so unintelligible that we are simply amazed at it, and accordingly
have to overcome considerable resistance in ourselves
before we can set to work seriously to unravel its symbolic
weaving by patient work. But when at last we penetrate into
its real meaning we find ourselves at a bound in the very
heart of the dreamer's secrets, and find to our astonishment
that an apparently senseless dream is quite full of sense, and
deals with extraordinarily important and serious problems of
the soul. Having acquired this knowledge we cannot refrain
from giving rather more credit to the old superstitions concerning
the meaning of dreams for which our rationalising
tendencies, until lately, had no use.
As Freud says: "Dream-analysis is the via regia to the
unconscious." Dream-analysis leads us into the deepest personal
secrets, and it is therefore an invaluable instrument in
the hand of the psychotherapist and educator. The objections
of the opponents of this method are based, as might be expected,
upon argument, which (setting aside undercurrents of
personal feeling) show the bias of present-day Scholasticism.
It so happens that it is just the analysis of dreams which
mercilessly uncovers the deceptive morals and hypocritical
affectations of man, and shows him the under side of his
character; can we wonder if many feel that their toes have
been rather painfully trodden upon? In connection with the
dream-analysis I am always reminded of the striking statue
of Carnal Pleasure in Bâle Cathedral, which shows in front
the sweet smile of archaic sculpture, but behind is covered
with toads and serpents. Dream-analysis reverses the figure
and for once shows the other side. The ethical value of this
reality-correction (Wirklichkeitscorrectur) cannot be disputed.
It is a painful but extremely useful operation, which makes
great demands on both physician and patient.
Psychoanalysis, in so far as we are considering it as a
therapeutic technique, consists mainly of the analysis of
many dreams; the dreams in the course of the treatment
bringing up successively the contents of the unconscious in
order that they may be subjected to the disinfecting power
of daylight, and in this process many a valuable thing believed
to have been lost is found again. It is not surprising
that for those persons who have adopted a certain pose
towards themselves, psychoanalysis is at times a real torture,
since in accordance with the old mystic saying, "Give all thou
hast, then only shalt thou receive," there is first the necessity
to get rid of almost all the dearly cherished illusions, to permit
the advent of something deeper, finer, and greater, for
only through the mystery of self-sacrifice is it possible to be
"born-again." It is indeed ancient wisdom which again
sees the daylight in psychoanalytic treatment, and it is a
curious thing that this kind of psychic re-education proves
to be necessary at the height of our modern culture; this
education which in more than one respect can be compared
to the technique of Socrates, even though psychoanalysis
penetrates to much greater depths.
We always find in a patient some conflict, which at a particular
point, is connected with the great problems of society;
so that when the analysis has arrived at this point the
apparently individual conflict is revealed as a universal
conflict of the environment and the epoch. Neurosis is thus,
strictly speaking, nothing but an individual attempt, however
unsuccessful, at a solution of the general problem; it must
be so, for a general problem, a "question," is not an end in
itself; it only exists in the hearts and heads of individual men
and women. The "question" which troubles the patient is—whether
you like it or not—the "sexual" question, or more
precisely, the problem of present-day sexual morality. His
increased demands upon life and the joy of life, upon glowing
reality, can stand the necessary limitations which reality
sets, but not the arbitrary, ill-supported prohibitions of
present-day morals, which would curb too much the creative
spirit rising up from the depths of the darkness of the beasts
that perish. For the neurotic has in him the soul of a child
that can but ill-endure arbitrary limitations of which it does
not see the meaning; it tries to adopt the moral standard,
but thereby only falls into deeper disunion and distress within
itself. On the one hand it tries to suppress itself, and on the
other to free itself—this is the struggle that is called Neurosis.
If this conflict were altogether clear to consciousness it would
of course never give rise to neurotic symptoms; these only
arise when we cannot see the other side of our character, and
the urgency of the problems of that other side. In these
circumstances symptoms arise which partially express what
is unrecognised in the soul. The symptom is, therefore, an
indirect expression of unrecognised desires, which, were they
conscious, would be in violent opposition to the sufferer's
moral views. As we have already said, this dark side of the
soul does not come within the purview of consciousness, and
therefore the patient cannot deal with it, correct it, resign
himself to it, or renounce it, for he cannot be said to possess
the unconscious impulses. By being repressed from the
hierarchy of the conscious soul, they have become autonomous
complexes which can be brought again under control
by analysis of the unconscious, though not without great
resistance. There are a great many patients whose great
boast it is that the erotic conflict does not exist for them; they
are sure that the sexual question is nonsense, that they have,
so to say, no sexuality. These people do not see that other
things of unknown origin cumber their path, such as
hysterical whims, underhand tricks, from which they make
themselves, or those nearest them, suffer; nervous stomach-catarrh,
pain here and there, irritability without reason, and
a whole host of nervous symptoms. All which things show
what is wrong with them, for relatively, only a few specially
favoured by fate, avoid the great conflict.
Analytical psychology has already been reproached with
setting at liberty the animal instincts of men, hitherto happily
repressed, and causing thereby untold harm. This childish
apprehension clearly proves how little trust is put in the
efficacy of present-day moral principles. It is pretended that
only morals can restrain men from dissoluteness; a much more
efficient regulator, however, is necessity, which sets much
more real and convincing bounds than any moral principles.
It is true that analysis liberates animal instincts, but not,
as some have said, just in order to let them loose, but rather
to make them available for higher application, in so far as
this is possible to the particular individual, and in so far
as such "sublimated" application is required. Under all
circumstances it is an advantage to be in full possession of
one's own personality, for otherwise the repressed desires will
get in the way in a most serious manner, and overthrow us
just in that place where we are most vulnerable. It is surely
better that a man learn to tolerate himself, and instead of
making war on himself convert his inner difficulties into real
experiences, rather than uselessly repeat them again and
again in phantasy. Then at least he lives, and does not
merely consume himself in fruitless struggles. But when
men are educated to recognise the baser side of their own
natures, it may be hoped they will learn to understand and
love their fellow-men better too. A decrease of hypocrisy
and an increase of tolerance towards oneself, can have
only good results in tolerance towards one's neighbours,
for men are only too easily disposed to extend to others
the unfairness and violence which they do to their own
natures.
Freud's theory of repression does, indeed, seem to
postulate the existence only of people who, being too moral,
are continually repressing the immorality of their natural
instincts. According to this idea, the immoral man who
allows his natural instincts an unbridled existence should be
proof against neurosis. But daily experience proves this is
obviously not the case; he may be just as neurotic as other
men. If we analyse him, we find that it is simply his
decency that has been repressed. Therefore, when an
immoral man is neurotic, he represents what Nietzsche
appropriately described as "the pale criminal," a man who
does not stand upon the same level as his deed.[232]
The opinion may be held, that in such a case the repressed
remnants of decency are merely infantile traditional legacies,
that impose unnecessary fetters upon natural instincts, for
which reason they should be eradicated. The principle
"écraser l'infâme" would be the natural culmination of
such an absolute let-instinct-live theory.[233] That would
obviously be quite phantastic and nonsensical. It should,
indeed, never be forgotten—and the Freudian School needs
this reminder—that morality was not brought down upon
tables of stone from Sinai and forced upon the people, but
that morality is a function of the human soul, which is as
old as humanity itself. Morality is not inculcated from without.
Man has it primarily within himself—not the law
indeed, but the essence of morals.
After all, does a more moral view-point exist than the
let-instinct-live theory? Is there a more heroic morality
than this? That is why Nietzsche, the heroic, is especially
partial to it. It is natural and inborn cowardice that
makes people say, "God preserve me from following my
instincts," thinking that they thus prove their high moral
standard. They do not understand that following one's
bent is really much too costly for them, too strenuous, too
dangerous, and finally it cuts somewhat against that sense of
decency which most people associate rather with taste than
with a categorical imperative. The unpardonable fault of
the let-instinct-live theory is, that it is much too heroic, too
idealogic for the multitude.
There is, therefore, probably no other way for the immoral
man but to accept the moral corrective of his unconscious,
just as he who is moral must come to terms as
best he may, with his demons of the netherworld. It cannot
be gainsaid that the Freudian School is so convinced of
the fundamental, and even exclusive importance of sexuality
in neurosis, that it has been courageous enough to face
the consequences of its convictions by heroically attacking
the sexual morality of the present day. Many different
opinions prevail upon this subject. What is significant is,
that the problem of sexual morality is being widely discussed
at the present time. This is doubtless both useful
and necessary, for hitherto we have not really had any
sexual morality at all, but merely a low barbaric view,
quite insufficiently differentiated. In the Middle Ages,
usury was considered absolutely despicable, for at that
time the morality of finance was not casuistically differentiated;
there was nothing but a kind of lump-morality.
So nowadays, there exists nothing but sexual morality in
the lump. A girl who has an illegitimate child is condemned,
without any inquiry as to whether she is a decent person
or not. Any form of love that has no legal sanction is
immoral, no matter whether it occurs between thoughtful
people of value or irresponsible scamps. People are still
barbarically hypnotised by the thing itself, to such an
extent that they forget the individual.
Therefore the discussion of and attack upon sexual
morality of the present day signifies at bottom, a moral
deed, constraining people towards a differentiated and really
ethical conception of the subject.
As already stated, Freud sees the great conflict between
the ego and natural instinct chiefly under its sexual aspect.
This aspect does exist, but a big query should be placed
behind its actuality. The question is whether what appears
in a sexual form must always essentially be sexuality? It
is conceivable that one instinct may disguise itself under
another. Freud himself has supplied several notable instances
of such a disguise, proving therewith, convincingly, that many
of the deeds and aims of human kind are, at bottom, nothing
but somewhat figurative expressions substituted, on account
of embarrassment, in place of important elementary things.
The substitution is not seen through on account of reasons
of mutual consideration. There is nothing to hinder certain
elementary things being also pushed conveniently into the
foreground, in place of more necessary but less pleasant
ones, under the illusion that the elementary things only are
really in question.
The theory of sexuality although one-sided is absolutely right
up to a certain point. It would, therefore, be just as false to
repudiate it as to accept it as universally valid.
III.—The other Viewpoint: the Will to Power.
We have so far considered the problem of the psychology
of unconscious processes mainly from the point of view of
Freud. We have thereby doubtless gained an inkling of a
real truth, which perhaps our pride, our consciousness of
civilisation, tries to deny, although something else in us
affirms it. This situation is extremely irritating to some
people, arousing resistances, and at the same time they
are terror-stricken by it, a fact which they are most
unwilling to acknowledge. There is something terrible in
admitting this conflict, for it is an acknowledgment of being
swayed by instinct. Has it ever been understood what
it means to confess to the sway of instinct? Nietzsche
desired to be so swayed and advocated it most seriously.
He even sacrificed himself throughout his whole life, with
rare passion, to the idea of the Superman, that is to the
idea of the man who, obeying his instincts, transcends even
his very self. And what was the course of his life? It
turned out as Nietzsche himself prophesied in the passage in
"Zarathustra" relating to the fatal fall of the rope-dancer,
of the man who did not want to be "surpassed." Zarathustra
says to the dying rope-dancer: "Thy soul will be
dead even sooner than thy body." And later, the dwarf says
to Zarathustra: "Oh, Zarathustra, thou stone of wisdom!
Thou threwest thyself high, but every thrown-stone must
fall! Condemned of thyself, and to thine own stoning: oh,
Zarathustra, far indeed threwest thou the stone—but upon
thyself will it recoil!"
When he cried his "ecce homo" over himself, it was
again too late, and the crucifixion of the soul began even
before the body was dead. He who thus taught yea-saying
to the instincts of life, must have his own career looked
at critically, in order to discover the effects of this teaching
upon the teacher. But if we consider his life from
this point of view, we must say that Nietzsche lived beyond
instinct, in the lofty atmosphere of heroic "sublimity."
This height could only be maintained by means of most
careful diet, choice climate and above all by many opiates.
Finally, the tension of this living shattered his brain. He
spoke of yea-saying, but lived the nay. His horror of people,
especially of the animal man, who lives by instinct, was too
great. He could not swallow the toad of which he so often
dreamt, and which he feared he must yet gulp down. The
Zarathustrian lion roared all the "higher" men, who craved
for life, back into the cavernous depths of the unconscious.
That is why his life does not convince us of the truth of his
teaching. The "higher man" should be able to sleep
without chloral, and be competent to live in Naumburg or
Basle despite "the fogs and shadows." He wants woman
and offspring; he needs to feel he has some value and
position in the herd, he longs for innumerable commonplaces,
and not least for what is humdrum: it is this instinct
that Nietzsche did not recognise; it is, in other words, the
natural animal instinct for life.
But how did he live if it was not from natural impulse?
Should Nietzsche really be accused of a practical denial of
his natural instincts? He would hardly agree to that;
indeed he might even prove, and that without difficulty,
that he really was following his instincts in the highest
sense. But we may well ask how is it possible that human
instincts could have led him so far from humanity, into
absolute isolation, into an aloofness from the herd which
he supported with loathing and disgust? One would have
thought that instinct would have united, would have coupled
and begot, that it would tend towards pleasure and good
cheer, towards gratification of all sensual desires. But we
have quite overlooked the fact that this is only one of the
possible directions of instinct. There exists not only the
instinct for the preservation of the species (the sexual
instinct), but also the instinct for the preservation of the self.
Nietzsche obviously speaks of this latter instinct, that is
of the will to power. Whatever other kinds of instinct may
exist are for him only a consequence of the will to power.
Viewed from the standpoint of Freud's sexual-psychology
this is a gross error, a misconception of biology, a bad
choice made by a decadent neurotic human being. For it
would be easy for any adherent of sexual psychology to
prove that all that was too lofty, too heroic, in Nietzsche's
conception of the world and of life, was nothing but a consequence
of the repression and misconception of "instinct,"
that is of the instinct that this psychology considers
fundamental.
This brings us to the question of perception, or rather it
were better to say of the various lenses through which the
world may be perceived. For it would hardly be permissible
to pronounce a judgment on a life like Nietzsche's. It was
lived with rare consistency, from the beginning to the fateful
end, in accordance with his underlying natural fundamental
instinct for power. It would hardly do to pronounce it to be
merely figurative, otherwise we should make the same unjust
condemnation that Nietzsche pronounced upon his polar
opposite Richard Wagner, of whom he said, "Everything in
him is false; what is genuine is hidden or disguised. He is
an actor, in every bad and good meaning of the word."
Why this judgment? Wagner is a precise representative of
that other fundamental instinct, which Nietzsche overlooked,
and upon which Freud's psychology is based. If we inquire
whether the other main instinct—that of power—was unconsidered
by Freud, we shall find that he has included it
under the name of the "ego instinct." But these ego
instincts drag out an obscure existence, according to his
psychology, alongside the broad, all-too-broad, development
of the sexual theme. In reality, however, human nature
wages a cruel and hardly-to-be-ended warfare between the
ego-principle and that of formless instinct. The ego is all
barriers; instinct, on the other hand, is without any limits.
Both principles are equally powerful. In a certain sense
men may account themselves fortunate in being conscious of
only one instinct: therefore he who is wise avoids getting
to know the other. But if, after all, he does get to know the
other instinct, he is indeed a lost man. For then he enters
upon the Faustian conflict. Goethe has shown us in the
first part of "Faust" what the acceptance of instinct
involves, and in the second part, what the acceptance of the
ego and of his gruesome unconscious world would signify.
Everything that is insignificant, petty, and cowardly in us
shrinks from it, and would avoid it—and there is one
admirable means of doing so. Namely, by discovering that
the other thing in us is "another fellow," a live man who
actually thinks, feels, does and desires all the things that are
despicable and odious. In this way the bogey is seized, and
the battle against him is begun to our satisfaction. Hence
arise, also, those chronic idiosyncrasies of which the history
of morals has preserved a few examples for us. The instance
of Nietzsche contra Wagner, already cited, is particularly
transparent. But ordinary human life is crammed full of
such cases. It is by these ingenuous devices that man saves
himself from the Faustian catastrophe for which he
evidently lacks both courage and strength. But a sincere
man knows that even his bitterest opponent, or any number
of them, does not by any means equal his one worst
adversary, that is his other self who "bides within his
breast." Nietzsche unconsciously had Wagner in himself,
that is why he envied him his Parsifal. But even worse, he
was a Saul and also had Paul within. That is why Nietzsche
became a stigmatised outcast of the Spirit; he had like
Saul to experience Christification when "the other self"
inspired him with his "ecce homo." Which man in him
"broke down before the cross," Wagner or Nietzsche?
It was ordained by destiny that one of Freud's earliest
pupils, Adler,[234] should formulate a view of neurosis as founded
exclusively upon the principle of power. It is interesting
and even fascinating to observe how totally different the
same things appear when viewed in another light. In order
to emphasise the main contrast, I would like at once to
draw attention to the fact that, according to Freud, everything
is a strictly causal consequence of previously-occurring
facts; Adler, on the contrary, sees everything as a
finally conditioned arrangement. To take a simple example:
A young woman begins to have attacks of terror. She
wakes at night from some nightmare with a piercing cry;
calming herself with difficulty, she clings to her husband, imploring
him not to leave her, making him repeat again and
again that he loves her, etc. Gradually a nervous asthma
develops, attacks of which also come on during the day.
In such a case, the Freudian system begins at once to
burrow in the inner causality of the illness: What did the
initial anxiety-dreams contain. She recalls wild bulls,
lions, tigers, bad men. What does the patient associate with
them? She told a story of something that had happened to
her when she was still single. It ran as follows: She was
staying at a summer-resort in the mountains, a great deal of
tennis was played, the usual acquaintances being made.
There was a young Italian who played particularly well,
and who also knew how to handle the guitar in the evenings.
A harmless flirtation developed, leading once to a moon-light
walk. On this occasion, the Italian temperament "unexpectedly"
broke through, running away with the young
man to the great terror of the unsuspecting girl. He
"looked at her with such a look," that she could never
forget it. This look follows her even in her dreams; the
wild animals that persecuted her had it. As a matter of fact,
does this look originally come from the Italian? Another
reminiscence enlightens us. The patient had lost her father
through an accident, when she was about fourteen years old.
The father was a man of the world, and travelled a great
deal. Not long before his death he took her to Paris, where,
among other things, they visited the Follies Bergères. Something
happened there that at the time made a deep impression
upon her. As they were leaving the theatre, a rouged
female suddenly pressed close up to her father in an
impertinent way. She looked at her father in fear as to
what he would do—and then she saw that look, that animal
glare in his eyes. An inexplicable something clung to her
day and night. From this moment her attitude to her
father was quite changed. At one instant she was irritable
and full of venomous moods, at another she loved him extravagantly;
then causeless fits of crying suddenly began,
and, for a time, whenever her father was at home, she was
tormented by terrible choking at table, with apparent attacks
of suffocation, which were usually followed by voicelessness
lasting from one to two days. When the news of her
father's sudden death arrived, she was overcome by uncontrolled
grief ending in hysterical laughter. But she
soon calmed down, her condition improving quickly, and
the neurotic symptoms disappearing almost completely. It
seemed as if a veil of forgetfulness had descended over the
past. Only the experience with the Italian roused something
in her of which she was afraid. She had broken off completely
with the young man. A few years later she married.
The present neurosis only began after the birth of her second
child, that is at the moment when she discovered that
her husband took a certain tender interest in another
woman.
This history raises a number of questions. For instance,
what do we know about the mother? It should be said of
her that she was very nervous, and had tried many kinds of
sanatoria and systems of cure. She also had symptoms of
fear and nervous asthma. The relations between her and
her husband had been very strained as far back as the
patient could remember. The mother did not understand
the father; the daughter always felt that she understood
him better. She was moreover her father's declared favourite,
being inwardly correspondingly cool towards her mother.
These facts are indications for a survey of the meaning
of the illness. Behind the present symptoms phantasies are
operative, connected in the first place with the young Italian,
but further clearly referring to the father, whose unhappy
marriage furnished the little daughter with an early opportunity
of acquiring a position that really should have been
filled by her mother. Behind this conquest there lies, of
course, a phantasy of being the woman who was really suited
to her father. The first attack of neurosis broke out at the
moment when this phantasy received a violent shock, presumably
similar to that the mother had once experienced (a
fact that was, however, unknown to the child). The symptoms
are easily comprehensible as the expression of disappointed
and rejected love. The choking is based upon a sensation
of tightening in the throat that is a well-known accompanying
phenomenon of violent effects which we cannot quite
"swallow." The metaphors of language often refer to similar
physiological occurrences. When the father died, it seemed
that her consciousness sorrowed deeply but her unconscious
laughed, after the manner of Till Eulenspiegel, who was
sad when he went downhill but was jolly when climbing
laboriously, happy in anticipation of what was coming.
When the father was at home the girl was low-spirited
and ill, but whenever he was away she felt much better.
Herein she resembles numerous husbands and wives who
as yet are mutually hiding from each other the secret that
they are not under all circumstances indispensable to one
another.
That the unconscious had some right to laugh was
shown by the subsequent period of good health. She succeeded
in letting all that had passed retire behind the trap-door.
The experience with the Italian, however, threatened
to bring the netherworld up again. But she quickly pulled
the handle and shut the door. She remained quite well until
the dragon of neurosis came creeping in, just when she
imagined herself to be already safely out of her troubles, in
the so-to-say perfected state of wife and mother. Sexual
psychology finds the cause of the neurosis in the fact that
the patient is not at bottom free from the father. This
forces her to resuscitate her former experience at the moment
when she discovered in the Italian the very same disturbing
something that had formerly made such a deep impression
upon her when perceived in her father. These recollections
were naturally revived by the analogous experience with
another man, and formed the starting-point of the neurosis.
It might therefore be said that the content and cause of the
neurosis lay in the conflict between the phantastic infantile-erotic
relation to the father on the one hand, and her love
for the husband on the other.
But if we now consider the course of the same illness
from the standpoint of the other instinct, that is, of the will
to power, a different complexion is put upon the matter.
Her parents' unhappy marriage afforded an excellent opportunity
for the exhibition of childish instinct for power. The
instinct for power desires that, under all circumstances, the
ego should be "on top," whether by straight or crooked
means. At all costs the integrity of the personality must be
preserved.
Every attempt, even what appears to be an attempt of
the surroundings, to bring about the slightest subjection of
the individual, is retorted to by the "masculine protest," as
Adler expresses it. The mother's disappointment and her
taking refuge in a neurosis brought about an opportunity for
the development of power and the attainment of a dominating
position. Love and excellence of conduct are, as everybody
knows, extremely well-adapted weapons for the purposes
of the instinct for power. Virtue is not seldom made the
means of forcing recognition from others. Already as a child
she knew how to obtain a privileged position with her father
by means of specially pleasing and amiable behaviour,
even occasionally to supplant her mother. This was
not out of love for her father, although love was a good
means of obtaining the coveted superiority. The hysterical
laughter at the death of her father is a striking proof of this
fact. One is inclined to consider such an explanation as a
deplorable depreciation of love, if not actually a malicious
insinuation. But let us pause a moment, reflect, and look
at the world as it really is. Have we never seen those innumerable
people who love, and believe in their love, only until
its purpose is achieved, and who then turn away as if they
had never loved? And, after all, does not Nature herself do
the same? In fact, is a "purposeless" love possible? If
so, it belongs to the highest human virtues, which confessedly
are extremely rare. Perhaps there is a general disposition to
reflect as little as possible about the nature and purpose of
love; discoveries might be made which would show the value
of one's own love to be less considerable than we had supposed.
However, it were dangerous to life to subtract anything from
the value of fundamental instincts, perhaps specially so
to-day, when we seem to have only a minimum of values left.
So the patient had an attack of hysterical laughter at the
death of her father; she had finally arrived at the top. It
was hysterical laughter, therefore a psychogenic symptom,
that is, something proceeding from unconscious motives and
not from those of the conscious ego. That is a difference
that should not be underrated, for it enables us to recognise
whence and how human virtues arise. Their contraries led
to hell, that is, in modern terms, to the unconscious, where
the counterparts of our conscious virtue have long been
gathering. That is why our very virtue makes us desire to
know nothing of the unconscious; indeed, it is even the
summit of virtuous wisdom to maintain that there is no unconscious
at all. But unfortunately we are all in a like predicament
with Brother Medardus in E. T. A. Hoffman's "The
Elixir of the Devil": somewhere or other there exists a
sinister, terrible brother, our own incarnate counterpart
bound to us by flesh and blood, who comprehends everything,
maliciously hoarding whatever we most desire should disappear
beneath the table.
The first outbreak of neurosis occurred in our patient at
the moment when she became aware of the fact that there
was something in her father which she did not control. And
then it dawned upon her of what use her mother's neurosis
was. When one meets with an obstacle that cannot be overcome
by sensible and charming means, there yet exists an
arrangement hitherto unknown to her which her mother had
been beforehand in discovering, and that is neurosis. That
is the reason why she now imitates her mother. But, the
astonished reader asks, what is supposed to be the use of
neurosis? What does it effect? Whoever has had a pronounced
case of neurosis in his immediate environment,
knows all that can be "effected" by a neurosis. In fact,
there is altogether no better means of tyrannising over a
whole household than by a striking neurosis. Heart attacks,
choking fits, convulsions of all kinds achieve enormous effects,
that can hardly be surpassed. Picture the fountains of pity
let loose, the sublime anxiety of the dear kind parents, the
hurried running to and fro of the servants, the incessant
sounding of the call to the telephone, the hasty arrival of
the physicians, the delicacy of the diagnosis, the detailed
examinations, the lengthy courses of treatment, the considerable
expense; and there, in the midst of all the uproar,
lies the innocent sufferer, to whom the household is even
overflowingly grateful, when he has recovered from the
"spasms."
The girl discovered this incomparable "arrangement"
(to use Adler's term), applying it on occasion when the father
was there with success. It became unnecessary when the
father died, for now she was finally uppermost. The Italian
was soon dismissed, because he laid too much stress upon
her femininity by an inopportune reminder of his manliness.
When the way opened to the possibility of a suitable marriage,
she loved, adapting herself without any complaint to the
deplorable rôle of the queen bee. As long as she held the
position of admired superiority, everything went splendidly.
But when her husband evinced a small outside interest, she
was obliged again to have recourse to the extremely efficacious
"arrangement," that is, to the indirect application of power,
because she had once again come upon that thing—this time
in her husband—that had already previously withdrawn her
father from her influence.
That is how the matter appears from the standpoint of
the psychology of power. I fear that the reader will feel as
did the Kadi, before whom the counsel of one party spoke
first. When he had ended, the Kadi said: "Thou hast
spoken well. I perceive that thou art right." Then spoke
the counsel for the other party, and when he had ended, the
Kadi scratched himself behind his ear and said: "Thou hast
spoken well. I perceive that thou also art right." There is
no doubt that the instinct for power plays a most extraordinary
part. It is true that the complexes of neurotic
symptoms are also exquisite "arrangements," that inexorably
realise their aims with incredible obstinacy and unequalled
cunning. The neurosis is final; that is, it is directed towards
an aim. Adler merits considerable distinction for having
demonstrated this.
Which of the two points of view is right? That is a
question that might well cause much brain-racking. For the
two explanations cannot be simply combined, being absolutely
contradictory. In one case, it is love and its course that is
the principal and decisive fact; and in the other case, it is
the power of the ego. In the first case the ego is merely a
kind of appendage to the passion for love; and in the second
love is upon occasion merely a means to the end, that of
gaining the upper hand. Whoever has the power of the ego
most at heart rebels against the former conception, whilst he
who cares most about love, will never be able to be reconciled
to the latter.
IV.—The Two Types of Psychology.
It is at this point that our most recent researches may
suitably be introduced. We have found, in the first place,
that there are two types of human psychology.[235] In the one
type the fundamental function is feeling, and in the other it
is thought. The one feels his way into the object, the other
thinks about it. The one adapts himself to his surroundings
by feeling, thinking coming later; whilst the other adapts
himself by means of thought, preceded by understanding.
The one who feels his way transfers himself to some extent
to the object; whilst the other withdraws himself from the
object to some extent, or pauses before it and reflects about
it. The first we called the extroverted type, because in the
main he goes outside himself to the object, the latter is
called the introverted type, because in a major degree he
turns away from the object, withdrawing into himself and
thinking about it.
These remarks only give the broadest outline of the two
types. But even this quite inadequate sketch enables us to
recognise that the two theories are the outcome of the contrast
between the two types. The sexual theory is promulgated
from the standpoint of feeling, the power theory from
that of thought; for the extrovert always places the accent
upon the feelings that are connected with the object, whereas
the introvert always puts the accent upon the ego, and is as
much detached by thought from the object as possible.
The irreconcilable contradictions of the two theories are now
to be understood, because both theories are the product of a one-sided
psychology. We find an instance of the contrast of
types in Nietzsche and Wagner. The dissension between
the two is due to the contrast in their ideas of psychological
values. What is most prized by the one is "affectation"
for the other, and is deemed false to the very core. Each
depreciates the other.
If we apply the sexual theory to an extrovert it tallies
with the facts of the case; but if we apply it to an introvert,
we simply maltreat and do violence to his psychology. The
same applies to the contrary case. The relative rightness of
the two hostile theories is explained by the fact that each one
draws its material from cases that prove the correctness of
the theory. There is a remnant of persons whom neither
theory fits—has not every rule its exceptions?
Criticism of both theories is indispensable. Recognition
of facts showed the necessity of overcoming their contrast,
and of evolving a theory that should do justice not only to
one or the other type, but equally to both.
Even the layman will to some extent have been struck by
the fact that in spite of their correctness both theories really
have a very unpleasant character and one not altogether
pertinent under all circumstances to the strict views of
science. The sexual theory is unæsthetic and unsatisfying
intellectually. The power theory, on the other hand, is
decidedly venomous. Both inevitably reduce high-flown
ideals, heroic attitudes, pathos, and deep convictions, in a
painful manner to a reality which is hackneyed and trite;
that is, if these theories are applied to such things—but
they should certainly not be so applied. Both theories are
really only therapeutic instruments out of the tool-chest of
the physician, whose sharp and merciless knife cuts out all
that is pernicious and diseased. It was just such a misapplication
of theory Nietzsche tried with his destructive
criticism of ideals. He regarded ideals as rampant diseases
of the soul of humanity; as indeed they really are. However,
in the hands of a good physician who really knows the
human soul, who, as Nietzsche says, "has a finger for the
slightest shade," who applies the treatment only to what is
really diseased in a soul—in such hands both theories prove
wholesome caustics. The application must be adapted to the
individual case. It is a dangerous therapy in the hands of
those who do not understand how to deal out the treatment.
These applications of criticism do good when there is something
that should and must be destroyed, dissolved or brought
low, but can easily damage what is being built up, or growing
in response to life's requirements.
Both theories might, therefore, be allowed to pass without
attack, in so far as they, like medicinal poisons, are entrusted
to the safe hands of the physician. But fate has ordained
that they should not remain solely in the care of those who
are qualified to use them. First of all they naturally became
known to the medical public. Every practising physician
has an indefinitely high percentage of neurotics among his
patients; he is therefore more or less obliged to look out for
new and suitable systems of treatment. He ultimately lights
upon the difficult method of psychoanalysis. He is at first
not competent for this, for how should he have learnt about
the secrets of the human soul? Certainly not through his
academic studies. The smattering of psychiatry that he
acquired for his examination barely suffices to enable him to
recognise the symptoms of the commonest mental disturbances,
and is far from giving him any sufficient insight into
the human soul. He is, therefore, practically quite unprepared
to apply the analytic method. An unusually far-reaching
knowledge of the soul is indeed necessary in order
to be able to apply this caustic treatment with advantage.
One must be in a position to differentiate elements that are
diseased and should be discarded, from those which are
valuable and should be retained. This is plainly a matter of
great difficulty. Any one who wishes to get a vivid impression
of the way in which a psychologysing physician may
unwarrantably violate a patient through an ignoble pseudo-scientific
prejudice, should read what Moebius has written
about Nietzsche. Or he may study various psychiatric
writings about the "case of Christ," and will surely not
hesitate to lament the lot of the patient whose fate it is to
meet with such "understanding." Psychoanalysis—greatly
to the regret of the medical man who, however, had not
accepted it—then passed over into the hands of the teaching
profession. This is right: for it is really, when rightly
understood and handled, an educational method, and one of
the social sciences. I would, however, never personally recommend
that Freud's purely sexual analysis should be exclusively
applied as an educational method. It might do much harm
because of its one-sidedness. In order to make psychoanalysis
available for educational purposes, all the metamorphoses
that have been the work of the last few years were
needed. The method had to be expanded from a general
psychological point of view.
But the two theories of which I have spoken are not
general theories. They are, as I have said, caustics to be
applied, so to say, "locally," for they are both destructive
and reductive. They explain to the patient that his symptoms
come from here or there, and are "nothing but" this or
that. It would be very unjust to wish to maintain that this
reductive theory is wrong in a given case, but when exalted
into a general explanation of the nature of the soul—whether
sick or healthy—a reductive theory becomes impossible. For
the human soul, whether it be sick or healthy, cannot be
merely reductively explained. Sexuality it is true is always
and everywhere present; the instinct for power certainly
does penetrate the heights and the depths of the soul; but
the soul itself is not solely either the one or the other, or
even both together, it is also that which it has made and will
make out of them both. A person is only half understood
when one knows how everything in him came about. Only
a dead man can be explained in terms of the past, a living
one must be otherwise explained. Life is not made up of
yesterdays only, nor is it understood nor explained by
reducing to-day to yesterday. Life has also a to-morrow,
and to-day is only understood if we are able to add the
indications of to-morrow to our knowledge of what was
yesterday. This holds good for all expressions of psychological
life, even for symptoms of disease. Symptoms of
neurosis are not merely consequences of causes that once
have been, whether they were "infantile sexuality" or "infantile
instinct for power." They are endeavours towards a
new synthesis of life. It must immediately be added, however,
they are endeavours that have miscarried. None the
less they are attempts; they represent the germinal striving
which has both meaning and value. They are embryos that
failed to achieve life, owing to unpropitious conditions of an
internal and external nature.
The reader will now probably propound the question:
What possible value and meaning can a neurosis have? Is
it not a most useless and repulsive pest of humanity? Can
being nervous do anybody good? Possibly, in a way similar
to that of flies and other vermin, which were created by
God in order that man might exercise the useful virtue of
patience. Stupid as this thought is from the standpoint of
natural science, it might be quite shrewd from that of psychology;
that is, if we substitute "nervous symptoms" in
the place of "vermin." Even Nietzsche, who had an uncommon
disdain for anything stupid and trite in thought,
more than once acknowledged how much he owed to his
illness. I have known more than one person who attributed
all his usefulness, and the justification for his existence even,
to a neurosis, that hindered all decisive stupidities of his life,
compelling him to lead an existence which developed what
was valuable in him; material that would have been crushed
had not the neurosis with its iron grip forced the man to
keep to the place where he really belonged. There are
people the meaning of whose life—whose real significance—lies
in the unconscious; in consciousness lies only all that is
vain and delusive. With others the reverse is the case, and
for them the neurosis has another significance. An extended
reduction is appropriate to the one, but emphatically unsuitable
to the other.
The reader will now, indeed, be inclined to agree to the
possibility of certain cases of neurosis having such a significance
but will nevertheless be ready to deny an expediency
that is so far-reaching and full of meaning to ordinary cases
of this illness. What value, for instance, might there be in
the afore-mentioned case of asthma and hysterical attacks of
fear? I confess that the value here is not so obvious, especially
if the case be looked at from the standpoint of a reductive
theory, that is, from that of a chronique scandaleuse of
the psychological development of an individual.
We perceive that both the theories hitherto discussed
have this one point in common, viz. they relentlessly disclose
everything that is valueless in people. They are
theories, or rather hypotheses, which explain wherein the
cause of the sickness lies. They are accordingly concerned
not with the values of a person, but with his lack of value
that makes itself evident in a disturbing way. From this
point of view, it is possible to be reconciled to both standpoints.
A "value" is a possibility by means of which energy may
attain development. But in so far as a negative value is also
a possibility through which energy may attain development—as
may, for instance, be clearly seen in the very considerable
manifestations of energy shown in neurosis—it also stands
for a value, albeit it brings about manifestations of energy
which are useless and harmful. In itself energy is neither
useful nor harmful, neither full of value nor lacking in it; it
is indifferent, everything depending upon the form into which
it enters. The form gives the quality to the energy. On
the other side, mere form without energy is also indifferent.
Therefore in order to bring about a positive value, on the one
hand energy is necessary, and upon the other a valuable
form. In a neurosis psychic energy is undoubtedly present,
but in an inferior and not realisable form. Both the analytic
methods that have been discussed above are of service only
as solvents of this inferior form. They prove themselves
good here as caustics.
By these methods we gain energy that is certainly free,
but which, being as yet unapplied, is indifferent. Hitherto
the supposition prevailed, that this newly acquired energy
was at the patient's conscious disposal, that he might apply
it in any way he liked. In so far as it was thought that the
energy was nothing but the sexual impulse, people spoke of
a sublimated application of the same, under the presumption
that the patient could, without further ado, transfer what
was thought of as sexual energy into a "sublimation"; that
is, into a non-sexual form of use. It might, for instance, be
transferred to the cultivation of an art, or to some other good
or useful activity. According to this concept, the patient
had the possibility of deciding, either arbitrarily or from
inclination, how his energy should be sublimated.
This conception may be accorded a justification for its
existence, in so far as it is at all possible for a human being
to assign a definite direction to his life, in which its course
should run. But we know that there is no human forethought
nor philosophy which can enable us to give our lives
a prescribed direction, except for quite a short distance.
Destiny lies before us, perplexing us, and teeming with
possibilities, and yet only one of these many possibilities is
our own particular right way. Who should presume to
designate the one possibility beforehand, even though he
have the most complete knowledge of his own character that
a man can have? Much can certainly be attained by means
of will-power. But having regard to the fate of certain
personalities with particularly strong wills, it is entirely
misleading for us to want at all costs to change our own fate
by power of will. Our will is a function that is directed
by our powers of reflection; it depends, therefore, upon how
our powers of reflection are constituted. In order to deserve
its name reflection must be rational, that is, according to
reason. But has it ever been proved, or can it ever be
proved, that life and destiny harmonise with our human
reason, that is, that they are exclusively rational? On the
contrary, we have ground for supposing that they are also
irrational, that is to say, that in the last resort they too are
based in regions beyond the human reason. The irrationality
of the great process is shown by its so-called accidentalness,
which perforce we ought to deny, since, obviously, we cannot
think of a process not being causally and necessarily conditioned.
But actually, accidentality exists everywhere, and
does so indeed so obtrusively that we might as well pocket
our causal philosophy! The rich store of life both is, and
is not, determined by law; it is at the same time rational
and irrational. Therefore, the reason and the will founded
upon it are only valid for a short distance. The further we
extend this rationally chosen direction, the surer we may be
that we are thereby excluding the irrational possibilities of
life, which have, however, just as good a right to be lived.
Aye, we even injure ourselves, since we cut off the wealth of
accidental eventualities by a too rigid and conscious direction.
It was certainly very expedient for man to be able to give his
life a direction; it would, therefore, be quite right to maintain
that the attainment of reasonableness was the greatest
achievement of mankind. But that is not to say that under
all circumstances, this must or will always continue to be
the case. The present fearful catastrophic world-war has
tremendously upset the most optimistic upholder of rationalism
and culture.
In 1913 Ostwald wrote[236] as follows: "The whole world
agrees that the present state of armed peace is untenable,
and is gradually becoming an impossible condition. It
demands tremendous sacrifices from individual nations far
surpassing the outlay for cultural purposes, without any
positive values being gained thereby. Therefore, if mankind
could discover ways and means of putting an end to these
preparations for a war that will never come, this conscripting
of a considerable part of the nation at the best and most
capable age for training for war purposes, if it could overcome
all the innumerable other injuries caused by the present
customs, such an enormous saving of energy would be effected,
that an undreamt-of development of the evolution of culture
might be expected. For like a hand-to-hand fight, war is the
oldest, and also the most unsuitable of all possible means of
solving a conflict between wills, being indeed accompanied by
the most deplorable waste of energy. The complete setting
aside of potential as well as of actual warfare is, therefore,
absolutely one of the most important tasks of culture in our
time, a real necessity from the point of view of energy."
But the irrationality of destiny ordained otherwise than
the rationality of the well-meaning thinker; since it not only
determined to use the piled-up weapons and soldiers, but
much more than that, it brought about a tremendous insane
devastation and unparalleled slaughter. From this catastrophe
humanity may possibly draw the conclusion, that only
one side of fate can be mastered by rational intention.
What can be said of mankind in general applies also to
individuals, for mankind as a whole consists of nothing but
individuals. And whatever the psychology of mankind is,
that is also the psychology of the individual. We are
experiencing in the world-war a fearful balancing-up with
the rational intentionality of organised culture. What is
called "will" in the individual, is termed "imperialism"
among nations, for the will is a demonstration of power over
fate, that is, exclusion of what is accidental. The organisation
of culture is a rational and "expedient" sublimation
of free and indifferent energies, brought about by design and
intention. The same is the case in the individual. And
just as the hope of a universal international organisation
of culture has experienced a cruel right-about through this
war, so also must the individual, in the course of his life,
often find that so-called "disposable" energies do not suffer
themselves to be disposed of.
I was once consulted by a business man of about forty-five,
whose case is a good illustration of the foregoing. He
was a typical American self-made man, who had worked
himself up from the bottom. He had been successful, and
had founded a very extensive business. He had also gradually
organised the business in such a way that he could
now retire from its management. He had indeed resigned
two years before I saw him. Until then he had only
lived for his business, concentrating all his energy upon it,
with that incredible intensity and one-sidedness that is so
peculiar to the successful American man of business. He
had bought himself a splendid country seat, where he
thought he would "live," which he imagined to mean
keeping horses, automobiles, playing golf and tennis, attending
and giving parties, etc. But he had reckoned without
his host. The energy that had become "disposable"
did not enter into these tempting prospects, but betook
itself capriciously to quite other ways. A couple of weeks
after the commencement of his longed-for life of bliss, he
began to brood over peculiar vague physical sensations. A
few more weeks sufficed to plunge him into an unprecedented
state of hypochondria. His nerves broke down completely.
He, who was physically an uncommonly strong
and exceptionally energetic man, became like a whining
child. And that put an end to all his paradise. He fell
from one apprehension to another, worrying himself almost
to death. He then consulted a celebrated specialist, who
immediately perceived quite rightly that there was nothing
wrong with the man but lack of employment. The patient
saw the sense of this, and betook himself to his former
position. But to his great disappointment no interest for
his business presented itself. Neither the application of
patience nor determination availed to help. His energy
would not by any means be forced back into the business.
His condition naturally became worse than before. Energy
that hitherto had been actively creative was now turned
back into himself, with fearfully destructive force. His
creative genius rose up, so to speak, in revolt against him,
and instead of, as before, producing great organisations in
the world, his demon now created equally clever systems of
hypochondriac fallacies, by which the man was absolutely
crushed. When I saw him, he was already a hopeless moral
ruin. I tried to make clear to him that such a gigantic
amount of energy might indeed be withdrawn from business,
but the problem remained as to where it should go. The
finest horses, the fastest automobiles, and the most amusing
parties are in themselves no inducement for energy, although
it is certainly quite rational to think that a man who has
devoted his whole life to serious work, has a natural right
to enjoy himself. This would necessarily be the case if
things happened "humanly" in destiny; first would come
work, then well-earned leisure. But things happen irrationally
and inconveniently enough, energy requires a congenial
channel, otherwise it is dammed up and becomes
destructive. My arguments met with no response, as was
indeed to be expected. Such an advanced case can only be
taken care of till death; it cannot be cured.
This case clearly illustrates the fact that it does not lie in
our power to transfer a "disposable" energy to whatever
rationally chosen object we may like. Exactly the same may
be said of those apparently available energies that are made
available by the fact that the psychoanalytical caustic has
destroyed their unsuitable forms. These energies can be
arbitrarily applied, as has already been said, at the very most
only for a short time. They resist following the rationally
presented possibilities for any length of time. Psychic energy
is indeed a fastidious thing, that insists upon having its
own conditions fulfilled. There may be ever so much energy
existing, but we cannot make it useful, so long as we do not
succeed in finding a congenial channel for it.
The whole of my research work for the last years has
been concentrated upon this question. The first stage of this
work was to discover the extent to which the two theories
discussed above were tenable. The second stage consisted
in the recognition of the fact, that these two theories correspond
to two opposite psychological types, which I have
designated the introversion and the extroversion types.
William James[237]
was struck by the existence of these two
types among thinkers. He differentiated them as the "tough-minded,"
and the "tender-minded." Similarly, Ostwald[238]
discovered an analogous difference in the classical and
romantic types among great scholars. I am not therefore
alone in my ideas about the types, as is testified by
mentioning only these two well-known names out of many
others. Historical researches have proved to me that not
a few of the great controversies in the history of thought
were based upon the contrast between the types. The
most significant case of this kind is the contrast between
nominalism and realism, which, beginning with the difference
between the Platonic and the Megarian schools,
descended to scholastic philosophy, where Abelard won the
immortal distinction of at least having ventured an attempt
to unite the two contradictory standpoints in conceptualism.
This conflict has continued down to the present day, where
it finds expression in the antagonism of spiritualism and
materialism.
Just as in the general history of thought, so too every
individual has a share in this contrast of types. Close
investigation proves that people of opposite types have an
unconscious predilection for marrying each other, that they
may mutually complement one another. Each type has
one function that is specially well developed, the introvert
using his thought as the function of adaptation, thinking
beforehand about how he shall act; whilst the extrovert, on
the contrary, feels his way into the object by acting. To
some extent he acts beforehand. Hence by daily application
the one has developed his thought, and the other his
feeling. In extreme cases the one limits himself to thinking
and observing, and the other to feeling and acting. It is
true that the introvert feels also, very deeply indeed, almost
too deeply; that is why an English investigator[239] has gone
so far as to describe his as "the emotional type." True,
the emotion is there, but it all remains inside, and the more
passionate and deeper his feeling is, the quieter is his
outward demeanour. As the proverb puts it, "Still waters
run deep." Similarly, the extrovert thinks also, but that
likewise mostly inside, whilst his feelings visibly go outside,
that is why he is held to be full of feeling whilst the introvert
is considered cold and dry. But as the feeling of the thinker
goes inwards, it is not developed as a function adapted to
external situations, but remains in a relatively undeveloped
state. Similarly the thinking of one who feels remains also
relatively undeveloped.
But if comparatively well-adapted individuals are under
consideration, then the introvert will normally be found to
have his feeling directed outwards, and the result may
be extraordinarily deceptive. He shows feelings; he is
amiable, sympathetic, even emotional. But a critical examination
of the expressions of his feelings reveals that they
are markedly conventional. They are not individualised.
He shows to every one, without any essential difference, the
same friendliness and the same sympathy; whilst the extrovert's
expressions of feeling are throughout delicately graded
and individualised. With the introvert the expression of
feelings is really a gesture that is artificially adopted and
conventional. Similarly, the extrovert may apparently think,
and that even very clearly and scientifically. But upon
closer investigation, his thoughts are found to be really
foreign property, merely conventional forms which have been
artificially acquired. They lack anything individual and
original, and are just as lukewarm and colourless as the
conventional feelings of the introvert. Under these conventional
disguises, quite other things are slumbering in
both, which occasionally when awakened by some overpowering
effect, suddenly break out to the astonishment and
horror of the environment.
Most civilised people incline more to one type than the
other. Taken together they would supplement each other
exceedingly well. That is why they are so apt to marry one
another, and so long as they are fully occupied with adapting
themselves to the necessities of life they suit one another
splendidly. But if the man has earned a competence, or if
a big legacy drop from the sky, terminating the external
urgencies of life, then they have time to occupy themselves
with each other. Until now they stood back to back, defending
themselves against want. But now they turn to each
other expecting to understand one another; and they make
the discovery that they have never understood one another.
They speak different languages. Thus the conflict between
the two types of psychology begins. This conflict is venomous,
violent and full of mutual depreciation, even if it be conducted
very quietly in the utmost intimacy. This is so because the
value of the one is the worthlessness of the other. The one,
starting from the standpoint of his valuable thinking, takes
for granted that the feelings of the other correspond to his
own inferior feelings, this because he knows absolutely nothing
of any other feelings. But the other, starting from the standpoint
of his valuable feelings, assumes that his partner has the
same inferior thought that he himself has. Evidently there
is plenty of work here for Goethe's Homunculus, who had
to find out "why husband and wife get on so badly." Now
as many cases of neurosis have a basis in such differences,
I, as a physician, found myself obliged to relieve the Homunculus
of some of his ungrateful task. I am glad to be able
to say that many a sufferer has been helped in grave difficulties
by the enlightenment I could give.
The third stage of the path of increasing understanding
consisted in formulating a theory of the psychology of types
which would be of practical use for the development of man.
Viewed from the newly-gained standpoint, there resulted,
first of all, a totally new theory of psychogenic disturbances.
The foundation of the facts remains the same: the first
hypothesis of every neurosis is the existence of an unconscious
conflict. According to Freud's theory, this is an erotic
conflict, or to speak more exactly, a battle of the moral consciousness
against the unconscious infantile sexual world of
phantasy and its transference to external objects. According
to Adler's theory, it is a battle of the superiority of the ego
against all oppressive influences, whether from inside or outside.
But the new idea asserts that the neurotic conflict always
takes place between the adapted function and the co-function that
is undifferentiated, and that lies to a great extent in the unconscious;
therefore in the case of the introvert, between thought
and unconscious feeling, but in that of the extrovert, between
feeling and unconscious thought.[240] Another theory of the
etiological moment results from this. If a man who naturally
adapts himself by thinking is faced by a demand that cannot
be met by thinking alone, but which requires differentiated
feeling, the traumatic or pathogenic conflict breaks out. On
the contrary, the critical moment comes to the man who
adapts by feeling when he is faced by a problem requiring
differentiated thought. The afore-mentioned case of the
business man is a clear example of this. The man was an
introvert, who all through his life had left every consideration
of sentiment in the background, that is, in the unconscious.
But when, for the first time in his life, he found himself in a
situation in which nothing could be done except by means of
differentiated feeling, he failed utterly. At the same time,
a very instructive phenomenon occurred; his unconscious
feelings manifested themselves as physical sensations of a
vague nature. This fact harmonises with a generally accepted
experience in our psychology, to wit, that undeveloped feelings
partake of the character of vague physical sensations, since
undifferentiated feelings are as yet identical with subjective
physical sensations. Differentiated feelings are of a more
"abstract" objective nature. This phenomenon may well
be the unconscious basis of the earliest statement of psychological
types that is known to me; namely, the three types
of the Valentinian School. They held the undifferentiated
type to be the so-called hylic (material) man. He was ranked
below the differentiated types, that is, the psychic (soulful)
man, who corresponds to the extroversion type; and
the pneumatic (spiritual) man, who corresponds to the
introversion type. For these gnostics the "pneumatikos"
stood of course the highest. Christianity, with its "psychic"
(spiritual) nature (principle of love), has indeed contested
this privilege of the gnosis. But even this page may be
turned in the course of time: since, if the signs of the age
are not deceptive, we are now in the great final settlement
of the Christian epoch. We know that, evolution not being
uniformly continuous, when one form of creation has been
outlived, the evolutionary tendency harks back to resume
that form which, after having made a beginning, was left
behind in an undeveloped state.
After this brief digression to generalities, let us return to
our case. If a similar disturbance were to take place in an
extrovert, he would have what are called hysterical symptoms,
that is, symptoms that are also of an apparently physical
nature, which, as our theory indicates, would this time represent
the patient's unconscious undifferentiated thought. As
a matter of fact, we find also a widespread region of phantasy
as the basis of hysterical symptoms, of which many have
been described in detail in the literature of the subject. They
are phantasies of a pronounced sexual, that is physical complexion.
But in reality they are undifferentiated thoughts,
which in common with the undifferentiated feelings are to
some extent physical, and therefore appear as what may be
called physical symptoms.
By taking up again here the thread that was dropped
before, we can now clearly see why it is precisely in the
neurosis that those values which are most lacking to the
individual lie hidden. We might also now return to
the case of the young woman, and apply to it the newly-won
insight. She is an extrovert with an hysterical
neurosis. Let us suppose that this patient had been
"analysed," that is, that the treatment having made it
clear to her what kind of unconscious thoughts lay behind
her symptoms, she had regained possession of the psychic
energy which by becoming unconscious had constituted the
strength of the symptoms. The following practical question
now arises: what can be done with the so-called available
energy? It would be rational, and in accordance with the
psychological type of the invalid, to extrovert this energy
again, that is to transfer it to an object, as for instance to
philanthropic or some other useful activities. This way
is possible only in exceptional cases—there are energetic
natures who do not shrink from care and trouble in a
useful cause, there are people who care immensely about
just such occupations—otherwise it is not feasible. For it
must not be forgotten, that in the case under consideration,
the libido (that is the technical expression for the psychic
energy) has found its object already unconsciously in the
young Italian, or an appropriate real human substitute.
Under these circumstances such a desirable sublimation,
however natural, is out of the question. For the object of
the energy usually affords a better channel than an ethical
activity, however attractive. Unfortunately there are many
people who always speak of a person, not as he is, but as
he would be if their desires for him were realised. But the
physician is necessarily concerned with the actual personality,
which will obdurately remain the same, until its real character
has been recognised on all sides. An analysis must
necessarily be based upon the recognition of naked reality,
not upon any arbitrarily selected phantasies about a person,
however desirable.
The fact is that the so-called available energy unfortunately
cannot be arbitrarily directed as desired. It follows
its own channel, one which it had already found, even before
we had quite released it from its bondage to the unadapted
form. For we now make the discovery that the phantasies
which were formerly occupied with the young Italian, have
been transferred to the physician himself. The physician
has therefore himself become the object of the unconscious
libido. If this is not the case, or if the patient will on no
account acknowledge the fact of transference, or again, if
the physician either does not understand the phenomenon at
all, or does so wrongly, then violent resistances make their
appearance, which aim at completely breaking off relations
with the doctor. At this point patients leave and look for
another doctor or for people who "understand" them; or if
they hopelessly relinquish this search they go to pieces.
But if the transference to the physician takes place
and is accepted, a natural channel has thereby been found,
which not only replaces the former, but also makes a
discharge of the energic process possible, and provides a
course that is relatively free from conflict. Therefore if the
libido is allowed its natural course, it will of its own accord
find its way into the transference. Where this is not the
case, it is always a question either of arbitrary rebellion
against the laws of Nature, or of some deficiency in the
physician's work.
Into the transference every conceivable infantile phantasy
is first of all projected; these must then be subjected to the
caustic, that is, analytically dissolved. This was formerly
called the dissolution of the transference. Thereby the energy
is freed from this unsuitable form also, and once again
we are confronted by the problem of disposable energy.
We shall find that an object affording the most favourable
channel has been chosen by Nature even before our search
began.
V.—The Personal and the Impersonal Unconscious
The fourth stage of our newly won insight is now reached.
The analytical dissolution of the infantile transference phantasies
was continued until it became sufficiently clear, even
to the patient, that he was making his physician into father,
mother, uncle, guardian, teacher, friend or any other kind
of surrogate for parental authority conceivable. But, as
experience is constantly proving, further phantasies make
their appearance, representing the physician as saviour or as
some other divine being. Obviously this is in flagrant contradiction
to the sane reasoning of consciousness. Moreover,
it appears that these divine attributes considerably overstep
the bounds of the Christian conception in which we grew
up. They even assume the guise of heathen allurements, and,
for instance, not infrequently assume the form of animals.
The transference is in itself nothing but a projection of
unconscious contents on to the analyst. At first it is the so-called
superficial contents that are projected. During this
stage the physician is interesting as a possible lover (somewhat
after the manner of the young Italian in our case).
Later on, he is a representation of the father, and is the
symbol either of kindness or of severity, according to what
the patient formerly imputed to his real father. Occasionally
the doctor even appears to the patient as a kind of mother,
which, though sounding somewhat strange, really lies well
within the bounds of possibility. All these projections of
phantasy have an underlying basis of personal reminiscences.
But presently other forms of phantasy appear, bearing an
extravagantly effusive and impossible character. The physician
now appears to be endowed with uncanny qualities; he
may be either a wizard or a demoniacal criminal, or his
counterpart of virtue, a saviour. Later on he appears as an
incomprehensible mixture of both sides. It should be clearly
understood that the physician does not appear to the patient's
consciousness in these forms, but that phantasies come up to
the surface representing the doctor in this guise. If, as is
not seldom the case, the patient cannot forthwith perceive
that his view of the physician is a projection of his own
unconscious, then he will probably behave rather foolishly.
Difficulties often arise at this stage of analysis, making severe
demands upon the good will and patience of both physician
and patient. In a few exceptional cases, a patient cannot
refrain from disseminating the stupidest tales about the
physician. Such people cannot get it into their head that, as
a matter of fact, their phantasies originate in themselves, and
have nothing or very little to do with the physician's actual
character. The pertinacity of this error arises from the
circumstance that there is no foundation of personal memory
for this particular kind of projection. It is occasionally
possible to prove that similar phantasies, for which neither
parent gave reasonable occasion, had at some time in childhood
been attached to the father or mother.
In one of his shorter books, Freud has shown how
Leonardo da Vinci was influenced in his later life by the fact
that he had two mothers. The fact of the two mothers (or
the double descent) had indeed a reality in Leonardo's case,
but it plays a part with other artists as well. Benvenuto
Cellini had this phantasy of a double descent. It is unquestionably
a mythological theme; many heroes of legend have
two mothers. The phantasy is not founded upon the actual
fact of the hero's having two mothers, but is a widespread
"primordial image" belonging to the secrets of the universal
history of the human mind. It does not belong to the sphere
of personal reminiscences.
In every individual, in addition to the personal memories,
there are also, in Jacob Burckhardt's excellent phrase, the
great "primordial images," the inherited potentialities of
human imagination. They have always been potentially
latent in the structure of the brain. The fact of this inheritance
also explains the otherwise incredible phenomenon, that
the matter and themes of certain legends are met with all
the world over in identical forms. Further, it explains how
it is that persons who are mentally deranged are able to
produce precisely the same images and associations that are
known to us from the study of old manuscripts. I gave some
examples of this in my book on "The Psychology of the Unconscious."
I do not hereby assert the transmission of representations,
but only of the possibility of such representations,
which is a very different thing.
It is therefore in this further stage of the transference
that those phantasies are produced that have no basis in
personal reminiscence. Here it is a matter of the manifestation
of the deeper layers of the unconscious, where the
primordial universally-human images are lying dormant.
This discovery leads to the fourth stage of the new conception:
that is, to the recognition of a differentiation in the
unconscious itself. We are now obliged to differentiate a
personal unconscious and an impersonal or super-personal
unconscious. We also term the latter the absolute or collective
unconscious, because it is quite detached from what is
personal, and because it is also absolutely universal, wherefore
its contents may be found in every head, which of
course is not the case with the personal contents.
The primordial images are quite the most ancient, universal,
and deep thoughts of mankind. They are feeling just
as much as thought, and might therefore be termed original
thought-feelings.
We have therewith now found the object selected by the
libido when it was freed from the personal-infantile form of
transference. Namely, that it sinks down into the depths of
the unconscious, reviving what has been dormant there from
immemorial ages. It has discovered the buried treasure out
of which mankind from time to time has drawn, raising
thence its gods and demons, and all those finest and most
tremendous thoughts without which man would cease to be
man.
Let us take as an example one of the greatest thoughts
to which the nineteenth century gave birth—the idea of the
conservation of energy. Robert Mayer is the originator of this
idea. He was a physician, not a physicist nor a natural
philosopher, to either of whom the creation of such an idea
would have been more germane. It is of great importance
to realise that in the real sense of the word, Robert Mayer's
idea was not created. Neither was it brought about through
the fusion of the then-existent conceptions and scientific
hypotheses. It grew in the originator, and was conditioned
by him. Robert Mayer wrote (1841) to Griesinger as
follows: "I by no means concocted the theory at the writing-desk."
He goes on to report about certain physiological
investigations that he made in 1840-41 as doctor on board
ship, and continues: "If one wishes to be enlightened about
physiological matters, some knowledge of physical processes
is indispensable, unless one prefers to work from the metaphysical
side, which is immensely distasteful to me. I
therefore kept to physics, clinging to the subject with such
ardour that, although it may well seem ridiculous to say so,
I cared little about what part of the world we were in. I
preferred to remain aboard where I could work uninterruptedly,
and where many an hour gave me such a feeling
of being inspired in a way I can never remember having
experienced either before or since.
"A few flashes of thought that thrilled through me"—this
was in the harbour of Surabaja—"were immediately
diligently pursued, leading again in their turn to new
subjects. Those times are passed, but subsequent quiet
examination of what then emerged, has taught me that it was a
truth which can not only be subjectively felt, but also proved
objectively; whether this could be done by one who has so
little knowledge of physics as I have, is a matter which
obviously, I must leave undecided."
Heim, in his book on Energetics, expresses the opinion:
"that Robert Mayer's new thought did not gradually detach
itself by dint of revolving it in his mind, from the conceptions
of power transmitted from the past, but belongs to
those ideas that are intuitively conceived, which, originating in
other spheres of a mental kind, surprise thought, as it were,
compelling it to transform its inherited notions conformably
with those ideas."
The question now arises, whence did this new idea that
forced itself upon consciousness with such elemental power
spring? And whence did it derive such strength that it
was able to effect consciousness so forcibly that it could
be completely withdrawn from all the manifold impressions
of a first voyage in the tropics? These questions are not
easy to answer. If we apply our theory to this case the
explanation would run as follows: The idea of energy and of
its conservation must be a primordial image that lay dormant in
the absolute unconscious. This conclusion obviously compels
us to prove that a similar primordial image did really exist
in the history of the human mind, and continued to be
effective through thousands of years. As a matter of fact,
evidence of this can be produced without difficulty. Primitive
religions, in the most dissimilar regions of the earth, are
founded upon this image. These are the so-called dynamistic
religions, whose sole and distinctive thought is the
existence of some universal magical power upon which
everything depends. The well-known English scholars,
Taylor and Frazer, both wrongly interpreted this idea as
animism. Primitive peoples do not mean souls or spirits
by their conception of power, but in reality something that
the American investigator Lovejoy[241] most aptly terms "primitive
energetics."
In an investigation appertaining to this subject, I showed
that this notion comprises the idea of soul, spirit, God, health,
physical strength, fertility, magic power, influence, might,
prestige, curative remedies, as well as certain states of mind
which are characterised by the setting loose of affects.
Among certain Polynesians "Melungu" (that is this primitive
concept of energy) is spirit, soul, demoniacal being, magic,
prestige. If anything astonishing happens, the people cry
"Melungu." This notion of power is also the first rendering
of the concept of God among primitive peoples. The
image has undergone many variations in the course of
history. In the Old Testament this magic power is seen in
the burning bush, and shines in the face of Moses. It is
manifest in the Gospels as the outpouring of the Holy Spirit,
as cloven tongues of fire from heaven. In Heraclitus it
appears as universal energy, as "eternally living fire";
for the Persians it is the fiery brightness, haôma, divine
mercy; for the Stoics it is heimarmene, the power of
destiny. In mediæval legend it is seen as the aura, or the
halo of the saint. It blazes forth in great flames from the
hut where the saint is lying in ecstasy. The saints reflect
the sum of this power, the storehouse of light, in their faces.
According to ancient concepts this power is the soul itself;
the idea of its immortality contains that of its conservation.
The Buddhistic and primitive conception of the metempsychosis
(transmigration of souls) contains the idea of its
unlimited capacity for transformation under constant conservation.
This thought has obviously therefore been imprinted on
the human brain for untold ages. That is why it lies ready
in the unconscious of every one. Only certain conditions
are needed in order to let it appear again. These conditions
were obviously fulfilled in the example of Robert Mayer.
The greatest and best thoughts form themselves upon these
primordial images, which are the ancient common property
of humanity.
After this instance of the nascence of new ideas out of
the treasury of primordial images, we will resume the further
delineation of the process of transference. It was seen that
the libido of the patient seizes upon its new object in those
apparently preposterous and peculiar phantasies, namely
the contents of the absolute unconscious. As I already observed,
the unacknowledged projection of primordial images
upon the physician constitutes a danger for further treatment
which should not be undervalued. The images contain
not only every beautiful and great thought and feeling of
humanity, but also every deed of shame and devilry of which
human beings have ever been capable. Now, if the patient
cannot differentiate the physician's personality from these
projections, there is an end to mutual understanding, and
human relations become impossible. If however the patient
avoids this Charybdis, he falls into the Scylla of introjecting
these images, that is, he does not ascribe their qualities to
the physician but to himself. This peril is just as great.
If he projects, he vacillates between an extravagant and
morbid deification, and a spiteful contempt of his physician.
In the case of introjection, he falls into a ludicrous self-deification
or moral self-laceration. The mistake that he
makes in both cases consists in attributing the contents of
the absolute unconscious to himself personally. Thus he
makes himself into both God and devil. This is the psychological
reason why human beings have always needed demons,
and could not live without gods. There is the exception, of
course, of a few specially clever specimens of the homo occidentalis
of yesterday and the day before—supermen whose
God is dead, wherefore they themselves become gods. There
is also the example of Nietzsche, who confessedly required
chloral in order to be able to exist. These supermen even
become rationalistic petty gods, with thick skulls and cold
hearts. The concept of God is simply a necessary psychological
function of an irrational nature that has altogether
no connection with the question of God's existence. This
latter question is one of the most fatuous that can be put.
It is indeed sufficiently evident that man cannot conceive
a God, much less realise that he actually exists, so little is
he able to imagine a process that is not causally conditioned.
Theoretically, of course, no accidentality can exist, that is
certain, once and for all. On the other hand, in practical
life, we are continually stumbling upon accidental happenings.
It is similar with the existence of God; it is once and
for all an absurd problem. But the consensus gentium has
spoken of gods for æons past, and will be speaking of them
in æons to come. Beautiful and perfect as man may think
his reason, he may nevertheless assure himself that it is
only one of the possible mental functions, coinciding merely
with the corresponding side of the phenomena of the universe.
All around is the irrational, that which is not congruous with
reason. And this irrationalism is likewise a psychological
function, namely the absolute unconscious; whilst the
function of consciousness is essentially rational. Consciousness
must have rational relations, first of all in order to
discover some order in the chaos of disordered individual
phenomena in the universe; and secondly, in order to labour
at whatever lies within the area of human possibility. We
are laudably and usefully endeavouring to exterminate so
far as is practicable the chaos of what is irrational, both in
and around us. Apparently we are making considerable
progress with this process. A mental patient once said to
me, "Last night, doctor, I disinfected the whole heavens
with sublimate, and yet did not discover any God." Something
of the kind has happened to us. Heraclitus, the
ancient, that really very wise man, discovered the most
wonderful of all psychological laws, namely, the regulating
function of antithesis. He termed this "enantiodromia"
(clashing together), by which he meant that at some time
everything meets with its opposite. (Here I beg to remind
the reader of the case of the American business man, which
shows the enantiodromia most distinctly.) The rational
attitude of civilisation necessarily terminates in its antithesis,
namely in the irrational devastation of civilisation. Man
may not identify himself with reason, for he is not wholly a
rational being, and never can or ever will become one. That
is a fact of which every pedant of civilisation should take note.
What is irrational cannot and may not be stamped out. The
gods cannot and may not die. Woe betide those men who have
disinfected heaven with rationalism; God-Almightiness has
entered into them, because they would not admit God as an
absolute function. They are identified with their unconscious,
and are therefore its sport. (For where God is nearest, there
the danger is greatest.) Is the present war supposed to be a
war of economics? That is a neutral American "business-like"
standpoint, that does not take the blood, tears, unprecedented
deeds of infamy and great distress into account,
and which completely ignores the fact that this war is really
an epidemic of madness. The several parties project their
unconscious upon each other, hence the mad confusion of
ideas in every head. This is the enantiodromia that occurs
in the individual life of man, as well as in that of peoples.
The legend of the Tower of Babel turns out to be a tenable
truth.
Only he escapes from the cruel law of enantiodromia who
knows how to separate himself from the unconscious—not by
repressing it, for then it seizes him from behind—but by presenting
it visibly to himself as something that is totally different
from him.
This gives the solution of the Scylla and Charybdis
problem which I described above. The patient must learn
to differentiate in his thoughts between what is the ego and
what is the non-ego. The latter is the collective psyche or
absolute unconscious. By this means he will acquire the
material with which henceforward, for a long time, he will
have to come to terms. Thereby the energy, that before was
invested in unsuitable pathological forms, will have found its
appropriate sphere. In order to differentiate the psychological
ego from the psychological non-ego, man must necessarily
stand upon firm feet in his ego-function; that is, he must fulfil
his duty towards life completely, so that he may in every respect
be a vitally living member of human society. Anything that he
neglects in this respect descends into the unconscious and
reinforces its position, so that he is in danger of being
swallowed up by it, if his ego-function is not established.
Severe penalties are attached to that. As indicated by old
Synesius, the "spiritualised soul (pneumatike psyché) becomes
god and demon, a state in which it suffers the divine
penalties," that is, it suffers being torn asunder by the
Zagreus, an experience which Nietzsche also underwent at
the beginning of his insanity, where, in "Ecce Homo," the
God whom he was despairingly resisting in front assailed
him from behind. Enantiodromia is the being torn asunder
into the pairs of opposites, which opposites are only proper
to "the god," and therefore also to the deified man, who owes
likeness to God to his having prevailed over his gods.
VI.—The Synthetic or Constructive Method
We now reach the fifth stage of progressive understanding.
The coming to terms with the unconscious is a technical
performance to which the name of transcendental function has
been given because a new function is produced, which being
based upon both real and imaginary, or rational and irrational
data, makes a bridge between the rational and irrational
functions of the psyche. The basis of the transcendental
function is a new method of treating psychological materials
such as dreams and phantasies. The theories previously
discussed were based upon an exclusively causal-reductive
procedure, which reduces the dream or phantasy to its component
reminiscences, and the instinctive processes that
underlie them. I have already stated the justification as
well as the limitations of this proceeding. It reaches the
end of its usefulness at the moment when the dream symbols
no longer permit of a reduction to personal reminiscences or
aspirations; that is when the images of the absolute unconscious
begin to be produced. It would be quite inappropriate
to reduce these collective ideas to what is personal, and not
only inappropriate but even actually pernicious, a fact that
has been impressed upon me by disagreeable experiences.
The values of the images or symbols of the absolute unconscious
are only disclosed if they are subjected to a synthetic
(not analytical) treatment. Just as analysis (the causally
reductive procedure) disintegrates the symbol into its components,
so the synthetic procedure synthesises the symbol into
a universal and comprehensible expression. The synthetic
procedure is by no means easy; I will therefore give an
example, by means of which I can explain the whole process.
A patient had the following dream. She was just at the
critical juncture between the analysis of the personal unconscious
and the commencement of the production of the absolute
unconscious. "I am on the point of crossing a broad
and rapid stream. There is no bridge, but I find a ford where
I can cross. As I am just on the point of doing so, a big crab
that lay hidden in the water seizes my foot and does not let it go."
She awoke in fear. Associations with the dream were as
follows:—
1. Stream.—It forms a boundary that is difficult to cross.
I must surmount an obstacle; I suppose it refers to the fact
that I am getting on very slowly; I suppose I ought to reach
the other side.
2. Ford.—An opportunity for getting safely across, a
possible way; otherwise the stream would be too difficult.
The possibility of surmounting the obstacle lies in the analytical
treatment.
3. Crab.—The crab lay quite hidden in the water; I did
not see it at first. Cancer is a fearful incurable illness. (A
series of recollections of Mrs. X., who died of cancer, followed.)
I am afraid of this illness. A crab[242] is an animal that walks
backwards; obviously it wants to pull me down into the
stream. It clutched me in a gruesome way, and I was awfully
afraid. What prevents my getting across? Oh yes, I had
another great scene with my friend.
It must be explained that there is something special about
this friendship. We have here an ardent attachment, bordering
on the homosexual. It has been going on for years.
The friend is in many respects like the patient, and is also
nervous. They have pronounced artistic interests in common.
But the patient is the stronger personality of the two. They
are both nervous, and their mutual relation being too engrossing,
cuts them off too much from other possibilities of
life. In spite of an "ideal friendship" they have at times
tremendous scenes, owing to their mutual irritability. Evidently
the unconscious wishes to put some distance between
them, but they refuse to pay attention to it. A "scene"
usually begins by one of them finding that she does not yet
understand the other well enough, and that they ought to talk
more openly together; whereupon both make enthusiastic
endeavours to talk things out. Misunderstandings supervene
almost directly, provoking fresh scenes, each worse than the
last. The quarrel was in its way and faute de mieux a pleasure
to both of them, which they were unwilling to relinquish. My
patient, especially, was unable for a very long time to renounce
the sweet pain of not being understood by her best
friend, although, as she said, every scene "tired her to
death." She had long since realised that this friendship had
become superfluous, and that it was only from mistaken
ambition that she clung to the belief that she could yet make
something ideal out of it. The patient had formerly had an
extravagant, fantastic relation to her mother, and after her
mother's death had transferred her feelings to her friend.
VII.—Analytical (Causal-reductive) Interpretation.[243]
This interpretation may be summed up in a sentence: "I
understand that I ought to get to the other side of the stream
(that is, give up the relation with the friend), but I would
much rather that my friend did not let me out of her claws
(embrace)." That is, expressed as an infantile wish: Mother
would like to attract me to herself again by the well-known
mode of enthusiastic embraces. The incompatibility of the
wish lies in the strong under-current of homosexuality, the existence
of which had been abundantly proved by obvious facts.
The crab seizes her foot. The patient having big, "manly"
feet, she plays a masculine part towards her friend, having
also corresponding sexual fantasies. The foot is known to
have phallic significance. (Detailed evidence of this is to be
found in Aigremont's writings.) The complete interpretation
would run as follows: The reason why she will not let her
friend go is because her unconscious homosexual wishes are
set upon her. As these wishes are morally and æsthetically
incompatible with the tendency of the conscious personality,
they are repressed, and therefore unconscious. The fear is
an expression of this repressed wish.
This interpretation is exceedingly depreciative of the
patient's high-pitched conscious ideal of friendship. It is true
at this point in analysis she would no longer have taken this
interpretation amiss. Some time before certain facts had
sufficiently convinced her of her homosexual tendency, so
that she was able to acknowledge the existence of this inclination
frankly, although it was of course painful for her to do so.
Therefore if, at this stage of the treatment, I had informed
her that this was the interpretation, I should not have
encountered resistances from her. She had already overcome
the painfulness of this unwelcome tendency by understanding
it. But she would have said to me: "Why do we
analyse this dream at all? It is only repeating what I have
now known for a long while." It is true this interpretation
does not reveal anything new to the patient, and it is therefore
uninteresting and ineffective. This kind of interpretation
would at the beginning of the treatment have been impossible
in this case, because the patient's prudishness would under no
circumstances have acknowledged it. The "venom" of understanding
had to be instilled very carefully, and in the smallest
of doses, until the patient gradually became more enlightened.
But when the analytical or causal-reductive interpretation,
instead of furnishing something new, persistently brings the
same material in different variations, then the moment has
come when another mode of interpretation is called for. The
causal-reductive procedure has certain drawbacks. First, it
does not take strictly into account the patient's associations—e.g.
in this case the association of the illness ("cancer") with
"crab" (Krebs = cancer). Second, the particular choice of
symbol remains obscure. For instance, why does the friend-mother
appear as a crab? A prettier and more plastic representation
would have been a nymph. ("Half dragged she
him, half sank he down,"[244] etc.) An octopus, a dragon, a
serpent, or a fish could have performed the same services.
Third, the causal-reductive procedure completely ignores that
a dream is a subjective phenomenon, and that consequently
even an exhaustive interpretation can never connect the crab
with the mother or the friend, but only with the dreamer's
idea of them. The whole dream is the dreamer; she is the
stream, the crossing, and the crab. That is to say these
details are expressions of psychological conditions and tendencies
in the subject's unconscious.
I have therefore introduced the following terminology.
I call interpretations in which the dream symbols are treated
as representations of the real objects interpretation upon the
objective plane. The opposite interpretation is that which
connects every fragment of the dream (e.g. all the persons
who do anything) with the dreamer himself. This is interpretation
upon the subjective plane. Objective interpretation is
analytical, because it dissects the dream contents into complexes
of reminiscence, and finds their relation to real conditions.
Subjective interpretation is synthetic, because it
detaches the fundamental underlying complexes of reminiscence
from their actual causes, regarding them as tendencies
or parts of the subject, and reintegrating them with the
subject. (In experiencing something I do not merely experience
the object, but in the first place myself, although this
is only the case if I render myself account of the experience.)
The synthetic or constructive procedure of interpretation[245]
is therefore based upon the version on the subjective plane.
VIII.—The Synthetic (Constructive) Interpretation.
The patient is unconscious of the fact that it is in herself
that the obstacle lies which should be overcome, the boundary
that is difficult to cross which impedes further progress.
But it is possible to cross the boundary. It is true that just
here a peculiar and unexpected peril threatens, namely, something
"animal" (non-human or super-human) which moves
backwards and goes into the depths of the stream, wanting to
draw down the dreamer as a whole personality. This danger
is, moreover, like the deadly disease of cancer, which begins
secretly somewhere, and is incurable (overpowering). The
patient imagines that her friend hinders her, pulling her
down. So long as this is her belief she must perforce influence
her friend, "draw her up," teach, improve, educate
her, and make futile and impractically idealistic efforts in
order to avoid being dragged down herself. Of course, the
friend makes similar endeavours, being in a like case with the
patient. So both of them keep jumping upon each other like
fighting cocks, each trying to fly over the other's head. The
higher the point to which the one screws herself, the higher
must the other also try to get. Why? Because each thinks
the fault lies in the other, in the object. Interpretation of the
dream on the subjective plane brings deliverance from this
absurdity, for it shows the patient that she has something in
herself that is hindering her from crossing the boundary;
that is, from getting out of the one position or attitude into
another. To interpret change of place as change of attitude
is supported by the mode of expression in certain primitive
languages, where, e.g., the phrase "I am on the point of going,"
is "I am at the place of going." In order to understand the
language of dreams, we need plenty of parallels from the
psychology of primitive peoples, as well as from historical
symbolism. This is so because dreams originate in the
unconscious, which contains the residual potentialities of
function of all preceding epochs of the history of the
evolution of man.
Obviously, in our interpretation everything now depends
upon understanding what is meant by the crab. We know
that it symbolizes something that comes to light in the friend
(she connects the crab with the friend), and also something
that came to light in the mother. Whether both mother and
friend really have this quality in them is irrelevant as regards
the patient. The situation will only be changed when the
patient herself has changed. Nothing can be changed in the
mother because she is dead. The friend cannot be urged to
alter; if she wants to alter herself, that is her own affair.
The fact that the quality in question is associated with the
mother indicates that it is something infantile. What is there
in common in the patient's relation both to her mother and
her friend? What is common to both is a violently extravagant
demand for love, the patient feeling herself overwhelmed
by its passion. This claim is an overpowering infantile
craving which is characteristically blind. What is in
question here is a part of her libido that has not been educated,
differentiated, nor humanized, retaining still the compulsive
character of an instinct, because it has not yet been tamed by
domestication. An animal is a perfectly appropriate symbol for
this rôle of libido. But why is the animal a crab in this particular
instance? The patient associates cancer with it, of which
disease Mrs. X. died at the age the patient has just reached.
It may, therefore, well be that this is an allusion to an identification
with Mrs. X. We must therefore make inquiries about
this Mrs. X. The patient relates the following facts about
her: Mrs. X. was widowed early; she was very cheerful and
enjoyed life. She had a number of adventures with men,
especially with one particular man, a gifted artist, who the
patient herself knew personally and who always impressed her
as very fascinating and weird.
An identification can only result from an unrecognized
unconscious resemblance. Now what is the resemblance
between our patient and Mrs. X.? I was able here to remind
the patient of a series of former fantasies and dreams, which
had shown plainly that she also had a frivolous vein in her,
although anxiously repressing it, because she vaguely feared
it might seduce her to an immoral life. We have now gained
a further essential contribution for a right understanding of
the "animal" rôle, which evidently represents an untamed,
instinctive greed, which in this case is directed to men. At
the same time we understand a further reason why she cannot
let go of her friend. She must cling to her in order not to
fall a prey to this other tendency, which seems so much
more dangerous. By these means she remains at an infantile
homosexual stage, which serves her as a defence. (Experience
proves this erection of defences to be one of the most effective
motives for the retention of unadapted, infantile relations.)
But in this missing libido in the animal rôle lies her well-being,
the germ of her future healthy personality, which does
not shrink from the hazards of human life.
But the patient had drawn another conclusion from the
fate of Mrs. X., having conceived her severe illness and early
death as a punishment of fate for her gay life which the patient,
although certainly not confessing to this feeling, always envied
her. When Mrs. X. died, the patient pulled a long face,
beneath which a "human, all too human," malicious satisfaction
was hidden. As a punishment for this tendency the
patient, taking Mrs. X.'s example as a warning, deterred herself
from living and from further development, and burdened
herself with the misery of this unsatisfying friendship. Of
course this concatenation had not been consciously clear to
her, otherwise she would never have acted as she had done.
The truth of this conclusion can be proved by the material.
The history of this identification by no means ends here.
The patient subsequently emphasized the fact that Mrs. X.
had a not inconsiderable artistic capacity which developed
only after her husband's death and which led to her friendship
with the artist. This fact seems to be one of the essential
incentives to the identification, if we call to mind that the
patient had already told us what a striking impression she had
received from the artist. A fascination of this kind is never exclusively
exercised by one person only upon the other. It is a
phenomenon of reciprocal relation between two persons in so far
as the fascinated person must provide a suitable predisposition.
But she must be unconscious of this predisposition, otherwise
there will be no fascination. Fascination is a phenomenon of
compulsion which lacks conscious ground; that is, it is not
a process of the will, but a phenomenon coming to the surface
from the unconscious, and forcing itself compulsorily upon
consciousness. All compulsions arise from unconscious motives.
It must therefore be assumed that the patient possesses a
similar unconscious predisposition to that of the artist. She
becomes identified with this artist, and is also identified with
him as man. Here we are at once reminded of the analysis
of the dream, where we met an allusion to the "masculine"
foot. As a matter of fact, the patient plays a thoroughly
masculine part towards her friend, being the active one who
continually takes the lead, commanding her friend and occasionally
even forcing her somewhat violently to some course
that only the patient desires. Her friend is distinctly feminine
both in her external appearance and otherwise, whilst the
patient is also externally of a somewhat masculine type. Her
voice is stronger and deeper than that of her friend. She now
describes Mrs. X. as a very feminine woman, her gentleness
and amiability being comparable to that of her friend, so she
thinks. This gives us a new clue. The patient is obviously
playing towards her friend the artist's part towards Mrs. X.
Thus she unconsciously completes her identification with
Mrs. X. and her lover. In this way she is giving expression to
her frivolous vein which she had repressed so carefully. She
is not living it consciously, however, but is herself played upon
by her own unconscious tendency.
We now know a great deal about the crab: it represents
the inner psychology of this untamed part of the libido. The
unconscious identifications always keep drawing her on. They
have this power because being unconscious they cannot be
subjected to insight and correction. The crab is the symbol
of the unconscious contents. These contents are always
seducing the patient to retain her relation to the friend. (The
"crab goes backwards.") But the relation to the friend is
synonymous with illness, she became nervous through it
(hence the association of illness).
Strictly speaking, this really belongs to the analysis on the
objective plane. But we must not forget that we only arrive
at understanding by applying the subjective interpretation,
which thereby proves itself to be an important heuristic
principle. For practical purposes we might rest quite satisfied
with the result we have already reached. But we seek here
to satisfy all the requirements of the theory. Not all the
associations have yet been used; neither is the significance of
the choice of symbols yet demonstrated sufficiently.
We will now recur to the patient's remark that the crab
lay hidden under the water in the stream, and that she had
not seen it at first. She had not at first perceived the unconscious
relations that have just been elucidated; they lay hidden
in the water. But the stream is the obstacle preventing her
from going across. It is precisely the unconscious relations
binding her to her friend that have been hindering her.
The unconscious was the obstacle. In this case, therefore, the
water signifies the unconscious, or, it were better to say, the
being unconscious the being hidden, for the crab is also something
unconscious, namely, the portion of the libido that was
hidden in the unconscious.
IX.—The Dominants of the Super-Personal Unconscious.
The task now lies before us of raising the unconscious data
and their relations that have been hitherto understood upon
the objective plane, to the subjective plane. To this end we
must once more separate them from their objects, conceiving
them as images, related in a subjective way to function-complexes
in the patient's own unconscious. Raised to
the subjective plane, Mrs. X. is the person who showed the
patient the way to do something that the patient herself feared
while unconsciously desiring it. Mrs. X. therefore represents
that which the patient would like to become, and yet does not
quite want to. In a certain sense Mrs. X. is a picture of the
patient's future character. The fascinating artist cannot be
raised to the subjective plane, because the unconscious artistic
gift lying dormant in the patient has already been covered
over by Mrs. X. It would be quite right to say that the artist
is the image of the masculine element in the patient, which
not being consciously realised, is still lying in the unconscious.
In a certain sense this is indeed true, the patient actually
deluding herself as regards this matter. That is, she seems
to herself to be particularly tender, sensitive and feminine,
with nothing in the least masculine about her. She was indignantly
amazed when I drew her attention to her masculine
traits. But the reason why she is fascinated by something
mysterious in the artist cannot be attributed to what is
masculine in her. That seems to be completely unknown to
her. And yet it must be hiding somewhere, for she has produced
this feeling out of herself.
Whenever a part of libido similar to this cannot be found,
experience teaches us that it has always been projected. But
into whom? Is it still attached to the artist? He has long
ago disappeared from her horizon, and can hardly have taken
the projection with him, because it was firmly fixed in the
patient's unconscious. A similar projection is always actually
present, that is, there must somewhere be some one upon whom
this amount of libido is actually projected, otherwise she would
have felt it consciously.
Thus we once more reach the objective plane, for we cannot
discover this missing projection in any other way. The patient
does not know any man except myself who means anything at
all to her, and as her doctor I mean a good deal to her. Therefore
she has probably projected this part upon me. It is true
I had never noticed anything of the kind. But the exquisitely
deceptive rôles are never presented to the analyst on the
surface, coming to light always only outside the hour of treatment.
I therefore carefully inquire: "Tell me what do I
seem like to you when you are not with me? Am I just the
same then?" Reply: "When I am with you, you are very
pleasant and kind; but when I am alone, or have not seen you
for rather a long time, then the picture I have in my mind of
you changes in an extraordinary way. Sometimes you seem
quite idealized, and then again different." She hesitates; I
help by saying: "Yes, what am I like then?" Reply: "Sometimes
quite dangerous, sinister like an evil magician or demon.
I do not know how I get hold of such ideas. You are not really
a bit like that."
So this part was attached to me as part of a transference;
that is why it was lacking in her inventory. Therewith we
recognize a further important thing. I was confused with
(identified with) the artist, and in her unconscious fantasy she
is Mrs. X. I was easily able to prove this fact by means of
material that had previously been brought to light (sexual
fantasies). But I myself then am the obstacle, the crab, that
is hindering her from getting across. The state of affairs
would be critical if at this particular point we were to limit
ourselves to the objective plane of interpretation. What would
be the use of my explaining: "But I am not this artist at all,
I am not in the least weird as he is, nor am I like an evil
magician." That would leave the patient quite unconvinced
because she would know as well I do that the projection would
continue to exist all the same, and that it is really I who am
hindering her further progress. It is at this point that many
a treatment has come to a standstill. For there is no other
way for the patient here of escaping from the embrace of the
unconscious, but for the physician to raise himself to the subjective
plane, where he is to be regarded as an image. But
an image of what? This is where the greatest difficulty lies.
The doctor will say: "An image of something in the patient's
unconscious." But the patient may object: "What, am I to
suppose myself to be a man, a mysteriously fascinating one to
boot, a wicked wizard and a demon? No, I cannot accept that;
it is nonsense. I'd sooner believe that you are all that." She
is really, so to speak, quite right. It is too preposterous to
want to transfer such things to herself. She cannot permit
herself to be made into a demon, any more than can the
physician. Her eyes flash, a wicked expression appears upon
her face, a glimmer of an unknown hate never seen before,
something snake-like seeming to creep into her. I am
suddenly faced by the possibility of a fatal misunderstanding
with her. What is it? Is it disappointed love? Is she
offended? Does she feel depreciated? There seems to lurk
something of the beast of prey, something really demoniac
in her glance. Is she then after all a demon? Or am I
myself the beast of prey, the demon, and is this a terrified
victim sitting before me, who is trying to defend herself with
the brute force of despair against my wicked spells? But
either idea must be nonsense, phantastical delusion. What
have I come in contact with? What new string is vibrating?
But it is only for a passing moment. The expression upon
the patient's face becoming quiet again, she says, as if relieved:
"It is extraordinary. I feel as if you had touched the
point which I could never get over in relation to my friend.
It is a horrible feeling, something non-human, wicked, and
cruel. I cannot describe how queer this feeling is. At such
moments it makes me hate and despise my friend, although I
struggle against it with all my might and main."
An explanatory light is thrown upon what has happened
by this observation. I have now taken the friend's place.
The friendship has been overcome, the ice of repression is
broken. The patient has without knowing it entered upon
a new phase of her existence. I know that now upon me will
fall everything painful and bad in the relation to the friend.
So also will whatever was good in it, although in violent conflict
with the mysterious unknown quantity X, about which
the patient could never get clear. A new phase, therefore, of
the transference supervenes, which, however, does not as yet
make clearly apparent what the X that is projected upon me
consists of.
It is quite certain, that the most troublesome misunderstandings
threaten if the patient should stick at this stage of
the transference. In that case she will necessarily treat me as
she treated her friend; that is the X will continually be somewhere
in the air giving rise to misunderstandings. The end
would probably be that she would see the evil demon in me,
because she is quite unable to accept the fact that she is herself
the demon. All insoluble conflicts are brought about in
this way. And an insoluble conflict signifies a standstill in
life.
Another possibility is, that the patient should disregard
the obscure point by applying her old preventative against
this new difficulty. That is, she would repress it again,
instead of keeping it conscious, which is the necessary and
obvious demand of the whole method. Nothing is gained by
such repression; on the contrary, the X threatens more from
the unconscious where it is considerably more unpleasant.
Whenever such an unacceptable image emerges, one must
decide whether at bottom it is destined to represent a human
quality or not. "Magician" and "demon" may represent
qualities that are described in this particular fashion, in order
that they may speedily be recognized as not human but mythological
qualities. Magician and demon being mythological
figures aptly express the unknown "non-human" feelings
which had surprised the patient. These attributes are not
applicable to a human personality; being as a rule judgments
of character intuitively and not critically approved, which are
projected upon our fellow-beings, inevitably doing serious
injury to human relations.
Such attributes always indicate that contents of the super-personal
or absolute unconscious are being projected. Neither
demons nor wicked magicians are reminiscences of personal
experiences, although every one has, of course, at some time or
other heard or read of them. Although one has heard of a rattle-snake,
it would hardly be appropriate to describe a lizard or a
blind-worm as a rattle-snake, simply because one was startled
by their rustling. Similarly, one would hardly term a fellow-being
a demon, unless some kind of demoniacal influence were
closely associated with him. If, however, the demoniacal influence
were really part of his personal character, it would show
itself everywhere, and then this human being would be a
demon, a kind of werwolf. But such an ascription is mythology;
in other words, it is from the collective and not from
the individual psyche. Inasmuch as through our unconscious
we have a share in the historical collective psyche, we naturally
dwell unconsciously in a world of werwolves, demons, magicians,
etc., these being things which have always affected man
most profoundly. We have just as much a part in gods and
devils, saviours and criminals. But it would be absurd to
want to ascribe to one's personal self the possibilities that
are potentially existing in the human unconscious. It is,
therefore, essential to make as clear a distinction as possible
between the personal and the impersonal assets of our psyche.
This is by no means intended to nullify the occasional great
effects due to the existence of the contents of the absolute
unconscious; but these contents of the collective psyche should
be differentiated from those belonging to the individual psyche.
For simple-minded people, of course, these things were never
separated, the projection of gods, demons, etc., not having been
understood as a psychological function were simply accounted
concretistical realities. Their projectional character was never
perceived. It was only with the advent of the epoch of
scepticism that it was realized that the gods did not really exist
except as projections. With that the matter was set at rest.
But the psychological function corresponding to it was by no
means set at rest, for it lapsed into the unconscious and began
to poison men with a surplus of libido that had hitherto been
invested in the cult of idols or gods. Obviously, the depreciation
and repression of such a powerful function as that of
religion has serious consequences for the psychology of the
individual. The reflux of this libido strengthens the unconscious
prodigiously, so that it begins to exercise a powerful
compulsory influence upon consciousness and its archaic
collective contents. One period of scepticism came to a close
with the horrors of the French Revolution. At the present
time we are again experiencing an ebullition of the unconscious
destructive powers of the collective psyche. The result
is an unparalleled general slaughter. That is just what the
unconscious was tending towards. This tendency had previously
been inordinately strengthened by the rationalism of
modern life, which by depreciating everything irrational,
caused the function of irrationalism to sink into the unconscious.
But the function once in the unconscious will from thence
work unceasing havoc, like an incurable disease whose
centre cannot be eradicated. For then the individual and the
nation alike are compelled to live irrationally, and even to
apply their highest idealism and their best wit to make this
madness of irrationalism as complete as possible. We see
examples of this on a small scale in our patient. She turned
from a possibility of life that seemed to her irrational (Mrs. X.)
in order to live it in a pathological form, to her own loss, and
with an unsuitable object.
There is, indeed, no possible alternative but to acknowledge
irrationalism as a psychological function that is necessary
and always existent. Its results are not to be taken as concrete
realities (that would involve repression), but as psychological
realities. They are realities because they are effective
things, that is, they are actualities.
The collective unconscious is the sediment of all the experience
of the universe of all time, and is also an image
of the universe that has been in process of formation for
untold ages. In the course of time certain features have
become prominent in this image, the so-called dominants.
These dominants are the ruling powers, the gods; that is, the
representations resulting from dominating laws and principles,
from average regularities in the issue of the images that the
brain has received as a consequence of secular processes.
In so far as the images formed in the brain are relatively
faithful portrayals of psychic happenings they will correspond
to their dominants; that is, their general characteristic
features, made prominent by the accumulation of similar
experiences, will correspond to certain physical fundamental
facts that are also universal. Hence it is possible to transfer
unconscious images to physical events direct as intuitive
ideas; e.g. ether the primeval breath or soul-substance
appears in man's conceptions the whole world over; so, too,
energy, the magic force, which is equally widespread.
On account of their connection with physical things the
dominants usually make their appearance as projections, appearing,
indeed—if the projections are unconscious—in the
persons of the immediate environment, as a rule in the form
of abnormal under- or over-valuations, which excite misunderstandings,
conflict, infatuations, and various kinds of folly.
People say: "He makes a god of So-and-so," or "So-and-so
is X.'s bête noire." They also give rise to the formation of
modern myths, that is, fantastic rumours, suspicions and
prejudices.
The dominants of the collective unconscious are therefore
extremely important things of significant effect, to which
great attention should be paid. They must not be repressed,
but must be given most careful consideration. They usually
appear as projections, and since projections are only attached
where there is some external stimulus, it is very difficult to
appraise them aright, on account of the relation of the unconscious
images with the object. If some one projects the
dominant of "devil" into a fellow-being, this occurs because
this other person has something in him that makes the
attachment of the devil dominant possible. But that is by
no means to say that this person is therefore, so to speak,
a devil; on the contrary, he may be a particularly good
fellow, but being antipathetic to the one who projects, a
"devilish effect" is brought about between the two. This
does not mean that the one who projects is a devil, although
he must recognize that he too, just as much, has something
devilish in him, and has been gulled by it, inasmuch as he
projected it; but that does not make him a devil; indeed, he
may be just as decent a man as the other. In such a case
the appearance of the devil dominant means: the two persons
are incompatible (for the moment and for the near future),
wherefore the unconscious splits them asunder and holds
them apart from each other.
One of the dominants that is almost always met in the
analysis of projections of collective unconscious contents is
the "magical demon;" it is of preponderating sinister effect.
"The Golem," by Meyrink, is a good example of this; also the
Thibetan wizard in Meyrink's "Fledermäusen," who lets the
world-war loose by magic. Obviously Meyrink formed this
image independently and freely out of his unconscious, by
giving word and picture to a feeling similar to the one that my
patient had projected upon me. The dominant of magic also
appears in "Zarathustra," whilst in "Faust" it is, so to say,
the hero himself.
The picture of this demon is the lowest and most elementary
concept of God. It is the dominant of the primitive
tribal magic-man, or a singularly gifted personality endowed
with magic power. This figure very frequently makes an
appearance in my patient's unconscious as a dark-skinned
being of Mongolian type.
An important step forward has been taken by the recognition
of the dominants of the absolute unconscious. The
magical or demoniac effect of the fellow-being is made to
disappear by the feeling being realised as a definite projection
of the absolute unconscious. On the other hand, a completely
new and unsuspected task now lies before us: namely,
the question in what way the ego should come to terms with
this psychological non-ego. Should one rest satisfied with
having verified the effective existence of unconscious dominants,
leaving the matter to take care of itself?
To leave it at this point would be the means of creating
a permanent state of dissociation in the subject, a conflict
between the individual psyche and the collective psyche.
Upon the one side we should have the differentiated modern
ego, whilst upon the other a kind of uncivilized negro representative
of a thoroughly primitive state. That would mean that
we should have what really does exist, a crust of civilization
over a dark-skinned brute; the cleavage would be distinct
and demonstrable before our very eyes. But such a dissociation
requires immediate synthesis and cultivation of what is
undeveloped. There must be a union of these two aspects.
Before entering upon this new question let us first return
to the dream from which we started. The discussion has
given us a broader understanding of the dream, and especially
of an essential part of it, namely, the fear. This fear is a
demoniac fear of the dominants of the collective unconscious.
We saw that the patient identifies herself with Mrs. X.,
expressing thereby that she also has some relation to the
mysterious artist. It was apparent also that she identified
the physician (myself) with the artist; and further that when
taken upon the subjective plane, the image of the wizard
dominants of the collective unconscious represented me.
All this is covered in the dream by the symbol of the
crab which walks backwards. The crab stands for the living
content of the unconscious that can by no means be exhausted
or rendered inoperative by analysis on the objective plane.
But what we were able to do was to detach the mythological or
collective psychological contents from the objects of consciousness,
and to consolidate them as psychological realities outside the
individual psyche.
So long as the absolute unconscious and the individual
psyche are coupled together without differentiation, no progress
can be made, or, as the dream expresses it, no boundary
be crossed. If the dreamer does nevertheless prepare to cross
the boundary, the unconscious that was hitherto unnoticed
becomes animated, seizing her and dragging her down. The
dream and its material characterize the absolute unconscious,
on the one side as a lower animal living hidden in the depths
of the water; and on the other side, as a dangerous disease
that can only be cured by a timely operation. To what
extent this characterization is appropriate has already been
seen. As was pointed out, the animal symbol specially
refers to what is extra human, that is super-personal; for
the contents of the absolute unconscious are not merely the
residue of archaic human functions, but also the residue
of functions of the animal ancestry of mankind, whose duration
of life was indeed vastly greater than the relatively brief
epoch of specifically human existence. If such residues are
active, they are apt, as nothing else is, not merely to arrest the
progress of development, but also to divert the libido into
regressive channels, until the quantity which the absolute unconscious
has activated has been absorbed. The energy
becomes profitable again after it has been consciously contrasted
with the absolute unconscious, a process which enables
it to be converted into a valuable source from which to draw.
This transference of energy was established by religions in a
concretistic manner through cultural communication with the
gods (the dominants of the absolute unconscious). But these
modes and customs are too much at variance with our intellect
and our moral sense for us to be able to declare this solution of
the problem as still binding, or even possible. If, on the other
hand, we apprehend the images of the unconscious as collective
unconscious dominants, therefore as collective-psychological
phenomena or functions, this hypothesis is in no way
opposed to our intellect and conscience. This solution is
rationally acceptable. We have thus gained the possibility of
coming to terms with the activated residues of our ancestral
history. This mode of settlement makes it possible to traverse
the boundary line hitherto limiting us, and is therefore appropriately
termed the transcendental function, which is synonymous
with progressive development to a new attitude. In the
dream this development is indicated by the other side of the
stream.
The similarity to hero-myths is striking. The typical
combat of the hero with the monster (the unconscious content)
frequently takes place on the banks of some water; sometimes
at a ford. This circumstance is prominent in legends of Red
Indians, as, for example, in Longfellow's "Hiawatha." In the
decisive battle the hero is swallowed by a monster (cf. story
of Jonah), as Frobenius[246] has shown by means of extensive
material. But inside the monster the hero begins to come to
terms with the beast in his own way: whilst the creature
swims with him towards the sunrise, he cuts off a valuable
piece of the viscera, e.g. the heart, by which the monster
lived, that is, the valuable energy by which the unconscious
was activated. Through this deed he kills the monster, who
then drifts to land, where the hero, born anew through the
transcendental function (the "night-journey under the sea"
of Frobenius), steps forth, often in company with all those
beings whom the monster had previously swallowed. This
enables the normal state to be restored, as the unconscious
having been robbed of its energy no longer occupies a preponderating
position. In this way the myth—which is the
dream of a people—graphically describes the problem with
which our patient is concerned.[247]
The problem of how to come to terms with the absolute
unconscious is a question apart. I must content myself here
with a general survey of the new theory of the unconscious up
to the transcendental function, leaving the presentation of the
transcendental function itself to a later work.
X.—The Development of the Types of Introversion and
Extroversion in the Analytical Process.
The description of the analysis of the unconscious would
be incomplete if a word were not said about the question
whether this method is equally applicable to the two types.
As a matter of fact, both the development and the conception
of the unconscious are different for each type. Although
making every effort to find out a formulation that shall be
as universally valid as possible, we must emphatically impress
upon our minds the fact that the two modes of conception
of the types are essentially different; a universal
formulation that is just, only becomes possible when both
standpoints are given equal consideration. I do not conceal
from myself the fact that this subject is of less interest to the
layman than to the specialist. Nevertheless, certain aspects
of the question are of such a general character that the layman
should not find the perusal of this last section entirely
without interest.
Let us first consider the concept of the unconscious. I
have here introduced the unconscious under the conception of
a psychological function, namely, the function of the sum
of all those psychic contents which do not reach the threshold
of consciousness. I have divided the unconscious materials
into personal—that is to reminiscences attributable to personal
experiences, combinations and tendencies—and into impersonal
collective contents, that is, those whose contents cannot be
attributed to personal experiences.
The contents of the psyche are fundamentally images
indicating function on the one hand, and upon the other
objects and the world generally. The conscious contains
the recent object-images; the personal unconscious, the
object-images of the individual past, so far as they have
either been forgotten or repressed; whilst the absolute or
collective unconscious contains the inherited world-images
generally, under the form of primordial images or mythical
themes. All psychic images have two sides: the one, being
directed towards the object, is as faithful a likeness of the
object as possible, framed without any intention or obligation
to be anything else. The other side is directed towards the
soul, that is towards the psychic function and the laws peculiar
to it.
Let us take as an example, a primordial image out of a hero-myth.
There is in the West a demon ancestress with a large
mouth. The hero creeps into it, and at the same moment
a certain little bird sings; the ancient dame shuts her mouth
with a bang, and the hero disappears.
The side of the image directed towards the physical object
means, the sun goes down in the evening into the mouth
of the ocean. At this hour a certain little bird sings (which is
an objective fact), and the sun disappears into the depths of
the sea.
The side of the image directed towards the soul, that is the
idea, signifies: The energy contained in consciousness disappears
(like the sun in the evening) into the monster of the
unconscious.
If we consider the collective-unconscious from the side
of the soul or idea, it is something entirely distinct, and it
must be differentiated, abstracted from the object, if its contents
are to attain the perfection of an idea. If, on the other
hand, we consider the collective-unconscious from the side of
the physical object, that is as an image of the object, it is
weaker and less clear than the object itself, and can only
be brought to perfection if it is objectified, that is projected on
to the object itself.
As previously explained, there are two types of human
psychology that can be clearly distinguished, viz. introversion
and extroversion. The introvert is characterised by the
thought standpoint; the extrovert by the feeling standpoint.
As I showed, they are quite different in their relation to the
object: the introvert abstracting from the object and thinking
about it, whilst the extrovert goes to the object and feels himself
into it. The accent of value lies upon the ego for the
introvert, but upon the object for the extrovert. The former's
chief concern is the preservation of the ego; that of the latter
the preservation of the object. The two types will adopt a
different attitude towards the unconscious, namely, the introvert
will and must seize the idea-side of the unconscious
image; the extrovert, on the other hand, seizing the side of
the physical reflection. The introvert will purify as far as
possible the idea-side from the "alloy" of the concretistic
admixture of the physical image, in order to arrive at the
abstract idea; whilst, on the other hand, the extrovert will
purify the physical image as far as possible from the "phantastic"
admixture of the enveloping ideas. The former, by
raising himself to a world of idea, will endeavour to overcome
the disturbing influence of the unconscious; whilst the latter
will approach the object as near as possible and project the
unconscious image into the physical object, thus freeing himself
from the grip of the unconscious.
What for the extrovert is a phantastic and disturbing admixture
in the unconscious picture, is for the introvert precisely
that which has the most value, for it is the germ of the
pure idea, and vice versâ; what for the introvert are merely
concretistical "imperfections," survivals of a physical origin,
are for the extrovert a most valuable hint, the bridge by
which the unconscious can be united with the object.
This description makes it manifest that the two types go
contrary ways in the course of the development of their unconscious,
arriving therefore at opposite extremes: the one at
the idea, the other at the object of his feeling. The psychological
characteristics of the types are eventually pushed to
extremes, where according to the enantiodromic law the
moment has arrived when in each case the "other" function
enters into its fully acknowledged right, that is, feeling in the
case of the introvert, and thought in that of the extrovert.
The introvert attains the lacking function of autonomous
feeling by means of a differentiation and enhancement of his
thought; whilst the extrovert, on the other hand, attains his
thinking by the way of an increasingly differentiated love.
These functions that hitherto were secondary are found at
first in the unconscious, gradually reaching consciousness
in the course of development. At first they are unconscious
functions in a state that is more or less incompatible
with consciousness and have the typical qualities of unconscious
contents. These qualities are such as are not tolerated
in consciousness. The lunatic Schreber[248] says most aptly
that the language of God (the unconscious) is a somewhat
archaic but vigorous German, of which he gives a few striking
examples. As the contrary function that emerges from the
unconscious into consciousness differs to such an extent from
what appears to be acceptable to consciousness, the necessity
arises of a technique for coming to terms with the contrary
function. It is impossible to accept the contrary function as
it stands, as it always drags extraneous qualities and accompanying
circumstances with it from the absolute unconscious.
Through the above-described development the extrovert has
acquired an adaptation to the object that is absolutely real
and free from all phantasies; he will therefore be able to
turn his attention towards the "alloy" which for the introvert
was the valuable germ of idea. From this he will then
develop similar ideas to those which the introvert has already
developed. Vice versâ, the introvert will now be able to
turn his attention to those materials which before he was
obliged to reject, as being side-tracks on the road to physical
reality; that is, he will carry out the same clearing and winnowing
in his feeling-relations, that the extrovert has already
completed.
The development of the contrary function that was hitherto
unconscious, leads to individuation beyond the type, and
thereby to a new relation to the world and mind. The process
which begins with the complementation of the types is the
transcendental function, which leads to the new adaptation
by means of the clearing and winnowing of unconscious feelings
and thoughts that have been brought up by the contrary
function that had been neglected.
Following the old maxim: "naturam si sequemur ducem
nunquam aberrabimus," we have obeyed the natural impulse
of the thinker to carry the principle of thought through to its
utmost perfection attainable, as also that of the feeler, of
carrying the principle of feeling through to the end. By these
means the salutary extreme was produced, to wit, the hunger,
the desire for the compensatory function. For, by means of
thought, the one is landed in a lifeless ice-cold world of
crystalline ideas; whereas, by means of feeling, the other
reaches a limitless ocean of never ending flood of sentiment.
The former will, therefore, yearn for living warmth of feeling,
and the latter for the restrictive precision and solidity of
thought.
An enrichment of the individual is attained by this compensatory
process, giving him greater decision and the possibility
of a harmony that is complete in itself. The
assimilation of the contrary function discloses new inner
springs, which guarantee to the individual considerably greater
independence from external conditions. This acquisition is
an indisputable advantage that none would like to surrender
in face of the fact so unavoidably connected with it, that a
new adaptation and orientation of this kind places the individual
in a certain contrast to the great bulk of people who
yet have the old attitude. This contrast is no drawback; it
is rather a welcome and effective spur to life and work, for
thereby is created the channel required by our psychic energy
for its development.
XI.—General Remarks on the Therapy.
I have still to draw the reader's attention to an important
fact. Throughout the course of this paper, I have seemed to
associate the idea of disturbance or even of peril with the
unconscious. But it would give a false impression if we
were only to emphasize the dangerous side of the unconscious.
The unconscious is a source of danger when the individual is not
at one with it. If we succeed in establishing the function or
attitude that I call transcendental, the disharmony ceases,
and we are permitted to enjoy the favourable side of the
unconscious. In such case the unconscious vouchsafes us
that furtherance and assistance which bountiful Nature is
always ready to give to man in overflowing abundance. The
unconscious possesses possibilities of wisdom that are completely
closed to consciousness, for the unconscious has at its
disposal not only all the psychic contents that are under the
threshold because they had been forgotten or overlooked, but
also the wisdom of the experience of untold ages, deposited in
the course of time and lying potential in the human brain.
The unconscious is continually active, creating combinations
of its materials; these serve to indicate the future path of the
individual. It creates prospective combinations just as our
consciousness does, only they are considerably superior to the
conscious combinations both in refinement and extent. The
unconscious may therefore be an unparalleled guide for human
beings.
The reader must on no account suppose that the complicated
psychological changes described must all be passed
through in every individual case. In practice the treatment
is adjusted according to the therapeutic result attained. The
particular result arrived at may be reached at any stage of
the treatment, quite apart from the seriousness or duration
of the malady. The treatment of a serious case may last a
long time, without the higher phases of the evolution ever
being reached, or needing to be reached. There are comparatively
few people who, after attaining the desired therapeutical
result, pursue the further stages of evolution for the
sake of their own development. It is, therefore, not the
seriousness of the case which obliges one to pass through
the whole development. In any case, only those people attain
a higher degree of differentiation who are by nature destined
and called to it, that is, who have both a capacity and tendency
towards the higher differentiation. This is a matter in which
people are extremely different, just as among species of animals
there are some that are stationary and conservative, and
others that are evolutionary. Nature is aristocratic, but not
in the sense of having reserved the possibility of differentiation
exclusively for those species that stand high. Similarly,
the possibility of the psychological development of human
beings is not reserved for specially gifted individuals. In
other words: neither special intelligence nor any other talent
is necessary in order to achieve a far-reaching psychological
development, inasmuch as in this development moral qualities
step in to supplement where intellect does not suffice.
But it must not be supposed under any circumstances that
the treatment consists in grafting general formulas and complicated
doctrines on to people; this is not so. Each one can
acquire that which he needs, after his own fashion and in his
own language. What I have here presented is only the
intellectual formulation of the subject, founded upon preliminary
scientific study of an empirical as well as a theoretical
nature; but this formulation does not become a subject
of discussion in the ordinary practical analytical work. The
brief notes of cases that I have inserted give an approximate
idea of the practical side of analysis.
The reader should realize that our new understanding of
psychology has a side that is entirely practical, and another
that is entirely theoretical. It is not merely a practical
method of treatment or education, but it is also a scientific
theory, that is closely related to other co-ordinated sciences.
Conclusion.
In conclusion, I must beg the reader to pardon me for
having ventured to say so many new and abstruse things in
such a brief compass. I lay myself open to adverse criticism,
because I conceive it to be the duty of every one who isolates
himself by taking his own path, to tell others what he has
found or discovered, whether it be a refreshing spring for the
thirsty, or a sandy desert of sterile error. The one helps, the
other warns. Not the opinion of any individual contemporary
will decide the truth and error of what has been discovered,
but rather future generations and destiny. There are things
that are not yet true to-day, perhaps we are not yet permitted
to recognize them as true, although they may be true to-morrow.
Therefore every pioneer must take his own path,
alone but hopeful, with the open eyes of one who is conscious
of its solitude and of the perils of its dim precipices. Our age
is seeking a new spring of life. I found one and drank of it
and the water tasted good. That is all that I can or want to
say. My intention and my duty to society is fulfilled when I
have described, as well as I can, the way that led me to the
spring; the reproaches of those who do not follow this way
have never troubled me, nor ever will. New ideas always
encounter resistance from the old. That always was and
always will be the case; it appertains to the self-regulation
of mental progress.