1.03 - Some Aspects of Modern Psycho therapy

classes ::: The Practice of Psycho therapy, Carl Jung, Psychology, chapter,
children :::
branches :::
see also :::

bookmarks: Instances - Definitions - Quotes - Chapters - Wordnet - Webgen

object:1.03 - Some Aspects of Modern Psycho therapy
book class:The Practice of Psycho therapy
author class:Carl Jung
subject class:Psychology
class:chapter

III
SOME ASPECTS OF MODERN PSYCHO THERAPY 1
[46]
Modern psycho therapy finds itself in rather an awkward position at a
public-health congress. It can boast of no international agreements, nor can
it provide the legislator or the minister of public hygiene with suitable or
workable advice. It must assume the somewhat humble role of personal
charity work versus the big organizations and institutions of public welfare,
and this despite the fact that neuroses are alarmingly common and occupy
no small place among the host of evils that assail the health of civilized
nations.
[47]
Psycho therapy and modern psychology are as yet individual
experiments with little or no general applicability. They rest upon the
initiative of individual doctors, who are not supported even by the
universities. Nevertheless the problems of modern psychology have
aroused a widespread interest out of all proportion to the exceedingly
restricted official sympathy.
[48]
I must confess that I myself did not find it at all easy to bow my head
to Freuds innovations. I was a young doctor then, busying myself with
experimental psychopathology and mainly interested in the disturbances of
mental reactions to be observed in the so-called association experiments.
Only a few of Freuds works had then been published. But I could not help
seeing that my conclusions undoubtedly tended to confirm the facts
indicated by Freud, namely the facts of repression, substitution, and
symbolization. Nor could I honestly deny the very real importance of
sexuality in the aetiology and indeed in the actual structure of neuroses.
[49]
Medical psychology is still pioneer work, but it looks as if the medical
profession were beginning to see a psychic side to many things which have
hitherto been considered from the physiological side only, not to mention
the neuroses, whose psychic nature is no longer seriously contested.Medical psychology seems, therefore, to be coming into its own. But
where, we may ask, can the medical student learn it? It is important for the
doctor to know something about the psychology of his patients, and about
the psychology of nervous, mental, and physical diseases. Quite a lot is
known about these things among specialists, though the universities do not
encourage such studies. I can understand their attitude. If I were responsible
for a university department, I should certainly feel rather hesitant about
teaching medical psychology.
[50]
In the first place, there is no denying the fact that Freuds theories have
come up against certain rooted prejudices. It was to no purpose that he
modified the worst aspects of his theories in later years. In the public eye he
is branded by his first statements. They are one-sided and exaggerated;
moreover they are backed by a philosophy that is falling more and more out
of favour with the public: a thoroughly materialistic point of view which
has been generally abandoned since the turn of the century. Freuds
exclusive standpoint not only offends too many ideals but also
misinterprets the natural facts of the human psyche. It is certain that human
nature has its dark side, but the layman as well as the reasonable scientist is
quite convinced that it also has its good and positive side, which is just as
real. Common sense does not tolerate the Freudian tendency to derive
everything from sexuality and other moral incompatibilities. Such a view is
too destructive.
[51]
The extraordinary importance which Freud attaches to the unconscious
meets with scant approval, although it is an interesting point with a certain
validity. But one should not stress it too much, otherwise one robs the
conscious mind of its practical significance and eventually arrives at a
completely mechanistic view of things. This goes against our instincts,
which have made the conscious mind the arbiter mundi. It is nevertheless
true that the conscious mind has been overvalued by the rationalists. Hence
it was a healthy sign to give the unconscious its due share of value. But this
should not exceed the value accorded to consciousness.
[52]
A further reason for hesitation is the absence of a real medical
psychology, though there may be a psychology for doctors. Psychology is
not for professionals only, nor is it peculiar to certain diseases. It is
something broadly human, with professional and pathological variations.
Nor, again, is it merely instinctual or biological. If it were, it could verywell be just a chapter in a text-book of biology. It has an immensely
important social and cultural aspect without which we could not imagine a
human psyche at all. It is therefore quite impossible to speak of a general or
normal psychology as the mere expression of a clash between instinct and
moral law, or other inconveniences of that kind. Since the beginning of
history man has been the maker of his own laws; and even if, as Freud
seems to think, they were the invention of our malevolent forefa thers, it is
odd how the rest of humanity has conformed to them and given them silent
assent.
[53]
Even Freud, who tried to restrict what he called psychoanalysis to the
medical sphere (with occasional, somewhat inappropriate excursions into
other spheres), even he was forced to discuss fundamental principles that
go far beyond purely medical considerations. The most cursory
professional treatment of an intelligent patient is bound to lead to basic
issues, because a neurosis or any other mental conflict depends much more
on the personal attitude of the patient than on his infantile history. No
matter what the influences are that disturbed his youth, he still has to put up
with them and he does so by means of a certain attitude. The attitude is all-
important. Freud emphasizes the aetiology of the case, and assumes that
once the causes are brought into consciousness the neurosis will be cured.
But mere consciousness of the causes does not help any more than detailed
knowledge of the causes of war helps to raise the value of the French franc.
The task of psycho therapy is to correct the conscious attitude and not to go
chasing after infantile memories. Naturally you cannot do the one without
paying attention to the other, but the main emphasis should be upon the
attitude of the patient. There are extremely practical reasons for this,
because there is scarcely a neurotic who does not love to dwell upon the
evils of the past and to wallow in self-commiserating memories. Very often
his neurosis consists precisely in his hanging back and constantly excusing
himself on account of the past.
[54]
As you know, I am critical of Freud in this particular respect, but my
criticism would not go so far as to deny the extraordinary power of the
retrospective tendency. On the contrary, I consider it to be of the greatest
importance, so important that I would not call any treatment thorough that
did not take it into account. Freud in his analysis follows this regressive
tendency to the end and thus arrives at the findings you all know. Thesefindings are only apparent facts; in the main they are interpretations. He
has a special method of interpreting psychic material, and it is partly
because the material has a sexual aspect and partly because he interprets it
in a special way that he arrives at his typical conclusions. Take for instance
his treatment of dreams. He believes that the dream is a faade. He says
you can turn it inside out, that this or that factor is eliminated by a censor,
and so forth.
[55]
I hold that interpretation is the crux of the whole matter. One can just
as well assume that the dream is not a faade, that there is no censor, and
that the unconscious appears in dreams in the navest and most genuine
way. The dream is as genuine as the albumen in urine, and this is anything
but a faade. If you take the dream like this, you naturally come to very
different conclusions. And the same thing happens with the patients
regressive tendency. I have suggested that it is not just a relapse into
infantilism, but a genuine attempt to get at something necessary. There is,
to be sure, no lack of infantile perversions. But are we so certain that what
appears to be, and is interpreted as, an incestuous craving is really only
that? When we try, conscientiously and without theoretical bias, to find out
what the patient is really seeking in his father or mother, we certainly do
not, as a rule, find incest, but rather a genuine horror of it. We find that he
is seeking something entirely different, something that Freud only
appreciates negatively: the universal feeling of childhood innocence, the
sense of security, of protection, of reciprocated love, of trust, of faitha
thing that has many names.
[56]
Is this goal of the regressive tendency entirely without justification? Or
is it not rather the very thing the patient urgently needs in order to build up
his conscious attitude?
[57]
I believe that incest and the other perverted sexual aspects are, in most
cases, no more than by-products, and that the essential contents of the
regressive tendency are really those which I have just mentioned. I have no
objection to a patients going back to that kind of childhood, nor do I mind
his indulging in such memories.
[58]
I am not blind to the fact that the patient must sink or swim, and that he
may possibly go under as the result of infantile indulgence; but I call him
back to these valuable memories with conscious intent. I appeal to his senseof values deliberately, because I have to make the man well and therefore I
must use all available means to achieve the therapeutic aim.
[59]
The regressive tendency only means that the patient is seeking himself
in his childhood memories, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. His
development was one-sided; it left important items of character and
personality behind, and thus it ended in failure. That is why he has to go
back. In Psychological Types, I tried to establish the general lines along
which these one-sided developments move. There are two main attitudes
which differ fundamentally, namely introversion and extraversion. Both are
perfectly good ways of living, so long as they co-operate reasonably well. It
is only a dominating one-sidedness that leads to disaster. Within this very
general framework there are more subtle distinctions based upon whatever
function is preferred by the individual. Thus somebody with a good brain
will develop a powerful intellect at the expense of his feelings. Or again,
the facts perceived by the realist will obliterate the beautiful visions of the
intuitive. All such people will look back to childhood when they come to
the end of their particular tether, or they will hanker for some state when
they were still in touch with the lost world, or their dreams will reproduce
enchanting memories of a past that has sunk into oblivion.
[60]
By adopting a more idealistic philosophy, one can interpret things
differently and produce a perfectly decent and respectable psychology
which is just as true, relatively speaking, as the sordid underside. I do not
see why one should not interpret the facts in a decent and positive way
when one can easily afford to do so. For many people this is much better
and more encouraging than to reduce everything to primitive constituents
with nasty names. But here too we must not be one-sided, because certain
patients are all the better for being told some drastic but cleansing truth.
[61]
Freuds original idea of the unconscious was that it was a sort of
receptacle or storehouse for repressed material, infantile wishes, and the
like. But the unconscious is far more than that: it is the basis and
precondition of all consciousness. It represents the unconscious functioning
of the psyche in general. It is psychic life before, during, and after
consciousness. And inasmuch as the newborn child is presented with a
ready-made, highly developed brain which owes its differentiation to the
accretions of untold centuries of ancestral life, the unconscious psyche must
consist of inherited instincts, functions, and forms that are peculiar to theancestral psyche. This collective heritage is by no means made up of
inherited ideas, but rather of the possibilities of such ideasin other words,
of a priori categories of possible functioning. Such an inheritance could be
called instinct, using the word in its original sense. But it is not quite so
simple. On the contrary, it is a most intricate web of what I have called
archetypal conditions. This implies the probability that a man will behave
much as his ancestors behaved, right back to Methuselah. Thus the
unconscious is seen as the collective predisposition to extreme
conservatism, a guarantee, almost, that nothing new will ever happen.
[62]
If this statement were unreservedly true, there would be none of that
creative fantasy which is responsible for radical changes and innovations.
Therefore our statement must be in part erroneous, since creative fantasy
exists and is not simply the prerogative of the unconscious psyche.
Generally speaking, it is an intrusion from the realm of the unconscious, a
sort of lucky hunch, different in kind from the slow reasoning of the
conscious mind. Thus the unconscious is seen as a creative factor, even as a
bold innovator, and yet it is at the same time the stronghold of ancestral
conservatism. A paradox, I admit, but it cannot be helped. It is no more
paradoxical than man himself and that cannot be helped either.
[63]
There are sound philosophical reasons why our arguments should end
in paradox and why a paradoxical statement is the better witness to truth
than a one-sided, so-called positive statement. But this is not the place to
embark on a lengthy logical discourse.
[64]
Now if you will bear in mind what we have just said about the
significance of the unconscious, and if you will recall our discussion of the
regressive tendency, you will discover a further and cogent reason why the
patient should have such a tendency, and why he is quite justified in having
it. To be retrospective and introspective is a pathological mistake only
when it stops short at futilities like incest and other squalid fantasies, or at
feelings of inferiority. Retrospection and introspection should be carried
much further, because then the patient will not only discover the true reason
for his childhood longings, but, going beyond himself into the sphere of the
collective psyche, he will enter first into the treasure-house of collective
ideas and then into creativity. In this way he will discover his identity with
the whole of humanity, as it ever was, is, and ever shall be. He will add to
his modest personal possessions which have proved themselvesinsufficient. Such acquisitions will streng then his attitude, and this is the
very reason why collective ideas have always been so important.
[65]
It looks as if Freud had got stuck in his own pessimism, clinging as he
does to his thoroughly negative and personal conception of the
unconscious. You get nowhere if you assume that the vital basis of man is
nothing but a very personal and therefore very private affaire scandaleuse.
This is utterly hopeless, and true only to the extent that a Strindberg drama
is true. But pierce the veil of that sickly illusion, and you step out of your
narrow, stuffy personal corner into the wide realm of the collective psyche,
into the healthy and natural matrix of the human mind, into the very soul of
humanity. That is the true foundation on which we can build a new and
more workable attitude.

questions, comments, suggestions/feedback, take-down requests, contribute, etc
contact me @ integralyogin@gmail.com or
join the integral discord server (chatrooms)
if the page you visited was empty, it may be noted and I will try to fill it out. cheers

OBJECT INSTANCES [0] - TOPICS - AUTHORS - BOOKS - CHAPTERS - CLASSES - SEE ALSO - SIMILAR TITLES

TOPICS

SEE ALSO

AUTH

BOOKS

IN CHAPTERS TITLE

1.03_-_Some_Aspects_of_Modern_Psycho_therapy

IN CHAPTERS CLASSNAME

IN CHAPTERS TEXT

1.03_-_Some_Aspects_of_Modern_Psycho_therapy

PRIMARY CLASS

chapter

SIMILAR TITLES

DEFINITIONS

QUOTES [0 / 0 - 0 / 0]

KEYS (10k)

NEW FULL DB (2.4M)

*** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***

IN CHAPTERS [0/0]

WORDNET

IN WEBGEN [10000/0]

change font "color":
change "background-color":
change "font-family":
change "padding":
change "table font size":
last updated: 2022-02-04 18:52:41
316718 site hits