1.05 - Problems of Modern Psycho therapy

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object:1.05 - Problems of Modern Psycho therapy
book class:The Practice of Psycho therapy
author class:Carl Jung
subject class:Psychology
class:chapter

V
PROBLEMS OF MODERN PSYCHO THERAPY 1
[114]
Psycho therapy, or the treatment of the mind by psychological
methods, is today identified in popular thought with psychoanalysis.
[115]
The word psychoanalysis has become so much a part of common
speech that everyone who uses it seems to understand what it means. But
what the word actually connotes is unknown to most laymen. According to
the intention of its creator, Freud, it can be appropriately applied only to
the method, inaugurated by himself, of reducing psychic symptoms and
complexes to certain repressed impulses; and in so far as this procedure is
not possible without the corresponding points of view, the idea of
psychoanalysis also includes certain theoretical assumptions, formulated as
the Freudian theory of sexuality expressly insisted upon by its author. But,
Freud notwithstanding, the layman employs the term psychoanalysis
loosely for all modern attempts whatsoever to probe the mind by scientific
methods. Thus Adlers school must submit to being labelled
psychoanalytic despite the fact that Adlers viewpoint and method are
apparently in irreconcilable opposition to those of Freud. In consequence,
Adler does not call his psychology psychoanalysis but individual
psychology; while I prefer to call my own approach analytical
psychology. by which I mean something like a general concept embracing
both psychoanalysis and individual psychology as well as other
endeavours in the field of complex psychology.
[116]
Since, however, there is but one mind, or one psyche, in man, it might
seem to the layman that there can be only one psychology, and he might
therefore suppose these distinctions to be either subjective quibbles or the
commonplace attempts of small-minded persons to set themselves up on
little thrones. I could easily leng then the list of psychologies by
mentioning other systems not included under analytical psychology.There are in fact many different methods, standpoints, views, and beliefs
which are all at war with one another, chiefly because they all
misunderstand one another and refuse to give one another their due. The
many-sidedness, the diversity, of psychological opinions in our day is
nothing less than astonishing, not to say confusing for the layman.
[117]
If, in a text-book of pathology, we find numerous remedies of the
most diverse kind prescribed for a given disease, we may safely conclude
that none of these remedies is particularly efficacious. So, when many
different ways of approaching the psyche are recommended, we may rest
assured that none of them leads with absolute certainty to the goal, least of
all those advocated with fanaticism. The very number of present-day
psychologies is a confession of perplexity. The difficulty of gaining access
to the psyche is gradually being borne in upon us, and the psyche itself is
seen to be a horned problem, to use Nietzsches expression. It is small
wonder therefore that efforts to attack this elusive riddle keep on
multiplying, first from one side and then from another. The variety of
contradictory standpoints and opinions is the inevitable result.
[118]
The reader will doubtless agree that in speaking of psychoanalysis we
should not confine ourselves to its narrower connotation, but should deal
in general with the successes and failures of the various contemporary
endeavours, which we sum up under the term analytical psychology, to
solve the problem of the psyche.
[119]
But why this sudden interest in the human psyche as a datum of
experience? For thousands of years it was not so. I wish merely to raise
this apparently irrelevant question, not to answer it. In reality it is not
irrelevant, because the impulses at the back of our present-day interest in
psychology have a sort of subterranean connection with this question.
[120]
All that now passes under the laymans idea of psychoanalysis has
its origin in medical practice; consequently most of it is medical
psychology. This psychology bears the unmistakable stamp of the doctors
consulting-room, as can be seen not only in its terminology but also in its
theoretical set-up. Everywhere we come across assumptions which the
doctor has taken over from natural science and biology. It is this that has
largely contri buted to the divorce between modern psychology and the
academic or humane sciences, for psychology explains things in terms ofirrational nature, whereas the latter studies are grounded in the intellect.
The distance between mind and nature, difficult to bridge at best, is still
further increased by a medical and biological nomenclature which often
strikes us as thoroughly mechanical, and more often than not severely
overtaxes the best-intentioned understanding.
[121]
Having expressed the hope that the foregoing general remarks may not
be out of place in view of the confusion of terms existing in this field, I
should now like to turn to the real task in hand and scrutinize the
achievements of analytical psychology.
[122]
Since the endeavours of our psychology are so extraordinarily
heterogeneous, it is only with the greatest difficulty that we can take up a
broadly inclusive standpoint. If, therefore, I try to divide the aims and
results of these endeavours into certain classes, or rather stages, I do so
with the express reservation appropriate to a purely provisional
undertaking which, it may be objected, is just as arbitrary as the surveyors
triangulation of a landscape. Be that as it may, I would venture to regard
the sum total of our findings under the aspect of four stages, namely,
confession, elucidation, education, and transformation. I shall now proceed
to discuss these somewhat unusual terms.
[123]
The first beginnings of all analytical treatment of the soul are to be
found in its prototype, the confessional. Since, however, the two have no
direct causal connection, but rather grow from a common irrational
psychic root, it is difficult for an outsider to see at once the relation
between the groundwork of psychoanalysis and the religious institution of
the confessional.
[124]
Once the human mind had succeeded in inventing the idea of sin, man
had recourse to psychic concealment; or, in analytical parlance, repression
arose. Anything concealed is a secret. The possession of secrets acts like a
psychic poison that alienates their possessor from the community. In small
doses, this poison may be an invaluable medicament, even an essential pre-
condition of individual differentiation, so much so that even on the
primitive level man feels an irresistible need actually to invent secrets:
their possession safeguards him from dissolving in the featureless flow of
unconscious community life and thus from deadly peril to his soul. It is a
well known fact that the widespread and very ancient rites of initiationwith their mystery cults subserved this instinct for differentiation. Even the
Christian sacraments were looked upon as mysteries in the early Church,
and, as in the case of baptism, were celebrated in secluded spots and only
mentioned under the veil of allegory.
[125]
A secret shared with several persons is as beneficial as a merely
private secret is destructive. The latter works like a burden of guilt, cutting
off the unfortunate possessor from communion with his fellows. But, if we
are conscious of what we are concealing, the harm done is decidedly less
than if we do not know what we are repressingor even that we have
repressions at all. In this case the hidden content is no longer consciously
kept secret; we are concealing it even from ourselves. It then splits off
from the conscious mind as an independent complex and leads a sort of
separate existence in the unconscious psyche, where it can be neither
interfered with nor corrected by the conscious mind. The complex forms.
so to speak, a miniature self-contained psyche which, as experience shows,
develops a peculiar fantasy-life of its own. What we call fantasy is simply
spontaneous psychic activity, and it wells up wherever the inhibitive action
of the conscious mind abates or, as in sleep, ceases altogether. In sleep,
fantasy takes the form of dreams. But in waking life, too, we continue to
dream beneath the threshold of consciousness, especially when under the
influence of repressed or other unconscious complexes. Incidentally,
unconscious contents are on no account composed exclusively of
complexes that were once conscious and subsequently became
unconscious by being repressed. The unconscious, too, has its own specific
contents which push up from unknown depths and gradually reach
consciousness. Hence we should in no wise picture the unconscious psyche
as a mere receptacle for contents discarded by the conscious mind.
[126]
All unconscious contents, which either approach the threshold of
consciousness from below, or have sunk only slightly beneath it, affect the
conscious mind. Since the content does not appear as such in
consciousness, these effects are necessarily indirect. Most of our lapses
are traceable to such disturbances, as are all neurotic symptoms, which are
nearly always, in medical parlance, of a psychogenic nature, the exceptions
being shock effects (shell-shock and the like). The mildest forms of
neurosis are the lapses of consciousness mentioned abovee.g., slips of
the tongue, suddenly forgetting names and dates, inadvertent clumsinessleading to injuries and accidents, misunderstandings and so-called
hallucinations of memory, as when we think we have said something or
done something, or faulty apprehension of things heard and said, and so
on.
[127]
In all these instances a thorough investigation can show the existence
of some content which, in an indirect and unconscious way, is distorting
the performance of the conscious mind.
[128]
Generally speaking, therefore, an unconscious secret is more injurious
than a conscious one. I have seen many patients who, as a result of
difficult circumstances that might well have driven weaker natures to
suicide, sometimes developed a suicidal tendency but, because of their
inherent reasonableness, prevented it from becoming conscious and in this
way generated an unconscious suicide-complex. This unconscious urge to
suicide then engineered all kinds of dangerous accidentsas, for instance,
a sudden attack of giddiness on some exposed place, hesitation in front of
a motor-car, mistaking corrosive sublimate for cough mixture, a sudden
zest for dangerous acrobatics, and so forth. When it was possible to make
the suicidal leaning conscious in these cases, common sense could
intervene as a salutary check: the patients could then consciously
recognize and avoid the situations that tempted them to self-destruction.
[129]
All personal secrets, therefore, have the effect of sin or guilt, whether
or not they are, from the standpoint of popular morality, wrongful secrets.
[130]
Another form of concealment is the act of holding something back.
What we usually hold back are emotions or affects. Here too it must be
stressed that self-restraint is healthy and beneficial; it may even be a virtue.
That is why we find self-discipline to be one of the earliest moral arts even
among primitive peoples, where it has its place in the initiation
ceremonies, chiefly in the form of ascetic continence and the stoical
endurance of pain and fear. Self-restraint is here practised within a secret
society as an undertaking shared with others. But if self-restraint is only a
personal matter, unconnected with any religious views, it may become as
injurious as the personal secret. Hence the well-known bad moods and
irritability of the over-virtuous. The affect withheld is likewise something
we conceal, something we can hide even from ourselvesan art in which
men particularly excel, while women, with very few exceptions, are bynature averse to doing such injury to their affects. When an affect is
withheld it is just as isolating and just as disturbing in its effects as the
unconscious secret, and just as guilt-laden. In the same way that nature
seems to bear us a grudge if we have the advantage of a secret over the rest
of humanity, so she takes it amiss if we withhold our emotions from our
fellow men. Nature decidedly abhors a vacuum in this respect; hence there
is nothing more unendurable in the long run than a tepid harmony based on
the withholding of affects. The repressed emotions are often of a kind we
wish to keep secret. But more often there is no secret worth mentioning,
only emotions which have become unconscious through being withheld at
some critical juncture.
[131]
The respective predominance of secrets or of inhibited emotions is
probably responsible for the different forms of neurosis. At any rate the
hysterical subject who is very free with his emotions is generally the
possessor of a secret, while the hardened psychas thenic suffers from
emotional indigestion.
[132]
To cherish secrets and hold back emotion is a psychic misdemeanour
for which nature finally visits us with sickness that is, when we do these
things in private. But when they are done in communion with others they
satisfy nature and may even count as useful virtues. It is only restraint
practised for oneself alone that is unwholesome. It is as if man had an
inalienable right to behold all that is dark, imperfect, stupid, and guilty in
his fellow men for such, of course, are the things we keep secret in order
to protect ourselves. It seems to be a sin in the eyes of nature to hide our
inferiorityjust as much as to live entirely on our inferior side. There
would appear to be a sort of conscience in mankind which severely
punishes every one who does not somehow and at some time, at whatever
cost to his virtuous pride, cease to defend and assert himself, and instead
confess himself fallible and human. Until he can do this, an impenetrable
wall shuts him off from the vital feeling that he is a man among other men.
[133]
This explains the extraordinary significance of genuine,
straightforward confessiona truth that was probably known to all the
initiation rites and mystery cults of the ancient world. There is a saying
from the Greek mysteries: Give up what thou hast, and then thou wilt
receive.[134]
We may well take this saying as a motto for the first stage in
psycho therapeutic treatment. The beginnings of psychoanalysis are in fact
nothing else than the scientific rediscovery of an ancient truth; even the
name that was given to the earliest methodcatharsis, or cleansingis a
familiar term in the classical rites of initiation. The early cathartic method
consisted in putting the patient, with or without the paraphernalia of
hypnosis, in touch with the hinterl and of his mind, hence into that state
which the yoga systems of the East describe as meditation or
contemplation. In contrast to yoga, however, the aim here is to observe the
sporadic emergence, whether in the form of images or of feelings, of those
dim representations which detach themselves in the darkness from the
invisible realm of the unconscious and move as shadows before the
inturned gaze. In this way things repressed and forgotten come back again.
This is a gain in itself, though often a painful one, for the inferior and even
the worthless belongs to me as my shadow and gives me substance and
mass. How can I be substantial without casting a shadow? I must have a
dark side too if I am to be whole; and by becoming conscious of my
shadow I remember once more that I am a human being like any other. At
any rate, if this rediscovery of my own wholeness remains private, it will
only restore the earlier condition from which the neurosis, i.e., the split-off
complex, sprang. Privacy prolongs my isolation and the damage is only
partially mended. But through confession I throw myself into the arms of
humanity again, freed at last from the burden of moral exile. The goal of
the cathartic method is full confessionnot merely the intellectual
recognition of the facts with the head, but their confirmation by the heart
and the actual release of suppressed emotion.
[135]
As may easily be imagined, the effect of such a confession on simple
souls is very great, and its curative results are often astonishing. Yet I
would not wish to see the main achievement of our psychology at this
stage merely in the fact that some sufferers are cured, but rather in the
systematic emphasis it lays upon the significance of confession. For this
concerns us all. All of us are somehow divided by our secrets, but instead
of seeking to cross the gulf on the firm bridge of confession, we choose the
treacherous makeshift of opinion and illusion.
[136]
Now I am far from wishing to enunciate a general maxim. It would be
difficult to imagine anything more unsavoury than a wholesale confessionof sin. Psychology simply establishes the fact that we have here a sore spot
of first-rate importance. As the next stage, the stage of elucidation, will
make clear, it cannot be tackled directly, because it is a problem with quite
particularly pointed horns.
[137]
It is of course obvious that the new psychology would have remained
at the stage of confession had catharsis proved itself a panacea. First and
foremost, however, it is not always possible to bring the patients close
enough to the unconscious for them to perceive the shadows. On the
contrary, many of them and for the most part complicated, highly
conscious personsare so firmly anchored in consciousness that nothing
can pry them loose. They develop the most violent resistances to any
attempt to push consciousness aside; they want to talk with the doctor on
the conscious plane and go into a rational explanation and discussion of
their difficulties. They have quite enough to confess already, they say; they
do not have to turn to the unconscious for that. For such patients a
complete technique for approaching the unconscious is needed.
[138]
This is one fact which at the outset seriously restricts the application
of the cathartic method. The other restriction reveals itself later on and
leads straight into the problems of the second stage. Let us suppose that in
a given case the cathartic confession has occurred, the neurosis has
vanished, or rather the symptoms are no longer visible. The patient could
now be dismissed as curedif it depended on the doctor alone. But heor
especially shecannot get away. The patient seems bound to the doctor
through the confession. If this seemingly senseless attachment is forcibly
severed, there is a bad relapse. Significantly enough, and most curiously,
there are cases where no attachment develops; the patient goes away
apparently cured, but he is now so fascinated by the hinterl and of his own
mind that he continues to practise catharsis on himself at the expense of his
adaptation to life. He is bound to the unconscious, to himself, and not to
the doctor. Clearly the same fate has befallen him as once befell Theseus
and Peirithous his companion, who went down to Hades to bring back the
goddess of the underworld. Tiring on the way, they sat down to rest for a
while, only to find that they had grown fast to the rocks and could not rise.
[139]
These curious and unforeseen mischances need elucidation just as
much as the first-mentioned cases, those that proved inaccessible to
catharsis. In spite of the fact that the two categories of patients areapparently quite different, elucidation is called for at precisely the same
point that is, where the problem of fixation arises, as was correctly
recognized by Freud. This is immediately obvious with patients who have
undergone catharsis, especially if they remain bound to the doctor. The
same sort of thing had already been observed as the unpleasant result of
hypnotic treatment, although the inner mechanisms of such a tie were not
understood. It now turns out that the nature of the tie in question
corresponds more or less to the relation between father and child. The
patient falls into a sort of childish dependence from which he cannot
defend himself even by rational insight. The fixation is at times
extraordinarily powerfulits strength is so amazing that one suspects it of
being fed by forces quite outside ordinary experience. Since the tie is the
result of an unconscious process, the conscious mind of the patient can tell
us nothing about it. Hence the question arises of how this new difficulty is
to be met. Obviously we are dealing with a neurotic formation, a new
symptom directly induced by the treatment. The unmistakable outward
sign of the situation is that the feeling-toned memory-image of the father
is transferred to the doctor, so that whether he likes it or not the doctor
appears in the role of the father and thus turns the patient into a child.
Naturally the patients childishness does not arise on that accountit was
always present, but repressed. Now it comes to the surface, and the long-
lost father being found againtries to restore the family situation of
childhood. Freud gave to this symptom the appropriate name of
transference. That there should be a certain dependence on the doctor
who has helped you is a perfectly normal and humanly understandable
phenomenon. What is abnormal and unexpected is the extraordinary
toughness of the tie and its imperviousness to conscious correction.
[140]
It is one of Freuds outstanding achievements to have explained the
nature of this tie, or at least the biological aspects of it, and thus to have
facilitated an important advance in psychological knowledge. Today it has
been incontestably proved that the tie is caused by unconscious fantasies.
These fantasies have in the main what we may call an incestuous
character, which seems adequately to explain the fact that they remain
unconscious, for we can hardly expect such fantasies, barely conscious at
best, to come out even in the most scrupulous confession. Although Freud
always speaks of incest-fantasies as though they were repressed, further
experience has shown that in very many cases they were never the contentsof the conscious mind at all or were conscious only as the vaguest
adumbrations, for which reason they could not have been repressed
intentionally. It is more probable that the incest-fantasies were always
essentially unconscious and remained so until positively dragged into the
light of day by the analytical method. This is not to say that fishing them
out of the unconscious is a reprehensible interference with nature. It is
something like a surgical operation on the psyche, but absolutely necessary
inasmuch as the incest-fantasies are the cause of the transference and its
complex symptoms, which are no less abnormal for being an artificial
product.
[141]
While the cathartic method restores to the ego such contents as are
capable of becoming conscious and should normally be components of the
conscious mind, the process of clearing up the transference brings to light
contents which are hardly ever capable of becoming conscious in that
form. This is the cardinal distinction between the stage of confession and
the stage of elucidation.
[142]
We spoke earlier of two categories of patients: those who prove
impervious to catharsis and those who develop a fixation after catharsis.
We have just dealt with those whose fixation takes the form of
transference. But, besides these, there are people who, as already
mentioned, develop no attachment to the doctor but rather to their own
unconscious, in which they become entangled as in a web. Here the
parental imago is not transferred to any human object but remains a
fantasy, although as such it exerts the same pull and results in the same tie
as does the transference. The first category, the people who cannot yield
themselves unreservedly to catharsis, can be understood in the light of
Freudian research. Even before they came along for treatment they stood
in an identity-relationship to their parents, deriving from it that authority,
independence, and critical power which enabled them successfully to
withstand the catharsis. They are mostly cultivated, differentiated
personalities who, unlike the others, did not fall helpless victims to the
unconscious activity of the parental imago, but rather usurped this activity
by unconsciously identifying themselves with their parents.
[143]
Faced with the phenomenon of transference, mere confession is of no
avail; it was for this reason that Freud was driven to substantial
modifications of Breuers original cathartic method. What he nowpractised he called the interpretative method.
[144]
This further step is quite logical, for the transference relationship is in
especial need of elucidation. How very much this is the case the layman
can hardly appreciate; but the doctor who finds himself suddenly entangled
in a web of incomprehensible and fantastic notions sees it all too clearly.
He must interpret the transferenceexplain to the patient what he is
projecting upon the doctor. Since the patient himself does not know what it
is, the doctor is obliged to submit what scraps of fantasy he can obtain
from the patient to analytical interpretation. The first and most important
products of this kind are dreams. Freud therefore proceeded to examine
dreams exclusively for their stock of wishes that had been repressed
because incompatible with reality, and in the process discovered the
incestuous contents of which I have spoken. Naturally the investigation
revealed not merely incestuous material in the stricter sense of the word,
but every conceivable kind of filth of which human nature is capableand
it is notorious that a lifetime would be required to make even a rough
inventory of it.
[145]
The result of the Freudian method of elucidation is a minute
elaboration of mans shadow-side unexampled in any previous age. It is
the most effective antidote imaginable to all the idealistic illusions about
the nature of man; and it is therefore no wonder that there arose on all
sides the most violent opposition to Freud and his school. I will not speak
of the inveterate illusionists; I would merely point out that among the
opponents of this method of explanation there are not a few who have no
illusions about mans shadow-side and yet object to a biased portrayal of
man from the shadow-side alone. After all, the essential thing is not the
shadow but the body which casts it.
[146]
Freuds interpretative method rests on reductive explanations which
unfailingly lead backwards and downwards, and it is essentially
destructive if overdone or handled one-sidedly. Nevertheless psychology
has profited greatly from Freuds pioneer work; it has learned that human
nature has its black side and not man alone, but his works, his
institutions, and his convictions as well. Even our purest and holiest beliefs
rest on very deep and dark foundations; after all, we can explain a house
not only from the attic downwards, but from the basement upwards, and
the latter explanation has the prime advantage of being genetically themore correct, since houses are in fact built bottom-side first, and the
beginning of all things is simple and crude. No thinking person can deny
that Salomon Reinachs explanation of the Last Supper in terms of
primitive totemism is fraught with significance; nor will he reject the
application of the incest hypothesis to the myths of the Greek divinities.
Certainly it pains our sensibilities to interpret radiant things from the
shadow-side and thus in a measure trample them in the sorry dirt of their
beginnings. But I hold it to be an imperfection in things of beauty, and a
frailty in man, if anything of such a kind permit itself to be destroyed by a
mere shadow-explanation. The uproar over Freuds interpretations is
entirely due to our own barbarous or childish navet, which does not yet
understand that high rests on low, and that les extrmes se touchent really
is one of the ultimate verities. Our mistake lies in supposing that the
radiant things are done away with by being explained from the shadow-
side. This is a regrettable error into which Freud himself has fallen.
Shadow pertains to light as evil to good, and vice versa. Therefore I cannot
lament the shock which this exposure administered to our occidental
illusions and pettiness; on the contrary I welcome it as an historic and
necessary rectification of almost incalculable importance. For it forces us
to accept a philosophical relativism such as Einstein embodies for
mathematical physics, and which is fundamentally a truth of the Far East
whose ultimate effects we cannot at present foresee.
[147]
Nothing, it is true, is less effective than an intellectual idea. But when
an idea is a psychic fact that crops up in two such totally different fields as
psychology and physics, apparently without historical connection, then we
must give it our closest attention. For ideas of this kind represent forces
which are logically and morally unassailable; they are always stronger than
man and his brain. He fancies that he makes these ideas, but in reality they
make himand make him their unwitting mouthpiece.
[148]
To return to our problem of fixation, I should now like to deal with the
effects of elucidation. The fixation having been traced back to its dark
origins, the patients position becomes untenable; he cannot avoid seeing
how inept and childish his demands are. He will either climb down from
his exalted position of despotic authority to a more modest level and
accept an insecurity which may prove very wholesome, or he will realize
the inescapable truth that to make claims on others is a childish self-indulgence which must be replaced by a greater sense of responsibility.
[149]
The man of insight will draw his own moral conclusions. Armed with
the knowledge of his deficiencies, he will plunge into the struggle for
existence and consume in progressive work and experience all those forces
and longings which previously caused him to cling obstinately to a childs
paradise, or at least to look back at it over his shoulder. Normal adaptation
and forbearance with his own shortcomings: these will be his guiding
moral principles, together with freedom from sentimentality and illusion.
The inevitable result is a turning away from the unconscious as from a
source of weakness and temptation the field of moral and social defeat.
[150]
The problem which now faces the patient is his education as a social
being, and with this we come to the third stage. For many morally sensitive
natures, mere insight into themselves has sufficient motive force to drive
them forward, but it is not enough for people with little moral imagination.
For themto say nothing of those who may have been struck by the
analysts interpretation but still doubt it in their heart of heartsself-
knowledge without the spur of external necessity is ineffective even when
they are deeply convinced of its truth. Then again it is just the
intellectually differentiated people who grasp the truth of the reductive
explanation but cannot tolerate mere deflation of their hopes and ideals. In
these cases, too, the power of insight will be of no avail. The explanatory
method always presupposes sensitive natures capable of drawing
independent moral conclusions from insight. It is true that elucidation goes
further than uninterpreted confession alone, for at least it exercises the
mind and may awaken dormant forces which can intervene in a helpful
way. But the fact remains that in many cases the most thorough elucidation
leaves the patient an intelligent but still incapable child. Moreover Freuds
cardinal explanatory principle in terms of pleasure and its satisfaction is, as
further research has shown, one-sided and therefore unsatisfactory. Not
everybody can be explained from this angle. No doubt we all have this
angle, but it is not always the most important. We can give a starving man
a beautiful painting; he would much prefer bread. We can nominate a
languishing lover President of the United States; he would far rather wrap
his arms round his adored. On the average, all those who have no difficulty
in achieving social adaptation and social position are better accounted for
by the pleasure principle than are the unadapted who, because of theirsocial inadequacy, have a craving for power and importance. The elder
brother who follows in his fathers footsteps and wins to a commanding
position in society may be tormented by his desires; while the younger
brother who feels himself suppressed and overshadowed by the other two
may be goaded by ambition and the need for self-assertion. He may yield
so completely to this passion that nothing else can become a problem for
him, anyway not a vital one.
[151]
At this point in Freuds system of explanation there is a palpable gap,
into which there stepped his one-time pupil, Adler. Adler has shown
convincingly that numerous cases of neurosis can be far more satisfactorily
explained by the power instinct than by the pleasure principle. The aim of
his interpretation is therefore to show the patient that he arranges his
symptoms and exploits his neurosis in order to achieve a fictitious
importance; and that even his transference and his other fixations subserve
the will to power and thus represent a masculine protest against
imaginary suppression. Obviously Adler has in mind the psychology of the
under-dog or social failure, whose one passion is self-assertion. Such
individuals are neurotic because they always imagine they are hard done
by and tilt at the windmills of their own fancy, thus putting the goal they
most desire quite out of reach.
[152]
Adlers method begins essentially at the stage of elucidation; he
explains the symptoms in the sense just indicated, and to that extent
appeals to the patients understanding. Yet it is characteristic of Adler that
he does not expect too much of understanding, but, going beyond that, has
clearly recognized the need for social education. Whereas Freud is the
investigator and interpreter, Adler is primarily the educator. He thus takes
up the negative legacy which Freud bequea thed him, and, refusing to leave
the patient a mere child, helpless despite his valuable understanding, tries
by every device of education to make him a normal and adapted person.
He does this evidently in the conviction that social adaptation and
normalization are desirable goals, that they are absolutely necessary, the
consummation of human life. From this fundamental attitude comes the
widespread social activity of the Adlerian school, but also its depreciation
of the unconscious, which, it seems, occasionally amounts to its complete
denial. This is probably a swing of the pendulum the inevitable reaction
to the emphasis Freud lays on the unconscious, and as such quite inkeeping with the natural aversion which we noted in patients struggling for
adaptation and health. For, if the unconscious is held to be nothing more
than a receptacle for all the evil shadow-things in human nature, including
deposits of primeval slime, we really do not see why we should linger
longer than necessary on the edge of this swamp into which we once fell.
The scientific inquirer may behold a world of wonders in a mud puddle,
but for the ordinary man it is something best left alone. Just as early
Buddhism had no gods because it had to free itself from an inheritance of
nearly two million gods, so psychology, if it is to develop further, must
leave behind so entirely negative a thing as Freuds conception of the
unconscious. The educational aims of the Adlerian school begin precisely
where Freud leaves off; consequently they meet the needs of the patient
who, having come to understand himself, wants to find his way back to
normal life. It is obviously not enough for him to know how his illness
arose and whence it came, for we seldom get rid of an evil merely by
understanding its causes. Nor should it be forgotten that the crooked paths
of a neurosis lead to as many obstinate habits, and that for all our insight
these do not disappear until replaced by other habits. But habits are won
only by exercise, and appropriate education is the sole means to this end.
The patient must be drawn out of himself into other paths, which is the
true meaning of education, and this can only be achieved by an
educative will. We can therefore see why Adlers approach has found
favour chiefly with clergymen and teachers, while Freuds approach is
fancied by doctors and intellectuals, who are one and all bad nurses and
educators.
[153]
Each stage in the development of our psychology has something
curiously final about it. Catharsis, with its heart-felt outpourings, makes
one feel: Now we are there, everything has come out, everything is
known, the last terror lived through and the last tear shed; now everything
will be all right. Elucidation says with equal conviction: Now we know
where the neurosis came from, the earliest memories have been unearthed,
the last roots dug up, and the transference was nothing but the wish-
fulfilling fantasy of a childhood paradise or a relapse into the family
romance; the road to a normally disillusioned life is now open. Finally
comes education, pointing out that no amount of confession and no amount
of explaining can make the crooked plant grow straight, but that it must be
trained upon the trellis of the norm by the gardeners art. Only then willnormal adaptation be reached.
[154]
This curious sense of finality which attends each of the stages
accounts for the fact that there are people using cathartic methods today
who have apparently never heard of dream interpretation, Freudians who
do not understand a word of Adler, and Adlerians who do not wish to
know anything about the unconscious. Each is ensnared in the peculiar
finality of his own stage, and thence arises that chaos of opinions and
views which makes orientation in these troubled waters so exceedingly
difficult.
[155]
Whence comes the feeling of finality that evokes so much
authoritarian bigotry on all sides?
[156]
I can only explain it to myself by saying that each stage does in fact
rest on a final truth, and that consequently there are always cases which
demonstrate this particular truth in the most startling way. In our delusion-
ridden world a truth is so precious that nobody wants to let it slip merely
for the sake of a few so-called exceptions which refuse to toe the line. And
whoever doubts this truth is invariably looked on as a faithless reprobate,
so that a note of fanaticism and intolerance everywhere creeps into the
discussion.
[157]
And yet each of us can carry the torch of knowledge but a part of the
way, until another takes it from him. If only we could understand all this
impersonallycould understand that we are not the personal creators of
our truths, but only their exponents, mere mouthpieces of the days psychic
needs, then much venom and bitterness might be spared and we should be
able to perceive the profound and supra-personal continuity of the human
mind.
[158]
As a rule, we take no account of the fact that the doctor who practises
catharsis is not just an abstraction which automatically produces nothing
but catharsis. He is also a human being, and although his thinking may be
limited to his special field, his actions exert the influence of a complete
human being. Without giving it a name and without being clearly
conscious of it, he unwittingly does his share of explanation and education,
just as the others do their share of catharsis without raising it to the level of
a principle.[159]
All life is living history. Even the reptile still lives in us par sous-
entendu. In the same way, the three stages of analytical psychology so far
dealt with are by no means truths of such a nature that the last of them has
gobbled up and replaced the other two. On the contrary, all three are
salient aspects of one and the same problem, and they no more invalidate
one another than do confession and absolution.
[160]
The same is true of the fourth stage, transformation. It too should not
claim to be the finally attained and only valid truth. It certainly fills a gap
left by the earlier stages, but in so doing it merely fulfils a further need
beyond the scope of the others.
[161]
In order to make clear what this fourth stage has in view and what is
meant by the somewhat peculiar term transformation, we must first
consider what psychic need was not given a place in the earlier stages. In
other words, can anything lead further or be higher than the claim to be a
normal and adapted social being? To be a normal human being is probably
the most useful and fitting thing of which we can think; but the very notion
of a normal human being, like the concept of adaptation, implies a
restriction to the average which seems a desirable improvement only to the
man who already has some difficulty in coming to terms with the everyday
worlda man, let us say, whose neurosis unfits him for normal life. To be
normal is the ideal aim for the unsuccessful, for all those who are still
below the general level of adaptation. But for people of more than average
ability, people who never found it difficult to gain successes and to
accomplish their share of the worlds work for them the moral
compulsion to be nothing but normal signifies the bed of Procrustes
deadly and insupportable boredom, a hell of sterility and hopelessness.
Consequently there are just as many people who become neurotic because
they are merely normal, as there are people who are neurotic because they
cannot become normal. That it should enter anyones head to educate them
to normality is a nightmare for the former, because their deepest need is
really to be able to lead abnormal lives.
[162]
A man can find satisfaction and fulfilment only in what he does not
yet possess, just as he can never be satisfied with something of which he
has already had too much. To be a social and adapted person has no
charms for one to whom such an aspiration is childs play. Always to do
the right thing becomes a bore for the man who knows how, whereas theeternal bungler cherishes a secret longing to be right for once in some
distant future.
[163]
The needs and necessities of mankind are manifold. What sets one
man free is another mans prison. So also with normality and adaptation.
Even if it be a biological axiom that man is a herd animal who only finds
optimum health in living as a social being, the very next case may quite
possibly invert this axiom and show us that he is completely healthy only
when leading an abnormal and unsocial life. It is enough to drive one to
despair that in practical psychology there are no universally valid recipes
and rules. There are only individual cases with the most heterogeneous
needs and demandsso heterogeneous that we can virtually never know in
advance what course a given case will take, for which reason it is better for
the doctor to abandon all preconceived opinions. This does not mean that
he should throw them overboard, but that in any given case he should use
them merely as hypotheses for a possible explanation. Not, however, in
order to instruct or convince his patient, but rather to show how the doctor
reacts to that particular individual. For, twist and turn the matter as we
may, the relation between doctor and patient remains a personal one within
the impersonal framework of professional treatment. By no device can the
treatment be anything but the product of mutual influence, in which the
whole being of the doctor as well as that of his patient plays its part. In the
treatment there is an encounter between two irrational factors, that is to
say, between two persons who are not fixed and determinable quantities
but who bring with them, besides their more or less clearly defined fields
of consciousness, an indefinitely extended sphere of non-consciousness.
Hence the personalities of doctor and patient are often infinitely more
important for the outcome of the treatment than what the doctor says and
thinks (although what he says and thinks may be a disturbing or a healing
factor not to be underestimated). For two personalities to meet is like
mixing two different chemical substances: if there is any combination at
all, both are transformed. In any effective psychological treatment the
doctor is bound to influence the patient; but this influence can only take
place if the patient has a reciprocal influence on the doctor. You can exert
no influence if you are not susceptible to influence. It is futile for the
doctor to shield himself from the influence of the patient and to surround
himself with a smoke-screen of fatherly and professional authority. By so
doing he only denies himself the use of a highly important organ ofinformation. The patient influences him unconsciously none the less, and
brings about changes in the doctors unconscious which are well known to
many psycho therapists: psychic disturbances or even injuries peculiar to
the profession, a striking illustration of the patients almost chemical
action. One of the best known symptoms of this kind is the counter-
transference evoked by the transference. But the effects are often much
more subtle, and their nature can best be conveyed by the old idea of the
demon of sickness. According to this, a sufferer can transmit his disease to
a healthy person whose powers then subdue the demon but not without
impairing the well-being of the subduer.
[164]
Between doctor and patient, therefore, there are imponderable factors
which bring about a mutual transformation. In the process, the stronger and
more stable personality will decide the final issue. I have seen many cases
where the patient assimilated the doctor in defiance of all theory and of the
latters professional intentionsgenerally, though not always, to the
disadvantage of the doctor.
[165]
The stage of transformation is grounded on these facts, but it took
more than twenty-five years of wide practical experience for them to be
clearly recognized. Freud himself has admitted their importance and has
therefore seconded my demand for the analysis of the analyst.
[166]
What does this demand mean? Nothing less than that the doctor is as
much in the analysis as the patient. He is equally a part of the psychic
process of treatment and therefore equally exposed to the transforming
influences. Indeed, to the extent that the doctor shows himself impervious
to this influence, he forfeits influence over the patient; and if he is
influenced only unconsciously, there is a gap in his field of consciousness
which makes it impossible for him to see the patient in true perspective. In
either case the result of the treatment is compromised.
[167]
The doctor is therefore faced with the same task which he wants his
patient to face that is, he must become socially adapted or, in the reverse
case, appropriately non-adapted. This therapeutic demand can of course be
clothed in a thousand different formulae, according to the doctors beliefs.
One doctor believes in overcoming infantilism therefore he must first
overcome his own infantilism. Another believes in abreacting all affects
therefore he must first abreact all his own affects. A third believes incomplete consciousness therefore he must first reach consciousness of
himself. The doctor must consistently strive to meet his own therapeutic
demand if he wishes to ensure the right sort of influence over his patients.
All these guiding principles of therapy make so many ethical demands,
which can be summed up in the single truth: be the man through whom
you wish to influence others. Mere talk has always been counted hollow,
and there is no trick, however artful, by which this simple truth can be
evaded in the long run. The fact of being convinced and not the thing we
are convinced of that is what has always, and at all times, worked.
[168]
Thus the fourth stage of analytical psychology requires the counter-
application to the doctor himself of whatever system is believed inand
moreover with the same relentlessness, consistency, and perseverance with
which the doctor applies it to the patient.
[169]
When one considers with what attentiveness and critical judgment the
psychologist must keep track of his patients in order to show up all their
false turnings, their false conclusions and infantile subterfuges, then it is
truly no mean achievement for him to perform the same work upon
himself. We are seldom interested enough in ourselves for that; moreover
nobody pays us for our introspective efforts. Again, the common neglect
into which the reality of the human psyche has fallen is still so great that
self-examination or preoccupation with ourselves is deemed almost
morbid. Evidently we suspect the psyche of harbouring something
unwholesome, so that any concern with it smells of the sick-room. The
doctor has to overcome these resistances in himself, for who can educate
others if he is himself uneducated? Who can enlighten others if he is still
in the dark about himself? And who purify others if himself impure?
[170]
The step from education to self-education is a logical advance that
completes the earlier stages. The demand made by the stage of
transformation, namely that the doctor must change himself if he is to
become capable of changing his patient, is, as may well be imagined, a
rather unpopular one, and for three reasons. First, because it seems
unpractical; second, because of the unpleasant prejudice against being
preoccupied with oneself; and third, because it is sometimes exceedingly
painful to live up to everything one expects of ones patient. The last item
in particular contri butes much to the unpopularity of this demand, for if the
doctor conscientiously doctors himself he will soon discover things in hisown nature which are utterly opposed to normalization, or which continue
to haunt him in the most disturbing way despite assiduous explanation and
thorough abreaction. What is he to do about these things? He always
knows what the patient should do about themit is his professional duty
to do so. But what, in all sincerity, will he do when they recoil upon
himself or perhaps upon those who stand nearest to him? He may, in his
self-investigations, discover some inferiority which brings him
uncomfortably close to his patients and may even blight his authority. How
will he deal with this painful discovery? This somewhat neurotic
question will touch him on the raw, no matter how normal he thinks he is.
He will also discover that the ultimate questions which worry him as much
as his patients cannot be solved by any treatment, that to expect solutions
from others is childish and keeps you childish, and that if no solution can
be found the question must be repressed again.
[171]
I will not pursue any further the many problems raised by self-
examination because, owing to the obscurity which still surrounds the
psyche, they would be of little interest today.
[172]
Instead, I would like to emphasize once again that the newest
developments in analytical psychology confront us with the imponderable
elements in the human personality; that we have learned to place in the
foreground the personality of the doctor himself as a curative or harmful
factor; and that what is now demanded is his own transformation the
self-education of the educator. Consequently, everything that occurred on
the objective level in the history of our psychologyconfession,
elucidation, educationpasses to the subjective level; in other words, what
happened to the patient must now happen to the doctor, so that his
personality shall not react unfavourably on the patient. The doctor can no
longer evade his own difficulty by treating the difficulties of others: the
man who suffers from a running abscess is not fit to perform a surgical
operation.
[173]
Just as the momentous discovery of the unconscious shadow-side in
man suddenly forced the Freudian school to deal even with questions of
religion, so this latest advance makes an unavoidable problem of the
doctors ethical attitude. The self-criticism and self-examination that are
indissolubly bound up with it necessitates a view of the psyche radically
different from the merely biological one which has prevailed hitherto; for the human psyche is far more than a mere object of scientific interest. It is
not only the sufferer but the doctor as well, not only the object but also the
subject, not only a cerebral function but the absolute condition of
consciousness itself.
[174]
What was formerly a method of medical treatment now becomes a
method of self-education, and with this the horizon of our psychology is
immeasurably widened. The crucial thing is no longer the medical
diploma, but the human quality. This is a significant turn of events, for it
places all the implements of the psycho therapeutic art that were developed
in clinical practice, and then refined and systematized, at the service of our
self-education and self-perfection, with the result that analytical
psychology has burst the bonds which till then had bound it to the
consulting-room of the doctor. It goes beyond itself to fill the hiatus that
has hitherto put Western civilization at a psychic disadvantage as
compared with the civilizations of the East. We Westerners knew only
how to tame and subdue the psyche; we knew nothing about its methodical
development and its functions. Our civilization is still young, and young
civilizations need all the arts of the animal-tamer to make the defiant
barbarian and the savage in us more or less tractable. But at a higher
cultural level we must forgo compulsion and turn to self-development. For
this we must have a way, a method, which, as I said, has so far been
lacking. It seems to me that the findings and experiences of analytical
psychology can at least provide a foundation, for as soon as psycho therapy
takes the doctor himself for its subject, it transcends its medical origins and
ceases to be merely a method for treating the sick. It now treats the healthy
or such as have a moral right to psychic health, whose sickness is at most
the suffering that torments us all. For this reason analytical psychology can
claim to serve the common wealmore so even than the previous stages
which are each the bearer of a general truth. But between this claim and
present-day reality there lies a gulf, with no bridge leading across. We
have yet to build that bridge stone by stone.

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