1.06 - Psycho therapy and a Philosophy of Life

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object:1.06 - Psycho therapy and a Philosophy of Life
book class:The Practice of Psycho therapy
author class:Carl Jung
subject class:Psychology
class:chapter

VI
PSYCHO THERAPY AND A PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 1
[175]
So much is psycho therapy the child of practical improvisation that for
a long time it had trouble in thinking out its own intellectual foundations.
Empirical psychology relied very much at first on physical and then on
physiological ideas, and ventured only with some hesitation on the
complex phenomena which constitute its proper field. Similarly,
psycho therapy was at first simply an auxiliary method; only gradually did
it free itself from the world of ideas represented by medical therapeutics
and come to understand that its concern lay not merely with physiological
but primarily with psychological principles. In other words, it found itself
obliged to raise psychological issues which soon burst the framework of
the experimental psychology of that day with its elementary statements.
The demands of therapy brought highly complex factors within the
purview of this still young science, and its exponents very often lacked the
equipment needed to deal with the problems that arose. It is therefore not
surprising that a bewildering assortment of ideas, theories, and points of
view predominated in all the initial discussions of this new psychology
which had been, so to speak, forced into existence by therapeutic
experience. An outsider could hardly be blamed if he received an
impression of babel. This confusion was inevitable, for sooner or later it
was bound to become clear that one cannot treat the psyche without
touching on man and life as a whole, including the ultimate and deepest
issues, any more than one can treat the sick body without regard to the
totality of its functionsor rather, as a few representatives of modern
medicine maintain, the totality of the sick man himself.
[176]
The more psychological a condition is, the greater its complexity
and the more it relates to the whole of life. It is true that elementary
psychic phenomena are closely allied to physiological processes, and there
is not the slightest doubt that the physiological factor forms at least onepole of the psychic cosmos. The instinctive and affective processes,
together with all the neurotic symptomatology that arises when these are
disturbed, clearly rest on a physiological basis. But, on the other hand, the
disturbing factor proves equally clearly that it has the power to turn
physiological order into disorder. If the disturbance lies in a repression,
then the disturbing factor that is, the repressive forcebelongs to a
higher psychic order. It is not something elementary and physiologically
conditioned, but, as experience shows, a highly complex determinant, as
for example certain rational, ethical, aesthetic, religious, or other
traditional ideas which cannot be scientifically proved to have any
physiological basis. These extremely complex dominants form the other
pole of the psyche. Experience likewise shows that this pole possesses an
energy many times greater than that of the physiologically conditioned
psyche.
[177]
With its earliest advances into the field of psychology proper, the new
psycho therapy came up against the problem of oppositesa problem that
is profoundly characteristic of the psyche. Indeed, the structure of the
psyche is so contradictory or contrapuntal that one can scarcely make any
psychological assertion or general statement without having immediately
to state its opposite.
[178]
The problem of opposites offers an eminently suitable and ideal
battleground for the most contradictory theories, and above all for partially
or wholly unrealized prejudices regarding ones philosophy of life. With
this development psycho therapy stirred up a hornets nest of the first
magnitude. Let us take as an example the supposedly simple case of a
repressed instinct. If the repression is lifted, the instinct is set free. Once
freed, it wants to live and function in its own way. But this creates a
difficult sometimes intolerably difficultsituation. The instinct ought
therefore to be modified, or sublimated, as they say. How this is to be
done without creating a new repression nobody can quite explain. The
little word ought always proves the helplessness of the therapist; it is an
admission that he has come to the end of his resources. The final appeal to
reason would be very fine if man were by nature a rational animal, but he
is not; on the contrary, he is quite as much irrational. Hence reason is often
not sufficient to modify the instinct and make it conform to the rational
order. Nobody can conceive the moral, ethical, philosophical, and religiousconflicts that crop up at this stage of the problem the facts surpass all
imagination. Every conscientious and truth-loving psycho therapist could
tell a tale here, though naturally not in public. All the contemporary
problems, all the philosophical and religious questionings of our day, are
raked up, and unless either the psycho therapist or the patient abandons the
attempt in time it is likely to get under both their skins. Each will be driven
to a discussion of his philosophy of life, both with himself and with his
partner. There are of course forced answers and solutions, but in principle
and in the long run they are neither desirable nor satisfying. No Gordian
knot can be permanently cut; it has the awkward property of always tying
itself again.
[179]
This philosophical discussion is a task which psycho therapy
necessarily sets itself, though not every patient will come down to basic
principles. The question of the measuring rod with which to measure, of
the ethical criteria which are to determine our actions, must be answered
somehow, for the patient may quite possibly expect us to account for our
judgments and decisions. Not all patients allow themselves to be
condemned to infantile inferiority because of our refusal to render such an
account, quite apart from the fact that a therapeutic blunder of this kind
would be sawing off the branch on which we sit. In other words, the art of
psycho therapy requires that the therapist be in possession of avowable,
credible, and defensible convictions which have proved their viability
either by having resolved any neurotic dissociations of his own or by
preventing them from arising. A therapist with a neurosis is a contradiction
in terms. One cannot help any patient to advance furthe. than one has
advanced oneself. On the other hand, the possession of complexes does not
in itself signify neurosis, for complexes are the normal foci of psychic
happenings, and the fact that they are painful is no proof of pathological
disturbance. Suffering is not an illness; it is the normal counterpole to
happiness. A complex becomes pathological only when we think we have
not got it.
[180]
As the most complex of psychic structures, a mans philosophy of life
forms the counterpole to the physiologically conditioned psyche, and, as
the highest psychic dominant, it ultimately determines the latters fate. It
guides the life of the therapist and shapes the spirit of his therapy. Since it
is an essentially subjective system despite the most rigorous objectivity, itmay and very likely will be shattered time after time on colliding with the
truth of the patient, but it rises again, rejuvenated by the experience.
Conviction easily turns into self-defence and is seduced into rigidity, and
this is inimical to life. The test of a firm conviction is its elasticity and
flexibility; like every other exalted truth it thrives best on the admission of
its errors.
[181]
I can hardly draw a veil over the fact that we psycho therapists ought
really to be philosophers or philosophic doctorsor rather that we already
are so, though we are unwilling to admit it because of the glaring contrast
between our work and what passes for philosophy in the universities. We
could also call it religion in statu nascendi, for in the vast confusion that
reigns at the roots of life there is no line of division between philosophy
and religion. Nor does the unrelieved strain of the psycho therapeutic
situation, with its host of impressions and emotional disturbances, leave us
much leisure for the systematization of thought. Thus we have no clear
exposition of guiding principles drawn from life to offer either to the
philosophers or to the theologians.
[182]
Our patients suffer from bondage to a neurosis, they are prisoners of
the unconscious, and if we attempt to penetrate with understanding into
that realm of unconscious forces, we have to defend ourselves against the
same influences to which our patients have succumbed. Like doctors who
treat epidemic diseases, we expose ourselves to powers that threaten our
conscious equilibrium, and we have to take every possible precaution if we
want to rescue not only our own humanity but that of the patient from the
clutches of the unconscious. Wise self-limitation is not the same thing as
text-book philosophy, nor is an ejaculatory prayer in a moment of mortal
danger a theological treatise. Both are the outcome of a religious and
philosophical attitude that is appropriate to the stark dynamism of life.
[183]
The highest dominant always has a religious or a philosophical
character. It is by nature extremely primitive, and consequently we find it
in full development among primitive peoples. Any difficulty, danger, or
critical phase of life immediately calls forth this dominant. It is the most
natural reaction to all highly charged emotional situations. But often it
remains as obscure as the semiconscious emotional situation which evoked
it. Hence it is quite natural that the emotional disturbances of the patient
should activate the corresponding religious or philosophical factors in thetherapist. Often he is most reluctant to make himself conscious of these
primitive contents, and he quite understandably prefers to turn for help to a
religion or philosophy which has reached his consciousness from outside.
This course does not strike me as being illegitimate in so far as it gives the
patient a chance to take his place within the structure of some protective
institution existing in the outside world. Such a solution is entirely natural,
since there have always and everywhere been totem clans, cults, and
creeds whose purpose it is to give an ordered form to the chaotic world of
the instincts.
[184]
The situation becomes difficult, however, when the patients nature
resists a collective solution. The question then arises whether the therapist
is prepared to risk having his convictions dashed and shattered against the
truth of the patient. If he wants to go on treating the patient he must
abandon all preconceived notions and, for better or worse, go with him in
search of the religious and philosophical ideas that best correspond to the
patients emotional states. These ideas present themselves in archetypal
form, freshly sprung from the maternal soil whence all religious and
philosophical systems originally came. But if the therapist is not prepared
to have his convictions called in question for the sake of the patient, then
there is some reason for doubting the stability of his basic attitude. Perhaps
he cannot give way on grounds of self-defence, which threatens him with
rigidity. The margin of psychological elasticity varies both individually
and collectively, and often it is so narrow that a certain degree of rigidity
really does represent the maximum achievement. Ultra posse nemo
obligatur.
[185]
Instinct is not an isolated thing, nor can it be isolated in practice. It
always brings in its train archetypal contents of a spiritual nature, which
are at once its foundation and its limitation. In other words, an instinct is
always and inevitably coupled with something like a philosophy of life,
however archaic, unclear, and hazy this may be. Instinct stimulates
thought, and if a man does not think of his own free will, then you get
compulsive thinking, for the two poles of the psyche, the physiological and
the mental, are indissolubly connected. For this reason instinct cannot be
freed without freeing the mind, just as mind divorced from instinct is
condemned to futility. Not that the tie between mind and instinct is
necessarily a harmonious one. On the contrary it is full of conflict andmeans suffering. Therefore the principal aim of psycho therapy is not to
transport the patient to an impossible state of happiness, but to help him
acquire steadfastness and philosophic patience in face of suffering. Life
demands for its completion and fulfilment a balance between joy and
sorrow. But because suffering is positively disagreeable, people naturally
prefer not to ponder how much fear and sorrow fall to the lot of man. So
they speak soothingly about progress and the greatest possible happiness,
forgetting that happiness is itself poisoned if the measure of suffering has
not been fulfilled. Behind a neurosis there is so often concealed all the
natural and necessary suffering the patient has been unwilling to bear. We
can see this most clearly from hysterical pains, which are relieved in the
course of treatment by the corresponding psychic suffering which the
patient sought to avoid.
[186]
The Christian doctrine of original sin on the one hand, and of the
meaning and value of suffering on the other, is therefore of profound
therapeutic significance and is undoubtedly far better suited to Western
man than Islamic fatalism. Similarly the belief in immortality gives life
that untroubled flow into the future so necessary if stoppages and
regressions are to be avoided. Although we like to use the word doctrine
for thesepsychologically speakingextremely important ideas, it would
be a great mistake to think that they are just arbitrary intellectual theories.
Psychologically regarded, they are emotional experiences whose nature
cannot be discussed. If I may permit myself a banal comparison, when I
feel well and content nobody can prove to me that I am not. Logical
arguments simply bounce off the facts felt and experienced. Original sin,
the meaning of suffering, and immortality are emotional facts of this kind.
But to experience them is a charisma which no human art can compel.
Only unreserved surrender can hope to reach such a goal.
[187]
Not everybody is capable of this surrender. There is no ought or
must about it, for the very act of exerting the will inevitably places such
an emphasis on my will to surrender that the exact opposite of surrender
results. The Titans could not take Olympus by storm, and still less may a
Christian take Heaven. The most healing, and psychologically the most
necessary, experiences are a treasure hard to attain, and its acquisition
demands something out of the common from the common man.
[188]
As we know, this something out of the common proves, in practicalwork with the patient, to be an invasion by archetypal contents. If these
contents are to be assimilated, it is not enough to make use of the current
philosophical or religious ideas, for they simply do not fit the archaic
symbolism of the material. We are therefore forced to go back to pre-
Christian and non-Christian conceptions and to conclude that Western man
does not possess the monopoly of human wisdom and that the white race is
not a species of Homo sapiens specially favoured by God. Moreover we
cannot do justice to certain contemporary collective phenomena unless we
revert to the pre-Christian parallels.
[189]
Medieval physicians seem to have realized this, for they practised a
philosophy whose roots can be traced back to pre-Christian times and
whose nature exactly corresponds to our experiences with patients today.
These physicians recognized, besides the light of divine revelation, a
lumen naturae as a second, independent source of illumination, to which
the doctor could turn if the truth as handed down by the Church should for
any reason prove ineffective either for himself or for the patient.
[190]
It was eminently practical reasons, and not the mere caperings of a
hobby-horse, that prompted me to undertake my historical researches.
Neither our modern medical training nor academic psychology and
philosophy can equip the doctor with the necessary education, or with the
means, to deal effectively and understandingly with the often very urgent
demands of his psycho therapeutic practice. It therefore behoves us,
unembarrassed by our shortcomings as amateurs of history, to go to school
once more with the medical philosophers of a distant past, when body and
soul had not yet been wrenched asunder into different faculties. Although
we are specialists par excellence, our specialized field, oddly enough,
drives us to universalism and to the complete overcoming of the specialist
attitude, if the totality of body and soul is not to be just a matter of words.
Once we have made up our minds to treat the soul, we can no longer close
our eyes to the fact that neurosis is not a thing apart but the whole of the
pathologically disturbed psyche. It was Freuds momentous discovery that
the neurosis is not a mere agglomeration of symptoms, but a wrong
functioning which affects the whole psyche. The important thing is not the
neurosis, but the man who has the neurosis. We have to set to work on the
human being, and we must be able to do him justice as a human being.
[191]
The conference we are holding today proves that our psycho therapyhas recognized its aim, which is to pay equal attention to the physiological
and to the spiritual factor. Originating in natural science, it applies the
objective, empirical methods of the latter to the phenomenology of the
mind. Even if this should remain a mere attempt, the fact that the attempt
has been made is of incalculable significance.

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