Chapter XIV

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."