Patrick Vandermeersch
Unresolved Questions in the Freud/Jung Debate On Psychosis, Sexual Identity and Religion (Louvain...
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Patrick Vandermeersch
Unresolved Questions in the Freud/Jung Debate On Psychosis, Sexual Identity and Religion (Louvain Philosophical Studies 4), Leuven, Leuven University Press, 1991.
Due to the fact that the phenomenon of religion has been set aside as being something ’different’, a number of key problems within psychoanalysis have been unwittingly lost from sight. This is especially true for the central theme of the Freud-Jung debate: the experience of reality. The experience of reality in psychosis is different from that in religion. Both of these differ still from the way in which one is ’really’ affected by fantasy, daydreaming, a fairy tale, passionate love or bodily symptoms diagnosed as non-existent. Within this problematic of the experience of reality, one question should definitely not be overlooked: what is the specific reality experience of transference? This work resumes the theoretical debate between Freud and Jung with the intention of presenting the connections - connections which have been lost along the way - between the problematics of identity, reality/psychosis and religion in their full complexity as well as their full acuity.
Patrick Vandermeersch, STL, Ph.D., studied philosophy and theology and is a psychoanalyst. In 1991 he was a professor at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. The following year he was appointed full professor of Psychology of Religion at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies of the University of Groningen.
Contents PREFACE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . CHAPTER I THE ALLURE
OF A
MORE ‘RELIGIOUS’ PSYCHOLOGY . . . . .
The Theological Question Regarding the Essence of Religion A Different Question: Is Religion an Illusion? . . . . . . . . . . . How to Overcome Illusion? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Reality of Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Psychology and Secularization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Elusive Object of Psychology of Religion . . . . . . . . . . . The Importance of the Freud-Jung Debate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Key Questions in the Freud-Jung Debate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Our Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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CHAPTER II JUNG’S EARLY WORK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 The Pre-Freudian Notion of the Unconscious . . . . . . . . A Few Biographical Notes on Jung’s Youth and Studies Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Theodore Ziehen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Pierre Janet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Théodore Flournoy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Paul Eugen Bleuler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sigmund Freud . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Psychopathology of the Occult . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . CHAPTER III THE PERIOD
OF THE
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39 42 45 45 48 53 56 61 63 70
ASSOCIATION TEST (1902-1906) . . . . . 71
The Association Experiments . . . . . . . . . . . . General Framework . . . . . . . . . . . Attention and Affectivity . . . . . . . . . The Complex . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Hidden and the Repressed . . . . . . . . . . . In the Footsteps of Janet . . . . . . . . Toward the Lie Detector . . . . . . . . Association Test and Psychoanalysis The Language of the Unconscious . . A Remarkable Text . . . . . . . . . . . . Jung’s Understanding of Freud . . . . . . . . . . .
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74 74 77 83 85 86 90 91 100 . 105 . 107
CHAPTER IV THE PROBLEM
OF
DEFINING PSYCHOSIS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
‘Dementia Praecox’ . . . . . . . . . . . Bleuler’s Interpretation of Paranoia Jung’s Book on Dementia Praecox Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . CHAPTER V THE INVESTIGATION
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PSYCHOSIS (1906-1909) . . . . . . . . . 129
Mutual Contact . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A Short History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Freud’s Thought Seen in a New Light . . . . . . . . . . . . . Concerning Dementia Praecox. From Jung’s Visit to Vienna until Freud’s visit to Zurich (March 1907 - September 1908) . Dementia Praecox and Autoerotism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Further Hesitant Investigations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Abraham and the First Psychoanalytical Publication . . . The Case of Otto Gross . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Infantile Sexuality (September 1908 - September 1909) . . . . . . . . The Significance of the Father . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Little Anna . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Signs of Reversal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . CHAPTER VI THE DISCOVERY
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135 135 144 150 153 156 157 158 163 165 167
MYTHOLOGY (1909-1911) . . . . . . . . . 169
From the Journey to the United States until the Congress Weimar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Discovery of Mythology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Fantasy and Insanity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Essential Publications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Sense for Reality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Freud’s Belief in the Opposition between Pleasure and Reality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jung’s Belief in the Real Efficiency of Symbolism. . . Religion and Projection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Freud: Religion Belongs to the Past . . . . . . . . . . . . Jung: The Past Spontaneously Reoccurs. . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Structure of the Psyche . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jung: Introversion is the Mother of True Identity . . . Freud: Identity is Established by Narcissism . . . . . . Projection, Fixation on the Past and the Theory of Drives. . . . . Some Biographical Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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CHAPTER VII THE RUPTURE (1911-1913) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221 The Kreuzlingen Gesture (September 1911 - May 1912) Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido . . . . . . The Genetic Theory of the Libido . . . . . . . . . Symbol and Desexualization . . . . . . . . . . . . . Regression and Incest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Attempting a Theory of Psychoanalysis . . . . . . . . . . . . The Genetic and Energetic Concept of Libido . Regression and the Reality of the Conflict . . . The Rupture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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221 226 226 230 232 237 238 241 244
CHAPTER VIII CONCLUSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249 The Religion of the People and Its Leader: Freud’s Concern Hypnosis and Interpretation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jung’s Confrontation with the Unconscious . . . . . . . . . . . . The Jungian Scheme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Lost Problematic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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251 256 265 270 277
CHRONOLOGY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281 BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291 Some Bibliographical Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bibliographical References and Index of the Texts by Freud Jung Discussed in this Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bibliographical References of the Other Texts Quoted in Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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NAME INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303
Preface
Surely, no one would consider challenging the statement that the collaboration between Freud and Jung constituted an important chapter in the history of psychoanalysis. The manner in which their relationship developed to the point of an eventual rupture has often been the subject of research. These two pioneers in the discovery of the unconscious apparently had to experience in person the significance of a transferential relationship. Contradictory mutual expectations, the ambivalence of love and hate, the entanglement of admiration and envy, the impossibility of rational self-control and each one’s blindness for his own unconscious motives ... all of these have been elaborately described. Often, this was undertaken out of a sense of curiosity, although sometimes it was done in order to critically approach that personal experience on the basis of which the psychoanalytical knowing and not-knowing were first put into words. The theoretical side of their debate, however, was far less frequently the subject of research. Would it be worthwhile to reconsider these theoretical discussions? What was current then now seems hopelessly dated. Moreover, the fact that both authors combined various types of problematics without maintaining the clear-cut distinctions which we employ to delineate our thinking, highly disturbs us. Within the same breath, Freud and Jung made use of the yet to be clarified notion of schizophrenia, and they linked it with problems such as individual identity, relation to reality and religion. In their search, all themes seemed to be mingled. Moreover, they made use of concepts which had not yet received their final definition. At that time, Freud had not developed his theory of narcissism and Jung had not mentioned the archetypes. However, was not religion, that special domain which had always intrigued psychoanalysis while always clearly remaining a separate domain, the primary topic of their discussions? Here lies the problem. Due to the fact that the phenomenon of religion had been set aside as being something ’different’, a number of key problems within psychoanalysis had been unwittingly lost from sight. The term ’reality principle’, for example, has become a common expression but who recalls that Freud coined it because he was unable to clearly define the distinction between delusion, dream, daydream, fantasy and religious representation? The related term ’projection’ is in an even sorrier state. In line with Anna Freud, the concept is nowadays usually considered as a defense mechanism whereas this was definitely not the case for Freud himself. The topic apparently became too complex for Freud when projection seemed to be linked to a distinct libidinous organization which was related to something along the lines of homosexuality (though not homosexuality in the ’real’ sense). Freud hesitated to publish his meta-
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psychological study on the problematic and even ended up throwing his manuscript away. This is one of the forgotten problematics which are of the utmost importance for understanding both the psychoanalytical practice and the psychology of religion. Along with the deeply rooted fear of homosexuality, which never ceased to amaze Freud, the influence of the cultural school and of sociology have ensured that much has been written concerning sexual identities. Much less was published, however, with regard to the link with transferential love and with regard to the way which a patient ultimately acknowledges ’reality’ and ’unreality’ within a love relationship. Psychoanalysis would benefit if the investigation into this problematic was resumed. The same is true for the psychology of religion. It does not suffice to merely notice the resemblance between the representations of a delusion, a fairy tale, a dream, a myth and the symbolism of a recognized religion. Let us take Jung’s example: of course, it is remarkable that a schizophrenic patient perceives the phallus of the sun when staring at the sky, while the same representation is found in the initiation rite of a mystery cult. Yet nothing much can be asserted by this. The reality experience of people differs depending on whether they dream, listen to fairy tales, fall into daydreaming, recognize a religious reality or hallucinate. The psychotic who hears voices knows perfectly well that his therapist does not hear them. This, however, does not render the voices less real. ’They are more real than real’, a patient once said. The religious person knows just as well that the truth of the narrative which he is meditating is not the truth of the physical event. The experience of reality in psychosis is different from that in religion. Both of these differ still from the way in which one is ’really’ affected by fantasy, daydreaming, a fairy tale, passionate love or bodily symptoms diagnosed as non-existent. Within this problematic of the experience of reality, one question should definitely not be overlooked: what is the specific reality experience of transference? In each of these cases, unconscious phantasms and also sexuality with its typical polymorphy are at stake. Yet each time, the phantasms are ’real’ in a different way. Moreover, there might be a connection between those different forms of reality experience and the different forms and layers of the human experience which we for convenience’s sake, call ’sexuality’. This problematic of the reality experience, however, disappears when sexual identity, the reality test and the religious problematic are treated separately as if, from the beginning, they led an isolated existence which only secondarily and in certain cases could become interconnected. In fact, isolating religion as a specific field is a violent act which raises more problems than it solves. This is not only true for the problematic of the reality experience. The entanglement of love and hate - with regard to which Freud ultimately covered up his ignorance when he appealed to the mythic Eros-Thanatos dual unity - is a very important issue for understanding both the psychoanalytical practice and the psychology of
THE FREUD/JUNG DEBATE
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religion. This problematic as well was abandoned. Are we not becoming more and more aware of the fact that the depth of religious experience harbors violence and that religion, to the degree that it preaches love, does not bring this love about by banning violence but rather, by bending violence into something new? I believe that the interwovenness of religion with other aspects of the human experience is so fundamental that the basis itself of the psychoanalytical experience is mutilated if one accepts the premise that religion is a separate domain. The first chapter of the present work defends this position and deals exclusively with religion. It also sketches the broader perspective within which the book as a whole was written. Nevertheless, the scope of the actual project remains somewhat more limited. It intents to follow the theoretical discussion between Freud and Jung as systematically and as accurately as possible and to indicate in detail which problems remained unresolved. The groundwork for this book was laid more than 15 years ago, in my doctoral dissertation which was composed under the guidance of Prof. Dr. A. Vergote. I sincerely wish to thank him for the way in which he taught me, and many others, to link psychoanalysis to a philosophical and religious-psychological reflection. Besides the experiences of my own psychoanalytical practice, many of my students helped me develop my thinking. The close collaboration with my attentive translators, Vincent Sansone en Anne-Marie Marivoet, has shown me the degree of precision to which the transition from one language to another can lead. Matthias Vienne and Bart Pattyn were most helpful with a great deal of practical work. I would also like to express my gratitude to the personnel of the Jung Institute and of the Wissenschafthistorische Sammlungen of the ETH in Zurich, and especially to Dr. Lorenz Jung for his permission to use the Jung Archives.
Chapter I
The Allure of a More ‘Religious’ Psychology It seems odd that an intellectual debate concerned with certain essential questions can come to a sudden halt, giving way to platitudes while remaining unresolved. Such a reflection comes to mind when one considers the impression people nowadays have of the discussion between Freud and Jung with regard to the issue of religion. In general, it is thought that Jung sympathized with religion more than Freud did. The latter reduced religion to a mere projection, so it is argued. Thus, anyone interested in religion is expected to opt for Jung’s theories since he had an appreciation for the spiritual element. He would never have conceived of religious experiences as merely being fixations on infantile material. Freud, on the contrary, is often viewed as a ‘pansexualist’. In the world of psychology and psychiatry, however, it is not the ‘free-floating, vague and mystical’ Jung who is preferred. Rather, one candidly opts for the more scientific approach of Freud insofar as the latest quest for providing solid quantitative data does not deprive him also of the adjective ‘scientific’. It is not very clear whether such choices are really decisive. They would have to be true choices which implies that, in the scientific analysis of the phenomenon of religion, one goes beyond the popular clichés of both authors’ work and that one includes the particulars of their theoretical insights. This all too seldom occurs. A profound knowledge of the work of both authors is rarely encountered. How else could one explain the fact that Freud is accused of pansexualism while this criticism would be more appropriately directed to Jung? The same reflection is also valid with regard to the theory of projection. Jung developed this theory much further than Freud, who considered it to be such a complex and difficult notion that he tore up the article which he would have devoted to it and chose not to mention the concept again. From the persistence of certain simplisms and a prioris present in the Freud-Jung alternative, one must conclude that something more than mere ignorance is involved. Moreover, it would be futile to offer, yet again, an exposition on "what Jung and Freud really said". It almost seems as if hidden questions and fears are awakened as soon as someone mentions the term ‘psychology of religion’. This, more than likely, explains why the
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participants of the debate concerning the Freud-Jung alternative can passionately discuss the topic without truly knowing what is at stake. A stereotypical reference to each author is employed in order to suppress the fear of a certain type of research which presents itself as being specific to the psychology of religion. In the background of this attitude, there stands the suspicion that, whenever the psychology of religion was applied, there could no longer be religion and that not even a ‘second naiveté’ could offer any consolation. This study of the discussions between Freud and Jung not only intends to do justice to history and to correct certain misunderstandings but more importantly, its purpose is to investigate why, time and again, both men were misunderstood and thus, to trace those questions which are still being avoided today. What we hope to primarily deal with are the questions raised in the Freud-Jung debate and only secondarily, with the answers to these questions. Indeed, one must immediately admit that these answers were not always satisfactory. Yet is it not revealing that precisely those defective answers (religion is infantilism, religion is projection, religion is sex, ...) are remembered, as if that was the best way to cover up pertinent questions? In light of the questions that were raised, the debate between Freud and Jung is an outstanding test case for the psychology of religion. As a conclusion to this study, we will attempt to systematically sketch the problematic. In order to be able to follow the debate, however, we need to make several distinctions right from the start. Indeed, the discussions between Freud and Jung were not the first with regard to religion. Prior to their discussions, lively debates were held concerning the essence of religion. There was also another discussion, dealing with the question of whether or not religion consisted of an illusion. The topic of this discussion was often confused with that of the former. In a theological context, several possible options with regard to both of these questions remain available. Yet, how does psychology deal with these options? Nowadays, in the wake of the period which we will examine during which psychology intended to explain religion, it is claimed that the psychologist’s stance should be one of ‘benevolent neutrality’. Perhaps this is only partially true. That psychologists renounce their intention to exhaustively explain the origin of religion does not necessarily mean that they fully respect the specificity of the theological questions. Here perhaps lies the still unresolved point of conflict.
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The Theological Question Regarding the Essence of Religion In the course of history, the question concerning the essence of religion has frequently been raised. It appears that religion is a phenomenon which is never encountered in its pure form. Rather, one first needs to strip it of all sorts of extensions and additions before its core can be touched upon. Why this need for a religion à l’état pur? Can it be explained by a need to serve God "with a pure heart" and to fend off any form of superstition or perhaps by mere intellectual curiosity? These explanations may be valid for some people. However, what is at stake most of the time is the conviction that religion has become burdened by a number of social functions from which it should best be freed. If not, one would run the danger of rejecting religion along with the protests against these social functions. This is especially valid for that theologian who has often been placed at the cradle of psychology of religion and who moreover had a special influence on Jung personally, namely, Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834). Often, Schleiermacher is all too briefly referred to with the simple comment that he placed a religious sentiment at the origin of religion. The way in which he had described it, as a ‘feeling of unconditional dependence’, was sometimes ridiculed by a remark ascribed to Hegel: "Why, then my dog would be the most religious animal!" This is not completely fair since, in the unconditional aspect of dependence, Schleiermacher sought something which would establish individual freedom without a reliance on a limited or earthly resource. To hold Schleiermacher down to this one formula would be to overlook his prime concern. He intended to give religion its own place and to break through the confusion which often equated it with either metaphysics or morality.1 According to him, religion had been incorrectly viewed as an explanation of the world and thus it tended to be put aside as soon as the scientific world no longer needed such an appeal to God in order to discover the laws of the universe. The same reflection can be made with regard to morality. A religious person perhaps has specific reasons for acting morally but, according to Schleiermacher, religion should not be reduced to an instrument which merely supported morality. This, however, was precisely the function to which modern society intended to limit religion. A rather crude phrasing 1. F. SCHLEIERMACHER, On Religion. Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers, (1st edition: 1799) Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1988, p. 97-100.
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of this idea is ascribed to Napoleon: "In religion I do not admire the mystery of the Incarnation but rather the mystery of social order." In saying this, he voiced an insight which had already made its appearance during the Enlightenment. This insight was reflected in I. Kant’s work. The modern ideal of science no longer allowed for the rational proof of God’s existence starting from creation. Morality however, still provided a certain access to the religious sphere. For politicians, things were much simpler. As far as they were concerned, religion served morality. This was no longer voiced as harshly and boisterously during the period of restoration which dawned almost everywhere at the beginning of the 19th century. Nevertheless, the fundamental conviction was maintained, not in the least by those who had long forgotten about the issue of truth with regard to religion yet who still desired public order. In their view, religion should support morality and insofar as it fulfilled this function, its existence should be accepted. Moreover, the Churches seemed content to settle in such a role.2 In opposition to this tendency, Schleiermacher was convinced that religion was robbed of its essence when it was reduced to metaphysics and morality. He was aware of the fact that religion usually appeared in this hybrid form and that the theological task of leading people back to the core of religion time and again would prove to be very unrewarding. Therefore, when Schleiermacher spoke of a ‘religious feeling’, those two words by which he is often characterized in dictionaries, he did not offer a description of religion as he had encountered it as a neutral observer.3 He was searching for that core which must be protected whenever religion, according to him, was threatened at its essence. Schleiermacher did not intend to allow religion to dissolve into a number of accidental functions although he was well aware that it would be rather difficult for religion to fend these functions off. In the quest for the essence of religion, Schleiermacher was not alone. He was not the first man in the course of history to attempt to guard religion from impurities and abuses. Frequently, the following questions had arisen. What is at stake in religion? What constitutes its core? What are its historical expressions? In which ways does a society employ
2. This topic was investigated by P. VANDERMEERSCH (ed.) in Psychiatrie, godsdienst en gezag. De onstaansgeschiedenis van de psychiatrie in België als paradigma (Psychiatry, Religion and Authority. The Birth of Psychiatry in Belgium Considered as a Paradigm), Louvain/Amersfoort, Acco, 1984. 3. Actually, he stated: "Religion’s essence is neither thinking nor acting, but intuition and feeling." F. SCHLEIERMACHER, o.c., p. 102.
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religion in order to fulfil its own needs? More than once, historical crises, especially the crisis caused by the Reformation, compelled religion to redefine itself if it did not want to be swept away together with the decay of a cultural period which had assimilated certain aspects of it. One theological debate constantly resurfaced in these discussions on the essence of religion, namely, whether religion is of a completely different order than the human realm? From ancient times, two opposite opinions have been voiced concerning this question. On the one hand, one could posit that faith consisted of a radically different nature than human nature and that true religion precisely entailed a trusting turn to the ‘Completely Other’ who manifested himself. In this case, theology distinguished sacredness as being the ‘Other’. On the other hand, one could also hold that the divine only allowed itself to be known through humanity which would mean that the study of these the human aspects also belonged to the realm of theology. This classical alternative, often expressed in the opposition between ‘revelation theology’ and ‘creational theology’ or ‘verticalism’ and ‘horizontalism’, grosso modo corresponds to certain accents specific to Protestantism, as compared to Catholicism.4 During the 19th century, the question concerning the essence of religion was raised within a new context which Schleiermacher had well comprehended, namely, secularization. For the first time, the supposition that perhaps religion was no longer needed, was voiced very sharply. Would it not be more valuable to replace it with something else? What was more, should it be replaced at all? Perhaps it had become superfluous... These reflections did not only question the essence of religion and how it should be ‘defined’ or ‘limited’. Rather, a second question was added to this. Is religion not an illusion? A Different Question: Is Religion an Illusion? Viewed in itself, the question directed at the essence of religion did not coincide with the question of whether religion was based on an illusion. Wondering whether faith in God entails a certain view on the cosmos and the acceptance of a certain set of morals is different from ques-
4. There are, of course, also other, non-Christian religions with their distinct theological preferences. They as well attempt to salvage a well-defined aspect of the human experience as a conditio sine qua non for religious life or, precisely for this reason, eliminate it. Certain religious systems for example value meditative techniques as being essential, which subsequently presupposes the appreciation of separate stages of consciousness. Other religious convictions attempt to radically avoid every irrational element in the religious experience.
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tioning whether this God, and everything else one is bound to believe in along with him, really exists. Questioning the possible illusory character of religion in fact entails fewer consequences for the debate on whether religion consists of metaphysics and ethics than for the theological debate directed at the issues of transcendence and immanence. For the person who believes in God as the ‘completely other’ and perhaps also in an ethical system and worldview as being revealed from another world, the possibility of religion being an illusion constitutes a direct, unequivocal but less complex problem than for the person who holds a more immanent opinion of the divine. The 19th century militant atheism as well as the religious apologetics of that time overlooked this theological problematic. They connected the issue of illusion to that of defining religion without paying much attention to the various theological distinctions. One immediately attacked faith in God in order to fight an unscientific naiveté, the subjugation of human authority to ‘God’s grace’ and the morality imposed by the churches. Schleiermacher would have said : "Not all of this is religion!" but such a warning was not even considered. Because all these aspects were compounded and criticized as a whole, the issue of illusion was rather vaguely posited. What exactly is the illusion? Does it consist in the fact that divine reality exists or is it to be located in the fact that people connect certain convictions about the world and morality to that divine reality? By the time psychology emerged as a separate discipline, militant anticlericalism had already caused certain essential theological distinctions to slowly disappear from the debate. However, a new fact was added. The concept of ‘illusion’, employed in the already vague articulation of the question, seemed now to be very complicated. It would further confuse the issue. Marx’s view of religion as being opium for the people is, in this context, very revealing. According to him, people believe in a God because it provides them with consolation in the face of their inhumane living conditions. Should this belief in God be disputed because it leads to resignation and also impedes social progress? Marxism was divided with regard to that question. Marx himself, on the one hand, held the opinion that religion would disappear on its own once the social alienation of the working class was overcome. On the other hand, religion was seen as more than a mere indicator of an underlying helplessness because, like opium, it seemed to offer a certain measure of consolation which was so desperately needed it became addictive. For these reasons, Marxism often directly opposed religion. To anyone who views religion as a beneficial
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illusion, Marxism posed the question as to what degree that illusion was indeed truly effective. How to Overcome Illusion? What is illusion? At first sight, one could start with the following comparison. Let us suppose than a person is locked in a room and that he is convinced that behind the walls, someone is listening although no one responds to him. He keeps talking until finally, doubts start to arise. Is someone really there? How could one verify this? One tends to answer: by stepping out and looking. But what happens if this is not possible? Presented in this manner, the debate concerning the truthfulness of religion seems to coincide with the debate on the limits and possibilities of human knowledge. Indeed, that is what it was called. The trend, which obstinately held that only those elements which could be verified in a strictly scientific manner could be accepted as truthful, was called ‘scientism’. Faith became the opposite of strict knowledge. The person who possessed blind faith without any critical restraint was called a ‘fideist’ or was sometimes judged even more harshly and spoken of as an ‘obscurantist’. We wonder, however, whether presenting the faith issue as an epistemological issue is not misleading. We are left with the impression that the discussion is concerned with whether or not there is sufficient reason to consider the existence of the religious element as having been proven. If that be the case, then the problem is not new. It would simply indicate a 19th century revival of the quest to prove the existence of God, though now phrased in a very primitive manner. The Jewish and Christian traditions have frequently emphasized that the divine is not so easily detected, that the name by which it is known is unutterable and that it is part of the divine essence to only let its presence be felt through painful absence.5 Moreover, according to these traditions, the divine does not remain outside of the earthly existence. Rather, it is entwined with it to a certain degree as being the ‘fundament of existence’. The already mentioned, centuries old debate concerning God’s transcendence and immanence can correctly 5. C.A.J. VAN OUWERKERK, In afwezigheid van God. Voorstudies tot een psychologie van het geloof (In Gods Absence. Preliminary Studies for a Psychology of Faith), Den Haag, Boekencentrum, 1986. See also my exposition: P. VANDERMEERSCH, Objective Knowledge and Methodological Neutrality: Hidden Ideological Choices on what Religion should be. In: Proceedings of the Fourth Symposium on the Psychology of Religion in Europe (Nijmegen, 5-8 sept. 1988), Nijmegen, Department of Cultural Psychology and Psychology of Religion, 1989, 298-305.
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be used as a criticism against the example we gave earlier, of a person’s conversation with someone he believes is listening on the other side of the wall without being able to verify it. Alongside this argument, one could posit that the debate concerning the possibility of knowing God, which was quite heated in the 19th century, overlooked the distinction between ‘believing that’ and ‘believing in’. The act of believing does not entail the mere acceptance of information which cannot be proven. It is also more than simply daring to draw conclusions from insufficiently tested information. Toward the end of the century, Kierkegaard passionately defended the following position. Faith is a leap, made not on the level of knowledge but on the level of trust. That awareness, which Kierkegaard was able to articulate, had more than likely been intuitively felt in the time before him. Already during the 19th century, people must have been aware that the problem of faith did not consist of a question of possible gullibility and thus, of uncritically informing oneself. This becomes clear by the way in which one tried to warn people of the possible illusory character of religion. The importance of having something to believe in was stressed. Let us illustrate this by returning to the example of the possible listener behind the wall. The focus of attention did not concern methods of verifying whether someone was actually present. Rather, one simply stated: "Wouldn’t it be nice if someone was actually listening!" This indicated that one no longer appealed to the senses for verification but that one called attention to the awareness of one’s own wishes and even developed a special technique for this purpose. Marx’s labelling of religion as ‘the opium for the people’, before any of the psychological theories became popular, illustrates a shift that was taking place in the way in which people intended to verify religion’s truthfulness. The anti-religious, militant discourse of the 19th century still boisterously utilized the older ideology of the Enlightenment which posited that knowledge led to freedom. But in fact, the development towards what is now known as a ‘functional’ concept of truth, was already taking place. The truth of a statement is situated in the fact that it is effective it ‘works’ - and thus, by means of this expression, one succeeds in coming to grips with reality in an efficient manner. In the meantime, without much criticism, we have become accustomed to this new ideal of truth in a number of epistemological fields, especially as far as ‘theories’ are concerned. Nowadays, one starts from the principle that every science arranges data on the basis of a previously accepted model. It is claimed that the reliability of such a model cannot be directly proven. It cannot be
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verified but it can be ‘falsified’. The model proves its truth by its usefulness. It continues to be accepted as long as it is able to relate more and more facts to each other and it is abandoned as soon as a better model can take its place. We do not intend here to elaborate on the debate held by contemporary philosophers of science. Moreover, with regard to our problematic, this debate is too strongly characterized by a reflection on positive sciences to be of immediate value for human sciences. Nevertheless, it is important to keep in mind that the concept of truth was shifting at the same time psychology was emerging as a separate discipline. Up until that point, the reflection concerning this concept focused on an immediately visible, social level. It answered the question of why people were so attached to certain ideas by stating that these ideas exercised a particular social function. Society needed these ‘normative’ ideas. The question of the truthfulness of a particular belief was not perceived as the question of whether that belief was based in reality. Rather, it was understood as the question of whether such a belief exercised a socially useful function. With the emergence of psychology however, this all too simplistic concept of social usefulness was abandoned. Even before Freud, the investigations into hypnosis and hysteria had led to the awareness that quite a number of intrapsychic forces impeded rather than stimulated a true perception of reality. The question concerning usefulness was not completely disregarded since it appeared that the person involved derived some benefit from these forms of anaesthesia. Nevertheless, it was now more directly related to the question of truth. The debate between Freud and Jung immediately started with the following problem. What constituted the core of the psychotic delusion and what was the difference between such a patient’s attachment to his delusional system and the way we interpret the reality around us as being ‘real’? This brings us close to the topic of religion and the still different way in which a believer experiences the reality of the divine in which he believes. The Reality of Theory Did this problem merely reiterate the traditional question of truth as it had been expressed in the theology of old? Nothing can be stated with less certainty. Compelled by the observations within its field, psychoanalysis constructed its own theory. From the analysis of the formation of a delusion, psychoanalysis concluded that perception alone did not suffice to obtain the truth insofar as truth was viewed as allowing one to be
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regulated by an outside world which one shared with others. A person suffering from paranoia cannot be convinced of the falseness of his system of delusion by being told "to go see for himself", since his own theory has a far greater impact on his inner world than his ‘seeing’. In order to accept reality as being ‘real’, something else besides the senses is needed. In the Freud-Jung discussions, this something else was termed ‘affective cathexis’. A correct affective cathexis was needed not only in order to perceive reality in a truthful manner but also in order not to be overwhelmed by ‘theory’. Thus, there is not only the simple alternative between delusion and reality, conceived of as the distinction between a successful and failed perception. There is the ‘theory’ as well as the correct disposition needed to accept that theory as being real. What determines our faith in a theory? Moreover, are there not different types of theories which, each in its own way, demand to be accepted as ‘real’? B. Bettelheim for example demonstrated how important it was for a child’s development to be engrossed with fairy tales. This sort of faith however, is not the same as a scientist’s faith in the theory of relativity nor is it identical to an adult’s belief in horoscopes.6 It is clear that this problematic is of crucial importance for an interpretation of religious faith, if only to trace the relationship between the attachment to a theory and the attachment to religious beliefs.7 The affective cathexis of ‘reality’ will be amply discussed throughout this study. We will discover that it is related to several other aspects of the human psyche such as narcissism, difference in gender, identification, the positioning of aggression and so forth. In light of this, the question concerning truth will be related to much more than the mere notion of perception. Concerning the problematic of truth therefore, psychoanalysis induces us to reconsider philosophical anthropology since the older opinion, that the belief in truth was initiated by perception, appears to be untenable. Yet it would be all too easy if psychoanalysis produced a readymade theory which could be smoothly integrated into an anthropological
6. B. BETTELHEIM, The Uses of Enchantment. The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales, London, Thames, 1976. 7. One should keep in mind that this problematic refers back to psychoanalysis as well. In its practice, healing is expected to be achieved by an interpretation. In other words, it depends on the establishment of a ‘certain’ connection between what a patient is actually saying and something else he could have said. Yet what is the basis for this interpretation and what is the cathexis which guarantees that it is taken for ‘real’?
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view and which could then be confronted by the various theological options. We will further observe how both Freud and Jung, in their analyses of the affective cathexis, made use of the similarities and differences between perception, delusion and fantasy. In their analyses, the reflection on the phenomenon of religion will prove to be very important. Yet what did Freud and Jung understand by religion? That precisely will be our question. The unclear phrasing of the questions, which earlier on had confused the issue, reappeared in full force in their discussions. That is why we must consider their reflections once again in order to verify both the scope of their observations and their conclusions with regard to religion. Psychology and Secularization One wonders whether the classical theological distinctions should continue to function as norms in every type of analysis of the religious phenomenon. Perhaps theology can glean something from the approach of other disciplines to the phenomenon of religion; from their ways of determining what does or does not belong to this phenomenon and from the connections that are established between those aspects of the phenomenon which are retained. When one views religion as an invariable and timeless entity and holds a strictly verticalist opinion concerning religion, one can perhaps denounce these alternative approaches as annoying pedantry. Yet when secularization is considered as a phenomenon which deploys itself within faith and which also should be interpreted within the historical logic of the faith tradition, the perspective is quite different. Secularization indeed implies much more than the disappearance of the ‘sacred canopy’.8 More than religion’s mere ‘loss of function’ is at stake. Secularization primarily consists in the emergence of new ways of coming to grips with reality and changing it. In this context, one often speaks of the emergence of sciences and technology. This statement however overlooks the core of the contemporary secularization process. What has occurred during the past century can be viewed as follows. Independently, new conceptual models and specific methods have developed which, each in its particular way, attempted to amass knowledge and to alter reality. These models and practices were no longer concerned with the coherence of overall ‘knowledge’ nor with the general result of their
8. P. BERGER, The Sacred Canopy. Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion, New York, Doubleday, 1967.
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independent interventions.9 In this context, the stance of the old scientistic materialism, which in light of its notion of reality labelled religious beliefs as nonsense, differs greatly from the more recent opinions which deal with religion insofar as it is a psychological or sociological reality. But what is a psychological or sociological ‘reality’? Proponents of these disciplines usually candidly admit that ‘reality’ is the mere interpretation of a number of facts within a certain conceptual model. This, however, does not exclude other disciplines from studying the same facts from within their respective conceptual models. Contrary to the stringent statements which were often made with regard to religion during the time of the Jung-Freud debate, today’s scientists, at first sight, seem to take a more cautious stance than their predecessors. Yet the process of secularization now taking place is much more radical than when one intentionally attempted to ‘reduce’ religion. When, for example, it was stated that religion was ‘only’ sex or ‘only’ a futile ambition for power or ‘only’ the opium for the people, it was still dependent on something else which indubitably existed in reality and which one was convinced exercised an important function in the coherence of that reality. The fact that these questions are no longer raised does not imply that one has rejected them. Quite the contrary. The process of secularization deployed itself without having to justify itself. Religion was left at the side. Its language was not disputed. Rather, one merely placed another language next to it. Today, this frequently happens in the practice of psychology. When confronted with the glorification of religious celibacy, a psychologist does not discuss religion nor does he contest someone’s belief in religious phenomena. He investigates the personality structure of the individual involved and he raises questions with regard to the level of anxiety, sexual identity and feelings of guilt that are unresolved. When, in doing so, he appears to be attacking the person’s religious convictions all too directly, the psychologist will divert his attention to other, more profane aspects of life. He trusts that the insights gained in these areas will be used by the person in question, in the specifically religious area as well. The psychologist himself, in any case, does not enter this area. Once again, for the person who views the religious phenomenon as being the ‘Other’, based on his theological choice, this procedure poses few problems. However, someone who considers religion as the founda-
9. P. VANDERMEERSCH, Ethiek tussen wetenschap en ideologie (Ethics between Science and Ideology), Louvain, Peeters, 1987.
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tion of everything that is human is confronted with a more serious problem. Concerning the practice of psychological counselling and its distinction from pastoral counselling, this procedure can probably still be accepted as a practical rule of thumb. Yet, with regard to an insight into the relationship between psychological truth and religious truth, all questions still remain open. It is quite possible that, in our multiform world, the psychological ‘practice’ best leaves the religious questions up to the individual. On a theoretical level however, it seems that the previously heated debate about the relationship between psychology and religion has not been resolved. Rather, it is being masked over. This concealment of the existing problems more than likely explains why the psychology of religion appears so threatening to a religious person. The mere existence of psychology as a separate, autonomous discipline did not appear to the former, non-secularized worldview as an innocent coincidence. That is why the essential, though unspoken point of conflict should be articulated as follows. Is not the psychologist of religion driven by a motivation which is diametrically opposed to that of the theologian who, starting from his commitment to faith, searches for the core of religion, raises questions concerning the truth of religion and attempts to interpret secularization as a cultural phenomenon within the history of Christianity? Is it not inherent to the practice of psychology to no longer recognize the coherence of this questioning as the domain of a specific discipline? Rather, does not the psychologist of religion omit using militant, anti-religious language because he is convinced that he has won? The social functions, previously fulfilled by religion, are now being assumed by other disciplines. But is the remnant indeed religion à l’état pur? If one holds a more vertical view on religion, this does not really pose a problem. Yet, if one thinks differently about religion, along the lines of the horizontal perspective, the matter is more difficult. For the latter, secularization signals the decomposition of a worldview which, as a whole, bore religious significance, even though this was expressed in a specific language. Does the religious expression retain its significance when the worldview upon which it is based falls apart? Previously, ‘being religious’ implied: that one accepted authority without questioning; that it was presupposed that one act humbly and did not assert oneself; that it was considered extremely immoral to ask for interest or to be paid for any assistance; that, without any visible advantage for oneself, one appreciated good workmanship and one agreed when the community’s money was spent on a castle for the king or a cathedral for God; that one’s sexual
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behaviour carefully followed certain regulations; that for the most part, one suppressed all other erotic fantasies or one compensated for them on the side or in a confused manner in the mysteriousness of the Church. There, one became acquainted with the deeper reality of ‘something’ in the Latin chants which one did not understand and in the incense one inhaled without ever thinking of the word ‘drug’. Suddenly, things changed. Authorities are to be elected and must justify themselves; one must learn to appreciate oneself and achieve self realization; one learns to take into account interest rates and to save money; one must organize social security papers and pay one’s therapist; production processes should be efficient; when and where the city needs embellishment is to be determined by the budget and the specialists of urban development. In the meantime, there are specialists for every possible field. From their efforts, one learns to cultivate a ‘relationship’ according to the contemporary manners and one also makes love as it is prescribed by contemporary comparative research. How then could one possibly go to church and sing texts which, unfortunately, one does understand but which no longer possess the quality of a concealed sensuality caressing a secret spot. One can easily understand the nostalgia provoked by secularization. Many people inadvertently turn to another theological choice because they hope to retain certain articulations of the religious dimension although the worldview which supported it, has vanished. Due to their attachment to the previous horizontalism, these people become verticalists. Yet the question can be raised as to what is left of religion after such a change. In order to answer this question, one is obliged to investigate the structure of the previous religious world. Only an accurate analysis of the manner in which the - let us anachronistically employ a contemporary term ‘functions’ of religion were assumed by other disciplines, can clarify which connections were essential for the religious articulation and which were of lesser importance. If one states, for example, that "religion is merely sex", this probably indicates that one intends to view sexuality within a new context. This, however, does not necessarily imply that one suddenly becomes aware of a connection between sex and religion. Perhaps a direct link between ‘sex viewed in itself’ and ‘religion viewed in itself’ did not exist. There was, however, a broader context, which viewed sex as related to certain types of family relationships, to specific attitudes with regard to possession and to people of the same sex, to a specific experience of one’s body as the representation of one’s identity etc. The belief in the meaningfulness of this structured whole gave meaning to the religious discourse. The effect of secularization can be
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recognized retrospectively, for example, in the fact that sexuality gradually became a medical concern. Thus, interpreting secularization is not so much indicating that fields which previously belonged to the realm of religion, now fall within the ‘sphere’ of medicine. Rather, it is tracing the process by which sexuality obtained a new significance in a restructured philosophy of life. Moreover, it raises the question as to how an awareness of profound meaningfulness presents itself in this new context. Here then lies the relevance of a study of the outspoken attempts at reducing the impact of religion which took place at the turn of this century and which are so characteristically typified in the Freud-Jung debate. These attempts reveal the tensions which appeared in the previously coherent religious contemplation of the world and which, in the meantime, brought about a reorganization of all kinds of aspects of life within a new context. The Elusive Object of Psychology of Religion Before we review the debate itself, it would be worthwhile to consider how the problems which one had become aware of were being covered up. That is exactly what Freud and Jung had done near the end of their collaboration. When the core problem concerning the experience of reality in religion not only appeared to be extremely complex but also challenged aspects of the psychoanalytical theory itself, these unresolved problems were avoided by simply raising other questions. Both authors, each in his own way, investigated other aspects of the phenomenon of religion. Moreover, they defined religion differently. They thus strived after a quick evaluation of those other aspects in order to be able to easily classify the religious phenomenon ‘religion’. Neither one of them succeeded and, until the end of their lives, the question of religion imposed itself on them. Actually, this problem is also valid for psychology in general. In this regard, there is a constant uneasiness. The psychologist feels most secure when he can juxtapose his own discourse to the religious discourse. As mentioned above, this is perhaps the most radical form of secularization, namely, secularization which presents itself as a fact which no longer requires reflection. The psychologist still directly studies the religious phenomenon or, at least, that which looks like religion or even that which he feels should be considered as such. The hesitations and the troubled conscience which he displays witness to the unresolved nature of questions which have been masked over since the Freud-Jung debate. The
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remarkable aspect however, is that a psychologist employs certain distinctions which correspond to the classical theological distinctions, though only partially. These distinctions are very revealing when placed within the context of our research insofar as they also offer latent indications of how secularization consists in a restructuring of a general philosophy of life. Recalling the older debate, the psychologist usually assumes that, in assessing his position, a ‘fear of reduction’ is active. He could be inclined to reduce religion and thus claim that it is actually superfluous. The classical answer of the psychologist is that he will consider the phenomenon with ‘benevolent neutrality’. He will only investigate the determining factors of the phenomenon on a mere human level. For example, he will study whether a mystic’s love for God bears the characteristics to which normal, human love should correspond.10 The question as to whether or not this divine object exists, is left untouched. It is considered to be a matter of ‘faith’. Yet one wonders whether a psychologist with such an attitude responds to theological questions. We are left with the impression that he especially confuses the two classical theological questions. Is he suggesting that, for psychology as well, the religious life is of a completely different dimension than earthly life? If this is the case, then he is proclaiming, from the psychological point of view, that verticalism is the correct theological choice. Or, is he stating that the religious dimension should be limited to the problem of God? In this case, he would be in agreement with those who wish to liberate the core of faith from all unessential elements. This is a second theological choice. Which solution should a psychologist resort to if he wishes to stay objective and neutral? Many directions have been taken, though all in vain. Initially, one resorted to the concept of religious experience in order to find a way out of this dilemma. The newly formed discipline of the psychology of religion, at the end of the previous century, searched for this experience in paranormal phenomena which seemed to refute the existing anti-religious, materialistic determinism. When this extremely relative criticism of religion faded, the psychology of religion nevertheless continued to go in the same direction, searching for specific experiences of meaningfulness. Thus, religious awareness was not so much experi-
10. A. VERGOTE, Guilt and Desire. Religious Attitudes and their Pathological Derivatives, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1988. Original: Dette et désir: deus axes chrétiens et la dérive pathologique,Paris, Seuil, 1978.
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enced as a repudiation of determinism but more as an experience of intrinsic meaningfulness. Gradually, attention was also given to less extreme forms of religious experiences. One did not always have to deal with R. Otto’s experience of the sacred as tremendum et fascinosum nor with A.T. Boisen’s experience of schizophrenia as the most revealing abyss of human existence.11 Experiences of ‘basic trust’ or of some ‘whole-ness’ could also be considered. This approach was criticized from two perspectives. The criticism raised from a theological point of view was the following. Did the psychology of religion not isolate or privilege a particular aspect of religion, thus following some sort of hidden theological agenda? Experience plays a significant role in a number of Christian Churches, especially in those influenced by pietism. Yet there are also movements within Christianity which place faith in revelation, the acceptance of a doctrine and the adherence to a particular Church in the foreground and which, precisely for these reasons, have often contested the direct religious experience. When one conceives of religious experience in such a broad way that it constitutes the core of both revealed and non-revealed religions by, for example, placing the mystical experiences of Christianity and the nonChristian religions under one common denominator, one is making unmistakable and important theological choices. This focal positioning of the religious experience was also criticized from the perspective of human sciences. Under the influence of such currents as structuralism, one questioned the possibility of universal human experiences which could be isolated from their concrete context, compared to other such experiences and categorized into separate types. Independent from this trend, the interest within the theological field shifted from a clinical approach to a more empirical approach, in which the interview of a representative group and the quantitative processing of the obtained results became the most prominent method of research. At first sight, one would expect that this process would give a new incentive to the ideal of methodical neutrality proclaimed by psychologists. The consequence however, was that the question concerning the definition of the religious dimension became even more pressing. Should this dimension be regarded in the same way as the majority of people conceived of it? This appeared to be the most objective solution in the sense 11. A.T. Boisen (1876-1965) has been considered as the founder of pastoral psychology. See H. STROEKEN, Psychoanalyse, godsdienst en Boisen (Psychoanalysis, Religion and Boisen), Kampen, Kok, 1983, and D. STOLLBERG, Therapeutische Seelsorge. Die amerikanische Seelsorgebewegung, Munich, Kaiser, 1972.
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that it corresponded to a quantitative criterion. However, it immediately implied that the questioning of those qualified in the field of religion, namely, the theologians, was irrelevant. In the multitude of opinions concerning religion, the viewpoint of the theologian was very unique since precisely that which he considered to be religion was not at all the same as that which the majority of people called religion. From his perspective, the theologian could reproach the psychologist of religion for actually being partial to politicians and Churches when he employed his questionnaires. These latter groups agreed that one best fulfil the expectations which were placed under the denominator ‘religion’ without questioning whether or not these expectations were genuinely religious. Implicitly, this indicates that one holds the following position. "The Enlightenment was really a mistake. Time has passed between then and now and many areas, which formerly belonged to religion, are now governed by other disciplines. Consequently, that which is now called ‘religion’ no longer corresponds to what was understood by that term earlier. Should one question this? The majority of people do not in any case and they are the ones who supply the quantitative material...". Was it ultimately because the psychologist himself originated in the Enlightenment that he gradually introduced a few distinctions in the notion of religion? The problems which he became aware of were the same ones theologians had been struggling with all along. The psychologist however, faced these problems more cautiously and intended to further verify in visible reality the distinctions which he introduced. Thus, G.W. Allport proposed the classical distinction between ‘intrinsic’ and ‘extrinsic’ religiosity.12 A person who was extrinsically religious adhered to religion for some other reason, for example, because it offered comfort and security in this life or because one achieved a certain status by belonging to a certain church community. ‘Intrinsic’ religiosity, on the other hand, implied adherence to religion for its own sake. As could be expected, opinions were immediately divided as to which components ‘intrinsically’
12. In G.W. ALLPORT, The Individual and His Religion, New York, MacMillan, 1950, a distinction between immature and matured religiosity is initially at stake. In establishing this distinction, the author explicitly defended an ‘existential’ opinion of religion. The terms ‘extrinsic’ and ‘intrinsic’ religiosity reiterate this distinction. One even developed a test to measure these dispositions, G.W. ALLPORT and J.M. ROSS, Personal Religious Orientation and Prejudice. In: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 5 (1967) 432-443. The criticism which this test elicited from Batson, as we will discuss later, does not do justice to the whole of Allport’s thoughts.
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belonged to religion.13 It would have come as a surprise if the question which had been of such great concern to theologians had not presented itself to psychologists as well. Moreover, a new problem was added onto that question. In his description of intrinsic religiosity, Allport had spontaneously assumed that religion and devotion coincided. Authors such as Batson and Ventis therefore accused him of actually measuring orthodoxy and rigidity according to his category ‘intrinsic religiosity’. That is why they introduced, alongside Allport’s types of religion, the dimension ‘religion as a quest’ by which they characterized the attitude which steadily and maturely continued to search for the meaning of life without spasmodically clinging to standard answers.14 Most likely, this description was still aimed at the all too elitist group of people who were genuinely concerned with religion. However, it also witnesses to the fact that the psychologist had become aware of a new insight, namely, that more and more, people started making a distinction between devotion and religiosity. Was this not hypocritical? Yet if one frequently hears the statement: "I do not go to church but that does not mean that I am not religious!", one ultimately has to accept the distinction. Remarkably enough, statements such as this were not given by conscientious atheists who, in a premeditated and explicit manner, had distanced themselves from the religious system to which they previously adhered but who had nevertheless remained dependent on it in a negative way. Instead, it seemed to be the expression of a spontaneous and unmediated awareness. Should such statements be interpreted as the experimental and quantifiable proof of the existence of a more autonomous religious experience which does not coincide with belonging to a Church? The unravelling of this question, which implies that one attempts to verify the true meaning of such a statement as well as whether or not it holds its own when there is no longer a link to religious traditions or Church institutes perceived as autonomous elements, presents a burning issue for the contemporary psychology of religion which has a social-psy13. For a discussion of this problematic, see also J. WEIMA, Reiken naar oneindigheid. Inleiding tot de psychologie van de religieuze ervaring (Reaching towards Infinity. An Introduction into the Psychology of Religious Experience), Baarn, Ambo, 1981, p. 45-63. 14. C.D. BATSON and W.L. VENTIS, The Religious Experience. A Social Psychological Experience, New York, Oxford University Press, 1982. This subject was extensively discussed during the Congress for the Psychology of Religion at Nijmegen in 1985. Several contributions can be found in the journal of this congress: J.A. VAN BELZEN and J.M. VAN DER LANS, Current Issues in the Psychology of Religion. Proceedings of the Third Symposium on the Psychology of Religion in Europe, Amsterdam, Rodopi, 1986.
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chological interest. In the meantime, the problem as to how the notion of ‘religion’ could be delineated emerges once again. Precisely this new experience which people have of a ‘broader’ form of religiosity threatens to make it possible that everything can be called ‘religion’ while nothing can be taken as the specific object of the psychology of religion. On the one hand, there are reasons to speak about ‘invisible’ religion, as Th. Luckmann did, since many forms of attachment to higher values indeed stem from previous, explicitly religious attitudes.15 On the other hand, one ultimately loses track of what exactly constitutes ‘religion’ when traditional pilgrimages as well as the idolization of a political ideology and emotional outbursts during a pop concert are placed under the same category.16 In an attempt to solve this difficulty, one often points to the fact that both history and anthropology teach that, in all cultures, a specific and recognizable dimension of life can be encountered which can be isolated and identified as the religious dimension. Moreover, did not the Latin word sacer (sacred) initially mean that which is separated from the other? However, importing definitions which originate in cultures not influenced by the phenomenon of secularization, cannot answer the specific questions raised by that phenomenon in the western world. On the contrary, the relevance of the questions would be neglected. It would seem very odd if psychology, of all disciplines, were to do this since it originated in secularization. The Importance of the Freud-Jung Debate Contrary to the contemporary psychology of religion, psychoanalysis in its nascent period did not hesitate to search for an ‘explanation’ for religion. In the debates between Freud and Jung, they often unscrupulously attempted to reduce religion to something other. Not only the notion of ‘projection’ but several other categories of explanation as well were verified by means of a process which nowadays is often considered to be old fashioned. However, we have just proposed the hypothesis that the present ‘neutral’ attitude, by which psychology juxtaposes its own discourse to the religious discourse in order to compete with it without having to confront it, can be just as totalitarian. How did we arrive at this
15. TH. LUCKMANN, The Invisible Religion, New York, MacMillan, 1967. 16. A. VERGOTE, Religie, geloof and ongeloof. Psychologische studie (Religion, Belief and Unbelief. A Psychological Study), Antwerp, De Nederlandsche Boekhandel, 1984, p. 14-20.
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situation? Were these attempts at reduction ultimately successful in practice, although not in an explicit exposition? Or were other elements involved? This already gives us one reason to reconsider the attempts at reduction in light of the present problematic. In this study, we will not only raise the question as to whether religion is reduced to something other but also as to what religion is to be reduced to and what this attempt reveals concerning the religious phenomenon both in its essential and relative appearance. In doing this, we will come across a surprising observation. By the notion of ‘reduction’ of religion, one would expect that the element to which religion is reduced is somewhat solid and consistent. It appears that this is not the case. Is religion a veiled expression of erotic desires? Both Freud and Jung raised this question but subsequently, they were confronted with the question of what sexuality actually was. The initial question was thus transformed into further questions concerning the essence of the libido and what caused its arousal.... The same occurred concerning the hypothesis that religion had a function in the constitution of one’s identity. Again, one can pose the question: what is identity? Further, religion can be interpreted as an illusion when it is measured according to the norms of the reality principle. But what is a true experience of reality if the existence of psychosis clearly indicates that perception alone does not suffice as a criterion for ‘reality’? Only when one follows the debate between Freud and Jung in detail, does it become clear that psychoanalysis opened the discussion concerning a number of concepts which were considered self-evident and that it seriously questioned notions which were formerly perceived as unequivocal. The way in which psychoanalysis shed new light on religion is not detached from this approach. Actually, psychoanalysis never reduced religion to anything more well-defined, though it often clearly intended to do so. Instead, every element to which religion could be reduced in a first instance was stripped of its obviousness. Because of this, the questions raised by psychoanalysis were much more fundamental than those it had expected to raise when it set out to reduce religion. It could be very tempting to suggest that psychoanalysis probably left religion undisturbed. One would be inclined to state that, when Freud and Jung were discussing the religious contents of Schreber’s psychotic delusion, the problem of the relationship between psychosis and an awareness of reality was at stake and not the problem of religion. Further, when Freud examined the religious obsessions of the Wolf Man, concerning the figure of Christ and the mystery of the Trinity, he was studying the problem of
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the Wolf Man’s identity but not religion. When Jung in turn dealt with the psychological significance of transubstantiation in the Eucharist, he was discussing an inner transformation which was supported by the archetype of the ‘Self’ but again, not religion... When the issue is presented in this manner, any concern is unfounded. The fear sometimes expressed regarding psychology, is based on a mistake. In order to present the issue as such, however, religion must again be conceived of as a fixed, timeless entity; as the ‘Other’. At the same time, the presupposition for this argumentation remained the a priori that the opposition between psychology and religion could only imply a fight to the death. Either psychology was able to reduce religion leaving nothing of it intact or psychology was not able to reduce religion which would mean one had to acknowledge religion as an autonomous entity. In the latter case, it was still possible to approach religion from a psychological perspective but one could only discuss the subjective way in which people, both as individuals and as groups, appropriated an autonomous religious object. The issue looks quite different when religion is conceived of as a way to experience the whole of reality as it actually exists, sustained by absolute meaningfulness. In this case, religion requires a total view on the world. This does not imply that it is necessarily tied to a certain worldview. Moreover, if, because of one’s beliefs, one holds that history is steeped in meaningfulness, the emergence of a new religious view on the world does not necessarily cause a religious crisis. Quite the contrary. Religious convictions compel one to question the logic to which the emergence of a new worldview corresponds. The disappearance of an existing religious discourse, by which the world was interpreted as a whole, should not pose any fundamental problems. One is concerned, however, by the fact that, because of the divergence of scientific disciplines, the world as a whole is no longer the subject of discussion. This essential religious question subsequently becomes: is our belief in a coherent world an illusion and thus, is our religion also an illusion? Or, is there just something wrong with the way in which we formulate our belief in this coherence? In a second moment, one should question whether this new awareness of the meaningfulness of reality as a whole - perhaps one should indeed relinquish the old panoramic term ‘worldview’ - can be connected to the former religious discourse. Should this discourse be preserved? Should it be adapted? Or should a new discourse be developed?
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Still, within the same religious context, one should not limit these questions to the religious discourse sensu stricto since, like religion, it does not constitute a separate realm. A person who, based on his religious inspiration, experiences the existing reality as being meaningful, naturally pays extra attention to those aspects within reality which, according to him, occupy the central position in the coherence of this reality. That is why it is important to trace those elements to which one thought one could reduce religion. These elements will indicate where the cohesion was situated up until that moment and which crisis was feared if the intrinsic coherence of reality was suddenly conceived of in a different manner. Key Questions in the Freud-Jung Debate To this religious point of view, psychoanalysis presented a far more important challenge than to the verticalist point of view. The latter perspective might be suspicious that psychoanalysis would reduce the ‘Other’ of the religious dimension to something worldly. Moreover, more than any other discipline, psychoanalysis had stripped several core notions of the classical western philosophy of life of their self-evidence. This is true especially for the concept of sexuality which, in the history of Christianity, has proved remarkably problematic. After initially having posed that sexuality should no longer be mistaken as one of the essential elements characterizing human life - a first shock - sexuality was further stripped of its self-evidence by psychoanalysis. The discussions between Freud and Jung concerning the notion of the ‘libido’ were thus accompanied by a profound shift in the western view on humanity. This is also true for the classical opinion concerning the essence of the human person. The psychoanalytical notions of ‘identification’ and ‘transference’, which originated in clinical practice, force us to radically reconsider which elements compose the individual’s identity. This not only challenges the Cartesian tradition but also the older Aristotelian and Scholastic traditions and their respective views on the essence of a human being. Both sexuality and the concept of the human person were of particular importance to the classical western worldview to which the religious discourse corresponded. This is also true for a third problem, namely, the experience of an object’s ‘reality’. It was this problematic which Freud and Jung first discussed. The psychotic’s experience proves that perception is not the capacity by which we distinguish delusion from reality. Rather,
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‘libidinous cathexis’ makes this possible. Because of this clinical data, we are forced to radically reconsider our concept of ‘experience’ as well as the related concept of ‘theory’. Here, we touch upon the theme which has most often been fearfully avoided by the psychology of religion, namely, the specific religious experience of reality and the status of religious faith. A believer is convinced that the divine truly exists yet he also knows that its existence cannot be conceived of as the spatial presence of an object among objects. Without necessarily employing the corresponding philosophical concepts, he realizes that ‘transcendence’ is involved and that he only experiences the presence of the divine through its absence. The theme of the experience of an object’s ‘reality’, which is of crucial importance for our worldview in general, directly affects the way in which the specific religious discourse expresses the experience of reality’s meaningfulness. When considering what has been said thus far, a question with regard to the practical field poses itself. What sort of task division should we adopt between psychological counselling and the guidance which might be given concerning one’s philosophy of life? Can the tasks of the pastor and spiritual director be distinguished from the task of the psychologist without having to maintain the myth that this division stems from the fact that there are actually different fields? In the discussion between Freud and Jung, this issue as well was dealt with more candidly than what we are now used to. Moreover, a reflection on this exposition teaches us how secularization is active in the psychoanalytical practice and how a cultural institution, which psychoanalysis has indeed become in the meantime, is sustained by historical processes (I deliberately wish to avoid the term ‘collective unconscious’) of which it is not aware. Our Methodology In this study, we intend to follow the Freud-Jung debate chronogically. Approaching it differently, for example by discussing it theme by theme, would introduce the a priori that each theme exists independently and can be compared to the others. It is our intention to trace how the different themes of their research are interconnected and how changing an aspect of one theme immediately brings about a shift within another theme. We will therefore devote our attention to all aspects of the work of both authors. This includes Jung’s association experiments. At first sight, questions could arise as to whether we are not moving too far from the
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religious problematic. Jung’s association experiments, however, constitute an excellent test case for investigating the effect of the definition of the notion ‘religion’. We will discover that Jung, from his student days onward, held a certain preference for natural philosophy, which we will synthesize by the term ‘Romantic concept of the unconscious’. Jung himself explicitly, and in the most classical sense, related this preference to religion. He did not distinguish between his philosophical perspectives and his reflection on Christianity. Moreover, Jung made conscious theological choices. In his fascination with paranormal phenomena, he relied both on a faith in the gradual self-development of the spirit in nature as posited by E. von Hartmann and on a revaluation of the mystical element in religion, contrary to Ritchl’s thought. With this set of ‘convictions’ or better, with this conceptual model, Jung attempted to interpret the results of his association tests. This conceptual model was so strongly engrained in him that it initially impeded him from correctly understanding the Freudian theory. Without giving it much thought, he interpreted what he read in Freud’s works, as well as his own research data, in light of his own a prioris. What was the status of these convictions or this conceptual model? Does it concern faith, in the religious meaning of the word? If we had not noticed that Jung had previously related these convictions to immediately recognizable religious terminology, it probably would not have occurred to us to designate these convictions as ‘religious’ on the basis of Jung’s association tests. Moreover, in the wake of the association tests, Jung himself did not relate his conceptual model to a religious discourse for a long period of time. The conceptual model in the meantime remained operative. After his break with Freud, he developed it even more explicitly in the theory of the archetypes. From that point on, Jung once again incorporated into his discourse a reference to religion or at least to ‘spirituality’. He was indeed well aware of the difficulty of in defining the notion of religion. What can be properly called ‘religion’ and what should not be included within the concept? This in fact is the central question in the Freud-Jung debate. Is it merely a matter of language? Does it depend on the fact that the images which are employed are at first sight somewhat similar to those images by means of which people throughout the centuries thought they could recognize the ‘religious’ dimension? Or is the problem concerning the definition of religion much more complex? Does it perhaps concern the conclusions which people draw from their view on the world and thus, primarily, the question of how far human conclusions may reach?
Chapter II
Jung’s Early Work The Pre-Freudian Notion of the Unconscious Before becoming acquainted with Freud’s work, Jung was already familiar with a concept of the unconscious derived from the Romantic philosophy of nature. It is important to keep this Romantic concept in mind if we are to closely follow the dialogue between Jung and Freud on the unconscious. What initially seems to be a most confused discussion becomes clear once we realize the different conceptual frameworks of the two thinkers. The fact that these conceptual frameworks are not made explicit explains why Freud and Jung arrived at diverging conclusions even though for a long while they shared the same clinical material and employed identical terminology. Romanticism is principally an affirmation of the unity between man and nature. In opposition to the rationalism of the Enlightenment and the accompanying separation of matter and spirit, the Romantic movement aimed at restoring harmony between nature and spirit. For this reason, it appealed to the organic model. Since spirit and matter belong to the one and the same cosmos, they must be naturally attuned to each other. This conviction, that creation formed an organic whole, was also transferred to the concept of history. History was seen as one great process within which all particular events were propelled by the synthesizing power of a higher finality. The findings of the emergent theory of evolution were readily evoked to connect the unity of body and spirit with the historical process of the cosmos. It was precisely through the unfolding process of evolution that psychic life developed from animal life in the course of time. The unconscious was shown to be a transition stage between these two lives. Central to such a philosophy of nature is the notion of an organism that developed from the first germ cells according to a certain innate law. The whole of nature is an immense unfolding of potentialities which are present from the beginning. It is within this process that the unconscious is situated as a preliminary stage of consciousness. This preliminary stage normally develops spontaneously into the higher state of consciousness but if, for one reason or another, the transition does not take place, the psyche remains caught in the lower unconscious form.
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The classic and most popular representative of this Romantic philosophy of nature and its concept of the unconscious was Eduard von Hartmann (1842-1906). In his voluminous work The Philosophy of the Unconscious he argued that if one made a careful study of the physiological and zoopsychological phenomena of nature, one was forced to admit the existence of unconscious representations and an unconscious will. The idea of the unconscious which resulted from these data seemed to be the key which unlocked the hidden unity of the universe. For von Hartmann, the unconscious also supplied the answer to certain metaphysical questions. It allowed the finality of nature to appear and it presented itself as the core of all philosophical systems such as: the substance of Spinoza; the absolute Ego of Fichte; the absolute subject-object of Schelling; the absolute idea of Plato and Hegel; the Will of Schopenhauer etc. ...1 Von Hartmann described the unfolding of the cosmos as resulting from the antinomy between the two different elements which constitute the unconscious: unconscious representations and unconscious will. Initially, the representation was the slave of the will. The being, still bound to instinct, could only represent whatever was at that same time desired by need.2 However, the cosmic process was ultimately directed toward letting the representation triumph over the will. A psyche must arise, highly valuing representation and undermining the instinctual ground from whence representation originated. Von Hartmann considered that this would occur whenever humanity as a whole reaches such a level of spirituality that it decides to remove the absurdity of an existence which is bound to instinct by means of collective suicide. Consciousness was thus, in von Hartmann’s view, that which must develop from the unconscious according to cosmic finality. With the formation of consciousness, the representation freed itself from the dominion of the will in order to have the ability to turn against the will. Nature allowed consciousness to arise from the unconscious so that the great purification (cosmic suicide) could take place.3 Jung read von Hartmann most eagerly and was, no doubt, deeply influenced by his thought (without however adopting such a pessimistic view).4 Indeed, a similar trend of thought can be found in all the other
1. E. VON HARTMANN, Philosophie des Unbewussten (1st ed.: 1869) Berlin, Duncker, 7th ed.: 1876, I, p. 3. 2. Ibid., I, p. 97. 3. Ibid., II, p. 410-411. 4. C.G. JUNG, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, (1st ed.: 1961), New York, Pantheon Books, revised ed.: 1973, p. 105.
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authors who influenced Jung more specifically in his early psychiatric training. The unconscious was constantly situated as a preliminary stage of spirit. In the background, there appeared the representation of an organically structured cosmos within which the transition from instinct to spirit was interpreted as an extremely important mutation. Moreover, within the framework of a philosophy such as von Hartmann’s, there was plenty of scope for an experimental and scientific approach to man and nature. With an evolutionary model in mind, nature was studied and classified. In this way, it was discovered that the cosmos, from the simplest elements of life, had brought forth first the animal kingdom and finally man with his consciousness as the culminating point of an organic development. In this perspective, the psychic as well as the somatic had developed from more elementary forms which were then laboriously traced. Attention was also directed to the unconscious as the lower form of psychic development, vestiges of which could still be perceived in man’s psyche just as marks of a previous stage of evolution could be detected in the body. The progress of the positive sciences ultimately brought about little change in this pattern of thought. The data of these positive sciences, which were used to support the first syntheses of natural philosophy such as von Hartmann’s, were certainly criticized and replaced by other data, but the central idea was retained. The cosmos was still regarded as an organism which developed according to its own internal laws. However, the ultimate interpretation was no longer necessarily in the line of a transcendent spiritual finality. There was a reversal to a materialistic interpretation caused by the discovery of more elementary forms. This discovery led to a reduction of the lower forms of life to a mere accidental combination of these more elementary forms. In this way, the idea of finality was replaced by the notion of chance. The presuppositions of the Romantic philosophy of nature were maintained in this materialistic view. Conscious man remained the finished product of a process within which the unconscious reflected a lower stage of evolution. The discussion between materialists and spiritualists can ultimately be reduced to the following: whether the conscious ego constituted the highest form which was the culmination of a purposeful evolutionary process and thus whether the psyche had a higher value or whether it was simply a matter of an accidental finished product, to which no particular value should be attributed. In the latter case, we should speak only of an epiphenomenon which, as in Bleuler’s metaphor (to be discussed later) can be compared to the ticking of a clock.
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Jung’s development is to be placed within the context of these discussions between the materialists and the spiritualists - both of whom, as we have seen, while clearly holding different positions, were nevertheless operating within the same basic conceptual framework. It will later be seen how Jung also assimilated this pattern of thought, which explains exactly why he was unable to grasp that which was particular to Freudian thought. A Few Biographical Notes on Jung’s Youth and Studies Although since a few years we have some more detailed biographies of Carl Gustav Jung are at our disposal, we are still to a great extent dependent upon his autobiography, much of which he dictated shortly before his death.5 This work is a rather meditative reflection on his inner life. There is little opportunity for reference to factual data and when such an occasion does arise, the information is often inaccurate. In The Discovery of the Unconscious, Ellenberger has collected most of the information which is thus far known.6 Gustav Steiner has recorded his memories of Jung’s youth, when they had been friends.7 As the son of a village minister, Jung grew up in a thoroughly religious milieu which left a permanent impression on him. Although religion fascinated him, it also appeared to him as something extremely frightening. From his early youth, he recalled a whole fantasy world centred around the image of the crucified Christ, the bloody body that offered him protection but at the same time greatly disturbed him. In this way, Carl Gustav grew up with that mixture of fascination and fear which, since Rudolf Otto (1869-1937), has readily been seen as the mark of a religious sensitivity. High expectations often lead to disillusion. Jung recalled two such experiences from this period. The first occasion was when the time arrived for the long expected chapter on Trinity to be discussed in catechism class. The minister, Jung’s father, skipped this chapter because it was too difficult and of little importance to daily Christian life. Jung experienced
5. Most of the biographical works are discussed in the bibliographical notice at the end of this work. The most complete and objective work seems to be that of G. WEHR, Jung. A Biography, Boston & London, Shambhala, 1987. Original: Carl Gustav Jung. Leben, Werk, Wirkung, Munich, Kösel, 1985. 6. H. ELLENBERGER, The Discovery of the Unconscious. The History and Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry, London, Allen Lane, 1970, p. 657-748. 7. G. STEINER, Erinnerungen an Carl Gustav Jung in: FR. GRIEDER, Basler Stadtbuch 1965. Jahrbuch für Kultur und Geschichte, Basel, von Helbing und Lichtenhahn, 117-163.
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disillusion again on the occasion of his first communion when he realized that the body and blood of the Lord tasted like dry bread and sour wine. During his secondary school studies, he acquired an interest in philosophy. He read Nietzsche, Schopenhauer and Goethe. For Jung, Goethe’s Faust constituted the religious work par excellence. In this work, he continued to recognize his religious feelings. It was while reading this Romantic philosophical tradition that he discovered the concept of the unconscious. This was also the period when Jung’s fascination with religion took the form of the following question: what function do religious representations have within the evolutionary history of the cosmos? Not only the cosmos, but also history can be charged with religious meaning. For Jung this was experienced in a very direct way through his family tradition. There was a rumour that Jung’s grandfather, Carl Gustav Jung (1794-1864), was the natural son of Goethe.8 Jung’s grandfather was in any case a remarkable man. Having studied natural sciences and medicine in Heidelberg, he worked as an assistant surgeon at the Charité in Berlin. There he was converted from Catholicism to Protestantism by Friedrich Schleiermacher himself. It should be noted that there were already family ties between the Schleiermachers and the Jungs. The uncle of Jung’s grandfather married the younger sister of the great theologian. Shortly afterwards, Jung’s grandfather was involved in a revolutionary movement. He was forced to seek refuge in Paris. There he became acquainted with Alexander von Humbold (1769-1859). Thanks to the latter, he was appointed professor at the University of Basel where he reorganized the Faculty of Medicine. He later became rector of the university. He was also the Master of the Swiss Freemasons. One can easily understand the power of such a model for the grandson.9 According to his autobiography, Jung’s decision to study medicine was a compromise between his love for cultural history and his love for the positive sciences. In those fleeting years as a student, he was a member of Zofingia, a student organization which provided the opportunity for lively debates. The archives of this student club have been preserved and they give evidence to the fact that Jung was a regular speaker, especially on religious matters. Although nothing delighted him more than seeing theology students hard pressed by his sceptical manner, he nonetheless passionately defended the value of the spiritual against materialism. In
8. More information concerning this rumour, given however from the critical view of the maternal branch of Jung’s family, can be found in: ST. ZUMSTEIN-PREISWERK, C.G. Jungs Medium. Die Geschichte der Helly Preiswerk, Munich, Kindler, 1975, p. 114-119. 9. For further information confer G. WEHR, Jung. A Biography, p. 13-17.
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doing so, he did not renounce his faith in the positive sciences. He argued that it should be possible to prove the reality of the spiritual by experimental means, viz, by a positive scientific investigation of psychic states such as hypnosis, suggestion and spiritism. Since no physical explanation was to be found for these states, one could point to a spiritual causality. However, Jung could not tolerate the way in which theologians approached religion. He was particularly opposed to the liberal rationalist theology of Ritschl who, in his view, deprived religion of its essential mystical core.10 Besides the discussions in the Zofingia, there were also the spiritistic seances which Jung eagerly attended. In July 1899, his younger cousin started acting as a medium. The first experiments were only with tableturning but before long the medium passed over into a somnambulistic state.11 It is not surprising that Jung immediately showed interest in this subject and faithfully participated in all the sittings, at least until April 1900 when the medium seemed to weaken. Around this period, Jung probably devoted all his time to the preparation for the state examination in medicine. This episode is, however, important. Jung took copious notes during the sittings and his doctoral dissertation later consisted of a psychological analysis of these phenomena.
10. Jung’s talks have been published in a supplementary volume of the English translation of the Collected Works, but not yet in German: C.G. JUNG, The Zofingia Lectures, (Supplementary volume A to the Collected Works) London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983. 11. According to the medium’s family, table-turning experiments were performed as early as the summer of 1895. See ST. ZUMSTEIN-PREISWERK, C.G. Jungs Medium. Die Geschichte der Helly Preiswerk, p. 53. In the part of the Jung archives deposited in the library of the Polytechnical Institute of the Swiss Confederation (ETH) in Zurich, I found three reports of ‘Spiritistic experiments’ (Manuscript Hs 1055: 1a). The first two reports deal with experiments performed at Jung’s house in the presence of certain friends (Jung is indicated by his student nickname ‘Walze’) on March 19th and 22nd, 1897. These reports merely give a description of the attempt to communicate with a spirit, which finally revealed itself as ‘K.G. Jung’ (At that time Jung spelled his name ‘Karl’). It is not clear if Jung’s grandfather was meant. The third report (indicated with the roman numeral IV in the margin, so that we can infer that one report is missing), is the most important. This experiment took place on August 18th, 1897 in the ‘Bottminger Mühle’, Jung’s uncle’s home, where the Jung family had moved after the death of Jung’s father. This seems to be the very impressive fourth seance described in On the Psychology and Pathology of So-Called Occult Phenomena, C.W. I, § 48. However the first three seances reported in the dissertation are obviously not those described in the manuscript in the Jung archives. St. Zumstein-Preiswerk seems to be correct in claiming that the seances took place in 1897 and not in 1899 as Jung mentioned in his dissertation.
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In those days, there was nothing peculiar about such a topic. Somnambulistic states were then a privileged field of study and phenomena such as table-turning and spiritism were not uncommon.12 In 1902, Jung completed his dissertation On the Psychology and Pathology of So-Called Occult Phenomena. In the meantime, he had taken the state examination. From 11 December 1900 on, he was working as an assistant at the Burghölzli, the psychiatric clinic of the University of Zurich, under the direction of the eminent psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler (18571939). As a young assistant, Jung had to reside in the clinic in splendid isolation. He told how, for six months, he was practically out of contact with the outside world and how he waded through fifty volumes of Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie.13 Most of his free time was devoted to writing his thesis. Jung’s dissertation was less than one hundred pages long. It has often been claimed that this work foreshadowed many of his later ideas. Perhaps it would be more true to say that the dissertation gave strong evidence of certain concepts which continued to determine Jung’s later thought. These concepts were the belief in an organically constructed cosmos whereby all elements contribute to the realization of the same end according to certain inherent laws and the belief in the method of the natural sciences as being the key to discovering the aim of the whole from the observation of details. Sources Theodore Ziehen Theodore Ziehen (1862-1950) is regularly referred to as having the greatest influence upon Jung. He is also said to be the author of the term ‘complex’ which Jung introduced into the psychoanalytic vocabulary. On closer investigation, however, it does not at all seem clear that Jung was directly influenced by Ziehen. It is true, of course, that Ziehen was an important authority in German psychiatry at the time when Jung received his training. Perhaps it is as such that he ought to be mentioned. In the discussion between the spiritualists and the materialists, Ziehen can be placed among the ranks of the convinced materialists. He was vehemently opposed to the influential school of Wilhelm Wundt (18321920), which combined its experimental approach with a spiritualistic perspective. Wundt was of the opinion that it was simply impossible to
12. See H. ELLENBERGER, The Discovery of the Unconscious, p. 83-85. 13. C.G. JUNG, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p. 114.
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give an exhaustive account of how the human psyche operated by starting from the reflex reaction and elementary laws of association. He also postulated the existence of an autonomous psychic causality, apperception, which was responsible for the construction of higher psychic forms. The language Wundt used in this connection was very spiritualistic. He spoke of a ‘psychic causality of the will’ and of ‘the incomparable nature of physical and psychic causality’.14 Ziehen was opposed to such spiritualism. His whole work was intended to show that it precisely was possible to give an exhaustive account of the origin of such a complex whole as the human psyche by starting from simple psychophysiological laws. In his attempt to give a detailed description of the manner in which psychic forms strive after complexification, he developed two concepts which have become part of the history of psychology, viz, the concepts ‘transference’ and ‘constellation’. Ziehen used the term ‘transference’ to point to the fact that the affective charge of a certain representation has the tendency to attach itself to associated representations. He gave the following example. If one has been involved in an accident, it is often not only the representation of the accident that makes one feel uneasy but also the representation of the place where the accident occurred. Transference was thus an expansion of the affect to related representations. In this sense, transference was among those processes which were constitutive of the higher forms of the psyche.15 It should be mentioned in passing that there is a difference between this concept and the Freudian notion of ‘displacement’. Freud focused on the fact that the affective charge of a certain representation could be neutralized by shifting the affective charge to a related representation. This Freudian idea, with its connotation of defence, had no place in a conceptual framework such as Ziehen’s, where the psyche was a mere resultant and thus could not be seen as an active agent. The notion of ‘constellation’ was a second concept developed by Ziehen to explain how higher psychic forms were constituted. This concept was evoked to explain why it was not always the most frequently associated or the most affectively charged representation which dominated
14. W. WUNDT, Grundzüge der physiologischen Psychologie III, p. 316. Much has been written on the theory of apperception. For a short summary, see O. STAUDE, Der Begriff der Apperzeption in der neueren Psychologie. In: W. WUNDT (ed.), Philosophische Studien 1 (1883) 149-212. 15. T. ZIEHEN, Leitfaden der physiologischen Psychologie, Jena, Fischer, 1898, p. 147.
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the thought process. A weak representation could thus be joined by another representation and, according to Ziehen, this accounted for the variability in the thought process. The constellation increased or decreased the energy of certain latent representations as a consequence of the presence of another representation.16 However, it remains unclear exactly how Ziehen saw the working of this constellation mechanism. He simply dismissed the problem with a presentation of several examples. In ‘transference’ and ‘constellation’, we are repeatedly concerned with the idea that elementary forms constitute themselves into a more complex whole without the intervention of a specifically spiritual faculty such as apperception. Ziehen gave explicit consideration to the ego as the finished product of such a process. He defined it as a specific complex of memory images connected by association, the complex having arisen in the course of the individual’s ontogenetic development.17 Ziehen also gave a brief description of the elements involved in this ego representation: the representation of one’s own body as a unity; the sum of momentary inclinations and predominant representations; and the idea of a succession of physical and psychic events from the past.18 In Ziehen’s view, "empirical psychology only knows this composite ego".19 It is clear then that Ziehen considered the ego as a mere resultant. The ego’s dynamism was to be found in single impressions of representations. In physiological psychology, there was simply no question of an ‘ego’ which could be an active principle. It is not at all certain whether Ziehen had a direct influence on Jung. In Jung’s early work, Ziehen was seldom quoted. Although the term ‘complex’ appeared repeatedly in Ziehen’s works, it was by no means a specifically technical term which was characteristic of his works. A complex was simply understood as a conglomeration of elementary psychic units. It is in this sense that the term was current in psychological literature. In his early works, even Freud spontaneously employed the term ‘representation complex’.20 There is thus little positive evidence that Ziehen had a specific influence on Jung.
16. Ibid., p. 175. 17. Ibid., p. 201. 18. Ibid., p. 202. 19. "Die empirische Psychologie kennt nur jenes zusammengesetztes Ich..." Ibid., p. 203. 20. S. FREUD, Studies on Hysteria, C.W. I, p. 234, S.E. II, p. 166. In the S.E. the German ‘Vorstellungscomplex’ was translated with ‘ideational complex’. To be consistent, ‘representation complex’ is used here.
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In German psychiatry, Ziehen was definitely an authority. It is even possible that, during his training, Jung studied Ziehen’s handbook of psychiatry.21 There was, nevertheless, a much more direct connection between Jung and German psychiatry. Especially concerning the theory of the ‘complex’, Jung was immediately influenced by Bleuler. It is remarkable that so little attention has been paid to Bleuler. Before we consider him however, we must turn our attention to French psychiatry and to someone else who deeply influenced Jung: Pierre Janet. Pierre Janet One of the names constantly quoted by Jung in his early writings was that of Pierre Janet (1859-1947), whose influence on Jung should not be underestimated. While German psychiatry was dominated by E. Kraepelin (1856-1926), who attempted to classify psychic disorders on the basis of an organic presupposition, Janet represented the new French style of psychiatry then emerging. This French school was especially interested in hypnosis and other sorts of phenomena of dissociation, thus opening an area of psychology largely ignored by the Germans. Jung was attracted to these phenomena and even wrote his dissertation with the express intention of making up for the lacuna in German literature which seemed to show a real aversion to the study of such matters.22 The personalities of Jung and Janet are remarkably similar.23 Both experienced a religious crisis in their adolescence. In his autobiography, Janet records how his interest in psychology was a compromise between his religious feelings and his love for the natural sciences. Jung had chosen to study medicine for basically the same reason. Like Jung, Janet maintained a permanent interest in religion though there is little evidence of this in his publications. Only one book, De l’angoisse à l’extase (19261928) was devoted to the subject of religion. Janet was a friend of H. Bergson (1859-1941), who was in the class ahead of him at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, while Jung met P. Häberlin (1878-1960) at university. The philosophical thought which Häberlin represented in Switzerland was analogous to that represented by Bergson in France. Janet, like Jung, was also interested in alchemy. The Latin thesis presented along with his main thesis to obtain the degree of doctorat ès lettres dealt 21. T. ZIEHEN, Psychiatrie für Aertze und Studirende bearbeitet, Berlin, Wreden, 1894.. 22. C.G. JUNG, On the Psychology and Pathology of So-Called Occult Phenomena, C.W. I, p. 18. 23. Biographical material on Janet has been taken from H. ELLENBERGER, The Discovery of the Unconscious, p. 331-356.
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with the influence of the earlier alchemists on Bacon. What is most important for us is the fact that Janet’s first investigations were concerned with the psychology of somnambulistic states. He gave an exhaustive account of these investigations in his doctoral dissertation L’automatisme psychologique (1889), which had a profound influence on Jung’s own dissertation, On the Psychology and Pathology of So-Called Occult Phenomena. Janet’s principal thesis was that the human psyche consisted of two complementary functions: a synthesizing function and a conservative function. The synthesizing activity united the different contents of consciousness in one totality, which was constantly renewing itself. This took place in perception, the act whereby the results of earlier syntheses were assimilated with the new contents of consciousness to form a whole.24 Indeed, the unity of a person depended upon this synthesizing activity. Janet quite explicitly pointed out that this activity should not be confused with the purely mechanical process whereby a unity came about which was no more than the sum of the various parts. The synthetic activity, on the other hand, was a creative act by which the individual continually connected his present perception with the contents of consciousness from his memory, thereby affirming the continuity and unity of his personal life. That which was called association was only the consequence of this activity. It was the impression on the memory of what the synthetic activity had effected. The term ‘association’ expressed the fact that the memory retained not only single impressions and images but also the structure which the synthetic activity had given to the contents of consciousness. While the synthetic activity constantly created a new unity and was thus the expression of the life of the individual, the conservative activity held fast to the earlier syntheses. The synthetic and conservative activities were normally complementary, resulting in a harmonious functioning of body and spirit. It could happen, however, that there was some interference with the synthetic activity, so that all the contents of consciousness were no longer united within one, unique field. A number of ‘psychological automatisms’ then arose, adopting various forms. In the first place, there may be a reduction of the field of consciousness, which meant that the psyche was completely occupied with a limited number of representations. The synthetic function apparently remained at fault here, for no new representations were introduced and a number of
24. See P. JANET, L’automatisme psychologique. Essai de psychologie expérimentale sur les formes inférieures de l’activité humaine, Paris, Alcan, 1889, p. 306-307.
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memories also became unattainable. The most severe form of this was catalepsy, a fairly rare psycho-pathological phenomenon characterized by the fact that the patient remained motionless in a certain position as if he had suddenly become a statue. The organic life, heartbeat and breathing were normal, but all other movement, which could otherwise be considered arbitrary, suddenly seemed to have stopped. The patient, no longer reacting to outside stimuli, appeared to have died. This could reach the classical extreme condition of flexibilitas cerae, where the patient could be made to adopt and maintain the most impossible positions just as a wax doll. Janet offered the following explanation for this phenomenon. Through the reduction of the field of consciousness, one particular representation continued to occupy the whole psychic field. This was accompanied by the fact that the synthetic ability could not bring this representation to a new synthesis with new contents. The psychic life therefore became fossilized in one content of consciousness. There were also partial forms of psychological automatisms. In such cases, the psyche was, as it were, crushed into autonomous parts, operating independently of each other. This provoked all sorts of phenomena of dissociation. The highest synthesis, the unity of the person, could not be constituted and a considerable number of psychic contents associated autonomously without entering consciousness. A clear example of this was the unconscious act, by which Janet meant the act "which has all the characteristics of a psychological fact, with one exception, viz, that the person who performs the action does not know at the time he acts that he is performing this action".25 Another example was partial catalepsis. A patient’s arm could appear exactly like the arm of a cataleptic, while he laughed and chatted without any concern for his arm.26 We might also mention the unconscious phenomenon of imitation such as copying a coughing-fit or breathing-rhythm.27 Posthypnotic suggestion lent itself particularly well to experiments in this field as did systematic anaesthesia which, like other stigmas, was more prevalent at that time in cases of hysteria. Certain patients made no physical reaction to the light and heat of a match by one research worker yet they did react with another research worker. Others were systematically insensitive to a particular object or person, that they could neither hear, see, nor touch. Janet considered all this as pointing to the autonomous 25. Ibid., p. 225. 26. Ibid., p. 228. 27. Ibid., p. 231.
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working of a group a psychic contents independent of the total synthesis of consciousness. In the same way, he explained the psychology of the medium in the seances of occultism and spiritism. Janet regarded hysteria as such a form of psychological disaggregation. Thus anaesthesia appeared in hysteria, not because of an actual numbness but because the sense impressions remained outside of the synthesis of consciousness. On account of this underlying disaggregation, it was not surprising that one found: subconscious acts in cases of hysteria; that the patient was easily hypnotized; that there might have been a split-personality involved; and that the same patient could often act as a medium. To provisionally summarize Janet’s position, one can say that he viewed the unconscious as consisting of the grouping together of contents which escaped present consciousness on account of the feeble, personal power of synthesis. The unconscious was thus seen as that which was dissociated. Janet ultimately explained this unconscious as resulting from a form of psychological inadequacy, ‘la misère psychologique’, which he postulated as parallel to physical inadequacy.28 And if one wonders why exactly certain contents escaped the synthesis and others did not, the only answer Janet gave was that perhaps the synthesis retained the most useful or most pleasant contents. For this reason, the left side of the body was more often paralyzed than the right side.29 In connection with this, it should be pointed out that L’automatisme psychologique was thus a long way from Freud, with regard to the concept of the unconscious. According to Janet, there was neither a dynamic concept supported by a theory of drives nor any idea in the direction of a theory of conflict and of repression. It is certainly true that particular case studies and even several of Janet’s practical conclusions seemed to approach some of Freud’s views. This applies specifically to Janet’s theory of subconscious idées fixes. This theory was still in a rather embryonic state in L’automatisme psychologique. However, it was especially developed later by Janet during his research at the Salpêtrière in Paris, and can be found more fully explained in L’état mental des hystériques (1894). Indeed, he declared that in mental disturbances, especially in cases of obsession and hysteria, one had to return to the past and trace the pathogenic moment. In L’état mental des hystériques, there was a paragraph devoted to the ‘old and latent idée fixe’ and another
28. Ibid., p. 454. 29. Ibid., p. 312.
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dealing with the ‘primary and secondary idée fixe’.30 It is hardly surprising then that there was a quarrel between Freud and Janet concerning the claim of who was the first to discover the cathartic method. Nevertheless, with regard to its aetiology, Janet continued to posit a psychic inadequacy. The subconscious ideas were earlier syntheses which, on account of an inadequate power of synthesis, remained outside the synthesis of the ego and were thus adrift in a fossilized autonomous existence. When he summarized his views in the shorter work Les névroses (1909), he wrote the following conclusion to the chapter on hysteria:31 "Hysteria thus becomes a form of mental depression characterized by a reduction of the field of personal consciousness and by a tendency to the dissociation and to the emancipation of systems of ideas and functions which constitute the personality by their synthesis."
Janet thus assigned no role to the significance of the symptoms or of the situation in which these symptoms arose. Nor was there a dynamic tension between consciousness and unconsciousness. The occurrence of dissociation could best be compared to what happened in certain lower life forms which could be divided into two or more parts with the result that each part continued to live on its own without concern for the other half. Janet’s greatest merit laid in the fact that his accurate analysis of details enabled him to demonstrate that the unconscious consisted of specified concrete contents. His empirical psychological work contrasted sharply with the attitude of German psychiatry which, while certainly valuing the practice of keen observation, was nevertheless exclusively concerned with localizing what was thought to be an injury to the anatomical brain. Janet did not get very far, however. His explanation may have been on the psychic level but his last word was ‘psychic inadequacy’. The dynamism proper to psychic symptoms was barely touched upon. It is also striking that Janet never parted from the conceptual framework of the Romantic philosophy of nature, even though he was explicitly opposed to this current of thought. Janet reproached Romanticism for its speculative and metaphysical character. He found it most ironic that von Hartmann should admire a mysterious activity which took place inside of
30. P. JANET, L’état mental des hystériques, (1st ed.: 1894) Paris, Alcan, 2nd ed.: 1911, p. 629. 31. P. JANET, Les névroses, Paris, Flammarion, 1909, p. 345.
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us without our realizing it.32 Janet’s intent was clear. With regard to the unconscious, he wanted to restrict himself to what was empirically establishable and he found this possible with the automatisms. The unconscious consisted of a well-defined group of contents, dissociated from the group which constituted the conscious personality. These contents were of the exact same nature whether they were conscious or unconscious. This concept nevertheless involved viewing the ego as a product or resultant. Janet was thus not as far from von Hartmann as he thought. The reason why Janet considered the possibility of dissociation between two groups of contents of consciousness was that he presumed a certain inadequacy on the part of the psychic powers of synthesis. If this power was greater, all contents would be united in one group and there would be but one personality. The personality was the result of a number of concrete contents of consciousness and a more indistinct and impersonal power of synthesis. The ego was the finished product of this power and it remained a kind of emergence. Théodore Flournoy Once again there is an irresistible temptation to include a few biographical notes concerning Théodore Flournoy (1854-1920). There is a striking parallel between Flournoy and both Jung and Janet.33 After having studied positive sciences under the strict materialist Karl Vogt (18171895), he enrolled in the faculty of theology but soon migrated to the study of natural sciences. He earned his degree as a medical doctor and then travelled to Leipzig to study with Wundt. After reading Kant, Flournoy regained interest in philosophy. He became a lecturer in history, philosophy of science and physiology, and he published a work on metaphysics and psychology.34 In 1892, he opened a laboratory of experimental psychology, doing research on reaction times, associations, illusionary perceptions and similar subjects. He soon became interested in parapsychology and it was in this context that he wrote the work which directly inspired Jung. Under the influence of William James (1842-1910), he later devoted himself particularly to the psychology of religion.
32. See Janet’s preface to J. JASTROW, La subconscience, Paris, Alcan, 1908. 33. For more biographical information: E. CLAPARÈDE, Théodore Flournoy. Sa vie, son oeuvre. In: Archives de Psychologie 18 (1923) 1-125. The grandchild of Flournoy, who became a psychoanalyst, wrote a book on his grandfather: O. FLOURNOY, Théodore et Léopold. De Théodore Flournoy à la psychanalyse, Geneva, La Baconnière, 1986. 34. T. FLOURNOY, Métaphysique et psychologie, Geneva, Kundig, 1919.
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It need be of no surprise to us that Jung was fascinated by the work Des Indes à la planète Mars (1900) in which Flournoy gave a detailed description of the seances and the psychology of a medium whom he called Hélène Smith. In a somnambulistic state, Smith claimed to be under the protection of a spirit named Léopold. She recounted two of her previous incarnations: her life as an eastern princess, the beloved wife of an eastern prince who was now incarnated anew in Flournoy; and her life as Marie-Antoinette, the unfortunate wife of Louis XVI. She was also able to transpose her spirit to Mars and to reveal the secrets of this planet. All this was narrated by her, either directly in a state of trance or through the usual spiritistic means such as table-turning, automatic writing and the sort. The similarity with Jung’s study of S.W. comes immediately to mind here. What was particularly characteristic of Hélène Smith’s case was that she developed two new languages, Martian and Indian. For the Martian language, she even made up her own alphabet. Flournoy succeeded in composing an elementary dictionary from which it appeared that Smith knew how to use the language with a certain consistency. In the Indian language, she employed words that were unmistakably Sanskrit. It should be mentioned in passing that Ferdinand de Saussure, Flournoy’s colleague in Geneva, attended several sessions with Hélène Smith and concentrated on the interpretation of these language productions. However, little was achieved in this first application of linguistics to the study of the unconscious. We need not repeat the entire contents of Des Indes à la planète Mars here. It is sufficient to indicate a few theoretical passages where Flournoy interrupted his description in order to situate things more clearly. Like Janet, Flournoy regarded the various spirits involved as subconscious personalities, groups of contents of consciousness with an autonomous existence. Flournoy went even further than this and spoke not only of contents of consciousness but also of inclinations and impulses. Thus he described the spirit Léopold, the protector of Hélène Smith, as consisting in a group of pre-existent inclinations with a most intimate character, which set themselves up independently of consciousness.35 Thus the subconscious personalities did not involve accidentally separated contents of consciousness; rather, they involved conflicting inclinations. This was an extremely important element which was later
35. T. FLOURNOY, Des Indes à la planète Mars. Etudes d’un cas de somnambulisme avec glossolalie, Geneva, Atar, 1900. Reprint: Paris, Seuil, 1983 and Genève, Slatkine Reprints, 1983, p. 132.
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employed in Jung’s study of S.W. What was also important was that Flournoy connected the various subconscious personalities with remnants of certain phases which the individual had passed through in the process of development. Consciousness was suddenly penetrated by remnants from infancy.36 A third important element in Flournoy which deeply interested Jung was the idea that ontogenesis was a repetition of phylogenesis in psychology as well. This was not Flournoy’s discovery. Stanley Hall (1844-1924) had previously explained the frequent occurrence of anxieties, phobias and obsessions in children as a transitory repetition of psychic experiences which reverted back to the childhood of humanity and even to the animal mode of existence. Flournoy applied this view to Hélène Smith’s creation of the Martian and the Indian language. It was a sudden flickering of the innate possibility to create a language. At the same time, he pointed out that Hélène Smith could only construct the Martian and the Indian language on the basis of her knowledge of French. In conclusion, we shall briefly consider the theory of ‘teleological hallucination’ which is said to have derived from Flournoy’s thought. However, that Flournoy really introduced this term cannot be definitively proven. In Des Indes à la planète Mars, he explicitly refused to discuss this phenomenon. Two examples were mentioned in passing. Whenever Miss Smith was walking through a disreputable district, thereby exposing herself to danger, the figure of Léopold suddenly appeared in order to stand in her way. On another occasion, in the shop where she worked when she was once asked for a piece of material that could not be found, she suddenly saw a column of figures in the air from which she was able to conclude when and to which client the material had been sent. Bleuler also gave examples of ‘teleological hallucination’, but of a different sort. In one case, a hebephrenic man wanted to throw himself out of the window.37 As he approached the window, he was blinded by a beam of light and he felt as if he had stumbled upon an insuperable obstacle. In another instance, a hysterical woman became speechless every time she entered a shop where the rather officious assistant regularly persuaded her to buy all sorts of things she did not require. These and similar examples were also given by Jung in The Psychology of Dementia Praecox.38
36. Ibid., p. 415. 37. E. BLEULER, Bewusstsein und Assoziation, In: C.G. JUNG (ed.), Diagnostische Assoziationsstudien, vol. I, Leipzig, Barth, 1906, p. 241. 38. C.G. JUNG, The Psychology of Dementia Praecox, C.W. III, § 304-307.
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What was involved in those teleological hallucinations can clearly be established. The patient hallucinated something that was ultimately to his advantage. This did not imply, however, that the patient saw his future or formed an ideal image of himself in order to direct his life. What Jung will say on this point will be thus a considerable advancement upon what was then understood by the term ‘teleological hallucination’. After the publication of On the Psychology and Pathology of So-Called Occult Phenomena, Jung received some very positive criticism from Flournoy. He visited Flournoy in Geneva and a personal relationship developed between them. Jung wrote that he found in Flournoy the ‘father friend’ whom he needed to counterbalance his relationship with Freud.39 At Jung’s request, Flournoy was present at the Fourth International Psychoanalytic Congress in Munich in 1913, which led to the eventual break with Freud. Indeed, the fantasies of Miss Miller which were the guide for Jung’s Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido were also appropriated from Flournoy. Paul Eugen Bleuler It is surprising how little attention has been given until now to Bleuler’s influence on Jung. Paul Eugen Bleuler (1857-1939) was, after all, professor of psychiatry at the University of Zurich and director of the ‘Burghölzli’ clinic when Jung came as an assistant in 1900. Bleuler is mostly remembered in the history of psychiatry as the author of the renowned handbook Dementia Praecox or the Group of Schizophrenias which was first published in 1911 and which was the combined result of years of collaboration and differences of opinion between Jung and Bleuler on the question of psychosis. What has been overlooked however is that, prior to engaging Jung in the study of psychosis, Bleuler had devoted much time to constructing a model which would enable to understand the human psyche and psychiatric disturbances. The result of this can be found in an article written in 1894 entitled Versuch einer naturwissenschaftlichen Betrachtung der psychologischen Grundbegriffe. In this article, Bleuler was particularly concerned with introducing the notion of the ‘ego complex’, a term central to Jung’s work from the very beginning. When reading this rather neglected article, it becomes clear that it was precisely here that Jung derived his initial categories.
39. The passage dealing with Flournoy belongs to the part of the autobiography Jung did not allow to have it translated into English: C.G. JUNG, Erinnerungen, Träume, Gedanken, p. 378-379.
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Bleuler himself admitted that the article was written from a monistic, materialistic and deterministic viewpoint.40 His aim was to demonstrate that what we call the ego, viz. a personality with consciousness and selfconsciousness, could be explained as the mere product of physiological processes. In this way, he endeavoured to strip the ego of every metaphysical quality, claiming that the known psycho-physiological mechanisms sufficed to account for those phenomena designated as spiritual. Furthermore, he affirmed that this view was the most fruitful in psychopathology.41 In the spirit of classical associationism, Bleuler described how human action could be seen as an extremely complex mechanism which did not essentially differ from the simple model of the reflex action. As he himself noted, nothing new was offered here and the whole approach was completely in keeping with what had already been seen in the work of Ziehen. What was new, however, was Bleuler’s view of the ‘ego complex’. He considered the ego not simply as the sum or resultant of all association processes but as one distinct group of associations (a complex) which were related to the most permanent elements in the personal life of the individual. In the first place, perceptions concerning our own personality belong to this group. Each letter we receive bears our name and address. Some of us may be addressed as doctor, director or some other title and we must then assume the responsibility corresponding to that title. In this way, we arrive at a complex of contents relating to our social position. There was also a complex of contents concerning our private life. Thus, one could distinguish a complete range of complexes which unite to form a greater whole: the personality. Then there were the stimuli constantly originating from our organs and metabolism, the presence of our body with its constant functions and various sensations with their inherent continuity: all of which had a share in the complex of our personality. The result of all this was that an extremely permanent complex came into being: the ego complex.42 Bleuler thus remained within the realm of associationism yet he aimed at a more pronounced underscoring of the ego as the true core and permanent basis of the personality. His view on the difference between
40. E. BLEULER, Versuch einer naturwissenschaftlichen Betrachtung der psychologischen Grundbegriffe. In: Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie und psychisch-gerichtliche Medicin 50 (1894), p. 166. 41. Ibid., p. 133. 42. Ibid., p. 140-141.
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conscious and unconscious processes was also connected to this concept. One could speak of consciousness as a certain centripetal stimulus which was associated with the ego complex or as a motor stimulus originating from this ego complex. It could also happen, however, that a stimulus was associated with the content of another complex without any association to the ego complex. In such cases, one was dealing with an unconscious process. Bleuler provided a striking illustration of the monistic, materialistic and deterministic view which resulted from this concept.43 "In our view, consciousness is not a necessary condition of thought; resolution and thought appear to be just as much unconscious as conscious. This is no to say that consciousness is an epiphenomenon, without any direct connection to the other psychic events. It should not be compared with a clock’s (incidental) striking of the hour, but with the ticking of a clock. Consciousness is the necessary consequence of the organization of the brain. Since the latter is linked to the senses in a specific manner, since all processes taking place here are maintained under the form of dynamic vestiges which can be experienced once again and can connect themselves according to specific rules, for these reasons then, consciousness also exists. It is conceivable that there might be a clock which does not tick. Until now, this has not happened. Practically speaking, it is true that until now the ticking is a necessary by-product of a clock which is in working order. In the same manner, it is perhaps possible, theoretically speaking, to construct an active being without consciousness. In actual fact, however, our brain is so arranged that a part of the activity which takes place here is connected with the phenomenon that we call consciousness."
For Bleuler, just as for Ziehen and Janet, the ego was a product or result. However, Bleuler attached more meaning to it. Due to the fact that the ego included certain permanent elements, viz. the sensations of a 43. "Das Bewusstsein ist nach unsere Auffassung nicht notwendige Bedingung des Denkens; unbewusstes Schliessen und Denken überhaupt kommt so gut vor wie bewusstes. Ebenso wenig ist es ein Epiphänomenon, das keinen directen Zusammenhang mit dem übrigen psychischen Geschehen hat. Es ist nicht zu vergleichen mit dem (unwesentlichen) Ton der Uhr, welche schlägt, sondern etwa dem Tick-Tack des Uhrwerkes. Es ist notwendige Folge der Organisation des Gehirns: weil dieses in der gegebenen Weise mit den Sinnesorganen verbunden ist, weil in ihm durch alle sich darin abspielenden Vorgänge dynamische Spuren ausgebildet werden, die wieder belebt werden und sich nach den bestimmten Gesetzen verbinden können, so besteht in ihm auch ein Bewusstsein. Es ist denkbar, dass einmal eine Uhr ohne Tick-Tack construirt werde. Bis jetzt ist aber in Wahrheit keine solche hergestellt worden. Praktisch ist also zur Zeit das Tick-Tack ein notwendiges Nebenprodukt des funktionierenden Uhrwerkes. Ebenso liesse sich vielleicht theoretisch ein handelndes Wesen construiren, das kein Bewusstsein hätte. Faktisch ist aber unser Gehirn so eingerichtet, dass ein Teil der in ihm ablaufenden Tätigkeit mit den Erscheinungen verbunden sein muss, die wir als Bewusstsein bezeichnen." Ibid., p. 166, footnote.
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constantly functioning organism, the ego complex became unique. With Janet, who commonly spoke of dissociation between two groups of contents of consciousness, one could simply think of two separate personalities on an equal level within one subject. The relation between the two personalities posed a number of problems. There was not a symmetrical relationship between the split personalities. The subconscious personality was aware of what was occurring in the conscious personality though not vice versa. Moreover, the split between the two personalities could be removed in hypnosis. In spite of this, Janet sought the ultimate explanation in the disaggregation of the psychic contents which, once again, was due to a psychic inadequacy. In the same way, in Bleuler’s model, the unconscious still remained that which was dissociated, viz which was not associated with the ego complex. But, owing to the fact that the ego complex was proposed as the very core of the personality, the unconscious on the other hand was placed on a somewhat unequal level. There was thus more room to raise the question of the relation between the two. If psychic life was the result of a mechanically terminable association process, then the question which posed itself to Bleuler, just as it had to Ziehen, was the following: what was there in the association process which determined that such a process should select one particular deed out of the manifold possibilities which were present? In order to solve this problem, Ziehen, who never considered the ego complex as a separate entity, introduced the concept ‘constellation’. Without employing the term ‘constellation’, which was later adopted by Jung, Bleuler assigned a decisive influence to the ego complex in order to direct the association process. He did this in such a way that the sum of experiences accumulated in the ego complex favoured a specific direction in the association process. What we call the ‘will’ was nothing other than the inclination of the ego complex to become centrifugal in a certain sense with the actual content of consciousness.44 This happened of course whenever the ego complex was involved in the association process (i.e. whenever it is a matter of a conscious process). Bleuler wrote explicitly:45
44. Ibid., p. 147. 45. "Wenn nun die bewusste Wahrnehmungen, Ueberlegungen, Handlungen alle mit dem IchKomplex in Verbindung treten, so folgt daraus, dass der Ich-Komplex, die Persönlichkeit, gerade bei den bewussten Handlungen die grösste Bedeutung bekommt, und dass nur bei bewussten Handlungen die Person als solche ihr volles Gewicht in die Waagschale wirft. Bei unbewussten, oder weniger bewussten Handlungen hat der Ich-Komplex keine, oder nur geringe Verbindung mit der, der Handlung vorausgehenden Ueberlegung oder mit der Handlung selbst und kann deshalb dieselbe auch nur wenig beeinflussen." Ibid., p. 146.
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"Since conscious perception, reasoning and acts are all connected with the ego complex, it follows that the ego complex, the personality, derives most significance from these conscious acts. Only in conscious acts does the person as such show his full import. In unconscious or less conscious acts, the ego complex has very little or no connection at all with those considerations which precede the act or with the act itself and can thus be of little influence on the act."
When the ego complex was involved in the association process, one was dealing with a conscious process. The influence of the ego complex upon this association process could be called voluntary. Thus, Bleuler encountered the problem which was also recognized by Ziehen, viz. the possibility of there being two representations which with equal force influence the ego complex in two different directions. What then occurred was that the influence of one of the two association complexes was suppressed. It was established that our human consciousness was able to restrict itself - while not absolutely, at least in a very pronounced manner - to one complex of ideas.46 The guidance which the ego complex could give to the association process consisted therefore in its ability to eliminate certain associations. Bleuler used the technical term ‘attention’ to designate this phenomenon. In conclusion then, we see that the fundamental difference between Bleuler and Ziehen was that Bleuler considered the ego complex as a specific complex in the human psyche, capable of asserting its influence in a privileged manner. Bleuler also affirmed that it was precisely the link between the association complex and the ego complex which decided whether the process would be conscious or unconscious. Bleuler was well aware of the fact that this view left many questions unanswered. The central questions were: how could the ego complex effect this restriction of the association process and why did the association process occur independently of the ego complex in one case and not in the other case. Although Bleuler indicated the role which affect could play here, he ultimately concluded that we knew as little about this as about the precise mechanism which explained why the heart beats more quickly in response to pain.47 Bleuler remained rather evasive when it came to attributing the psyche with a certain autonomy. His view on consciousness did not change. He explicitly labelled it as something which was ‘deduced,
46. Ibid., p. 155. 47. Ibid., p. 155.
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changeable and relative’.48 The influence of the ego complex on the association process did not differ essentially from the tendency of every complex to discharge itself according to a fixed pattern. The ego complex merely did this in a more complicated manner.49 Nevertheless, the fact remains that Bleuler assigned a separate place to consciousness by allotting a prominent position to the ego complex alongside the other complexes. In this way, he was compelled to at least raise the question of how the ego complex could check certain associations. Once this idea was proposed, one could no longer simply continue to affirm that consciousness was nothing more than the mere incidental ticking of a clock. Sigmund Freud The relation between Jung and Freud will be discussed in more depth in the following chapters. In comparison to Janet, Flournoy, Ziehen and Bleuler, Freud’s influence on Jung was initially only slight. Although Freud’s name appeared four times in On the Psychology and Pathology of So-Called Occult Phenomena, the nucleus of his thought was still very remote from the core of Jung’s argumentation here. Jung probably became acquainted with Freud when he had to review the latter’s The Interpretation of Dreams (1900) in the presence of his colleagues at the Burghölzli. In his autobiography, Jung related that the first time he read the book he did not understand it properly and attached little importance to it. It was not until some years later when he was engaged in his association experiments that he was able to more fully appreciate the significance of the book. For the sake of historical truth, the question should be asked if Jung really read the larger The Interpretation of Dreams at that time, or only the shorter booklet On Dreams.50 This fact could explain why Jung in the beginning was so scarcely aware of Freud’s theory concerning the psychological apparatus.51 By way of anticipation, a few points relevant to our later argumentation may be noted. There is no need to offer still another presentation of
48. Ibid., p. 142. 49. Ibid., p. 146. 50. S. FREUD, On Dreams, S.E. V, 633-686, G.W. II/III, 643-700. 51. In the part of the Jungarchives deposited in library of the Polytechnical Institute of the Swiss Confederation (ETH) in Zurich, there are extensive notes made by Jung on this shorter work of Freud, dated January 25th, 1901 (Manuscript Hs 1055: 1c). The text has been published, with an strange interpolation (§ 863 originally stood between § 867 and 868) in the C.W. XVIII: Sigmund Freud: ‘On Dreams", § 841-870.
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Freud’s view here, especially since Studies on Hysteria (1895) and the case of Anna O. are sufficiently covered in various other handbooks. It is known that Freud and Breuer were the first to give serious consideration to the content of the symptoms of hysteria, demonstrating that "hysterics suffer mainly from reminiscences".52 Only one central point will be emphasized here. At the time when Jung read Freud, the latter’s thought was characterized by an emphasis upon the notion of defence. In this way, Freud had clearly moved away from Janet’s position. It is true that prior to the publication of Studies on Hysteria, Freud and Breuer had suggested that a hypnoid disposition was at the origin of hysteria. By this, they understood a tendency toward dissociation preceding any indication of the illness. The pathogenic memory with its somatic consequences was grafted onto this tendency to dissociation. From the beginning then, the pathogenic representation remained outside of the ego due to the hypnotic psychic state in which it was received. In such a case, therapy would not encounter any resistance. Here Janet’s outline was faithfully followed. Besides this ‘dispositional hysteria’, Freud and Breuer also recognized another form, viz, ‘psychically acquired hysteria’. In this case, a tiresome repression or a severe trauma could cause a splintering of groups of representations in otherwise normal people.53 In the last chapter of Studies on Hysteria, which was written by Freud alone, consideration was once again given to the distinction between the two forms of hysteria. Freud remarked that personally he had never come across a case of real hysteria based on a hypnotic constitution. There was always some indication of resistance. Although he wanted to respect Breuer’s view on dispositional hysteria, Freud nevertheless put forward the opinion that the defence was primary. In Further Remarks of the NeuroPsychoses of Defence (1896), Freud said that he had increasingly come to see defence and repression as central to the concept of neurosis.54 Here, there is evidence of the typical Freudian view which is very different from that of all the authors we have discussed thus far. The idea of resistance implied the activity of something like an ego which could no longer be conceived of as a mere product. For Freud, at least in his early works, the unconscious was a consequence of repression. The idea of conflict was central here. The ego was present first and the unconscious
52. S. FREUD, Studies on Hysteria, S.E. II, p. 7, G.W. I, p. 86. 53. Ibid., S.E. II, p. 12-13, G.W. I, p. 92. 54. S. FREUD, Further Remarks of the Neuro-Psychoses of Defence, S.E. III, p. 162, G.W. I, p. 379-380.
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came about as a consequence of the ego. It was precisely this model, diametrically opposed to that of the authors previously discussed (for whom the unconscious was rather the natural preliminary stage of consciousness), that would present the greatest difficulty for Jung. The Psychopathology of the Occult As has already been mentioned, Jung’s dissertation was a psychological study of the activities of a young medium at spiritistic seances. Jung refers to her as ‘Miss S.W.’. We know however that she was in fact Helene Preiswerk, Jung’s cousin from his mother’s side of the family.55 According to Jung’s presentation of the case, S.W. was fifteen when she first heard spiritism and table turning being discussed among members of her family and also among her friends. This interested her to such an extent that she decided to experiment a little and soon it became clear that she had a remarkable talent as a medium. S.W. began by employing the classical technique of media. The letters of the alphabet were placed in a circle on a smooth table. In the centre of the table, a tumbler was turned upside down and held by two fingers so that even the slightest vibration would cause it to slide from one letter to another. The ‘spirit’s’ message was then read from the sequence of the letters. These seances were held regularly and, from early on, Jung attended them. Very soon, in the beginning of August 1899, the medium began to pass over into a somnambulistic state during such seances. She sank slowly to the ground or into a chair, closed her eyes and, after a moment of catalepsy, began to speak. She had visions of the spirits who otherwise only made themselves known through the tumbler, and she was able to speak in the name of these spirits. Two categories of spirits who announced themselves could be distinguished. In the first place, there were spirits of the serious religious type, with her own grandfather and Jung’s grandfather being the prototype. At one point, she saw both grandfathers walking arm in arm.56 The other type of spirits were most cheerful, gay and carefree, even to the point of vulgarity. The representative of this group was a certain Ulrich von Gerbenstein. After a few sittings, he appeared next to the grandfather, was pushed aside by the latter for a while, but then gradually came to demand
55. H. ELLENBERGER, The Discovery of the Unconscious, p. 690-691. ST. ZUMSTEINPREISWERK, C.G. Jungs Medium. Die Geschichte der Helly Preiswerk, Munich, Kindler, 1975. 56. C.G. JUNG, On the Psychology and Pathology of So-Called Occult Phenomena, C.W. I, § 46.
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the seances entirely for himself, so that the figure of the grandfather finally disappeared completely. During a particular seance, the medium herself claimed to be the reincarnation of the spirit ‘Ivenes’. She fabricated a whole story about her previous incarnations. At the beginning of the 14th century, she was the clairvoyant of Prevost (she had read The Seeress of Prevost by Justinus Kerner). In the 18th century, she was the wife of a clergyman in the middle of Germany. She had been seduced by Goethe and had borne a son by him. In her ecstasy, she constructed very complicated family trees of the progeny resulting from these various incarnations. She claimed that, in the 8th century, she was the mother of the incarnation of her own father, then of her grandfather and Jung’s grandfather. In the 13th century, she was the mother of Jung himself. Besides these family romances, she also developed a whole cosmological system of forces. According to Jung, this marked the end of the interesting seances. Somnambulism became less frequent and it seemed more and more as if the participants were being deceived. Jung therefore stopped attending the sessions. In his interpretation of the facts, Jung relied heavily on Janet. The fact that dual personalities arose, expressing themselves in automatisms, was the consequence of the disaggregation of psychic complexes. The unconscious personality was a ‘synthesis’, an ‘automatic splitting of the personality’.57 Jung quoted Janet on this point and, just as the latter, he sought to account for this dissociation by looking at the subject’s disposition.58 In S.W.’s normal state outside of the seances, Jung found this disposition in the fact that she was an absent-minded, dreamy sort of girl. This he regarded as a typical feature of hysteria. Once again, Jung quoted Janet as stating that "the basis of hysterical anaesthesia is disturbance of attention."59 Jung illustrated this with the fact that S.W. often misread certain words: instead of the word ‘Ziege’ (goat) she would read the corresponding word in her dialect, viz, ‘Geiss’. The explanation for this was that there had been a restriction of the field of consciousness by which the word ‘Geiss’, closely associated with the word ‘Ziege’, automatically replaced the latter, without the subject being aware of the substitution.60 The same was true, on a larger scale, of the dissociation of the psyche in subconscious personalities and the automatisms resulting from
57. Ibid., § 87. 58. Ibid., § 93. 59. Ibid., § 73. 60. Ibid., § 38 and 73.
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this. Janet’s model could thus be recognized completely. The patient suffered from a restriction of the field of consciousness, seeing that she could consciously grasp only a minimum of elementary perceptions at the same time and that the other contents continued automatically outside of consciousness in a kind of dream which suddenly broke off. In his diagnosis, Jung also spoke of hysterical phenomena.61 What was new as compared to Janet’s model was the importance which Jung now attached to the content of the subconscious personalities. These personalities fell into three types: the grandfather, Ulrich von Gerbenstein and Ivenes. The spirit of the grandfather - representing the clergyman Samuel Preiswerk and Jung’s grandfather - were distinguished by ‘a dry and tedious solemnity, rigorous conventionality and sanctimonious piety’. They were the medium’s guide and protector.62 Ulrich von Gerbenstein, on the other hand, was ‘a gossip, a wag and an idler, a great admirer of the ladies, frivolous and extremely superficial’.63 Ivenes, however, was neither ‘boringly unctuous’ like her grandfather nor ‘irrepressibly silly’ like Ulrich von Gerbenstein but ‘a serious, mature person, devout and right-minded, full of womanly tenderness and very modest’.64 The image of Ivenes embodied what S.W. wished to become as a young woman: ‘an assured, influential, wise, gracious, pious lady’. In this image, we find the prototype of Kerner’s clairvoyant of Prevost. What was important to Jung was that:65 "the patient (poured) her own soul into the role of the clairvoyant, seeking to create out of it an ideal of virtue and perfection; she anticipated her own future ..."
It was in this connection that Jung quoted Freud. Both the grandfather and Ulrich von Gerbenstein represented those aspects which S.W. wanted to exclude from her personality. They personified the main features of her past: her pietistic, strict education and her tendency toward excessive boisterousness. The medium experienced this opposition most acutely, seeking a middle course between these two extremes which she attempted to repress in order to strive after a more ideal state. Here Jung
61. Ibid., § 74. 62. Ibid., § 55. 63. Ibid., § 57. 64. Ibid., § 62. 65. Ibid., § 116.
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employed Freud’s concept of repression which at the same time, he linked to a concept of finality. S.W. projected an ideal image of herself.66 "These strivings lead to the adolescent dream of the young Ivenes, beside whom the unrefined aspects of her character fade into the background. They are not lost, but as repressed thoughts, analogous to the idea of Ivenes, they begin to lead an independent existence as autonomous personalities. This behaviour calls to mind Freud’s dream investigations, which disclose the independent growth of repressed thoughts."
In other words, Jung explained the case as follows: S.W. felt an intolerable tension between her strict, pietistic education and the tendency toward a more boisterous life, which emerged with puberty. She desired to repress both of these extremes. This led to the origin of two unconscious personalities. There was no complete split however, because the ego complex created for itself an ideal image in which the two opposite tendencies were synthesized. Ivenes and the two split personalities were recuperated in the sense that a whole story developed concerning the relation between Ivenes and these personages.67 With regard to Ivenes, Jung spoke of "a dream of sexual wishfulfilment, which differs from the dream of a night only in that it is spread over months and years".68 Ivenes expressed the wishes of S.W., who allowed herself to be carried away by this image of herself in the manner of hysterical identification. Here Jung referred once again to Freud.69 Certain fundamental points thus become clear. Jung considered hysteria principally according to Janet’s model. In the analysis of the phenomenon’s content, we discern a double line. On the one hand, in connection with Freud, Jung spoke of the repression of unpleasant contents. This led to the construction of the grandfather and Ulrich von Gerbenstein. On the other hand, Jung pointed out the fact that an ideal image had been formed which united the opposite tendencies: Ivenes. This was certainly Jung’s own contribution to the subject. It is ultimately unclear exactly how these two lines fit together. Although Jung said that in the first moment the repression and the creation of the grandfather and Ulrich von Gerbenstein took place as a split and that in the second moment, the ego complex constructed Ivenes as a model that permitted a
66. Ibid., § 132-133. 67. Ibid., § 131. 68. Ibid., § 120. 69. Ibid., § 117.
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new synthesis of the two split personalities, the precise relation between these two moments remained unclear.70 What was clear, however, was that this view differed from that of Freud in that Freud would have regarded the one personality as the result of repression and the other as belonging to the repressive agency. With regard to other details in Jung’s view, more could be said concerning his relation to those authors who influenced him. It has already been mentioned, for example, that Jung’s own contribution was to interpret the figure of Ivenes as an ideal image that S.W. had unconsciously formed of herself. There is clearly a certain connection here with Flournoy and more particularly with his concept of ‘teleological hallucinations’, a term quoted by Jung himself in this context.71 It is a fact that Flournoy indicated that unconscious personalities were expressions of the desires and passions to be found in the subject and by ‘teleological hallucination’, he understood that automatisms or hallucinations also appeared, preventing the conscious subject from doing anything harmful to himself as in the case of the patron spirit, Léopold, who stood in the way of Hélène Smith. What was new in Jung’s thought even though he mentioned the term ‘teleological hallucinations’ in passing - was the fact that an unconscious personality could represent an ideal image of the individual. In other words, the image had a mediating function in the individual’s development. For the rest, Flournoy’s work must certainly have been a source of inspiration for Jung. As for Freud, it has already been pointed out that Jung adopted his term ‘repression’. It is too soon to give serious consideration here to Jung’s understanding of the theory of repression. At this point, he seemed to have read only The Interpretation of Dreams, and Studies on Hysteria and according to his autobiography, this had not been a careful study. Freud was quoted four times in all: twice concerning the fact that repressed ideas automatically go on working in the unconscious, and a third time concerning hysterical identification.72 The fourth passage, though longer than the others, is of less importance for an understanding of Jung’s thought. This passage dealt with the interpretation of the fact that in the first seance, the communications of the spirit of S.W.’s grandfather was brusquely interrupted by the communication of Jung’s grandfather and here it was remarked that the two spirits did not get along well together. The communication took place through the glass on the table. In 70. Ibid., § 127-131. 71. Ibid., § 136. 72. Ibid., § 97, 117, 119 and 133.
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the next sitting, S.W. had a vision of her grandfather arm in arm with Jung’s grandfather and then they both drove past sitting side by side in a open carriage.73 Jung offered the following interpretation. The idea of S.W.’s grandfather which was previously present, combined with the fact that S.W. entertained certain expectations concerning Jung himself, led to the association ‘Jung’s grandfather’.74 "Whether this offers a parallel to the result of Freud’s dream investigations must remain unanswered, for we have no means of judging how far the emotion in question may be considered ‘repressed’."
In passing, Jung also mentioned that one of the romances produced by S.W. in her somnambulistic state was an attack aimed at a woman who was an acquaintance of Jung.75 He did not go very deeply into all of this however, since he was mainly interested in the creation of Ivenes and the significance which this had for S.W. As for the influence of Ziehen, there is little that can be noticed. Jung certainly employed the term ‘complex’. The first mention of the term in Jung’s writings followed a rather lengthy quotation from L’automatisme psychologique, where Janet described the origin of the subconscious personality ‘Adrienne’ in his patient Lucie. To this Jung remarked:76 "One can see from these extracts how the unconscious personality builds itself up. It owes its existence simply to suggestive questions which strike an answering chord in the medium’s own disposition. This disposition can be explained by the disaggregation of psychic complexes...."
It would seem then that Jung employed the term ‘complex’ simply to denote Janet’s concept of ‘synthesis’. There was no explicit reference to Ziehen and, as has already been seen, the term ‘complex’ did not have a technical meaning for Ziehen himself. Finally, we come to the influence of Bleuler. This was to be found of course in the use of the concept ‘ego complex’, that ‘firmly knit basis that cannot be touched by hysterical disturbances’.77 Bleuler’s model was also clearly evident in Jung’s interpretation of cryptomnesia. This phenomenon, discussed only as a marginal note in Jung’s dissertation78, signified the coming into consciousness of a memory, which was not recog-
73. Ibid., § 45-46. 74. Ibid., § 97. 75. Ibid., § 64. 76. Ibid., § 93. 77. Ibid., § 130. 78. Ibid., § 137-149.
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nized as such but rather was experienced as a creation of the present thought process. By way of example, Jung quoted a passage from Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, where a whole episode from a ship’s log is quoted almost verbatim. Nietzsche had read this text when he was between twelve and fifteen years of age. Jung explained this unconscious plagiarism as follows. Matters of little importance, such as this text was for Nietzsche, were linked to the ego complex by a minimum of associative connections. For this reason, they readily lost their connection with the ego complex and became autonomous and unconscious. Should it happen that they accidentally entered the consciousness, they were often no longer recognized as memory images. In the same way, Jung explained glossolalia as a cryptomnesic phenomenon of foreign words picked up accidentaly, which were then altered and combined into a sort of language. There is thus little doubt concerning Bleuler’s influence. At the same time, we see here that Jung had not yet considered the consequences of the concept ‘repression’. He wrote:79 "We have, however, a criterion by which we can always recognize intrapsychic cryptomnesia objectively. The cryptomnesic idea is linked to the ego complex by a minimum of associations."
According to Jung, there was a minimum of associative connections especially when dealing with unimportant matters. In other words, matters which were important to the individual had stronger associative ties with the ego complex and thus did not disappear entirely from consciousness. Clearly it was difficult to reconcile this view with the theory of repression. On the Psychology and Pathology of So-Called Occult Phenomena was given an enthusiastic welcome by Flournoy in a review in Archives de Psychologie.80 It seems that Bleuler was elated with the work of his assistant. In an article entitled Bewusstsein und Assoziation, where he dealt with the fact that the autonomous operation of the unconscious could not be denied, he referred to the following works: Des Indes à la planète Mars (Flournoy), On the Psychology and Pathology of So-Called Occult Phenomena (Jung), Studies on Hysteria (Breuer and Freud).81
79. Ibid., § 139. 80. Archives de Psychologie, 2 (1903) 85-86. 81. E. BLEULER, Bewusstsein und Assoziation, p. 231.
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Conclusion From the very beginning, Jung’s thought can be situated within a tradition where the unconscious was understood as the result of a creative force which propelled nature in a process of unfolding consciousness. The unconscious was regarded as the preliminary stage of the conscious spirit; a preliminary stage which had to be overcome but nevertheless contained within itself the power of self transcendence. This view contrasted with Freud’s initial approach to the unconscious as the product of repression. The unconscious, as seen by Freud, initially had a much more morbid character than it had for Jung. The implication of the unconscious resulting from repression was that there was an opposition between a repressed content and a repressive situation. In this way, the idea of conflict assumed a central position. This was completely alien to the Romantic tradition, where the whole cosmos was regarded as an organic growth and harmonious development. This fundamental difference in perspective between Jung and Freud should be kept in mind, even though Jung’s view regarding ‘Ivenes’ seemed so close to Freud’s later theory of the ego ideal. Jung considered the ideal image ‘Ivenes’ as originating from the power inherent in the unconscious self which endeavoured to reconcile oppositions. With the introduction of narcissism, Freud will emphasize that the ego ideal could only arise by means of external reality and its intersubjective structure. His key concept will become that of identification. In his dissertation, Jung certainly already gave some consideration to identification. Indeed, he was acutely aware of how significant the model of ‘the clairvoyant of Prevost’ was for the creation of ‘Ivenes’. As a work of observation, Jung’s dissertation was a remarkable preview of whole areas of later psychoanalytical problems. In the formation of his theory however, this theme was not further developed. Jung’s attention was principally directed to the inherent creative power of the unconscious. Thus, we already see what became more evident in Jung’s later work, viz, that the meaning of the term ‘repression’ became rather ambiguous. Repression was understood as a process within the unconscious self for the purpose of harmonizing oppositions. This might be seen, of course, as another preview of Freud’s later views where repression was no longer situated as something proceeding from the higher conscious systems of the ego but rather as something that was partly determined by the unconscious self. Nevertheless, it will be shown that Freud’s view also remained irreconcilable with the idea of a ‘natural’ maturation of the psyche according to innate laws - an idea which Jung certainly advocated.
Chapter III
The Period of the Association Test (1902-1906) After the publication of his dissertation entitled On the Psychology and Pathology of So-Called Occult Phenomena, Jung interrupted his stay at the Burghölzli in order to study with Janet in Paris for a semester.1 Upon his return to the Burghölzli, he resumed his activities under Bleuler. This marked the beginning of an important period in Jung’s work which continued until the end of 1906 when, due to the publication of his book The Psychology of Dementia Praecox, he personally sought contact with Freud. The content of Jung’s work from the period between 1902 and 1906 was well-balanced. The development of the association test, which led Jung to his ‘theory of complexes’ and which led to his adherence to the theory of psychoanalysis, was the focal point of this period. The articles devoted to this topic were combined in the first volume of his Diagnostic Association Studies published in 1906. In his association experiments, Jung’s attention was primarily drawn to the hysterical phenomena. However, within the framework of Bleuler’s research, schizophrenia - then known as dementia praecox - slowly became his chief interest. Thus, The Psychology of Dementia Praecox was an initial attempt to synthesize his own theory of complexes along with Freud’s thought into a psychological theory about schizophrenia. It is relatively easy to delineate Jung’s knowledge of the Freudian theory during this period. Of particular interest to Jung were Freud’s works Studies on Hysteria, The Interpretation of Dreams in its first, shorter edition of 1900 and probably The Psychopathology of Everyday Life as well. It was only in 1906 that Jung became acquainted with a collection of Freud’s articles in the Collected Short Papers on the Theory of Neuroses. In these articles, Freud explicitly discussed the roles of sexuality and defence. Freud’s most important writings concerning infantile
1. We know very little concerning his stay in Paris during the winter of 1902-1903, except the fact that he met Helene Preiswerk, his former medium, who was living there at that time. See ST. ZUMSTEIN-PREISWERK, C.G. Jungs medium. Die Geschichte der Helly Preiswerk, p. 99-103.
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sexuality date from 1905: Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria and Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. Thus the development of Jung’s theory of complexes predated his exposure to the Freudian sexual theory. Jung perceived Freud as the man who, in an eminent way, expressed the aetiological role of affect. He interpreted Freudian thought in light of Janet’s thought which naturally led to a distortion of the former. Very often, the experiments which Jung performed for his association test are unfortunately overlooked. In the first place, the historical importance of these activities should not be underestimated. Jung was commissioned by Bleuler to undertake this research as part of a broader project studying the phenomenon of schizophrenia. The result of this research led to Bleuler’s pioneering work: Dementia Praecox or the Group of Schizophrenias. Also, on the basis of Jung’s research, the lie detector was later developed in the United States. Secondly, a closer look at Jung’s association experiments reveals those non-thematized presuppositions which unknowingly influenced the interpretation of data acquired through the experiments. Once again, we must notice how, from the beginning, Jung employed a very specific concept of the subject and of the unconscious which eventually brought him to a completely different approach as compared to Freud. Before we elaborate on this in detail, Jung’s works dating from this period need to be briefly situated. Following the publication of his dissertation On the Psychology and Pathology of So-Called Occult Phenomena, Jung was requested by the judicial system to research a number of cases which required psychiatric expertise. These studies include the works A Case of Hysterical Stupor in a Prisoner in Detention (1903) and Medical Opinion on a Case of Simulated Insanity (1904). The focal point of these articles was the difficulty of distinguishing instances of mere simulation from a true hysteric-like state of confusion known as ‘Ganser’s syndrome’, which sometimes occurred in detained suspects.2 We also find an article entitled On Manic Mood Disorder, which was published in the same period (1903). This article, based on four previously researched cases, intended to demonstrate the role of the affect in instances of mania. In 1904, Jung and Riklin published what is still considered the fundamental work on the association test: The Associations of Normal Subjects. This
2. S. GANSER, Ueber einen eigenartigen hysterischen Dämmerzustand. In: Archiv für Psychiatrie und Nervenkrankheiten 30 (1898) 633-640. An English translation appeared in the British Journal of Criminology 5 (1965) 120-130.
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work was followed by a series of articles which further analyzed the results of the test and which sought wider applications for these results. Analysis of the Associations of an Epileptic (1905) pointed to the fact that the test indicated the amplification and the persistence of the epileptic’s emotions. The Reaction Time Ratio in the Association Experiments (1905) dealt with the concept of reaction time as being an index for emotional charges. Experimental Observations on the Faculty of Memory (1905) introduced the reproduction test as a complement to the association test. Thus the association test received its classical form. In the meantime, Jung had also written two articles, On Hysterical Misreading (1904) and Cryptomnesia (1905), in which he referred back to his dissertation as a reply to criticism directed against several points which he had made in that work. Further, there are several articles dealing with the application of the association test in lie detection. On the Psychological Diagnosis of Facts (1905), The Psychological Diagnosis of Evidence (1905) and New Aspects of Criminal Psychology (1908) described how a guilty party could be detected by means of this test. The method of tracing emotions by physiological processes was studied in On the Psychophysical Relations of the Association Experiment (1907), Psychophysical Investigations with the Galvanometer and Pneumograph in Normal and Insane Individuals (written together with Peterson - 1907) and in Further Investigations on the Galvanic Phenomenon and Respiration in Normal and Insane Individuals (written by Jung and Ricksher - 1907). A new field of application which gradually attracted Jung’s attention was psychoanalysis. The association test was seen as possibly replacing the method of free association by tracing suppressed complexes in a quicker and more advantageous manner. This particular application of the association test was the subject of Association, Dream and Hysterical Symptom (1906) and of Psychoanalysis and Association Experiments (1907). Two minor articles also appeared in this period. A Third and Final Opinion on Two Contradictory Psychiatric Diagnoses (1906), again within the scope of psychiatric expertise, inquired into the influence of hysteria on criminal acts. In Statistical Details on Enlistment (1906), Jung expressed his amazement over ‘the inferior human material’ which he had observed as a member of the medical committee examining future draftees. Near the end of 1906, Jung’s important work on schizophrenia entitled The Psychology of Dementia Praecox, was published. Shortly there-
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after, he visited Freud in Vienna. This visit marked the dawning of a new period for Jung. The Association Experiments General Framework Jung’s activities at the Burghölzli coincided with the introduction of experimental psychology into the realm of psychiatry. The renowned Kraepelin, a pioneer in the field of nosology, had studied under Wundt and had adopted his experimental approach to psychiatric research. The theory of associationism, which was prevalent at that time, viewed the psyche as one large association process and attempted to uncover the elementary laws of this complex construction one by one. To this end, a variety of association experiments were undertaken. Wundt’s school had performed the first systematic investigations. The principle was very simple. The subject was presented with a stimulus word to which he responded as quickly as possible with the first word that came to mind. Yet it was not very clear what one could do with the acquired results. First of all, how could quantifiable results be derived from the various reactions? Further, what conclusions could be drawn with regard to the psychic state of the subject? It is an impossible task to even attempt a concise survey of the theory of associationism.3 In the field of psychopathology, the research performed by Kraepelin and his assistant Aschaffenburg was very important, especially the distinction they developed between interior and exterior associations. Interior associations were for example: man - boy attack - defend table - furniture
In these instances, the connection lay in the meaning or conceptual content of a word. When the connection existed in a more exterior bond, one was dealing with exterior associations, as for example: knife - pocket water - fish plant - pot
3. Jung himself provided a good survey of the preliminary history of his test in C.G. JUNG, The Psychopathological Significance of the Association Experiment, C.W. II, § 863-917.
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Along with these two categories, a third could be distinguished: associations based on sound. The relationship between the stimulus word and the reaction was determined by sound: drive - strive house - mouse
Attempts to discover certain constants proved to be in vain. Some subjects made a number of interior associations while others uttered more exterior associations. Sometimes, sound reactions were frequent while at other times, they did not occur at all. Yet the origin of these differences could not be explained. In search of an explanation for these differences, Kraepelin and Aschaffenburg decided to change the psychic state of their subjects. They allowed their subjects to ingest a variety of intoxicating substances. Among these substances were alcohol and tobacco which, even at that time, were considered to be the cause of a number of diseases. By doing this, the researchers attempted to trace the influence of intoxication which they suspected to be at the origin of most psychic disorders. Kraepelin and Aschaffenburg also intentionally fatigued their subjects. Thus they noticed the same phenomenon in all of their subjects. As the degree of fatigue or intoxication increased, the amount of interior associations decreased while the amount of exterior associations, and especially of sound reactions, increased. Thus the category of associations varied according to the psychic condition of the subject. This discovery was very important. The results suited the researchers’ conceptual schemes remarkably well. For indeed, they spontaneously viewed interior associations, where the significance of a word played the key role, as a higher form of association than exterior associations. It was not so surprising that in cases of fatigue or intoxication, the brain was no longer able to function on this higher level and thus it switched to a lower level. The same results were expected when treating mental disorders which, in most cases, were perceived as phenomena of intoxication or degeneration. Immediately, some interesting perspectives appeared on the horizon. By means of the association experiments, Kraepelin and Aschaffenburg hoped to determine the precise correlation between a defined type of association, a corresponding somatic constitution or disorder and a specific type of mental disease. A very practical application of the experiment, such as an association test with diagnostical value, was expected.
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As early as 1901, Bleuler had started his own research on association at the Burghölzli.4 He had composed a list of 156 stimulus words which he used in his experiments on subjects suffering from various types of psychoses. He commissioned Jung and Franz Riklin to perform similar experiments on healthy subjects in order to determine criteria for classification and organization. The result of this project was published in 1904 in the work The Associations of Normal Subjects. Jung and Riklin tested 38 subjects using four series of 100 stimulus words. In the first two series, they allowed their subjects to respond with the first word that came to mind, without any further specification. In the last two series, they followed the example of Kraepelin and Aschaffenburg and altered the psychic state of their subjects in order to detect whether or not a shift would occur in the results. The novelty of their approach was that they did not achieve this alteration by administering intoxicating substances or by inducing physical fatigue, but rather by causing a state of lessened attention in their subjects. In the third series, the subjects were asked to pay attention to the image which flashed before their interior eye upon hearing the stimulus word and to react just as quickly as before (distraction by interior cause). During the fourth series, the subjects were to draw lines on a piece of paper following the beat of a metronome (distraction by exterior cause). The research led to the conclusion that the number of exterior and sound reactions decisively increased in a proportionate manner in those series where the subject was forced to divide his attention while the number of interior associations decreased. Thus the association process shifted and began functioning on a lower level. Apparently, distraction exercised the same effect on this process as did fatigue and intoxication in the study of Kraepelin and Aschaffenburg. Next, Jung attempted to demonstrate that attention was a specific capacity which could be influenced by certain organic factors such as fatigue and intoxication. Yet he stressed that it could never be reduced to the sum total of a number of somatic processes.5 Just as Wundt before him, Jung found himself obliged to employ the notion of an autonomous psychic factor within the conceptual model of associationism. This led to two questions. What exactly was this phenomenon of attention to which Jung designated the characteristic of autonomy? Further, what were the
4. C.G. JUNG, The Psychological Diagnosis of Evidence, C.W. II, § 731. 5. C.G. JUNG, The Associations of Normal Subjects, C.W. II, § 388-389; 491.
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factors that could influence or disturb this attention? Two key words capture Jung’s answer to these two questions: affectivity and the complex. Attention and Affectivity The foreword of the The Associations of Normal Subjects stated as a declaration of program the affirmation that attention (Aufmerksamkeit) was indeed the factor which directed and modified the association process. Yet, in the book itself, an explicit elaboration on the way in which attention as a psychic function must be conceived, cannot be found. Of course, we know the central thesis of the work. When attention is disturbed, higher associations disappear in favour of a lower category of associations. Beyond this, when one combines various statements spread throughout the work, the following conclusion can be drawn. The psychic field is seen as a combination of contents of consciousness which can be associated with each other in all possible directions and according to the greatest variety of criteria. Attention gives direction to the process of association. Of all possible associations which could come to mind, the majority are eliminated from the very beginning. Only those associations which lie in the immediate realm of the actual conceptual process are made available. Attention is the function which limits the association process to that which is useful. As soon as attention disappears, the chaos of all possible associations in any possible direction resumes.6 In the actual thought process of an adult, the higher category of associations, namely the associations according to significance, are usually employed. Lower categories such as sound reactions are thus limited. These sound reactions did have a function in a person’s past when, as a youngster, he was acquiring language skills. Nevertheless, in the normal ‘directed’ thought process, these reactions are rarely seen. Sound reactions are continuously eliminated since they do not enhance the thought process. Yet as soon as attention is disturbed, sound reactions can again invade and suddenly confound the association process.7 We can conclude that the following mechanism is active. When a subject reacts from the focal point of his consciousness, he will not make an association based on sound unless he deliberately intends to do so. Yet, when he focuses his attention on a different activity, so that the association process proceeds almost automatically, these more primitive
6. Ibid., § 384-385. 7. Ibid., § 118.
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associations will surface again. In this situation, even an association based completely on sound can occur. A stimulus word evokes another word which - by way of sound - is related to it regardless of the significance of the word. This notion of the attention’s function clearly incorporated several ideas which Bleuler had already expressed and which he would later develop in Affektivität, Suggestibilität, Paranoia (1906). Jung most likely did not offer a theoretical exposition on the role of attention because he spontaneously wrote against the background of his mentor’s concepts. Thus we need to now turn our attention to Bleuler’s concepts. In Versuch einer naturwissenschaftlichen Betrachtung der psychologischen Grundbegriffe (1894), Bleuler had defined the role of the ego complex in the association process as favouring certain associations while detaining others. The ego complex functioned in this way by means of paths which had already been carved by the accumulation of similar reactions. It was in this context that Bleuler devoted a short passage to the topic of attention. First, Bleuler distinguished a more passive type of attention which created few problems. When a certain concept dominated our thinking, representations which were closely related to this concept will also be dominant. Bleuler gave the following example. When someone was watching a wrestling match, all other thoughts which had nothing to do with that activity, faded into the background.8 For Bleuler, the problem was located in the arbitrary nature of attention on any given topic and also in the choice that the subject could apparently make between representations, each of which attempted to attract attention to itself. A certain autonomous activity of the ego complex must be recognized here. Bleuler therefore posed that the ego complex, "just as other cerebral stimulus complexes, can influence lower reflexes and can contain the association process within certain limits."9 The mechanism of this process was not very clear for Bleuler at that time.10 This unanswered question apparently intrigued Bleuler and, in 1906, he devoted an entire chapter of his Affektivität, Suggestibilität, Paranoia to the description of affectivity as the basic dynamism in the human
8. E. BLEULER, Versuch einer naturwissenschaftlichen Betrachtung der psychologischen Grundbegriffe, p. 154. 9. "Wie jeder andere cerebrale Reiz-Complex vermag er niedere Reflexe zu beeinflussen, das Spiel des Assoziationen in bestimmten Bahnen zu halten". Ibid., p. 155. 10. Ibid., p. 155.
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psyche. In this chapter, Bleuler noted that attention was one of the most important components through which affectivity expressed itself. Although this work was not published until 1906, two years after The Associations of Normal Subjects, the link that Bleuler found and described between attention and affectivity definitely influenced the study of Jung and Riklin. It is evident that they had learned about this link from their mentor. The point of departure of Affektivität, Suggestibilität, Paranoia was the notion that affectivity essentially consisted of a generalization of a particular reaction to the complete subject in his psychic and organic totality.11 This implied that a reaction of panic for example suppressed all those motivations which might oppose fleeing and made the idea of rescue the only directive. When a person is infuriated, he can beat someone up even if this is not the most favourable solution to the problem. The affect curtails all associations which are inclined to an opposite reaction and amplifies parallel associations. By doing this, the human organism has a greater than normal amount of energy at its disposal for a period of time. Bleuler’s example of a despairing person illustrated this fact very well.12 Another process within the framework of the affect’s mobilization of the whole organism, is the process of transference (Übertragung des Affektes). The affect is transferred to neutral representations which have no need of restraint since they do not present an obstacle. This contributes to a reinforced reaction. We loathe a certain place where an unpleasant event occurred or we foster feelings of hostility not only toward someone who has offended us but also toward a coincidental witness. This type of transference, which Bleuler also called ‘irradiation’ of the affect, had already been indicated by Ziehen. Bleuler, however, viewed it within the framework of the mobilization of all of the organism’s efforts,13 as an expression of the survival instinct. Moreover, the usefulness of this mechanism was not limited to cases of extreme emergency. Often a small dose
11. "Der Affekt verallgemeinert eine Reaktion - ich könnte wohl eben so richtig sagen: der Affekt ist eine verallgemeinerte Reaktion." E. BLEULER, Affektivität, Suggestibilität, Paranoia, Halle, Marhold, 1906, p. 15. 12. "Werde ich zornig, so schlage ich drein, auch wenn es nicht gerade angemessen ist, und ich glaube in diesem Momente erst noch, dazu berechtigt zu sein. So werden durch die Affekte alle diejenige Assoziationen gehemmt, die ihnen entgegenstehen, die entsprechenden aber gefördert. Dadurch wird selbstverständlich die momentane Kraft des Handelns erhöht." Ibid., p. 15. 13. "Durch diese Übertragung des Affektes (Irradiation) wird die Wirkung desselben auf das Handeln natürlich weiter verstärkt, und Abweichungen von der eingeschlagenen Richtung werden möglichst verhindert." Ibid., p. 16.
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of impatience aids in conquering an obstacle and, in order to obtain an important goal, the one-sidedness of enthusiasm is always necessary.14 It is not fortuitous that the notion ‘organism’ has been mentioned so often in the previous pages. Affect belongs to the organization of the individual as an autonomous entity. Affectivity is therefore considered as the dynamic behind the thought and action process. In Bleuler’s argumentation, this was not only valid for human beings. As an elementary example of affect, he pointed to the manner in which a unicellular organism such as the amoeba proteus, consumed a grain of food. Not only was there a reaction upon seeing the food, the extension of the pseudopodia and so forth, but this elementary organism even experienced the complete process as a unity.15 One would tend to conclude by affirming that affectivity creates a higher unity by which the individual comes into being, lives, and reacts as an entity. Yet Bleuler did not wish to address the question of the essence of affectivity. For him, affectivity had only an ‘academic’ significance:16 "It suffices for us to know that intellectual processes, psychopetal and intrapsychic association complexes do not only provoke the specific corresponding reaction but that they also control the associations of the complete nervous system (including the vasomotoric nerves). A general reaction which supports the specific reaction, occurs to the advantage of the individual as a whole (excluding exceptional cases where the organism cannot cope)."
Still, Bleuler had not found an answer to the question whether affectivity was ultimately either a special process in the human brain, constituting the substratum of feelings of pleasure or discomfort, or merely the result of ‘associative, vasomotoric and secretory inhibitions and courses.’17 In any case, affectivity was closely related to aspirations, desires and the will. In Bleuler’s view, one did best to combine these notions into
14. Ibid., p. 16-17. 15. Ibid., p. 14. 16. "Was die Affektivität ist, können wir nicht sagen. Die Frage hat für unsere Aufgabe ganz akademische Bedeutung. Es genügt uns zu wissen dass intellektuelle Vorgänge, psychopetale und intrapsychische Assoziationskomplexe, nicht nur die spezielle entsprechende Reaktion auslösen, sondern auch die Assoziationen des gesamten Nervensystems (inkl. vasomotorische und Eingeweidenerven) so beherrschen, dass eine allgemeine Reaktion eintritt welche die Spezielle unterstützt, und (abgesehen von Ausnahmebedingungen, denen der Organismus nicht angepasst ist) das Individuum überhaupt fördert." Ibid., p. 44. 17. Ibid., p. 45.
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one conceptual unity and to clearly distinguish this unity from intellectual processes which did not encroach so deeply on the human psyche.18 Bleuler thus avoided taking a clear stance on the autonomy of the psyche. In any case, affectivity, either as a mere result or as an autonomous function, participated in the constitution of the individual as a unity. With regard to the concept of attention, Bleuler declared that "attention (was) but a special instance of the operation of the affect".19 For indeed, we only pay attention to those matters to which we are partial. When we force ourselves to direct our attention elsewhere, we do so on the basis of affectivity. The immediate consequence of directing our attention toward something is that certain experiences, associations and movements, responding to the object of our interest, will have free run while others are restrained. Thus, according to Bleuler, this was the same phenomenon as the one encountered in the discussion on affect.20 Attention was thus seen as the consequence of the affectivity’s intervention upon the thought process. When a strong content of consciousness dominated the psychic field, related contents were evoked due to association, opposite contents were curbed and neutral contents were annexed by means of transference. This well-developed exposition on affectivity was not found in Jung’s work but only in Bleuler’s Affektivität, Suggestibilität, Paranoia. Yet, in the publication of On Manic Mood Disorder (1903), we notice that a similar conceptual scheme appeared, at least in a rudimentary form, in Jung’s thought. By means of four cases from the archives of the Burghölzli, Jung intended to more deeply penetrate into the understanding of the manic personality type. Initially, he noticed that manic patients could be quite intellectually gifted. Mental deficiency did not account for their senseless behaviour which often brought them into conflict with society. Mania made it exceptionally clear that a person’s actions and thoughts were determined by affectivity. A maniac thus possessed a surplus of feelings and drives defined by his constitution, causing all representations to appear extraordinarily interesting. As a result, the
18. Bleuler demonstrated by means of several psychopathological images how affection affirmed its independence with regard to cognitive functions - See Ibid., p. 22-27. 19. "Die Aufmerksamkeit ist also nichts als ein Spezialfall der Affektwirkung." Ibid., p. 31. 20. "Eine der wichtigsten Äusserungen der Affektivität ist die Aufmerksamkeit ... Das Bemerkbare an der Aufmerksamkeit ist gar nichts anderes als eine Bahnung für alle diejenige Empfindungen, Assoziationen und Bewegungen, die den Gegenstand des Interesses entsprechen, eine Hemmung für alle andere, d.h. das gleiche, was wir als Wirkung der Affekte von jeher kennen." Ibid., p. 29.
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association process lost all direction leaving the patient in a state of chaos in his attempt to find satisfaction.21 In short, we can state that mania is a condition in which all associations are endowed with such a constitutive power, that no similar function remains for the ego complex. Thus the ego complex can no longer exercise its function to curtail. In a maniac’s mind, every impression is emotionally charged to such a degree that his attention is drawn to everything. Returning to the association test, we observe that the importance of the connection between attention and affectivity is not so apparent. The conclusion which we found was that a shift from a higher to a lower category of associations took place when the subject’s attention was disturbed. In Jung’s and Riklin’s experimental procedure, distraction was intentionally caused by ‘interior’ and ‘exterior’ diversions in the instances of the third and fourth series of stimuli. Drawing lines following the beat of a metronome cannot be considered as an extraordinary emotional event. Yet it was quite remarkable that even in the first two series, the association process sometimes appeared to be abruptly disturbed from within. For some reason, the subject was being forced from within to divide his attention. Indeed, one sometimes notices in everyday life, outside of the experimental situation, how the association process can suddenly be interrupted by a slip of the tongue, a sudden insight or an abrupt breach of the flow of consciousness. Under a closer investigation, such phenomena appear not to be merely coincidental. One can always demonstrate that, either directly or indirectly, an emotionally charged representation which diverted the person’s attention sprang up at that point. There could also be an interior distraction resulting from a group of emotionally charged representations which suddenly occupied the greater part of the psychic field. When this occurred, it acted to the detriment of the guiding power of the ego complex. A disturbing autonomous complex interfered with the ego complex by positioning its own constitutive power in opposition to the ego complex.
21. C.G. JUNG, On Manic Mood Disorder, C.W. I, § 220.
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The Complex "By ‘emotionally charged complex’, we mean the sum of ideas referring to a particular feeling-toned event."22 This was the first provisional definition of the notion of complex to be found in Jung’s work. The ego complex is the principal complex in the human psyche. As far as content is concerned, it refers to that which constitutes an individual’s personality. Normally speaking, the entire association process is constructed by the ego complex. It curbs those associations which are of no use for a particular line of thought. Indeed, it is precisely the associative connection between the ego complex and a group of representations which establishes the conscious character of a thought process. There appear to be other groups of representations or complexes that can interfere with the association process in exactly the same way as the ego complex does. Such interference can take place beyond the awareness of the ego complex and these groups of representations can almost act as a ‘second consciousness’.23 The competitive activity of complexes which pit their proper constitutive power against that of the ego complex is precisely what disturbs the association test. These disturbances include: prolonging of the reaction time; waning of the association; forgetting the stimulus word which had to be repeated by the researcher; and, finally, mistakes in the reproduction test. When the test was completed, the subject could not recall with which word he had responded to the stimulus word. Two aspects can be distinguished in these disturbances. First, the autonomy of the complex is expressed by the fact that it absorbs part of
22. C.G. JUNG, The Associations of Normal Subjects, C.W. II, § 167. Definitions of the notion ‘complex’ are also found in The Reaction Time Ratio in the Association Experiments, C.W. II, § 602 and in The Psychological Diagnosis of Evidence, C.W. II, § 733. The most elaborate exposition is found in the second chapter of The Psychology of Dementia Praecox. In Jung’s Collected Works the translation ‘emotionally charged’ is used for the German ‘affektbetonte’ and ‘feeling-toned’ for the German ‘gefühlsbetonte’. The distinction between both terms seems to be less important than the theory concerning affectivity which is at the basis of the theory of complexes. When reading ‘emotionally charged’, one should not forget that it means ‘charged by this basic affectivity’ in the sense we have seen. 23. "From the figures given, it follows that relatively long reaction times are almost without exception caused by the intervention of a strong feeling-tone. Strong feeling-tones as a rule belong to extensive and personally important complexes. The reaction can be an association belonging to a complex of this nature and take its feeling-tone from this complex, though the complex need not be conscious. The constellation (Ziehen) of an association is mostly unconscious (or not-conscious); the constellating complex here plays the part of a quasiindependent entity - a ‘second consciousness’." C.G. JUNG, The Reaction Time Ratio in the Association Experiments, C.W. II, § 621.
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a person’s attention. In other words, the complex expands its constitutive power to the detriment of the ego complex’s power. This explains the prolongation of the reaction time as well as the waning of the associations. The ego complex is no longer capable of restraining the lower category of associations. A second aspect is that the content of the competing complex stands opposed to the content of the ego complex. Influenced by the former, the stimulus word is immediately forgotten and thus the pattern of the autonomous complex has neutralized the pattern of the ego complex. Faults in the reproduction test can be explained in a similar way. The reaction which affected the complex in the same way as the stimulus word, was also forgotten. Two matters need to be further distinguished: on the one hand, the existing dissociation between the complex and the ego complex; on the other hand, the opposition of these two patterns which presumes a relationship between the complexes. In this context, it is not so surprising that Jung was attracted to Freud’s theory of repression. Yet contrary to Freud, Jung did not attach great value to the unconscious character of certain complexes. The essential characteristic of a complex was that it was emotionally charged. The fact that such a complex could be unconscious was only of secondary importance. The unconscious aspect resulted from the dissociating influence which the affect could exercise on the psyche. A highly emotionally charged group of representations is so closely interconnected that it tends to act as an autonomous entity, without any relation to the ego complex. The fact then that consciousness is not aware of the particular complex, changes nothing fundamentally in the way in which the complex exercises its constitutive power within the psychic field.24 It is remarkable that, at this point, Jung did not comprehend that he had overlooked the essential element of the Freudian discovery, namely the phenomenon of repression. During this period, Jung believed that "Freud (had) offered convincing proof that the chief aetiological role in psychogenic disturbances (was) played by affects."25 Jung did not hesitate to state that Freud’s interpretation of the symptom act corresponded precisely to what Ziehen described as the ‘constellation’.26
24. C.G. JUNG, On Simulated Insanity, C.W. I, § 339. 25. Ibid., § 349. 26. C.G. JUNG, The Psychological Diagnosis of Evidence, C.W. II, § 733.
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When looking back, we clearly notice in Jung’s theory of complexes the same pattern which we observed in the theories of Janet, Ziehen and Bleuler. The psyche consists of elementary psychic cells that were organically combined into a unity. Gradually, the affect assumed a greater role within this unity. One had to state that the usual laws of association did not suffice to explain either the origin of the subject or the dynamic force on which the subject thrived. The theories of affect and transference, as encountered in Ziehen’s work, were further developed. In Affektivität, Suggestibilität, Paranoia (1906), Bleuler treated affectivity as the deepest dimension of the psychic life.27 Along the same lines, Jung described the affect as the dynamic by which individual, basic representations, which were associatively connected, could extend their grip on the entire psychic field. In this context, the unconscious was interpreted as a flaw. While all representation complexes should have united themselves into one psyche with the ego complex as its centre, certain representation complexes under the influence of an exaggerated emotional charge, isolated themselves from the rest of the psyche. The unconscious was that which escaped the laws of a harmonic development. The Hidden and the Repressed In On the Psychology and Pathology of So-Called Occult Phenomena, Jung, following Janet, had indicated that dissociation was the essential characteristic of hysteria. It was here that he integrated the theory of the ‘complex’ for the dissociated contents were seen as autonomous complexes. The association test, in its ability to evoke the interference of autonomous complexes, seemed very appropriate for tracing those contents of consciousness which the subject could not or would not make known. Jung searched for a connection with Freud’s theory on this point. Freud had researched the content of unconscious representations in hysterical patients. He discovered that these representations were related to unpleasant or abhorrent objects or events, often of a sexual nature. It was Freud who had developed the method of free association in order to trace these repressed contents. Yet, could the association test not be a substitute
27. Bleuler also related the affect with finality: "Wir kommen damit auf das, was Paulhan vor Jahren mit dem etwas anspruchsvollen Namen der ‘loi de la finalité’ bezeichnete, womit er sagen wollte, dass die gewöhnlichen Assoziationsgesetze nicht ausreichen, das Denken zu erklären, wenn man nicht auch den Zweck, das Ziel des Denken als bestimmenden Faktor mitrechne." E. BLEULER, Affektivität, Suggestibilität, Paranoia, p. 31.
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for the longer method of free association or, at least, shorten the duration of the process? It was here that Jung found a connection with the theory of psychoanalysis. However, it must be remarked that, from the beginning, there was no room in Jung’s theory of complexes for a notion such as repression. In the Footsteps of Janet At the start of his career at the Burghölzli, Jung was entrusted with several cases which required his psychiatric expertise. Within the context of these cases, he was confronted with the problem of hysteria. The cases involved a number of people who were being held in protective custody. At a certain point, they found themselves in such a state of confusion that, when interrogated, they uttered the most senseless statements. It was often very difficult to determine whether a real psychic disorder was present or whether one was dealing with imposters who preferred being sentenced to a psychiatric hospital rather than to a prison. Yet the possibility of a true psychic disorder had to be taken into account. Ganser, who defined this syndrome in 1897, described it as a specific instance of the hysterical twilight state. A classic case of the syndrome developed in the following manner. Patients grew frightened during the period of preliminary detention. They became disoriented. They started hallucinating and their perception was disturbed. The characteristic outcome of this development was the ‘senseless answers’ symptom. Even the most simple questions elicited responses that were nonsensical, although the type of answers betrayed that the question had been correctly understood. After a while, the patients became more quiet and a quick recovery followed. Nevertheless, the patients often experienced an attack of amnesia concerning the events which took place in this crisis period.28 In A Case of Hysterical Stupor in a Prisoner in Detention (1903), the first article after the publication of his dissertation, Jung offered a study of a particular case of Ganser’s syndrome. He attempted to prove that this syndrome was in fact a process in which the observed patient’s affectivity played an important role. The emotional condition of a person being detained had as a consequence that the memory of the unpleasant events, aroused by the interrogations, was separated from consciousness. The excess of the emotional charge placed on those memories made it
28. C.G. JUNG, On Simulated Insanity, C.W. I, § 278.
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impossible for them to be integrated within the psychic field in a normal way and to stay connected with the ego complex. The above mentioned separation, however, was not complete because the ‘nonsensical’ answer contained an element that remained associated with that which should have been the correct answer. When one indirectly interrogated or hypnotized the patient, it became possible to receive a direct answer to the questions. Thus Jung made the fundamental discovery that such dissociation involved only the superficial layers of consciousness. As soon as one was able to reach the unconscious, the integrity of the psychic field was restored. In order to support this argumentation, Jung referred back to Studies on Hysteria in a rather remarkable way, as well as to the Freudian notion of repression. He wrote:29 "Here we have the primary phenomenon in the genesis of hysterical symptoms which Breuer and Freud have termed hysterical conversion. According to them, every person has a certain threshold up to which he can tolerate ‘unabreacted’ affects and allow them to pile up. Anything that exceeds that threshold leads - cum grano salis - to hysteria. In the language of Breuer and Freud, our patient’s threshold had been reached and exceeded as a result of her detention, and the unabreacted affect - the ‘excitement proceeding from the affective idea’ - flowed off into abnormal channels and got ‘converted’. Just how it will flow off is ‘determined’ in most cases by chance or by the individual; that is to say, the line of least resistance is in one case the convulsion mechanism, in another sensibility, in a third the disturbance of consciousness, and so on. In our case, to judge from all the crucial points in the patient’s history, the determining factor seems to have been the idea of forgetting. Her ‘not knowing’ turns out to be partly an unconscious and partly half conscious not wanting to know."
Jung’s explanation went as follows: under the influence of affect, the ‘representation of forgetfulness’ gained such a constitutive power that, by means of association, it became connected to the major part of the psychic field. The ego complex, which was deprived of its constitutive power, was no longer successful in containing the association process within certain limits which under normal circumstances, it had no problem doing. The representation of forgetfulness thus became all-powerful. ‘Forgetting’ took on the characteristics of an automatism along the lines of Janet’s thought.
29. Ibid., § 298.
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In Jung’s presentation, the main accent was placed on the emotional charge which, when present, could inundate everything. If this charge flowed toward the representation of forgetting, the phenomenon which Freud described as ‘repression’ occurred. It is in this rather remarkable sense that Jung typified the nonsensical answer as a ‘phenomenon of conversion’. Thus Jung completely overlooked the typically Freudian notion of the symptom being characterized by compromise. Jung explained the meaningful elements present in the nonsensical answers of the patients as a consequence of the fact that the association process affected only the superficial layers of consciousness. Furthermore, it is clear that Janet, far more than Freud, remained the principal influence on the theoretical framework of Jung’s interpretation. This influence became even more clear in two articles which again dealt with cases requiring his psychiatric expertise. These cases involved the simulation of a mental disorder. On Simulated Insanity (1903) outlined a number of such cases while a second article, Medical Opinion on a Case of Simulated Insanity (1904), elaborated on one of the cases mentioned in the previous article. Medical Opinion on a Case of Simulated Insanity concerned a vagrant who had been caught stealing. He intended to simulate being mentally disturbed but he became so carried away with his game that he actually started to hallucinate. Simulation had become a sort of autosuggestion which then automatically followed its course in the unconscious. In order to explain how this occurred, Jung claimed that there must have been a psychic disposition which impeded the integration of affects and new impressions. This disposition caused a state of confusion and of pseudo-mental debilitation.30 Jung went on to say:31 "How far this disposition to neutralize affects in a faulty or abnormal way coincides with hysteria is not easy to determine, but according to Freud’s theory of hysteria the two are identical. Janet found that the influence of affects is seen most clearly in hysterical persons, and that it produces a state of dissociation in which the will, attention, ability to concentrate are paralyzed and the higher psychic phenomena are impaired in the interest of the lower; that is, there is a displacement towards the automatic side, where everything that was formerly under the control of the will is now set free."
30. Ibid., § 317. 31. Ibid., § 318.
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Thus affect caused the process of dissociation. Jung explicitly agreed with Janet and the role he ascribed to affect. He quoted Janet:32 "Emotion has a decomposing action on the mind, reduces its synthesis and makes it, for the moment, wretched. Emotions, especially depressives ones such as fear, disorganize the mental syntheses. Their action, so to speak, is analytic, as opposed to that of the will, of attention, of perception, which is synthesis."
When he did refer to Freud, it was to indicate that Freud had an exceptionally good grasp on the aetiological importance of the affect.33 Jung further investigated how the affect made its dissociative influence felt. He concluded that, more than likely, one particular representation was brought to the fore in an exaggerated manner. As a consequence, only a limited amount of attention was left for other psychic activities. It then followed that the more mechanical and automatic processes were released and gradually obtained a certain autonomy to the detriment of the consciousness.34 In the article Medical Opinion on a Case of Simulated Insanity, in which Jung discussed the same case, he expressed it as follows:35 As is clear from the respondent’s own statement, the development of simulation was attended by strong affects. Affects always have a disturbing influence on consciousness, as they place undue emphasis on feeling-toned thought-processes and thus obscure any others that may be present. ... In our opinion, the initial affects were the source of the overmastering suggestion to simulate that later ensued. That this phenomenon of partly conscious, partly unconscious simulation could come about at all was evidently due to the respondent’s hysterical disposition, and the most outstanding feature of this disposition is an abnormal dissociability of consciousness, which, in the moment a strong affect appears, can easily lead to mental confusion and the formation of suggestions which are very difficult to combat."
Thus Jung referred to the patient’s disposition as the ultimate cause of mental disorder. Yet the provocative factor was the emotionally charged
32. Ibid., § 318. Source: P. JANET, L’automatisme psychologique, p. 457. 33. Ibid., § 349. 34. Ibid., § 339. 35. C.G. JUNG, Medical Opinion on a Case of Simulated Insanity, C.W. I, § 423.
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representation which defined the content of dissociation.36 The use of the association test for tracing the emotionally charged content seemed very promising. Toward the Lie Detector As has been earlier mentioned, the association test not only revealed dissociated contents but also normal, emotionally charged representations which the subject intentionally wished to hide. The idea to design a ‘lie detector’ was the obvious consequence of this discovery. Jung and Wertheimer independently developed the association test in this direction. There was even some argument over which of the two initially made the discovery.37 In a short preliminary statement made in 1905, entitled On the Psychological Diagnosis of Facts, Jung wrote:38 "Readers may be interested to know that today I succeeded for the first time in testing out, on a delinquent, our method of discovering complexes, and with excellent results."
This preliminary statement, written on the night of the experiment itself, was soon followed by the article The Psychological Diagnosis of Evidence. An older gentleman had requested Jung’s expertise. For quite some time, the man had noticed that objects were being stolen from his house. While his domestic staff was suspected, his foster son was also not beyond suspicion. Because of the latter possibility, the man wished to keep the police out of the affair and thus, he requested Jung to interrogate his son using hypnosis. Although Jung rejected this proposal, he was willing to use his association test in order to discover the truth. Among a series of neutral stimulus words, Jung mingled a number of words which referred to theft and hiding places such as ‘drawer’, ‘linen cabinet’, ‘being caught’, ‘police’, ‘prison’, ‘pass key’, etc.39 The test revealed betraying reactions in the responses to these words so that Jung told the dumbfounded young man that he had stolen. The man immediately confessed. Jung described a similar case of detecting a thief in the article New Aspects of Criminal Psychology (1908).
36. A well done summary of Jung’s concepts of this period can be found in Jung’s conclusion in: C.G. JUNG, On Simulated Insanity, C.W. I, § 354. 37. Concerning the discussion on priority with regard to this discovery, see C.G. JUNG, On the Psychological Diagnosis of Facts, C.W. I, § 479-480. 38. Ibid., § 481. 39. C.G. JUNG, The Psychological Diagnosis of Evidence, C.W. II, § 771.
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After an address by the neurologist O. Veraguth at the Second Congress for Experimental Psychology in Würzburg (Germany) from 18 to 21 April 1906, Jung conceived the idea of directly interpreting the operation of the complex, provoked by his association test, by means of the accompanying physiological phenomena. The electrical resistance of the human body, as well as the respiration rate, changed with emotion. This discovery ultimately brings us to the lie detector. The articles that Jung devoted to this topic have appeared in English under the titles On the Psychophysical Relations of the Association Experiment (1906), Psychophysical Investigations with the Galvanometer and the Pneumograph in Normal and Insane Individuals (written together with F. Petersen in 1907), and Further Investigations on the Galvanic Phenomenon and Respiration in Normal and Insane Individuals (written with Ricksher in 1907). These articles also marked the end of Jung’s interest in lie detection. Yet the idea was adopted by others and developed further into the more technical ‘lie detector’.40 Jung’s short-lived fascination with the lie detector proved once again that the question whether the complex was conscious or unconscious was not an issue for him. According to Jung, the affective charge of the complex was of central concern together with the discovery that this affective charge could be detected by the association test. As far as the usefulness of the test was concerned, it was of no importance whether the complex had remained conscious or whether it had separated itself from the ego complex as a consequence of an exaggerated emotional charge. Association Test and Psychoanalysis Jung’s concept of hysteria at that time has repeatedly been mentioned. In essence, hysteria consisted in the dissociation of intrapsychic representations into two groups. On this point, Jung faithfully adopted Janet’s scheme. The affect played the central role while the ego complex lost its controlling function in the process of association. The emotionally charged representations gained a certain autonomy and escaped the control of the ego complex even further. Yet this autonomy was not so far reaching as to cause a radical split of consciousness into two groups. The ego complex, being associated with the body which is its solid substratum, continued to be the principal complex. The ‘autonomous’ complex, which functioned as a disturbing alien source in the association process, still 40. Concerning this topic, see: BR. KLOPFER et al., C.G. Jung and Projective Techniques. In: Journal of Projective Techniques (Special Issue), 19 (1955) 225-270.
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maintained a certain bond with the ego complex. The link between the two complexes was not direct. If it was direct, the autonomous complex would have entered into consciousness. Nevertheless, there must be some link, even if indirect, in order to explain the interference between the two complexes. Starting from this scheme, Jung further integrated two of Freud’s notions. First, he recognized that the contents of the autonomous complexes were unpleasant to the consciousness and that they often referred to sexuality. Secondly, he adopted the symbolic interpretation which Freud had noted in his The Interpretation of Dreams. It should be remarked that Jung’s integration of these elements did not occur without some tension. Jung was primarily interested in the usefulness of his association test in tracing dissociated contents in hysterical patients. The psychoanalytical approach - as it was then known - had been introduced at the Burghölzli at a rather early stage in its development. In his Experimental Observations on the Faculty of Memory (1905), Jung presented the results of an association test administered to a patient who ‘underwent psychoanalytical treatment’.41 In this case, he had been consulted by a musician troubled by thoughts of fear and by the obsession that he was unable to perform as a soloist. The analysis showed that a broken engagement and some rather unpleasant love affairs had preceded the symptoms. Nothing more was mentioned about the analysis which the patient underwent. Instead, Jung directed his attention to the association test which, even before the analysis was undertaken, showed critical reactions to certain stimulus words. This had led Jung to suspect something along the lines of an unpleasant love affair to be involved. In 1906, Jung published Psychoanalysis and Association Experiments. This article described a case of ‘obsessive-compulsive neurosis’ which Jung had treated in June 1905. He began the treatment by administering the association test in order to trace the repressed complex and only afterward did he apply psychoanalysis. The complete analysis lasted for three weeks, with two hour sessions every other day. It is important to understand Jung’s concept of the analysis. His main goal was to detect the repressed ideas. How this was accomplished did not matter. The method of free association was one possible method although the association experiment could also help in tracing the repressed complex. The latter method would shorten the analysis and render it easier. Jung did not ascribe the healing process as much to verbal expression or to a venting
41. C.G. JUNG, Experimental Observations on the Faculty of Memory, C.W. II, § 642.
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of the patient’s feelings as he did to the reinforcement of the will. The will power was amplified because the patient was forced to express everything that came to mind, even the more unpleasant thoughts.42 This concept of neurosis becomes completely understandable when read in light of Janet’s theory. Janet ascribed neurosis to a psychic deficiency as its ultimate cause. Although Jung demonstrated in his introduction that he clearly comprehended Freud’s theories, especially the necessity of going back to the patient’s childhood43, we cannot find any reference to this practice in his report of the analysis. Association, Dream and Hysterical Symptom is another article devoted to one of Jung’s cases, this time concerning an instance of hysteria. Jung treated this patient from 1 October 1905 through 21 December 1905. The fact that the article is one of the few case studies which Jung published in the course of his life makes it very interesting. Once again, Jung’s attention was drawn to the comparison between the results of both the association experiment and psychoanalysis. The patient, a 24 year old woman, complained of always being extremely warm. An outside temperature of 11 degrees centigrade was unbearable to her so she spent her days in a cellar, continuously refreshing herself with cold water. Further, she refused to eat meat and she was obsessed with the thought that she would be healed if only she could bleed from her nose. Six association tests were administered in the course of the treatment. After each test, the critical reactions were further examined by asking the patient to reveal what came to mind in those instances. During the sessions of analysis, special attention was paid to the patient’s dreams. Both the association test and the analysis demonstrated that a sexual problem was involved. Moreover, it seemed that the disorder had begun during puberty and the symptoms, such as seeking cold places, refreshment with cold water, dislike of meat and so forth, were the hygienic prescriptions published in popular magazines of that time for bridling one’s sexual urge.44 Apparently, Jung approached Freud’s thought rather closely here. Jung even regarded technical hints given in Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams when he pointed to cats, dogs and mice as representing passion; when he showed much interest in the minute details that remained unsaid in a first account of a dream; and when he spoke of transposition from a
42. C.G. JUNG, Psychoanalysis and Association Experiments, C.W. II, § 724-725. 43. Ibid., § 661. 44. C.G. JUNG, Association, Dream and Hysterical Symptom, C.W. II, § 851-853.
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lower to an upper part of the body.45 Nevertheless, Jung understood these elements in light of his own conceptual framework. He was not yet able to completely integrate the implications of a notion such as repression. When reviewing the above mentioned articles, it is noteworthy that Jung, from the beginning, nuanced his reference to Freud’s notion of repression. The first texts in which Jung discussed repression are the previously examined publications involving his psychiatric expertise. In these articles, repression denoted the tendency to fend off an unpleasant situation or representation which in turn could expand itself into a condition where the patient no longer knew anything and appeared to be acting foolish. Jung referred to Freud as the one who had brilliantly expressed the aetiological function of affect but, other than that, Janet’s theory continued to be Jung’s model of reference. The remarkable manner in which Jung presented repression as a type of conversion in his attempt to integrate the thought of Freud and Janet has already been discussed. The concept of repression later reappeared in The Associations of Normal Subjects. One of the signs by which the interference of a complex could be detected was that a subject, upon hearing a certain stimulus word, would hesitate for a long time and then suddenly ask: "What was the word again?" The patient had forgotten the word and Jung attributed this forgetfulness to repression. The reproduction test explicitly employed the idea of forgetting previously made revealing reactions as a criterion for tracing complexes. When the association test was completed, it was performed a second time to determine whether the subject would react with the same response. The fact that one responded differently indicated the trace of a complex.46 Jung devoted a separate article to this phenomenon, entitled Experimental Observations on the Faculty of Memory (1905). But even in his The Associations of Normal Subjects, he had made the following reflection:47 "This not wanting to understand corresponds to a repression of the complex that was to a greater or lesser extent conscious. There is no difference in principle from the cases (hysteria!) where not reacting or falsely reacting occurs involuntarily."
45. S. FREUD, The Interpretation of Dreams, S.E. V, p. 387, G.W. II/III, p. 392. 46. C.G. JUNG, Experimental Observations on the Faculty of Memory, C.W. II, § 639. 47. C.G. JUNG, The Associations of Normal Subjects, C.W. II, § 289.
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In The Reaction Time Ratio in the Association Experiments (1905), we find this important footnote:48 "The concept of repression, which I use on many occasions in my analyses, requires a brief explanation. In Freud’s works this concept (which in any case the meaning of the word itself indicates) has the character of an active function, frequently a function of consciousness. In hysteria one may, however, get the impression that repression equals deliberate forgetting. With normal subjects it might, however, be a more passive ‘sliding into the background’; at least here repression seems to be something unconscious, to which we can only indirectly attribute the character of something willed or something wished. If, nevertheless, I speak of repressing or, better, concealing, this can be taken as a metaphor from the psychology of the conscious. Essentially it comes to the same thing because objectively it does not matter one way or the other whether a psychic process is conscious or unconscious (Cf. Bleuler, Versuch...)."
With this explicit reference to Bleuler as a conclusion, Jung’s perception of the notion of repression became clear beyond a doubt. In instances of repression, one found a number of complexes that have separated from the ego complex. It is as though they are repressed by the consciousness, yet this statement is only a metaphor since its point of departure is the psychology of consciousness. When one rereads these texts by Jung in light of Freud’s later work, it is immediately noticeable that Freud and Jung, even before their first encounter, were following different paths. The formation of Freud’s theory was primarily based on the phenomenon of resistance which he encountered in his patients. In Studies on Hysteria, he explained that this experience of resistance had led him to abandon the belief in a pathological ‘disposition’ as the explanation for hysteria. Instead, he stressed repression as being the core of hysteria. Freud further raised the question why there was repression. He developed an answer along the lines of the contemporary culture, emphasizing the elements of prohibition and perfection. Jung, on the contrary, never lost faith in the pathological disposition as the explanation for hysteria. When he raised the same question concerning repression, it was directed to the cause of the dissociation. He continued to look for an answer in a deficiency in the individual constitution.
48. C.G. JUNG, The Reaction Time Ratio in the Association Experiments, C.W. II, § 619, footnote.
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It must be stated however that the distinction between Jung’s and Freud’s notion of repression has only become completely clear in retrospect. Certain passages from Studies on Hysteria could be misunderstood, especially when one spontaneously read them - as Jung did - with Bleuler’s conceptual framework in mind. For example, Freud wrote concerning the defence mechanism:49 "From these I recognized a universal characteristic of such ideas: they were all of a distressing nature, calculated to arouse the affects of shame, of self-reproach and of psychical pain, and the feeling of being harmed; they were all of a kind that one would prefer not to have experienced, that one would rather forget. From all this arose, as it were automatically, the thought of defence. It has indeed been generally admitted by psychologists that the acceptance of a new idea (acceptance in the sense of believing or of recognizing as real) is dependent on the nature and trend of the ideas already united in the ego, and they have invented special technical names for this process of censorship to which the new arrival must submit."
When one reads this text concerning censorship and recalls Bleuler’s description of the ego complex as a conglomerate of representations concerning the person proper which, by force of habit, directed the association process along certain favoured lines, one can easily view repression as ‘a metaphor from the psychology of the conscious’.50 This metaphor indicates the process which - even outside the realm of hysteria - is always valid. Unusual, highly emotionally charged representations tend to lead an insular existence without any ties to the organizing ego complex. Jung did not notice that he had overlooked the essential element of Freud’s discovery when he wrote, as he did in the above quoted text, that, objectively speaking, it did not matter whether a psychic process evolved consciously or unconsciously. Along these same lines, in a text dealing with the reproduction test, he remarked that the notions ‘repressed’ and ‘unconscious’ did not overlap:51 "I should like to point out that, as in the association test, so also in the reproduction method, the repressed complex can betray itself in the reaction even though it is unconscious; it does so when it is split off from
49. S. FREUD, Studies on Hysteria, S.E. II, p. 269, G.W. I, p. 268-269. 50. C.G. JUNG, The Reaction Time Ratio in the Association Experiments, C.W. II, § 619, footnote. 51. C.G. JUNG, Experimental Observations on the Faculty of Memory, C.W. II, § 659.
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consciousness, as is often the case with hysterical patients. So far as I can see, where repressed complexes are concerned, the same phenomenon occurs with normal, hysterical, and catatonic subjects; in normal cases there is a brief embarrassment or momentary blockage, in hysterical cases there is the well-known arbitrary amnesia, and in catatonic cases there is a complete barrier. The psychological mechanism, however, is the same."
The question of the consciousness or unconsciousness of an autonomous complex was, in Jung’s view, only of secondary importance as far as the psychological mechanism was concerned. The essential element was the affective charge of the autonomous complex which was in competition with the power of the ego complex. The association test was thus just as useful in detecting lies as it was in tracing unconscious complexes in cases of hysteria. Whether or not it played a role in the conscious flow of thought was not directly related to the operation of the emotionally charged complex. Jung continued to be a loyal disciple of Bleuler, for whom consciousness was only a secondary phenomenon. When dealing with hysteria, in order to explain why the complex worked unconsciously and why an amnestic rupture evolved, Jung referred back to the notion of disposition. He illustrated this very clearly:52 "Hysteria is a morbid condition, congenital or acquired, in which the affects are exceedingly powerful. Hence the patients are more or less the continual victims of their affects."
And further:53 "Every psychogenic neurosis contains a complex that differs from normal complexes by unusual strong emotional charges, and for this reason has such a constellating power that it fetters the whole individual. The complex, therefore, is the causa morbi (a certain disposition is, of course, presupposed!)."
52. C.G. JUNG, A Third and Final Opinion on Two Contradictory Psychiatric Diagnoses, C.W. I, § 464. 53. C.G. JUNG, Psychoanalysis and Association Experiments, C.W. II, § 665.
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Moreover, at the thirty seventh Versammlung südwestdeutschen Irrenärtze in Tübingen on 3 and 4 November 1906, Jung explicitly specified:54 "When I speak of the aetiological significance of the affects, I mean to make clear that the traumatic event defines the decisive factors of the symptoms. The disposition is, of course, presupposed."
This opinion had repercussions on the manner in which Jung employed the psychoanalytical method. According to him, the healing process did not consist in the awakening of consciousness or the venting of emotion. What had to be achieved was the reinforcement of the ego complex so that it might defend itself against the force of the autonomous complex. Therefore, one had to rather brutally coerce patients into expressing ideas which they detested. Jung thus aimed at a reinforcement of the will power. He clearly stated:55 "I therefore put the emphasis on arousing and strengthening of the will and not on mere ‘abreacting’, as Freud originally did."
It is not surprising that Jung relied on disposition as the ultimate explanation for hysteria. Freud found himself confronted with similar problems concerning the ‘ultimate cause’. Jung however, formulated the problem under a very specific form. He asked why was it possible that the affective charge of a certain complex was so strong that it isolated that complex instead of binding it to other complexes. When we schematize Jung’s theory more clearly than he himself did, we arrive at the following exposition. When an autonomous complex is emotionally charged to the extent that the complete psychic field is inundated by the affect and that the influence of the ego complex is eliminated, we can speak of neurosis. Consequently, we must conclude that the complex was even previously autonomous. If the psychic field had been in a harmonious state, the affect would maybe have modified the ego complex to a certain extent but it would certainly not have eliminated it. There is no reason to presume that the affect would initiate dissociation on its own since in essence, it has a connective function. Thus, the disposition of which Jung spoke must be viewed, in light of Janet’s thought, as 54. See the report of the 37th Versammlung südwestdeutschen Irrenartze in Tübingen in: Centralblatt für Nervenheilkunde und Psychiatrie, 1907, p. 176. 55. C.G. JUNG, Psychoanalysis and Association Experiments, C.W. II, § 725.
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a disposition toward dissociation, or, in other words, as a constitutional deficiency. When reflecting on Jung’s thought, this exposition remains very ambiguous. This ambiguity also reflected the difficult position of associationism. Starting from elementary association laws, the theory did not succeed in reconstructing the complete psyche. Wundt intended to solve the problem by introducing the notion of apperception alongside the association laws. Ziehen rejected this solution but he implicitly re-encountered the same problem under the name ‘constellation’. Along the lines of this tradition, in which the higher organism was but a more complex arrangement of the lower organism, it was hard to imagine how the higher could lead to the lower. Bleuler’s notion of the ego complex was an attempt within this conceptual framework to attach a certain role to the ego. On the one hand, the ego complex was, like all other complexes, the result of representations and affect but, on the other hand, it was also a privileged complex which influenced the entire association process. Yet this point of view created some tensions which, although not expressed, made themselves felt when one tried to retrieve Freud’s argumentation from this conceptual model. How can the affect, which in itself is only a connective force, create autonomous complexes which are capable of opposing other complexes? Or, to put it differently, why does the affect limit its synthesizing power to only a part of the psychic field? In Jung’s presentation of this matter, he would question why the affect created an autonomous complex which competed with the ego complex. Why did the affect not simply modify the complete psychic field, in addition to the ego complex? In any case, it is clear that Jung and Freud worked from very different approaches. Jung placed himself within the tradition of the Romantic unconscious which questioned how the ego arose from lower processes. This issue of the ego’s constitution was not at all foreign to Freud. His point of departure, however, lay with the mere observation of the conflict. His main interest was initially based almost exclusively on the libidinous pole. The problem of the ego drives and of the ego itself would only later - after his break with Jung - receive a place in Freud’s thought. In Jung’s attempt to understand Freud’s theory of repression, we can clearly observe the implicit opposition between the two different approaches. Moreover, Jung was not completely aware of there even being an opposition. Under the misapprehension that he had well understood and
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integrated Freud’s opinion, Jung synthesized his own concepts at the end of Association, Dream and Hysterical Symptom as follows:56 "The complex revealed in the associations is the root of the dreams and of the hysterical symptoms. The interferences that the complex causes in the association experiment are none other than resistances in psychoanalysis, as described by Freud. The mechanisms of repression are the same in the association experiment as in the dream as in the hysterical symptom. The complex has an abnormal autonomy in hysteria and a tendency to an active, separate existence, which reduces and replaces the constellating power of the ego-complex. In this way a morbid personality is gradually created, the inclinations, judgments, and resolutions of which move only in the direction of the will to be ill. This second personality devours what is left of the normal ego and forces it into the role of a secondary (oppressed) complex. A purposive treatment of hysteria must therefore strengthen what has remained of the normal ego, and this is best achieved by introducing some new complex that liberates the ego from domination by the complex of the illness."
The Language of the Unconscious The unconscious is the part of the psychic field which had detached itself from the constellating power of the ego complex. It is the realm where all forms of association uninhibitedly intersect with each other since the curtailing power of the ego complex, which runs the association process along a certain course, is lacking. That is why it is overcome with lower categories of associations which are based on the similarity of sound between two words, on the vague similarity between two images or on coincidental connections between two notions. With this in mind, Jung designated the unconscious as the domain of the symbolic. Jung initially considered the idea of symbol as a lack of meaning. Symbols surfaced only when restraints fell away. They were the products of the coincidental mechanism of the association possibilities. Concerning an association test administered to a respondent immediately after waking up, Jung remarked that he was not surprised by the great number of sound reactions obtained. The respondent’s attention was minimal, allowing for
56. C.G. JUNG, Association, Dream and Hysterical Symptom, C.W. II, § 858-862.
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‘the most primitive linguistic mechanism’ to the observer while uninhibitedly at work.57 He further wrote:58 "As far as we know, attention is completely extinguished in sleep. If one succeeded in obtaining reactions from a sleeping (but not somnambulant) subject, sound reactions would be the only result."
Jung’s concept of symbolic language as being characteristic of the unconscious was most clearly formulated in his work The Psychology of Dementia Praecox (1907). In two chapters where Jung synthetically expounded on the results of his association experiments as well as his concept of the complex, he wrote:59 "Here we must interpolate a brief discussion on symbolism. We use the term ‘symbolical’ in contradistinction to ‘allegorical’. Allegory, for us, is the intentional interpretation of a thought, reinforced by images, whereas symbols are only indistinct, subsidiary associations to a thought, which obscure it rather than clarify it. As Pelletier says: ‘The symbol is a very inferior form of thought. One could define the symbol as the false perception of a relation of identity, or of very great analogy, between two objects which in reality are only vaguely analogous’."
Jung applied this concept of dreams in the following manner. Sleep originated in the suggestive imperative of the ego complex which intended to curtail all associations. The autonomous complexes however, were not completely controlled by the direct influence of the ego complex. Even when a person was asleep, the autonomous complexes continued to exercise their disturbing influence. Sometimes they were so strong that they caused insomnia. Normally, they were vented through dreams where the association process again flowed in an uninhibited and thus a more mechanical and accidental manner:60 "But suppressing the complex (caused by the sleep-suggestion) means nothing more than the withdrawal of attention, i.e. depriving it of clarity. Thus the thought-complexes are dependent on a small fraction of clarity, for which reason they can manifest themselves only in vague, symbolic expressions and also get contaminated for lack of differentiation. We need
57. C.G. JUNG, The Associations of Normal Subjects, C.W. II, § 165. 58. Ibid., § 165. 59. C.G. JUNG, The Psychology of Dementia Praecox, C.W. III, § 136. 60. Ibid., § 137.
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not assume an actual censorship of dream thoughts in the Freudian sense; the inhibition exerted by sleep-suggestion is a perfectly sufficient explanation."
Jung’s concept of the ego again clearly came to the surface. ‘Attention’ and ‘clarity’ were correlative notions. The unconscious was the realm of all possible associations which was no longer enclosed by the ego complex. The unconscious arose when the ego complex fell away. Therefore, Jung did not speak of censorship or ‘dream labour’. In his conceptual model, dreams originated in the fact that the ego no longer functioned. The difference between Jung and Freud was brought to the fore once again when Jung, taking Freud’s analysis of ‘Signorelli’ as his example, analyzed one of his own insights, namely ‘Bunau-Varilla’. In the first pages of The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, Freud recounted how, when trying to remember the name of the painter of the Orvieto frescos, the names Botticelli and Boltraffio forced themselves upon his consciousness, although he knew perfectly well that neither of them was involved.61 The name Signorelli, the artist who painted the work, however did not come to mind. In his analysis, Freud became aware that, by way of association, this name was capable of arousing unpleasant memories. Shortly before this, he had been involved in a discussion about the Turks who inhabited the areas of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the enormous trust they placed in the ‘Herr Doktor’. They could accept in a very passive manner the fatal diagnosis of a physician. Yet when suffering impotence, they completely lost their composure. In such a case, they told the ‘Herr Doktor’ that they preferred death. This last fact had reminded Freud of one of his own patients who, because of his sexual disorders, had committed suicide. Freud had learned of this when passing through Trafoi. Freud interpreted his inability to call to mind the name ‘Signorelli’ as the consequence of the tendency to forget this painful incident. The term ‘Signor’, which reminded him of the patient’s trust in the ‘Herr Doktor’ and of the patient’s fear of sexual difficulties, disappeared under the influence of repression. The repressed content however came to the surface by way of detours: in the Turks who lived in Herzegovina (Herr Doktor) and Bosnia and in ‘Botticelli’ which combined ‘Bosnia’ with the innocent ending ‘elli’ of Signorelli. In ‘Boltraffio’, the repressed content came to the surface even more sharply. Besides the association with
61. The forgetting of ‘Signorelli’ is first discussed in 1898 in S. FREUD, The Psychical Mechanism of Forgetfulness, S.E. III, 287-297, G.W. I, 517-527. It was discussed again in the first pages of The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, S.E. VI, p. 1-7, G.W. IV, p. 5-12.
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Bosnia, there was also the association with Trafoi, the name of the place where Freud had learned about his patient’s suicide. In Freud’s view, repression caused him to forget the name. Yet the repressed content reappeared in the names ‘Botticelli’ and ‘Boltraffio’. In The Associations of Normal Subjects, Jung presented the analysis of a similar incident.62 He was taking a long journey by train and was smoking a cigar. He also had a good Havana cigar in his pocket to be used later that day. He suddenly remembered that he did not have any matches and that he would do best to light his Havana with the butt of the cigar which he was then smoking. Afterwards, his mind began to wander until he caught himself, a couple of minutes later, quietly and continuously repeating the name ‘Bunau-Varilla’. Jung recounted how he immediately applied Freud’s method of free association in order to understand what this meant. ‘Bunau-Varilla’ was the name of a Panamanian agitator in Paris. Then the term ‘Varinas’ came to mind followed by ‘Manila’ and ‘cigarillo’ with a vague feeling of a South American atmosphere. Then he remembered the cigar which was almost gone and with which he immediately had to light his Havana. According to Jung, the chain of associations went as follows: Havana-cigar / cigarillo (Spanish for cigarette) with a South American atmosphere / Manila (on another trip, Jung had smoked Manila tobacco) / Varinas (Spanish American tobacco) / Bunau Varilla. Although Jung himself claimed that he had discovered this associative series thanks to Freud’s method of free association, he once again overlooked the core of the Freudian approach. In his example, Freud intended to demonstrate that forgetting the name ‘Signorelli’ was not merely coincidental but rather a purposeful process in which repression and the reappearance of the repressed content could be recognized. Jung, on the contrary, only perceived the phenomenon of distraction in the chain of words that led to Bunau-Varilla. Diminished attention no longer allowed the association process to move exclusively on the level of significance but caused the process to slip down to the level of sound reactions. The association process did not, however, produce mere sound reactions which would be the case if the attention level had fallen to zero.63
62. C.G. JUNG, The Associations of Normal Subjects, C.W. II, § 451. Jung briefly referred to the same example in The Psychology of Dementia Praecox, C.W. III, § 110. 63. C.G. JUNG, The Associations of Normal Subjects, C.W. II, § 450.
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Nowhere in Jung’s exposition do we find the notion of repression which in Freud’s thinking was considered as the dynamic behind the entire process. The idea of the repressed content’s reappearance, which Freud had pointed out in the words ‘Botticelli’ and ‘Boltraffio’, was equally unknown to Jung. Jung even presented his analysis of ‘BunauVarilla’ as an explicit repudiation of Piéron. The latter had defended an opinion concerning chains of associations which was not so far removed from Freud’s ideas. Piéron claimed that an association which only became comprehensible if one presupposed a number of unconscious intermediary terms - as was the case in ‘Bunau-Varilla’ - had first of all to be interpreted as a consequence of the importance of the final term to the subject in question. The essential element was not to be found in the intermediary terms, which had fallen away and could only be retrieved by reconstruction. Rather, the essential element dwelled in the significance of the final term of the process, namely the word that consciously came to mind, in which one could always find a reference to something to which the subject was very partial.64 It was precisely the importance of the final term of the indirect association that was rejected by Jung, although he did make an exception for cases in which a strong emotional complex dominated the subject’s consciousness. In those instances, Piéron’s theory offered some attractive insights. Concerning the analysis of ‘Bunau-Varilla’, he opposed the opinion of Piéron which considered the final word as an expression of a special subjective interest. What occurred, according to Jung, was merely a condensation formed by the combination of several, very weak intermediary connections. This involved a "linguistic-motor automatism as often occurred in normal subjects".65 According to Jung, we observe the
64. "Consequently, what actually occurs in the process of mediated association? One idea acts upon the subconscious field and tends to evoke another element in the subconscious. This second element, in its action, brings along yet another element (i.e. lifts up another idea) which, because it is more interesting, is strongly attracted to the personal synthesis. Only this last element enters consciousness. What are the conditions necessary for the second element to appear to the exclusion of the first? The answer to this lies in the far greater interest of the second term for the ego, from among the other terms that could be evoked by a content of consciousness. The determination of one of the ideas is achieved by the proper attraction of the conscious or unconscious personal synthesis. In the first case, one is conscious of choosing. That is why Féré’s patient associated Joan of Arc with biscuits, without thinking of the intermediary terms (stake, stack of biscuits) because of the far greater interest of this last term." H. PIÉRON, L’association médiate. In: Revue Philosophique de France et de l’Etranger 28 (1903), p. 146-147 (own translation). 65. C.G. JUNG, The Associations of Normal Subjects C.W. II, § 451.
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usual association process as it operated when the ego made its influence felt only weakly or not at all.66 "The subconscious association-process takes place through similarities of image and sound; in fact all associations taking place in the subconscious, i.e., outside the range of attention, do so (with the exception of certain somnambulant processes)."
It could not be put any clearer. Jung completely opposed Piéron who had emphasized the influence of the ego in the indirect association and who, in that sense, was probably closer to Freud than Jung himself was. Jung viewed the unconscious as a somewhat cluttered domain beyond attention’s reach, even when qualifying hysterical phenomena. In those instances, he probably conceived that the secondary dissociated personality had become so powerful that it directed the association process in the same way the ego complex did in normal circumstances. A Remarkable Text Jung’s works in the period between 1902 and 1907 continuously focused on the association test and on the experimental approach which was its basis. This was indeed in sharp contrast to his earlier interest during his years as a student and in his dissertation On the Psychology and Pathology of So-Called Occult Phenomena. Had Jung truly become an unemotional scientist? A remarkable text dated in 1905 proved that Jung did not completely abandon the interest of his youth. This text dealt with ‘cryptomnesia’, namely the phenomenon of occasionally remembering something without recognizing it as a memory. The article returned to the analysis of Nietzsche’s so-called plagiarism in Zarathustra, which Jung had dealt with at the end of On the Psychology and Pathology of So-Called Occult Phenomena. Jung began by pointing out that emotionally charged representations possessed a certain autonomy by which they could force themselves upon the consciousness under the guise of a sudden insight. This could even occur when attention was turned to something else. He further offered several more general observations with regard to the unconscious as being the basis for the creativity of individual artists and groups. Creativity was
66. Id.
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hereby defined as the ‘search for new combinations’.67 In the process of seeking out new combinations, a differentiation occurred. Old elements were reorganized into a new whole. For the human psyche was not so rich that it could constantly rebuilt everything anew from its foundation up.68 "Our psyche is not so fabulously rich that it can build from scratch each time. Neither does nature. One can see from prisons, hospitals, and lunatic asylums at what enormous cost nature takes a little step forward; she builds laboriously on what has gone before."
Thus the unconscious was presented as the fertile ground of consciousness. It was considered to be the realm of unlimited possibilities, the domain of crazy games. Some of these possibilities were ingenious combinations, while others were useless or even monstrous attempts at combinations. That was why the genius and the mentally disturbed appeared to be so similar. Both surrendered to the rule of the unconscious.69 "... what kind of people seek these new combinations? They are the men of thought, who have finely-differentiated brains coupled with the sensitivity of a woman and the emotionality of a child. They are the slenderest, most delicate branches on the great tree of humanity: they bear the flower and the fruit. Many become brittle too soon, many break off. Differentiation creates in its progress the fit as well as the unfit; wits are mingled with nitwits - there are fools with genius and geniuses with follies, as Lombroso has remarked."
Jung’s concept has thus been clearly explained. The limitation imposed by consciousness on the range of possible associations hidden in the unconscious field, was to the ordinary person’s advantage. While the unconscious might bring forth something ingenious, it could also lead to insanity in many cases. Compared to the unconscious, Jung pointed to consciousness as being something secondary. He not only implied that the unconscious expressed itself with such power that consciousness was no longer able to control it - as Freud would confirm - but he also viewed consciousness as secondary, meaning that it was brought forth by the unconscious. He presented the unconscious as being foundational when he wrote:70
67. C.G. JUNG, Cryptomnesia, C.W. I, § 175 and 178. 68. Ibid., § 178. 69. Ibid., § 175. 70. Ibid., § 172.
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"It is to this unconscious that all those who do creative work must turn. All new ideas and combinations of ideas are premeditated by the unconscious."
In this context, Jung referred to the history of religions, to mass psychology and to the conscious life of "all those who ever hoped for or strived after something".71 Poignant examples of the changing combinations by which fantasy created new things from old elements could be found everywhere. Thus the Romantic view on nature continually made its influence felt throughout Jung’s thought. Such a view was permitted at the Burghölzli. Bleuler himself had written along the same lines about the kinship between the genius and the lunatic.72 For him however, the ultimate explanation for the distinction between the two was to be found in coincidence. Jung’s Understanding of Freud We must now turn our attention to a critical investigation of Jung’s understanding of Freud. As was mentioned above, Jung was only familiar with Freud’s Studies on Hysteria, The Interpretation of Dreams (or, more likely, On Dreams) and The Psychopathology of Everyday Life during the period which we are examining. The difference between their particular points of view becomes even more apparent when we place Freud’s main works known to Jung in the context of the former’s articles in which he further specified his own views. Jung only became acquainted with these articles in 1906, when he received the Collected Short Papers on the Theory of Neuroses from Freud. When one compares Freud’s concepts with Jung’s, it first of all becomes obvious that Jung continuously referred to Janet with regard to his conceptual framework for the understanding of hysteria. Freud, on the contrary, moved away from Janet early on. Although Freud’s and Breuer’s preliminary statement of 1892, was completely in line with Janet’s 71. Ibid., § 174. 72. "Genie und Geisteskrankheit haben das gemeinsam, dass ihre Ideenassoziationen von den durch die Erfahrung gegebenen Bahnen in erheblicher Weise abweichen. Bei unsern jetzigen Kenntnissen müssen wir es als Zufall bezeichnen, wenn bei solcher abnormen Kombinationen etwas Rechtes herauskommt. Dadurch erklärt sich die Seltenheit des Genies gegenüber der Geisteskrankheit." E. BLEULER, Versuch einer naturwissenschaftlichen Betrachtung der psychologischen Grundbegriffe, p. 161.
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thought, Freud quickly diverged from Janet. The concept of defence determined all his later work. Freud was apparently partial to opposing the notion that hysteria was merely a phenomenon of degeneration. In his article Heredity and the Aetiology of the Neuroses (1896), he explicitly attacked Janet on this point. According to Freud, hysteria was in essence the consequence of fending off an unbearable representation.73 Concerning this, two questions arose. First of all, why was a certain representation unbearable? Secondly, in what manner was this representation avoided and what was the result? During the period which we are now studying, Freud only attended to the last question. As a preliminary reply to the first question, he merely stated that a representation was unbearable since it referred to a previously unbearable situation which de facto simply shifted the problem. In the works The Neuro-Psychoses of Defence (1894) and Studies on Hysteria (1895), Freud outlined the detours by which a defence mechanism succeeded in neutralizing a painful representation. This was where the theory of the affect appeared. A painful representation carried with it an affective charge. This implied that its neutralizing consisted in either removing the affective charge or relocating it. Neutralization could occur because the affect was converted into a somatic condition. The consequence of this conversion was hysteria. Freud however, at this stage of his thinking, postulated that one had to possess a specific disposition toward conversion in order for it to occur.74 The affect could also be relocated on other, less unbearable representations causing obsessions or phobias.75 Using several case studies, Freud demonstrated in Studies on Hysteria how symptoms referred to original representations which were later neutralized. The method of ‘pressure’ was developed in order to trace the original representation and to thus restore the affect to its proper place. Only afterward could the affect be either vented or allowed to flow into the associative correctives of the thought process. Symptoms both hide and represent an emotionally charged representation or representation groups. It was Freud who made this discovery in his psychoanalytical practice. In order to explain this double nature, he
73. The theory of hypnotic conditions to which Breuer adhered, was not abandoned by Freud. Traumatic neurosis continued to exist as an autonomous entity although there were links to the psychosexual constitution. 74. S. FREUD, The Neuro-Psychoses of Defence, S.E. III, p. 50, G.W. I, p. 65. 75. Ibid., S.E. III, p. 51-52 , G.W. I, p. 65-66.
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developed the theory of the affect which, for him, was intrinsically connected to his experience of the defence mechanism. Along these lines, he wrote at the end of The Neuro-Psychoses of Defence:76 "I should like, finally, to dwell for a moment the working hypothesis which I have made use of in this exposition of the neuroses of defence. I refer to the concept that in mental functions something is to be distinguished - a quota of affect or sum of excitation - which possesses all the characteristics of a quantity (though we have no means of measuring it), which is capable of increase, diminution, displacement and discharge, and which is spread over the memory-traces of ideas somewhat as an electric charge is spread over the surface of a body."
Here we are confronted with a totally different approach to the affect than that of Jung or Bleuler. For them, the affect was a ‘generalized reaction of the organism’. They considered the affect to be a dynamic force connected to loose representations which enabled them to be combined with related representations. The affect created higher entities and, ultimately, the supreme unity which was known as the ‘ego’. Jung was following Ziehen’s line of thought, which had defined transference as an overflowing of a representation’s charge into related groups of representations. Jung also based himself on Bleuler who, in Suggestibilität, Affektivität, Paranoia, had clearly posed the affect as the fundamental dynamic of the human psyche’s unity. Jung developed his theory of affect in order to reconstruct how the psyche’s unity originated as the result of single representations. The affect was the binding force of the psychic organism. His approach differed greatly from Freud who had employed the notion of affect as an auxiliary representation in order to conceptualize the phenomenon of defence which consisted in the neutralization and isolation of certain representations within the whole of the psyche. The question with which Jung approached these phenomena hampered for a long time his understanding that the notion of defence was of central importance in Freud’s thinking. The concept of defence, especially in the form of a shift, was hard to integrate in Jung’s conceptual scheme. That the affect could detach itself from a representation was inconceivable to Jung. What, to the observer’s eye, seemed to appear as defence was in
76. Ibid., S.E. III, p. 60, C.W. I, p. 74.
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fact a deficiency, a lacking of the natural tendency toward an ever higher integration and organization of the numerous contents of the psyche. To speak of ‘defence’ and ‘repression’ was, for Jung, merely figurative language employed to indicate a deficiency as the cause of a representation’s exclusion from the total synthesis of the psychic field. It must be noted that Jung was initially convinced that he had understood Freud correctly, even when he interpreted the notions of ‘repression’ and ‘defence’ as ‘metaphors from the point of view of the conscious’.77 If Jung based himself only on the above-mentioned text from Studies on Hysteria which dealt with censorship,78 the misunderstanding could, to a degree, be comprehensible. Yet, from the time of the publication of Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams (1900) onward, censorship became such a central notion that it would have been difficult not to grasp its correct significance. In The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud built his argumentation on the fact that a dream could appear as a meaningful unity when interpreted as a symptom. Dreams appeared to be the hidden fulfilment of wishes. The reason that a wish had to be concealed was found in the tendency to ward off that particular wish. This explained the censorship applied to that wish and the distorted depiction of its content in the dream. Because of this distortion, Freud concluded that dreams were the products of two opposite psychic forces or systems. On the one hand, there was the tendency to express a wish through the dream. On the other hand, censorship impeded the blatant expression of that wish.79 Thus censorship appeared to be an organism which had the privilege to either allow or deny access to consciousness. Freud defined this consciousness in a very peculiar manner:80 "We see the process of a thing becoming conscious as a specific psychical act, distinct from and independent of the process of the formation of a presentation or idea; and we regard consciousness as a sense organ which perceives data that arise elsewhere."
The gap between Freud and Jung is very apparent here. Censorship could no longer be understood as the purposeful activity of the ego com77. C.G. JUNG, The Reaction Time Ratio in the Association Experiments, C.W. II, § 619, footnote. 78. S. FREUD, Studies on Hysteria, S.E. II, p. 269, G.W. I, p. 268-269. 79. S. FREUD, The Interpretation of Dreams, S.E. IV, p. 143-144, G.W. II/III, p. 149. 80. Ibid., S.E. IV, p. 114, G.W. II/III, p. 150.
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plex which suppressed useless and lower categories of associations. Censorship was to be considered as one of the two tendencies in the psyche which stood in opposition to each other. The directive role of consciousness was reduced to a merely observing role which could only add a second and more enhanced adjustment to the fundamental auto-regulation of the two conflicting systems according to the principle of displeasure.81 Freud and Jung also viewed the notion of the unconscious differently. For Jung, the unconscious consisted in the unbridled game of associations that came to the surface as soon as the curbing influence of the ego complex fell away. In Freud’s view, the unconscious was the consequence of repression. As early as in the writing of Studies on Hysteria, Freud stated that a repressed representation had originally been conscious since only a conscious representation could be unbearable to consciousness and cause a conflict.82 "Consciousness, plainly, does not know in advance when a incompatible idea is going to crop up. The incompatible idea, which, together with its concomitants, is later excluded and forms a separate psychical group, must originally have been in communication with the main stream of thought. Otherwise the conflict which led to their exclusion could not have taken place."
The fact that a representation became unconscious was thus the consequence of an act which solved the problem by neutralizing the affective charge of the unbearable representation. This was effected either by a shift or a conversion. Yet this was not a definitive solution to the problem. The symptom occupied the place of the original conflict, while the original conflict moved to the unconscious field where it sat bottled up with a non-diminishing intensity. Freud’s goal was to bring the unconscious back into consciousness. Only then could the conflict be realistically solved. For Freud, there definitely was an important distinction between the conscious and the unconscious. One aspect of this distinction was that the unconscious remained unspent and timelessly active. Therefore, in The Aetiology of Hysteria (1896), when Freud pointed out that seduction scenes stemming from childhood derived their activity from their unconscious character83, he was diametrically opposing Bleu-
81. Ibid., S.E. V, p. 615-616, G.W. II/III, p. 620-621. 82. S. FREUD, Studies on Hysteria, S.E. II, p. 167, G.W. I, p. 234-235. 83. S. FREUD, The Aetiology of Hysteria, S.E. III, p. 211, G.W. I, p. 448.
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ler’s and Jung’s positions which considered the conscious character as something concomitant. Freud explicitly remarked that philosophers had performed little preparatory work toward understanding precisely why the unconscious character guaranteed the continuous activity of old memories.84 Generally speaking, the difference between Freud and Jung evolved to this: Freud’s starting point was the fact that both the symptom and the dream referred to something unbearable in a concealed manner, which he interpreted as the consequence of a conflict between a desiring and a restraining body. The dream and symptom came into existence as a compromise. Their essential function was to capture the affective charge which was then withdrawn from the unbearable representation. Basically, it involved a defence mechanism which was conceived of as an energetic model of investment and divestment. Jung viewed things differently. Under normal conditions, the affective charge which was related to each representation, strove to communicate with other representations. This was where the unity of the psyche originated with the ego complex being its centre. However, when a certain group of representations was excessively emotionally charged, it became an independent unity. In other words, it became an ‘autonomous complex’ which competed with the ego complex. Hence, dissociation originated. Jung therefore offered the same presentation of affairs as Freud did in an article written in 1893 which dealt with hysterical paralysis: the affect immobilized the representation. Yet the notions of conflict, of repression and of the unconscious being characterized by indestructibility which distinguished it from consciousness, were not mentioned. The different ways in which Jung and Freud viewed the matter also determined their further questioning. Freud later wondered why the phenomena of defence and censorship were present which ultimately led him to the theme of prohibition and the Oedipus complex. Jung’s questioning, why an affective charge in some cases operated associatively while in other cases dissociatively, did not take him beyond the concept of the disposition. In Freud’s view, the unconscious was the consequence of a tendency to conceal. He further traced the inherent laws of this tendency. For Jung however, the unconscious proceeded from a decomposition of the ego, a regression into the non-organized. His further concern was to investigate how the ego emerged or re-emerged from this unconscious realm.
84. Ibid., S.E. III, p. 218-219, G.W. I, p. 456.
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From a superficial point of view, it might appear as if Freud and Jung shared the same opinion. Emotionally charged contents formed the core of neuropsychoses and the unconscious had its own language of vague comparisons and metaphors. Yet what made the distinction between Jung and Freud immediately clear was Jung’s attitude toward the phenomenon of displacement. While for Freud, the distinction between hysteria and obsessive-compulsive neurosis was essential, the problem was not touched upon by Jung.85 (Until 1906, Jung based himself exclusively on Freud’s Studies on Hysteria, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life and, perhaps only partly, The Interpretation of Dreams.) Yet in The Interpretation of Dreams (and in the shorter On Dreams), Freud frequently pointed to the importance of displacement. He recoiled from a merely symbolic interpretation. The dreamer had to articulate his associations and, in this way, one could verify how the dream combined both recent and indifferent material. According to Freud, a universal key to the interpretation of dreams did not exist.86 Only when the line of associations did not lead anywhere, did Freud allow some space for symbolic interpretation which he described as ‘typical dreams’.87 For Jung, on the contrary, dreams demonstrated that the unconscious was saturated with symbolism. It was the kingdom of inferior thought which operated with vague analogies. To conclude this confrontation between Jung and Freud, we must point out some themes in Freud’s work which Jung did not discuss at all. First of all, there was the connection which Freud made with childhood years and the important role played by sexuality at that time. He clearly emphasized this connection from Further Remarks on the NeuroPsychoses of Defence onward. Further, elements of the Oedipus complex could already be found in The Interpretation of Dreams. Finally, there was the complete psychological substructure which Freud developed in the seventh chapter of The Interpretation of Dreams. These three insights seem to have been of little or no importance to Jung. Concerning the theoretical substructure, Jung himself claimed that his theory of complexes was more far-reaching than Freud’s vision.88 Yet 85. Jung mentioned obsessive-compulsive neurosis one time in Psychoanalysis and Association Experiments. Yet the distinct difference between hysteria and obsessivecompulsive neurosis was not noted. 86. S. FREUD, The Interpretation of Dreams, S.E. IV, p. 99-105, G.W. II/III, p. 104-110. 87. Ibid., S.E. IV p. 241-276, G.W. II/III, p. 246-282. In the first edition of The Interpretation of Dreams, the section on symbolism in chapter 6 did not appear. 88. C.G. JUNG, The Associations of Normal Subjects, C.W. II, § 198.
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he did not offer any further explanation for this claim. Jung’s overlooking Freud’s view concerning sexuality was understandable. Although in Studies on Hysteria, sexuality was mentioned frequently and, in The Interpretation of Dreams, traces of Freud’s concept of infantile sexuality could already be found, the central place these notions would occupy in Freud’s thought would only appear more clearly in Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality and in the articles of the Collected Short Papers on the Theory of Neuroses. When Jung became aware of these concepts in 1906, he had difficulties accepting them. Yet he himself had written in The Associations of Normal Subjects that "the majority of complexes operative in the association experiment relate to direct or transposed sexuality."89 He had also noted that an "overwhelming number of the complexes we have discovered in our subjects are erotic. In view of the great part played by love and sexuality in human life, this is not so surprising."90 What Jung did not comprehend was that, for Freud, sexuality was more than the frequent, factual content of unconscious formations. Jung’s most outspoken stance with regard to this issue can be found in the foreword of The Psychology of Dementia Praecox. This was written in 1906, at the beginning of his collaboration with Freud. Jung situated himself with regard to Freud as follows:91 "Fairness to Freud, however, does not imply, as many fear, unqualified submission to a dogma; one can very well maintain an independent judgment. If I, for instance, acknowledge the complex mechanisms of dreams and hysteria, this does not mean that I attribute to the infantile sexual trauma the exclusive importance that Freud apparently does. Still less does it mean that I place sexuality so predominantly in the foreground, or that I grant it the psychological universality which Freud, it seems, postulates in view of the admittedly enormous role which sexuality plays in the psyche. As for Freud’s therapy, it is at best but one of several possible methods, and perhaps does not always offer in practice what one expects from it in theory. Nevertheless, all these things are the merest trifles compared with the psychological principles whose discovery is Freud’s greatest merit; and to them the critics pay far too little attention. He who wishes to be fair to Freud should take to heart the words of Erasmus: ‘Unumquemque move lapidem, omnia experire, nihil intentatum relinque’."
89. Ibid., § 198. 90. Ibid., § 381. 91. C.G. JUNG, The Psychology of Dementia Praecox, C.W. III, foreword.
Chapter IV
The Problem of Defining Psychosis Freud and Jung became personally acquainted not because of their mutual interest in religion but because they wanted to share their insights on the essence of schizophrenia. This should be kept in mind, especially when their respective attempts to understand the phenomenon of religion will be discussed below. The question will be raised of whether Freud and Jung were in fact discussing religion or whether they were dealing with the psychodynamic of schizophrenia, its distinction from neurosis, the underlying problem of psychological experience of identity, all of which as applied to the religious field. But before we can deal with that question, we should be aware of the precise delineation of the phenomenon at the time Freud and Jung were discussing it. ‘Dementia Praecox’ Until now, we have been dealing with hysteria or, to use a more contemporary and broader term, neurosis. These days, one tends to distinguish this form of psychopathology from the syndromes surrounding schizophrenia or, as it is frequently said in a more sloppy way, from psychosis. "Is this neurotic or psychotic?" is the classical diagnostic question of a therapist when attempting to evaluate the possibilities and risks of a particular therapy or analysis. Yet we must not forget that this distinction was precisely the result of a psychoanalytic theorizing, which will be observed here as it painstakingly came into being, often at the cost of tragic therapeutic attempts. It will also become obvious that more serious forms of pathology continued to be called ‘neurotic’ whereas contemporary therapists would be more quick to suggest "is this perhaps psychotic?"1
1. Contemporary therapists, for that matter, are often unfaithful to the original psychoanalytic insights which distinguished different pathological structures by means of the terms ‘neurosis’ and ‘psychosis’. It seems that the present-day distinction consists of a mere quantitative aspect: neurosis is the milder affliction, psychosis the more serious one. Yet this was not the original meaning of the distinction. Instances of either neurosis or psychosis can be mild or serious. The distinction consists simply in the fact that the disorders are of different sorts.
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Thus, in the discussion between Freud and Jung, which will be examined here, we must beware of an anachronistic reading. At that time, the notion of ‘schizophrenia’ did not yet exist. It would only find acceptance in 1911, thanks to Bleuler. He had closely observed the discussion between Freud and Jung and had recorded his own conclusions concerning the problem together with the new term in his well-known book Dementia Praecox or the Group of Schizophrenias (1911). Shortly thereafter, Freud and Jung as well put their conclusions into writing: Jung in his Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido (1911-1912) and Freud in his On Narcissism (1914). The problem confronted by both Jung and Freud was therefore not called ‘schizophrenia’ but ‘dementia praecox’. At that time, the range of the term and the necessary distinctions to be respected, were vividly discussed. ‘Dementia praecox’ was originally coined by the French psychiatrist Morel, who employed it for the first time in 1857 in order to designate a progressive delusion which very quickly and unrelentingly led towards insanity. Yet the term would only become generally accepted after the renowned German psychiatrist, E. Kraepelin, started using it in his new system of classification by which he intended to create some order in the continuously expanding and chaotic psychiatric field.2 He introduced the distinction between ‘dementia praecox’ and ‘paranoia’ in order to narrow the very broad concept of ‘paranoia’ which referred to all forms of pathology involving delusions. Kraepelin argued that, according to this definition, 70 to 80 percent of all psychiatric committals would be diagnosed as ‘paranoia’. Not much could be achieved with such a broad diagnostic category especially when prognosis was the central concern. This concern prompted Kraepelin to suggest the creation of a separate category for which he adopted Morel’s term ‘dementia praecox’. Alongside this category, one could still continue to use the term ‘paranoia’ for a completely different category, on the condition however that the scope of the term was strictly delineated. The characteristic development of dementia praecox consisted in the acute degeneration of the patient to a state in which all differentiated forms of thinking had disappeared.3 To Kraepelin, this seemed to be more important than the existence of the delusions as such. On the other 2. P. BERCHERIE, Les fondements de la clinique, Paris, Ornicar? & Seuil, 1980. 3. Literally: "Als dementia praecox bezeichnen wir die Entwicklung eines einfachen, mehr oder weniger hochgradigen geistigen Schwächezustandes unter den Erscheinungen einer acuten oder subacuten Geistesstörung." E. KRAEPELIN, Psychiatrie (5th ed.), Leipzig, 1896, p. 426.
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hand, he intended to limit the concept of paranoia to those patients who slowly developed a methodical and unshakable system of delusion while their ‘levelheadedness’ remained completely intact.4 This was most clearly illustrated in what he referred to as a ‘combinatorial’ form of paranoia. In such instances, a patient observed real facts but he interpreted them and combined them according to his own, unrelenting logic into a complete history in which everybody was attacking him. In Kraepelin’s view, the logic by which the paranoiac developed his system witnessed to the survival of the mind whereas in case of dementia praecox, it was precisely this mental capacity which was the first to be lost. Moreover, in instances of paranoia, delusions concerned only a certain area of the patient’s life so that, apart from this area, the patient could often still lead a satisfactory and independent life. Such was definitely not the case with dementia praecox.5 Yet Kraepelin was not as interested in psychology as in physiology. It was not so much a difference in content between the symptoms as a difference in the presupposed organic processes which led him to classify dementia praecox and paranoia as being so distinctly different. Paranoia developed slowly. The patient retained his sense of logic for a long time and, in many cases, Kraepelin claimed to have found traces of an unhealthy physical and psychic constitution.6 Dementia praecox, on the other hand, appeared suddenly, developed very quickly and led to insanity. What was involved in this case, according to Kraepelin, was an acute mental disturbance and not a constitutional deficiency. Although physiological research did not supply much support for his claim, he presupposed a suddenly activated disturbance of the metabolism which also had been found to be the cause of dementia paralytica.7 Kraepelin did not further develop the distinction between several types of delusions nor the psychology of mental disorders. However, he did illustrate these topics with a remarkable accuracy and a phenomenal talent for description. Thus, he prepared the way for further psychological investigation.
4. Ibid., p. 657 and p. 671. 5. Ibid., p. 699. The distinction between dementia praecox and a second type of paranoia, namely, the fantastical form, was a lot less clear. In the latter situation, the patient no longer built his system of delusion on actually observed facts. Rather, he allowed himself to be carried away into all sorts of hallucinations by an overpowering fantasy. The patient was the victim of cosmic powers, his body was mutilated, sucked empty and so forth. 6. Ibid., p. 696. 7. Ibid., p. 316-317.
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It is important to keep Kraepelin’s distinction between dementia praecox and paranoia in mind in order to clarify the misunderstanding between Freud and Jung in the beginning of their dialogue. While Jung, as a university scholar, made use of the distinction posited by Kraepelin almost from the start, Freud continued to use the older, much broader concept of paranoia. But before we deal with his matter, we should not overlook Bleuler’s influence. Bleuler’s Interpretation of Paranoia Bleuler’s Affektivität, Suggestibilität, Paranoia was published in 1906. Adopting Kraepelin’s view, Bleuler retained a clear distinction between paranoia and dementia praecox yet, contrary to Kraepelin, his interest was drawn to a psychological analysis of the symptoms. This however, did not imply that Bleuler doubted the role of the organism. He continued to postulate the organism as being influential but, as long as it remained an unknown factor, he focused his attention on the inner psychic consistency of the symptoms. Bleuler was not the first to take this approach. Specht had already attempted to explain paranoia on the basis of a disturbance within the emotional life which could lead to an uncontrolled growth of the ‘affect of suspicion’.8 In his analysis, Bleuler demonstrated that such an ‘affect of suspicion’ did not exist. This led him to the description of affectivity which we have already discussed. In the same manner, the second chapter of his book treated suggestibility as the collective dimension of affectivity. Only afterward did Bleuler turn to the actual exposition on paranoia. Of central importance to Bleuler’s exposition was the discovery that, when dealing with paranoia as opposed to dementia praecox, one ultimately could not posit a disturbance of affectivity. What for the outsider appeared as a disturbance of affectivity was only something secondary, namely, the consequence of delusions in which the outsider had no part.9 "Once one considers the delusions as being facts, the paranoiac appears to be quite normal as far as affectivity is concerned. What is most
8. It was impossible to get more information on this author, whose article appeared in a book which was impossible to get: ?. SPECHT, Ueber den pathologischen Affekt der chronischen Paranoia In: Festschrift der Universität Erlangen zur Feier des 80. Geburtstages seiner Königl. Hoheit des Prinzregenten von Bayern, Erlangen, Deichest, 1901. 9. "Ein Paranoiker scheint uns, wenn einmal seine Wahnideen gegeben sind, affektiv normal; was in dieser Beziehung an ihm auffällt, das erscheint als normale Reaktion auf seine (falschen) intellektuellen Vorstellungen." E. BLEULER, Affektivität, Suggestibilität, Paranoia, p. 89.
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conspicuous in our relations to him can be considered as a normal reaction to his (false) intellectual representations."
In this context, it became difficult to consider paranoia as the result of a disturbance of the affective life or of the dominance of the ‘affect of suspicion’. Bleuler, for that matter, did not even view suspicion as an affect. Moreover, paranoia could easily come into being without a phase of distrust. Further, exaggerated suspicion did not necessarily lead to paranoia.10 In a full-blown case of paranoia, the issue of trust or distrust was no longer of any importance. Whatever the paranoiac claimed, he claimed with an untouchable certainty and nothing would convince him otherwise. The precise content of the hallucination seemed to be of less importance to Bleuler. He considered the prominence of a persecution complex and megalomania to be evident since every person strove for something essential. When the obstacles which blocked the achievement of a certain value were due to facts and not to people, it necessarily led to passive resignation or to self destruction. Yet when the obstacle was another person, one could easily explain one’s failures by the generalization: "They’re all after me". Megalomania then became the counterbalance of the delusion of persecution. He who thought he was being persecuted must have esteemed himself to be important enough to be persecuted.11 Moreover, other themes could equally be influential, such as: eroticism, envy, concern for one’s own health, ...12 For Bleuler, the key for the understanding of the illness consisted in the observation that emotionally charged themes, namely, ‘complexes’, were fundamentally involved. When reviewing the genesis of paranoia, one could distinguish at the very origin an event to which the future paranoiac reacted in a highly emotional way. Viewed in itself, the reaction was not abnormal. A healthy person could also react very emotionally to certain events, namely by a generalized reaction of the complete organism involving the complete psychic field with all its memories and perceptions. Bleuler gave the example of a student who, in a panic before an exam, would be startled when he thought he recognized his professor in someone who passed by on the street.13 In the healthy person however, this polarization would have been corrected. In the case of the paranoiac,
10. Ibid., p. 83-84. 11. Ibid., p. 93. 12. Ibid., p. 129-135. 13. For this and other examples, see ibid., p. 121.
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such a correction did not take place. The affective reaction established itself permanently. It even expanded itself without the possibility of correction by other associations. This was how delusion originated. Everything was brought into relation with the emotionally charged complex.14 Bleuler thus ascribed the pathological aspect of paranoia to the fact that false interpretations became incorrectable and even advanced, contaminating their surroundings.15 What caused this was, for Bleuler, an unanswered question thus far. The incurable nature of the disease reminded him of an anatomically or physiologically irreversible injury. However, the fact that intellectual capabilities remained intact pointed to a mere functional disturbance which originated in a remarkable combination of a state of mind and an external event.16 When Bleuler expressed his expectations concerning the results of further investigations, he included the Freudian theory but in a nuanced manner:17 "We are convinced that further research will display, in most cases, initially a constitutional disposition and secondly, a string of Freudian predispositioning experiences. The constitutional disposition will explain why a particular person suffers from paranoia. The Freudian complex will tell us why precisely the critical experience evoked paranoia and, maybe also, why paranoia, at its origin, links up to that particular event."
Bleuler did not say anything more about this. It is not very clear what the term ‘Freudian complex’ implied here. Most likely, for Bleuler as for Jung, Freud was the man who had clearly described the role played by affectivity. In any case, affectivity, viewed as the pre-eminent dynamism that spurred a person into action, played the central role in Bleuler’s analysis of paranoia. According to Bleuler, affectivity as such was the last area that could be disturbed in a person since it was the most elementary function of the human psyche.18 In this context, it was inconceivable that partial
14. Ibid., p. 107-108. 15. Ibid., p. 141. 16. Ibid., p. 137. 17. "Wir sind im Gegenteil überzeugt, dass eine spätere Untersuchung für die meisten Fällen erstens noch eine konstitutionelle Disposition und zweitens noch eine Kette von Freudschen prädisponierenden Erlebnissen nachzuweisen haben wird. Die konstitutionelle Prädisposition wird erklären, warum gerade diese Person an Paranoia erkrankt, der Freud’sche Komplex soll uns sagen, warum gerade das kritische Erlebnis die Paranoia hervorgebracht hat, eventuell warum die entstehende Paranoia gerade an dieses Ereignis anknüpft." Ibid., p. 120. 18. "Die dominierende Stellung, die die Affektivität einnimmt, sowie ihre grosse
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functions, such as thinking and observing, could remain intact when affectivity was disturbed. This explained why it was so important for Bleuler to demonstrate that the paranoiac, who continued to have disposal of an excellent intellect, was in fact not emotionally disturbed but was reacting to hallucinations with normal emotionality. Along the same line, Bleuler also pointed out the fact that, concerning degenerating brain processes, one often incorrectly spoke of a loss of affectivity. If one observed the process very closely, one could discover that what actually occurred was a regression of the cognitive and intellectual functions which implied that a patient did not account for certain facts or situations. The apparent disturbance of affectivity was the consequence of this process. If one succeeded in making the patient realize what was happening, the affective reaction would follow immediately and in an exaggerated manner.19 Nevertheless, Bleuler’s exposition did raise some questions. Sometimes it seemed as if the opinion that affectivity could not be disturbed acted as an a priori. The view that the pathological aspect of paranoia consisted only in the fact that an initially normal affective reaction was maintained so that delusions, which became uncorrectable, came into being, could hardly be reconciled with the position that affectivity qua tale was not disturbed. Whatever the case, Bleuler had to admit that he found himself confronted with one enigma: dementia praecox. The decay of emotional life was its foremost symptom yet it frequently became clear that the intellect was not affected to the same extent.20 However, when one called to mind the physiological disturbance of the brain, one arrived at the following paradox. The disturbance involved had to be very delicate since the intellect was not damaged. At the same time, it must have been some sort of disorder which upset the most elementary function, namely affectivity.21 Bleuler did not go any further with this problem. He suspected that the affects did not merely fall away but continued to be active in a con-
Unabhängigkeit von den intellektuellen Vorgänge zeigt sich namentlich in der Pathologie. Sie erscheint daselbst geradezu als eine elementare Eigenschaft der Psyche, die ganze Krankheitsbilder beherrscht, die den Intellekt nach ihrem Gutdüncken ummodelt und durch die krankhaften Vorgänge in ihrem Wesen am wenigstens geschädigt wird. Bei den schwersten Hirnkrankheiten gehen die Gefühle nicht zu Grunde: im Gegenteil beeinflussen sie daselbst die mehr geschädigten intellektuellen Prozesse noch stärker als bei Gesunden." Ibid., p. 38. 19. Ibid., p. 38. 20. Ibid., p. 43-44. 21. Ibid., p. 32.
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cealed manner. Related to this, he expressed his hope that "the investigations of colleague Jung would achieve a perspective on the mechanisms by which affects are withdrawn from observation."22 For that matter, every time Bleuler mentioned dementia praecox, he expressed the hope that Jung’s investigations on this topic would bear fruitful results. Thus he wrote:23 "In the instance of dementia praecox, the affective events are modified into hallucinations, delusions and stereotypes by means of a well concealed symbolism. The original affect as such can no longer be pointed out or, to say the least, it becomes very rudimentary (see the research of Jung and Riklin)".
Nevertheless, Bleuler continued to employ the distinction between dementia praecox and paranoia. Moreover, he began his book with Kraepelin’s definition and stated that he "would only use the term ‘paranoia’ in that sense."24 Yet, he did not refer to the speed of the process or the degree of contamination of the intellect as an argument for the existence of two different organic processes at the basis of the two illnesses. His criterion was based on affectivity which was clearly active in paranoia and which seemed to be lacking in dementia praecox. This distinction, however, became very precarious due to the expectation that:25 "the private docent Dr. Jung will shortly demonstrate that delusions and many other psychic symptoms - maybe I should even say all - active in dementia praecox, can be restored to the same operations of the emotionally charged complexes."
Jung’s Book on Dementia Praecox Jung himself described his book The Psychology of Dementia Praecox as an attempt to extend the application of Freud’s theory of neurosis to the field of dementia praecox. The book was written with a dual purpose in mind. First of all, following in Bleuler’s footsteps, Jung intended 22. Ibid., p. 44. 23. "Bei dementia praecox werden affektive Ereignisse in Halluzinationen, Wahnideen, Stereotypien, alles meist mit einer ganz versteckten Symbolik, umgewandelt, während der ursprüngliche Affekt als solcher nicht mehr nachzuweisen oder rudimentär wird (Vide die Arbeiten von Jung und Riklin. Journal für Psychologie und Neurologie, 1904 ff.)." Ibid., p. 27. 24. Ibid., p. 74. 25. "Wie Herr Privatdozent Dr. Jung nächtens zeigen wird, lassen sich die Wahnideen und viele andere psychische Einzelsymptomen - vielleicht dürfte ich sagen alle - bei der dementia praecox auf die gleichen Wirkungen affektbetonten Komplexe zurückführen." Ibid., p. 108.
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to develop a conceptual model that would include a symptomatology which, at first sight, appeared to accommodate a contradiction. By this contradiction, he was referring to the obvious disturbance of affectivity, whereas other partial psychic functions, such as thinking and observing, appeared not to be affected to the same extent by the degeneration of the central function. Secondly, Jung explicitly agreed with Freud’s thought and wished to demonstrate that in the symptoms of dementia praecox, just as in those of neurosis, conceptual references to certain affective contents could be discovered. Historically, the book was of great importance. It was a first attempt at expanding Freudian thought outside of the field of neurosis. At the same time, it signalled the first expression of partiality to Freud from within the academic world. Yet Jung still remained dependent on Bleuler’s conceptual scheme, which resulted in quite a distortion of Freud’s insights. The core of the work consisted in an elaborate paralleling of the symptoms of hysteria and the symptoms of dementia praecox.26 The affective aloofness of a person suffering from dementia praecox was juxtaposed to the belle indifférence of the hysterical patient. Jung pointed out that, in both cases, explosive ruptures of emotions could occur together with characterizing peculiarities such as extravagance, preciosity and social pretention. On the intellectual level, the narrowing of the field of consciousness which typified par excellence the hysteric - once again, Jung referred to Janet - found its parallels in dementia praecox. Hallucinations occurred in both illnesses and, moreover, in Jung’s view, they were preformatted mechanisms which could be provoked by the most diverse causes.27 At this point, Jung felt that he was almost going too far. He repeatedly stated that he knew perfectly well that hysteria and dementia praecox were two very different disorders. Yet ultimately, he presented the issue in such a way that, at least at the root of both disorders, there was an intimate connection between them. Only a gradual difference was actually involved. In the instance of dementia praecox, the disorder would have more serious effects and lead to further degeneration than in hysteria. Jung easily relied on the older terminology ‘degenerative hysteric psychosis".28 Jung then turned his attention to the content of the symptoms and pointed to the fact that, in cases of dementia praecox as well as in in-
26. C.G. JUNG, The Psychology of Dementia Praecox, C.W. III, § 143-197. 27. Ibid., § 166. 28. Ibid., § 141.
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stances of hysteria, one could find references to autonomous affective complexes. Furthermore, in detailed investigations, it had become clear that, in dementia praecox, affectivity did not merely disappear.29 This was also proven by Jung’s association test. Although the patient appeared to be answering questions in a very unemotional and apathetic way, the results of the test continuously revealed the interference of an emotionally charged complex. Indifferent reactions such as ‘table-chair’ were an exception to the rule. Abnormal reaction times, perseveration, reactions that failed to appear, faults in the reproduction test were always obtained. Dementia praecox displayed nothing of the syndrome of dementia. The tendency to give definitions which typified oligophreny did not occur here. As was the case with the critical reactions of healthy and hysterical subjects, a careful analysis revealed a connection between the reaction and the hidden complex. For example, Jung’s patient Babette, to whom he devoted an elaborate study in the book, took a very long time to react to the stimulus word ‘pupil’ and then finally uttered "now you can write, Socrates". A direct inquiry into the significance of the statement proved futile. The patient answered the questions with various incomprehensible expressions, interspersed with neologisms. When she was asked to give all that came to mind upon hearing the stimulus word, the following result was obtained: "Socrates; pupil - books - wisdom - modesty - no words to express this wisdom - is the highest ’grundpostament’ - his teachings - he had to die because of evil people - was falsely accused - the highest highness - selfcontentment - Socrates is all of this - the most subtle world of scholars do not cut any threads - I was the best seamstress - the subtle professorship - is double - 25 francs - that is the highest - prison - slandered by angry people - ignorance - cruelty - excessiveness - brutality."30
This clarified the meaning of the associations to an extent. The patient, who used to be a seamstress, compared herself to Socrates. Just as Socrates, she had reached perfection in her profession. She earned up to twenty-five francs. Nevertheless, like Socrates, she was unjustly deprived of her freedom. In an analogous manner, Jung analyzed other statements such as: "I am the irreplaceable double-polytechnical"31, "I
29. C.G. JUNG, Psychophysical Investigations with the Galvanometer and Pneumograph in Normal and Insane Individuals, C.W. II, § 1066. 30. C.G. JUNG, The Psychology of Dementia Praecox, C.W. III, § 216. 31. Ibid., § 219.
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suffer in a hieroglyphical way"32, "I arrange two bazaars"33. From this, he concluded that, in dementia praecox as in hysteria, the core of the disorder consisted in the affective complex. The respective developments were as follows. In the case of hysteria, the affective complex caused a dissociation of the psyche. Following a moment of emotion, which caused the ego complex to withdraw and by which the pathogenic complex covered the complete psychic field, the latter complex was separated as far as possible from the normal functions of the psyche so that the patient remained capable of leading a more or less normal life. Or, to use strictly Jungian terminology, the ego complex and the pathogenic complex were separated at least as far as the superficial layers of consciousness were concerned. In the case of dementia praecox, the pathogenic complex continued to cover the entire psychic field as in the case of a new emotion. No dissociation took place and the ego complex was not restored to its rightful state. Consequently, every mechanism which was observable to a limited degree in hysteria and in dreams, was permanently in operation. The result was an uncontrolled game of associations following the principles of metaphors and sound connections. Since the ego complex could no longer interfere with the association process, the patient regressed to the realm of noncontrolled connections. A person suffering from dementia praecox was trapped in a dream from which he or she could not wake up. While hysteria was thus characterized by dissociation, dementia praecox was marked by a permanent repressing of the ego complex. Hysteria had the advantage of a compromise. On the one hand, a continuous inferiority complex was evoked but, on the other hand, there was still room for limited adaptation to reality. With dementia praecox however, the complex continued to exist unchanged. This led to a profound disturbance of the ego complex and its functions.34 In a certain sense, dementia praecox provided a view of the unconscious à l’état pur, a psyche that regressed to its most primitive mode of operating. Viewed in this context, a number of symptoms of dementia praecox could be explained. The cooling of emotional contacts was a repercussion of the bond between affectivity and the autonomous complex.35 The wandering of all thoughts to trivial, accidental matters, which could reach the point of mere enumeration of objects surrounding the patient, was a
32. Ibid., § 260. 33. Ibid., § 293. 34. Ibid., § 141. 35. Ibid., § 174.
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consequence of the lack of associations outside of the complex’s field.36 Stereotypes and motoric automatisms followed in the wake of the ossification of the association process. The fixation on the autonomous complex put the patient into a condition which psychologically did not differ from decerebration. Brain physiology had demonstrated that decerebration reduced higher animals to a kind of reflex mechanism.37 In order to explain why dementia praecox rather than hysteria developed on the basis of an emotionally charged complex, Jung proposed the hypothesis of poisoning by a ‘toxin’, a hypothetical substance which permanently fixated the affect in the brain.38 The question can be raised to what extent Jung integrated Freudian thought in his exposition on these issues. Jung eagerly and elaborately referred to Freud’s analysis of a case of dementia praecox which he had presented in his The Neuro-Psychoses of Defence.39 Moreover, at the end of his book, Jung analyzed a similar case. It is worthwhile to investigate the differences between both approaches. Freud’s analysis dealt with a woman who complained that she was being watched while she was undressing and who suffered from hallucinations of exposed genitalia. Through analysis, Freud discovered an episode in the patient’s childhood where she was not ashamed of showing herself naked to her brother. A defence against these memories led to the hallucinations in which Freud emphasized the double significance of defence and satisfaction. The patient defended herself against the infantile sexual inclination to expose herself by hallucinating that others now succeeded in seeing her or in exposing themselves to her. At the same time, these hallucinations signified a form of satisfaction since seeing genitalia was still involved. Thus according to Freud’s analysis, the fact that the hallucination was a defence mechanism was of central importance. This also implied that the hallucination was characterized by compromise, which was typical of every defence mechanism. Freud further pointed out that a very specific mechanism was at stake, namely projection. In Freud’s view, paranoid hallucination was the last of the three ‘defence neuropsychoses’ which, by
36. Ibid., § 177-178. 37. Ibid., § 193. 38. Ibid., § 76 and 142. 39. Freud spoke of ‘chronic paranoia’ while Jung pointed out that in fact, a paranoid form of dementia praecox (‘dementia paranoides’) was involved. Freud admitted this in a footnote in 1924. See ibid., § 61-69.
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means of their respective mechanisms, attempted to fend off memories of infantile sexual experiences: hysteria employed conversion; obsessional neurosis used the mechanism of substitution; and paranoid hallucination made use of projection.40 In Jung’s study, this notion of defence, the analysis of the peculiarity of the mechanisms involved and the reference to sexual scenes from childhood were not included. It is understandable that Jung’s attention was not especially attracted to the phenomenon of hallucination. As was mentioned above, Jung did not consider delusion as an essential - and certainly not a differentiating - element as compared to other nosographical elements.41 Nevertheless, one cannot help but be very surprised when Jung, after making an extensive reference to Freud’s analysis, wrote that:42 "... it is to Freud’s merit that he, when dealing with paranoid dementia praecox, has demonstrated the principle of conversion (the repressing and the mediated resurging of complexes) for the first time."
Freud’s distinction between conversion as the specific mechanism of hysteria and projection as the specific mechanism of paranoia, apparently escaped Jung. He did not yet comprehend that Freud’s attention was drawn to an accurate analysis of the various defence mechanisms since, based on the results, he intended to distinguish specific psychoneuroses. From reading Freud, Jung had become acquainted with the general notion that symptoms had a concealed meaning. Using his association test and further analysis, he attempted to prove that the apparently nonsensical statements of his schizophrenic patient referred to well-defined affective issues. Moreover, Jung classified these affective issues, rather strangely, as being juxtaposed: wish fulfilment, feelings of injury and the sexual complex. The notion that the disorder was in essence a mechanism of repression and gratification was not discussed. On the contrary, wish fulfilment did not function as a mechanism in Jung’s thinking but rather as the content of a ‘complex’. Along with a complex involving sexual themes, there were also complexes of wishes and of feelings of injury. The peculiar connections and the symbolic expressions of delusion were explained by Jung as being purely the consequence of the disappearance of the ego complex which had been deprived of its power by another all-
40. S. FREUD, Further Remarks on the Neuro-Psychoses of Defence, S.E. III, 157-186, G.W. I, 377-403. We should add that very soon afterwards, Freud abandoned the notion that projection was a defence mechanism. We will later investigate for what reasons he did this. 41. C.G. JUNG, The Psychology of Dementia Praecox, C.W. III, § 180. 42. Ibid., § 76.
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powerful and autonomous complex. Thus, the association process regressed into inferior and ambiguous thinking. We can thus conclude that Bleuler, more than Freud, appeared in the background of Jung’s work. Yet the question which Bleuler had posed concerning the distinction between paranoia and dementia praecox was, surprisingly enough, completely overlooked by Jung. For the reader, it seemed as if Jung’s framework of interpretation closely approached Bleuler’s interpretation of paranoia. But the fact that Jung employed an instance of dementia paranoides (a paranoia-like form of dementia praecox) as an example of dementia praecox was certainly not in keeping with the established sharp distinction between both disorders. Nevertheless, the problem was never explicitly dealt with by Jung. Conclusion Without being disavowed, Kraepelin’s organic approach which had led him to posit a sharp distinction between dementia praecox and paranoia, had to give way to the psychological approach in Bleuler’s and Jung’s work. The distinction between both disorders was kept while, from the psychological point of view, the problem was not thematized. What stood out in both Bleuler’s and Jung’s research was the method by which they performed the psychological analysis of the symptoms. Of central importance was the constitution of the subject and here, affectivity was the key word. The notion that affectivity was the deepest, constitutive dimension of psychic life was encountered time and again in Bleuler’s Affektivität, Suggestibilität, Paranoia. Jung’s The Psychology of Dementia Praecox defined the essence of this disorder as being an immobilization of the entire psyche due to the affect of a certain complex, which robbed the ego complex of its constellating power. The last word was always given to the affect which was conceived as a synthetic power uniting loose representations into higher unities. At the end of the previous chapter, we already pointed out that such a view was in keeping with the Romantic notion of the unconscious and was difficult to harmonize with the newly emerging Freudian opinion. Concerning dementia praecox, it once again became clear how Jung tried to integrate Freudian themes into his own approach. Thanks to Freud, Jung came to understand that, starting from the apparently nonsensical statements of patients, one could recover a connection with earlier emotional events by continuously using detours. Jung nevertheless continued to explain this phenomenon by referring to a constitutional deficiency.
Chapter V
Collaboration in the Investigation of Psychosis (1906-1909)
Two periods of collaboration between Freud and Jung can be distinguished. The first period, from the end of 1906 until their trip to America in September 1909, was dominated by the problem of the distinction between neurosis and psychosis. The second period of collaboration began after the trip to America. Both authors then directed their attention to the study of mythology and religion in search of a central complex in the human psyche. It was this research which eventually led to the break in their relationship and to Jung’s resignation as chairman of the International Psychoanalytic Association on 20th April 1914. It is mainly the correspondence between Freud and Jung during the first period of their collaboration which sheds light on the respective ways in which they attempted to formulate the problem of psychosis. The publications of both men at that time revealed no sign of this interest. Freud’s best known publications from this period were his analyses of ‘Little Hans’1 and of the ‘Ratman’.2 The latter, however, was hardly mentioned in his correspondence with Jung. Rather, the problem of dementia praecox occupied a central position. Freud himself said that he had little experience with dementia praecox until then. Jung, on the other hand, had been continually confronted with this condition while at the Burghölzli.
1. S. FREUD, Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-Year-Old Boy, G.W. VII, 241-377, S.E. X, 1147. 2. S. FREUD, Notes upon a Case of Obsessional Neurosis, G.W. VII, 379-463, S.E. X, 151249.
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Mutual Contact A Short History The publication of the correspondence between Jung and Freud enables us to closely follow the evolution of both thinkers during their collaboration. This correspondence opened with a letter from Freud, dated 11 April 1906, thanking Jung for having sent him a copy of his recently published Diagnostic Association Studies. The last article in that collection, Psychoanalysis and Association Experiments, should have been of particular interest to Freud yet he offered Jung no comment on it. The letter was simply an expression of gratitude for the gift of the book and hence, there was no reply from Jung. It was only later, on October 5th 1906, after Freud had sent him a copy of his Collected Short Papers on the Theory of Neuroses, that Jung made a reply. Nonetheless, Freud’s first letter initiated more than a merely superficial contact. This can be clearly seen in a lecture Freud delivered in June 1906, where he commended Jung’s association test.3 Jung, in turn, wrote a paper entitled Freud’s Theory of Hysteria, in response to Aschaffenburg’s fierce attack on Freud at the Baden-Baden Congress in May 1906.4 This paper was especially important since it was the first public defence of Freud from within the academic world. However, it also illustrated Jung’s attitude towards Freud. Jung reproached Aschaffenburg for exclusively concentrating on the fact that Freud discussed sexuality so often and for summarily dismissing without further investigation the rest of Freud’s theories which were far more important. In Jung’s opinion, Freud’s greatest merit lay in his having indicated the influence of unconscious formations on consciousness. Concerning Freud’s view that all hysteria was reducible to sexuality, Jung replied that Freud did not claim to have investigated all cases of hysteria and that he might have presented things rather one-sidedly in this respect. Jung considered that Freud would not have objected to modifying his statement as follows: "An indefinitely large number of cases of hysteria derive from sexual roots".5
3. S. FREUD, Psychoanalysis and the Establishment of Facts in Legal Proceedings, S.E. IX, 97-114, G.W. VII, 1-15. 4. E. JONES, Sigmund Freud. Life and Work, New York, Basic Books, 3 vol., 1953-1957, vol. II, p. 124. 5. C.G. JUNG, Freud’s Theory of Hysteria, C.W. IV, § 6-8.
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Even before Jung published this paper, Freud has sent him the copy of the Collected Short Papers on the Theory of Neuroses.6 In writing to thank Freud, Jung mentioned that he had conducted lively correspondence with Aschaffenburg concerning Freud’s theory and that he had adopted a view with which Freud might not agree entirely. He wrote:7 "What I can appreciate, and what has helped us here in our psychopathological work, are your psychological views, whereas I am still pretty far from understanding the therapy and the genesis of hysteria because our material on hysteria is rather meagre. That is to say your therapy seems to me to depend not merely on the affects released by abreaction but also on certain personal rapports, and it seems to me that though the genesis of hysteria is predominantly, it is not exclusively, sexual. I take the same view of your sexual theory. Harping exclusively on these delicate theoretical questions, Aschaffenburg forgets the essential thing: your psychology, from which psychiatry will one day be sure to reap inexhaustible rewards."
In the same letter, Jung told Freud about his book, The Psychology of Dementia Praecox, which was then being printed. This marked the definite beginning of their correspondence. In his reply, Freud expressed his hope that Jung, like himself, would gradually discover the role of sexuality.8 In the meantime, Jung’s article, Association, Dream and Hysterical Symptom, had appeared and he sent a copy to Freud.9 Freud was pleased that the sexual theme emerged so clearly in this article and that the problem of transference was outlined, a problem with which Freud was particularly concerned at that time.10 In December 1906, Jung’s The Psychology of Dementia Praecox 11 was published and a copy was immediately sent to Freud. Unfortunately, the letter to Jung in which Freud discussed this book has been lost. He must have offered considerable criticism for Jung’s next letter revealed his disappointment.12 Among other things, Freud must have pointed out some weak points in one of Jung’s dream interpretations.13 Jung replied
6. As is apparent from 6J and 7J. 7. 2J. 8. 3F. 9. 4J. 10. 5F. 11. Dated 1907. 12. 9J. 13. C.G. JUNG, The Psychology of Dementia Praecox, C.W. III, § 123-133.
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that he was well aware of the fact that the dream was insufficiently analyzed, adding that since the dream was his own, he had chosen not to reveal himself completely. More important was Jung’s reply to the remark by Freud concerning the concept of ‘indistinctness’ which Jung employed to explain dream symbolism. According to Jung, one should not read too much into this concept. He had accepted it because it was compatible with Wundt’s psychology and because it provided a visual image accessible to ordinary human understanding. In Jung’s view, the concept merely explained the fact that certain dream images could be displaced but offered neither the cause of nor the reason for this displacement. Instead of ‘indistinct’ ideas, one could just as easily speak of ideas ‘poor in association’.14 This concept of indistinctness obviously touched upon the problem of the essential difference between Freud’s view of the unconscious and that of Jung. In his reply, Freud wrote that in employing the concept of ‘indistinctness’, Jung had omitted a considerable amount of dream work. Nevertheless, he considered it too difficult to write down all he had to say on this matter and he invited Jung to visit him in Vienna.15 Another item which Freud hoped to discuss with Jung was the problem of sexuality, a problem which Jung’s hypothesis of toxins had overlooked. Jung gladly accepted the invitation to visit Vienna and went there with his wife and Ludwig Binswanger, who was then working under Jung’s supervision. He met with Freud on Sunday, 3 March, 1907.16 Most of the day was spent discussing infantile sexuality. This was one aspect of the Freudian theory which Jung had previously ignored and which he still found difficult to accept. Freud’s Thought Seen in a New Light In 1906, it was quite a revelation for Jung to read Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, Collected Short Papers on the Theory of Neuroses and Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria. In the first place, these articles, written in the period between the publication of Studies on Hysteria and The Interpretation of Dreams, revealed a very different side
14. 9J. 15. "A great deal might be said about the ‘indistinctness’ which supposedly makes much of the usual dream work superfluous; too much for a letter. Perhaps you will be coming to Vienna before you go to America (it’s nearer). It would give me the greatest pleasure to spend a few hours discussing these matters with you." 11F. 16. Not on 18 or 27 February as recorded by Jones. See the biographical note between 16J and 17J in The Freud/Jung Letters.
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of Freud’s thought than Jung had thus far been acquainted with. It was not the theory of the affect but rather that of repression which was now most important and, in the aetiology of neuroses, sexuality was accorded a decisive role. As has been mentioned above, this was not in keeping with Jung’s previous understanding of Freud’s thought. While Jung read in the Collected Short Papers on the Theory of Neuroses that Freud had once considered the root of all neuroses to be a real sexual trauma which had occurred during infancy, accompanied by an actual irritation of the genitals17, he also discovered that Freud had abandoned this theory, replacing the sexual trauma with infantile sexuality.18 The theme of infantile sexuality was central to the discussions in Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria and in Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, both of which were published in 1905. Without going into too much detail, we shall briefly sketch this turning point in Freud’s thought. Prior to 1905, Freud had considered the root of hysteria to have been an actual seduction by an adult. Resistance shown by patients when narrating the event had convinced Freud that this was indeed the case. In this context, there was no real mention of infantile sexuality. The child had merely suffered the consequences of an adult’s interference which had introduced sexuality into the child’s life.19 It was the sexuality of the adult which was originally predominant in Freud’s thought. This was also apparent in the fact that Freud had distinguished anxiety neurosis (a nosographical entity) from neurasthenia as the direct consequence of an actual unfulfilled sexuality.20 It was quite some time before Freud began to suspect the reality of these sexual traumas. Eventually however, he came to admit that he was really dealing with fantasies which, after being transformed during puberty, reverted back to the remembrance of sexual interests and experiences from the patient’s infancy. This implied the existence of infantile 17. S. FREUD, Further Remarks on the Neuro-Psychoses of Defence S.E. III, 159-185, G.W. I, 377-403; The Aetiology of Hysteria, S.E. III, 187-221, G.W. I, 423-459. 18. S. FREUD, My views on the Part played by Sexuality in the Aetiology of the Neuroses, S.E. VII, 269-279, G.W. V, 147-159. 19. Freud originally interpreted hysteria as the consequence of a sexual aggression which had been passively endured. Obsessional neurosis, on the other hand, arose from a precocious sexual event, though even in this case, Freud sought the ultimate cause in the adult who had seduced the child into premature sexual activity. See S. FREUD, Heredity and the Aetiology of the Neuroses, S.E. III, p. 156, G.W. I, p. 421. 20. S. FREUD, On the Grounds for Detaching a Particular Syndrome from Neurasthenia under the Prescription ‘Anxiety Neurosis’, S.E. III, 85-115, G.W. I, 313-342.
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sexuality. Freud also discovered that the unconscious fantasies of neurotics were mostly concerned with perverse forms of sexuality. This discovery provided him with an insight into the characteristics of infantile sexuality. In Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, Freud made a reconstruction of infantile sexuality based on the analysis of an adult. The scheme is well known. The first section of the work dealt with a description of generally known sexual perversions. Freud intended to demonstrate that these perversions essentially consisted in the predominance of a specific erotic component which appeared to be either isolated or dominant. In normal sexuality, on the other hand, this component was either wholly integrated or largely inhibited by feelings of repulsion or shame. Sexuality thus appeared to be a complex combination of a considerable number of separate erotic components which only achieved unity by means of a structuring process. Whenever this structuring process was lacking, the perversions which occurred clearly demonstrated the existence of isolated, partial instincts. In the second section, Freud described the sexuality of a child, which still remained in this polymorphous, perverse stage in which the erotogenic zones separately strived for satisfaction. At this point, the child was not directed to any external object. He was therefore autoerotic. What occurred, however, was that the erotogenic zones gradually united under the primacy of the genital zone and sexuality abandoned autoeroticism in order to look for an object in the opposite sex. This particular process was the theme of the third section of Freud’s work which dealt with the ‘transformation of puberty’. Freud called the process by which the various erotogenic zones were united under the primacy of the genital zone sublimation. By this, he meant that extremely strong impulses, originating from a particular zone, were transmitted to another area. In the process, these impulses were checked by feelings of repulsion or shame. According to Freud, this led not only to a decrease of energy in the erotogenic zones, which were forced to submit to the primacy of the genital zone, but also to a general recession of sexuality as such. The child entered into the period of latency, a necessary phase during which he might acquire culture by means of sublimated energy. It should be noted, however, that this theory of sublimation was still quite rudimentary, especially in the 1905 edition of Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. In light of the ideas which Jung later developed concerning this matter, there was a rather striking passage where Freud stated that the sublimation process, whereby the sexual forces were structured, was set in motion in a way that was organic and
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determined by hereditary factors. Furthermore, it was said that education only acted to support this process.21 Whatever the precise origin of this process, Freud’s claim was that normal sexual orientation only came about if the erotogenic zones were structured by the sublimation process. When this did not take place, perversion occurred. There was, however, a third possibility, namely that the separate erotic components were not sublimated but were violently repressed. Hence, the origin of neurosis which, in a certain sense, could be defined as the negative side of perversion. While perversion gave free reign to all partial instincts arising from the erotogenic zones, neurosis violently repressed these instincts. The result was that the perversions were relegated to the unconscious. The normal course of sublimation was thus situated between neurosis and perversion.22 What we do not find in Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality is the representation of the Oedipus complex in its classic form. Freud certainly pointed out that the child’s first love was for the mother but there was no mention here of the father’s role nor of the process of identification. It was particularly during he period of collaboration with Jung that Freud further investigated these problems. Concerning Dementia Praecox. From Jung’s Visit to Vienna until Freud’s visit to Zurich (March 1907 - September 1908) Dementia Praecox and Autoeroticism While Jung was in Vienna, Freud had explained to him the meaning of the notion ‘libido’ in broad terms. Furthermore, he had suggested to Jung that dementia praecox was essentially a return to autoeroticism. This interview had greatly puzzled Jung. Not only did he find it difficult to accept Freud’s theoretical insights but a number of personal problems had also arisen, problems which were to characterize his subsequent relationship with Freud. In his correspondence, Jung repeatedly mentioned this religious father-son relation with Freud with its unmistakable erotic undertones.23 It was almost a month after the interview before Jung was able to resume his correspondence with Freud. He wrote that he had tested
21. S. FREUD, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, S.E. VII, p. 177-178, G.W. V, p. 78. 22. S. FREUD, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, S.E. VII, p. 171-172, G.W. V, p. 7172. 23. See especially 49J and 50J.
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Freud’s ideas in a number of cases and that he had to admit that autoeroticism was indeed an obvious characteristic of dementia praecox.24 This was discussed at some length in their letters prior to June 1907. Jung presented a considerable amount of case material to which Freud applied his insights. Three of Freud’s letters are of particular importance in this respect since, for the first time, Freud attempted to draft a model for the dementia praecox-paranoia group. He began spontaneously from the presentation of the psychic apparatus which he had already given in the seventh chapter of The Interpretation of Dreams. There was, however, no explicit reference to this source which probably explains why Jung seemed to have initially had so much trouble in understanding Freud. The psychic apparatus as seen by Freud was a set of systems operating in a fixed order. To begin with, there was the system of perception which guaranteed the reception of stimuli that came from the external world or were generated from within by the needs of the organism itself. The perceived stimuli were then conducted through the memory system which ascribed a meaning and an affective value to them. One of the deepest dimensions of the memory system was the unconscious, which most decisively determined what meaning a stimulus would receive. Closely connected to the unconscious was the preconscious. The preconscious determined whether the stimulus was to be further admitted on its way to the motor end of the psychic apparatus where it could be neutralized by a discharge. It was this model of the psychic apparatus, together with his theory of projection as developed in Further Remarks on the Neuro-Psychoses of Defence, that Freud applied to dementia praecox and paranoia. Indeed, he had always remarked that he failed to understand why such a sharp distinction had been drawn between dementia praecox and paranoia since the time of Kraepelin. For this reason, he chose to speak of paranoia in all cases.25 In his first letter, which bore the heading ‘A Few Theoretical Remarks on Paranoia’26, Freud began with the following example. A woman desired sexual intercourse with a man. The desire was repressed but reappeared in the following manner: she heard that people were saying of her that she was anxious to have sexual intercourse and she vehemently denied such slander.
24. 17J. 25. 8F, 25F. 26. 22F.
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To understand this, according to Freud, one had to distinguish between the different stages in the development of paranoia. Therefore, the manner in which the desire for sexual intercourse arose must also be understood. In general, a wish originated as follows. The sexual drive, which was originally autoerotic, induced the cathexis of memory images of earlier objects, thereby creating the sexual fantasy. The object-love, which subsequently arose, could then be repressed in various ways. Such repression could occur just before the desire became conscious. In that case, we can recognize the respective characteristics of the various neuroses.27 In paranoia however, a different type of repression occurred. The libido was withdrawn from the object by becoming autoerotic again. The decathected object then became insignificant, so that it could safely be projected onto the outside world. This took place in the case of Jung’s patient. For her, it seemed to be a simple observation: "People say that I love coitus". At first, the person in question was quite indifferent to this suggestion. What was typical of paranoia was the failure of this defence created by affective de-cathexis and projection of the representation of the object. The libido was not satisfied in its regression to the autoerotic stage and turned once again towards the projected image. The erotic desire now reached the subject from the outside world. This made the subject all the more vulnerable since the system of perception registered everything coming from the outside world as being true. As a consequence of this, the subject exhausted herself in secondary defences against the recathected object, which she seemed to perceive continuously: "People say that I love coitus. That is what they say but it’s not true". A more precise statement of Freud’s view can be found in his subsequent letters devoted to this problem.28 In the first place, he made a sharper distinction between the primary defence mechanism, consisting of de-cathexis and projection of the image, and the return of the libido to the projected image which elicited the secondary defence typical of paranoia. In this context, Freud re-introduced the distinction between dementia
27. There is an error in the English translation of this letter. The translator based himself upon an incorrect transcription of the German original ("denn sie muss der Verdrängung unterworfen werden, ehe sie bewusst wird, so mag das auf verschiedenen Wegen geschehen (Hauptcharaktere der einzelnen Psychoneurosen)." while in fact Freud wrote: "kann sie nun...") Instead of "a wish fantasy ... because it must be subjected to repression ..." we should read "a wish fantasy ... If it can be subjected to repression before it becomes conscious, it can occur in various ways." 28. 25F and 30F.
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praecox, paranoia and dementia paranoides, though he still regarded them as a single group of related syndromes. Dementia praecox corresponded to the case in which the primary defence mechanism would be sufficient. The libido was withdrawn from the object and returned permanently to the autoerotic stage. Freud pointed out that this view was in keeping with the facts provided by Jung. Such subjects clearly exhibited autoerotic traits and were sometimes able to discuss their most intimate problems quite frankly and openly without the least resistance. Paranoia in its purest form corresponded with a complete collapse of the defence mechanism, causing the libido to return entirely to the projected object, so that the libidinous re-cathexis took place within the perception. The attempt at defence started all over again but this time within the field of perception. Freud termed this process ‘rejection’ instead of ‘repression’.29 Between the extremes of a completely successful return to autoeroticism and a total failure of this kind of defence, there was the hybrid of dementia paranoides in which part of the libido remained autoerotic while another part proceeded to lend re-cathexis to the projected object. There was, however, one point which Freud himself admitted as being rather vague, namely the precise nature of projection. In The Interpretation of Dreams, he had presented the theory that hysterical hallucination and dreaming were a kind of wish fulfilment. Censorship preventing entering consciousness at the motor end of the psychic apparatus, the cathected image regressively ran through the psychic apparatus to reappear as a perception at the perception end. This process was supposedly set in motion by the strong affective charge of the image. Freud found it difficult to reconcile this with his views on paranoid projection as outlined above, according to which the image should be de-cathected before it could be projected. In such cases, the return of the libidinous re-cathexis could only reinforce the hallucination in a secondary way. Freud hoped to find the solution to this antinomy by sharply distinguishing between regression and projection. But no more details were given in the letter. The fact that paranoia was usually accompanied by auditory hallucinations and not by visual images was, in Freud’s view, another possible characteristic of the distinction between paranoid projection and hallucinatory fulfilment. This would indicate an intensification of the thought process.
29. "Then the delusional idea becomes more intense and resistance to it more and more violent, the entire defensive battle is fought all over again as rejection of reality" (repression is transformed into rejection). 25F.
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The third letter contained further information on the distinction between both forms of projection.30 The letter was written after Jung had admitted that he did not quite grasp Freud’s explanation. Jung had asked him to further illustrate his theory by means of two short case descriptions which Jung himself quoted. The following section of the case history was significant for the problem of projection.31 A young man, living in Zurich, met a certain Lydia X, with whom he fell madly in love. A few years later, he was dismissed from his job in London. He wandered the streets for three days. He occasionally heard his name called. And, on his way to the train station one day, an unknown woman came towards him, obviously making advances. But when she came closer, he realized that he was mistaken and that the lady was in fact very respectable. Later, standing on the platform at the station, he saw a man with a young woman whom he thought was a girl he knew in Zurich. When he came home, he saw for the first time that his house was number 13. That night, he tried to commit suicide. The attempt failed and later he seemed to make a complete recovery. After ten years, he returned to Zurich where he learned that Lydia X was engaged. This has such an affect upon him that eventually he had be committed. Megalo- and other persecution manias developed: he was God, Monseigneur, doctor, the lot. He saw Lydia X in everyone he met and blamed her for every misfortune that befell him. In his discussion of the case, Freud first considered the episode in London. What happened there, he said, was something of the nature of a hallucinatory wish fulfilment except, however, that there was no actual regression of the psychic images to perceptions. The regression was limited to influencing the memory images of recent perceptions. The patient had seen a woman coming towards him and this recent memory image was immediately transformed into the wish: "She is making advances towards me". It was clear that the wish could only falsify the memory and that it was incapable of penetrating the perception itself since a second perception could still correct the falsified memory image: "The lady is in fact very respectable". In this process then, there was something in the nature of a hallucinatory wish fulfilment. According to Freud, both cases involved the basic process which distinguished neurosis from psychosis. Unlike neurosis, where the unconscious was repressed, in psychosis the unconscious over-
30. 30F. 31. 29J.
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powered the reality-connected ego. The difference between the case in question, which later developed into paranoia, and a direct hallucinatory wish fulfilment seemed to be that in the paranoid process, the regression did not penetrate the system of perception but came to a halt in the preceding system, namely the memory system. The analysis of the second episode in Zurich, in which paranoia clearly emerged, showed how the object of the libido, Lydia X, affected the subject from without. Freud held that this was understandable if one assumed that a libidinous de-cathexis of the object had taken place between both periods. During this interval, the de-cathected image was projected outward. On hearing about the engagement of Lydia X, this form of defence was no longer sufficient and the projected object was again cathected by the libido. Freud readily admitted that in such cases of paranoia, there was considerable difficulty in indicating the intermediary stage of the process in which the object had been de-cathected and the libido had been diverted to autoeroticism. Nevertheless, based on the observation of cases of pure dementia praecox, he inferred that such a process did exist. So much for Freud’s explanation in these three letters. Jung responded by affirming that he also regularly encountered autoerotic elements in dementia praecox patients. Such cases were repeatedly described in his letters. He pointed out that these patients masturbated frequently, relished playing with their excrement and smearing themselves with it, drank urine and so forth.32 This was an obvious regression to autoeroticism. Bleuler, with whom Jung often discussed Freud’s insights, found these ideas more difficult to accept. Jung realized that Bleuler’s personal concerns and emotional sensitivities were deeply involved here but it was quite some time before he managed to free himself from Bleuler’s authority.33 He was simply delighted when he wrote to Freud that "Bleuler has now accepted 70% of the libido theory"....34 Not long afterwards, Jung was able to announce that Bleuler had agreed to use the concept of autoeroticism in his contribution on dementia praecox in G. Aschaffenburg’s Handbuch der Psychiatrie35, though he still preferred
32. See especially 21J and 24J. 33. 17J. 34. 19J. 35. Dementia Praecox or the Group of Schizophrenias formed one volume in Aschaffenburg’s Handbuch der Psychiatrie, Spezieller Teil, 4. Abteilung, 1. Hälfte, Leipzig, Deuticke, 1911.
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to use the terms ‘autism’ or ‘ipsism’.36 On closer examination, however, there seems to be a considerable difference between Freud’s view on autoeroticism and that of Bleuler and Jung. Although in his letters, Jung frequently pointed out that all kinds of masturbatory and perverse sexual impulses could be observed in dementia praecox patients, he did not connect these autoerotic manifestations with loss of object-directedness and regression into an entirely objectless state. What concerned Jung much more was the withdrawal from reality into fantasy. He wrote:37 "When you say that the libido withdraws from the object, you mean, I think, that it withdraws from the real object for normal reasons of repression (obstacles, unattainability, etc.) and throws itself on a fantasy copy of the real one, with which it then proceeds to play its classic autoerotic game. The projection towards the perception end springs from the original wish for reality, which, if unattainable, creates its own reality by hallucination."
Jung thus considered autoeroticism as a flight into fantasy which could also be accompanied by an autoerotic longing for sexual fulfilment. For this reason he interpreted projection as a wish fulfilment just as he had in the other cases. Since reality was lacking, the fantasy world was projected. In this way, Jung resolved the difficulty he had with the difference between hallucinatory wish fulfilment and paranoid projection. In both cases, it was a matter of wish fulfilment. In his reply, Freud pointed out this misunderstanding:38 "I do not think that the libido withdraws from the real object to throw itself on the mental representation of the object, with which fantasy it proceeds to play its autoerotic game. By definition, the libido is not autoerotic as long as it has an object, real or imagined. I believe, rather, that the libido departs from the object-image, which is thereby divested of the cathexis that has characterized it as internal and can now be projected outward and, as it were, perceived. Then for a moment it can be perceived calmly as it were and subjected to the usual reality-testing. ’People say that I love coitus. That is what they say, but it’s not true!’ Successful repression would accomplish this much; the liberated libido would somehow manifest itself autoerotically as in childhood."
36. 24J. 37. 24J. 38. 25F.
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In other words, Freud claimed that the object-directedness disappeared entirely and the libido, thus released, was divested into objectless autoeroticism. The background to this was to be found in the opinion he expressed in Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, namely, that the sexual instinct consisted of separate components which could become object-directed only by being united under the primacy of the genital zone. In his first letter on the problem of paranoia, he had given a more detailed account of this idea by affirming that the object-directedness originated from linking the unified sexual instinct to memory images from former objects.39 In paranoia, this link would once more disintegrate. Jung’s view was exactly the opposite. The idea of a de-cathected image which could again become a perception was completely foreign to him. On the contrary, he included the erotic fantasy world in autoeroticism. In such a fantasy world, the images would be so affectively charged that they were hallucinated. It is unlikely that Freud or Jung realized just how much they differed. Freud was pleased that Jung, together with Bleuler, gradually came to accept autoeroticism as the nucleus of dementia praecox-paranoia. It is true that he complained about Jung not being able to regard autoeroticism as having no object but he did not yet seem to be aware of all the consequences of Jung’s position.40 There was, however, misunderstanding on two important points. In the first place, the relation between drive and representation was seen by Freud and Jung from completely different perspectives. Only later, once Jung equated ‘autoeroticism’ with ‘introversion’ and after Freud published his Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning (1911), did this difference become clear. Another misunderstanding arose concerning the distinction between dementia praecox and paranoia. Freud considered both as being identical and preferred to use the term ‘paranoia’. If, under Jung’s influence, he gradually came to admit that there was a certain difference between dementia praecox, dementia paranoides, and paranoia, it was no more than a difference of the degree to which the de-cathexis of the object was a successful defence. The problem was precisely that Freud’s model of the illness’s development was based upon the presupposition that dementia praecox and paranoia belonged together. In his model of the de-cathexis, projection and re-cathexis of the image, he admitted that de-cathexis (the necessary condition for projection) was not 39. 22F. 40. 25F.
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observable in paranoia but only in dementia praecox, where the libido found its autoerotic outlet. Thus the whole theory of projection, which was viewed as typical of paranoia, depended upon the correctness of the presumed relation between dementia praecox and paranoia. Here Freud abandoned the view that projection was the defence mechanism of paranoia, since he saw a certain contradiction between projection as a defence mechanism and projection as wish fulfilment in dreams and hallucination. At this stage, however, he did not see any clear solution to the problem. Jung never explicitly attacked Freud for connecting dementia praecox and paranoia. In fact, he was mainly concerned with the former illness. What he found most striking was that patients were locked inside their fantasy world. The problem of distinguishing between two forms of projection, as Freud did on the basis of observation of pure paranoia, simply did not exist for him. He failed to understand Freud’s preoccupation with this question and pointed out that in dementia praecox, projection consisted of ‘a crazy mixture of wish fulfilment and the feeling of being injured’.41 A considerable misunderstanding had arisen then on the subject of autoeroticism as well as on the distinction between dementia praecox and paranoia. With regard to repression, however, Jung’s views seemed to be more in keeping with Freud’s. Writing to Freud that Bleuler continued to contest the purposefulness of dreams, Jung himself affirmed that this amounted to a denial of the distorting effect of the complexes, the central thesis of The Interpretation of Dreams.42 In this same period, Jung wrote the paper Disturbances of Reproduction in the Association Experiment, in which he further investigated the reproduction test. He almost came to regard this test as an experimental proof of repression.43 If, during the first test, the subject of the experiment had reacted under the influence of an affectively charged complex, he would forget how he had answered. Jung gradually came to realize that the idea of repression also had certain implications for the manner in which the inner psychic constitution should be understood. After reading Bleuler’s Affektivität, Suggestibilität, Paranoia, Freud wrote to Jung that he had no use for Bleuler’s ideas of ‘personality’ or ‘ego’, since these concepts merely belonged to surface psy-
41. 24J. 42. 17J. 43. 26J.
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chology.44 In his reply, Jung expressed his full agreement with Freud and, in fact, quite explicitly added that the concept of the ego complex, as he (Jung) had conceived it up to that point, was likewise to be discarded.45 Further Hesitant Investigations It might have been expected that Jung’s preparation for his lecture at the Amsterdam Congress would have led to extensive correspondence on the theory of hysteria. This was not the case however. One has the impression that he did not have many problems in drafting the text by himself nor did he seek Freud’s advice to any great extent. Only on one occasion do we find Jung asking for some explanation concerning the role Freud assigned to sexuality. The question was posed whether Freud regarded sexuality as the mother of all feelings or merely as one component of the personality (though the most important one). In other words, Jung’s concern was whether any complexes other than sexuality could possibly determine hysterical symptoms.46 The question was put forward quite bluntly. Freud’s reply was equally as concise. The relation between sexuality and the other drives was a rather difficult matter and for this reason, Freud provisionally continued to hold the popular concept of two instinctual sources, namely, hunger and sexuality. As to the relation between hysteria and sexuality, Freud pointed out that he posited the necessary role of the sexual complex on theoretical grounds and not merely on the frequency or intensity of its occurrence in hysteria.47 No further explanation was offered. This reply was too short for Jung to realize the extent to which Freud’s views differed from his own. That this was so became clear from Jung’s Amsterdam lecture, where he gave evidence of being acquainted with all of Freud’s writings and the evolution of Freud’s ideas but nonetheless constantly emphasized the aetiological significance of the affect which was connected with sexuality. Jung’s lecture was, on the whole, not successful. In the first place, he exceeded the time limit so much that he was not allowed to finish. The audience, it seems, was also rather hostile.48 Moreover, the content was
44. 40J. 45. 41J. 46. 39J. 47. 40F. 48. See 43J and 44J.
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somewhat confused. Fully aware of this, Jung’s excuse was that Freud himself had not yet designed a clear theoretical basis for his psychoanalytical theory.49 In his lecture, Jung explained how Freud’s theory developed from his opinion that the core of hysteria consisted of nonabreacted, affective images into a theory concerning a real sexual trauma in infancy, and finally arriving at the view that an infantile, polymorphous-perverse, sexual disposition determined later neurosis. In working out the formula of hysteria, Jung placed particular emphasis on the elaboration of infantile memories during puberty. He even went as far as to affirm that the Freudian theory was not applicable to child neuroses.50 In his report, Jung made a few incidental remarks that were rather typical of him. Announcing the presentation of Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, he immediately warned that they were difficult to understand unless one kept in mind that Freud’s concept of sexuality was exceptionally broad. Jung felt that Freud’s notion of sexuality should not only be understood as a sexual drive in the strict sense but as everything connected with the ‘urge towards preservation of the species’, namely, all perversions and a large part of the psychosexual derivates. In the next sentence, Jung even went a step further. He explained the concept ‘libido’ as distinct from that of sexuality:51 "This concept, originally borrowed from ‘libido sexualis’, denotes in the first place the sexual components of psychic life so far as they are volitional, and then any inordinate passion or desire."
For Jung therefore, the term received an even wider significance than for Freud, who ultimately connected the libido only with the erotogenic zones. In his appreciation of Freud’s theory of hysteria, Jung limited himself to affirming that there were indeed cases such as Freud described. "The Freudian hysteria exists".52 However, he did not exclude the possibility of other forms of hysteria. He gave the examples of hysteria in children and psycho-traumatic neurosis.53 It is evident from this lecture that Jung was still reluctant to wholeheartedly accept Freud’s views on sexuality. We find little mention of the content of this lecture in their correspondence. It was not until seven months later, in April 1908, that Freud even had the occasion to read the 49. C.G. JUNG, The Freudian Theory of Hysteria, C.W. IV, § 27 and 48. 50. Ibid., § 62. See also 82F and 83F. 51. Ibid., § 49. 52. "... cases which conform exactly to Freud’s scheme really do exist". Ibid., § 62. 53. Ibid., § 62.
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text.54 Jung was most apologetic in sending Freud his text, having realized in the meantime that it was not the first-rate defence of Freud that he had wished it to be. After Jung’s lecture in September 1907, the correspondence took a different turn. Several topics were discussed: the founding of a ‘Freudian Society’ in Zurich55; Jung’s painful realization of his transference relation to Freud56; Jensen’s Delusions and Dreams in Jensen’s ‘Gradiva’, about which Freud had written a paper; and finally, the practical organization of the first psychoanalytic congress in Salzburg. Only occasionally was there mention of anything important for the later theories. For instance, Jung pointed out with some concern that a certain measure of sexual repression was in fact indispensable as a civilizing factor, even though it might become pathogenic in the case of weaker individuals.57 This observation was made in the context of a remark made to Jung by a fellow psychoanalyst, Otto Gross, to the effect that one could put a quick stop to the transference by leading the patient into sexual immorality which, according to Gross, was a truly healthy state for the neurotic. Freud’s reply to this letter is missing however. In a letter written in November58, and in reference to an observation on Jensen’s Gradiva, Freud expressed the view that it was vital for the first object of human love to remain unconscious.59 "Our love-objects form series, one is a recurrence of another (the Master of Palmyra), and each one is a reactivation of an unconscious infantile love, but this love must remain unconscious; as soon as it is aroused to consciousness, it holds the libido fast instead of guiding it onward, and a new love becomes impossible."
In January 1908, Jung delivered a lecture in Zurich on The Content of the Psychoses. This lecture, given before a large audience, contained little new material. Freud, however, was delighted with the popular ver-
54. 81J. 55. 47J. 56. See especially 49J, 50J and 51J. 57. 46J. 58. 53F. 59. 53F.
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sion of the text and had it published as soon as possible in his series Papers on Applied Psychology.60 The Content of the Psychoses was a plea for a psychological approach to psychiatry. Without rejecting the importance of the organic aspects, Jung pointed out that in 45 percent of the cases admitted to the Burghölzli, anatomical brain analysis failed to be of any assistance, whereas a psychological analysis allowed for the possibility of finding a certain meaning in otherwise senseless symptoms. This was illustrated by a few cases in which Jung, time and again, emphasized that the illness originated from an affectively meaningful event. He concluded with the observation that the core of mental disturbances was nothing other than the deepest existential questions that arose in each person. Like the ordinary man and the poet, the mentally disturbed person built himself a fantasy world in order to mitigate the harsh reality of daily life. Unlike the others, the mentally disturbed person got caught up in that dream. Nonetheless, there was much that he could teach the sane person. He did not reveal anything new or unknown. Rather, he demonstrated "the foundation of our own being, the matrix of these vital problems on which we are all engaged".61 Once the practical difficulties of organizing the Salzburg Congress had been settled, the problem of psychosis reappeared in the correspondence between Freud and Jung. Freud wrote that he had treated a few cases of paranoia and that in each case, he had encountered a detachment, though only partial, of the libido. Each case involved a homosexual component which, until then, had been normally and moderately cathected. This component was detached only to reappear in a projected form. Thus Freud found confirmation for his hypothesis on paranoia and, at the same time, a further specification of his view by the discovery that the decathexis of the libido could be partial since, in the cases recorded, the decathexis was restricted to the homosexual component.62 In his reply, Jung for the first time set down his own views in opposition to Freud’s theoretical formulations on dementia praecox. He suggested that the regression to autoeroticism was a teleological process. The de-cathexis of the object and the regression of the libido to autoerotic forms served the psychological self-preservation of the individual who felt threatened in his relation to the outside world. While hysteria was re-
60. See 66F, 67F and 68F. 61. C.G. JUNG, The Content of the Psychoses, C.W. III, § 387. 62. 70F.
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stricted to the plane of preservation of the species, dementia praecox was situated on the plane of self-preservation. It was this urge for self-preservation which Jung equated with autoeroticism:63 "The detachment of libido, its regression to autoerotic forms, is probably well explained by the self-assertion, the psychological self-preservation of the individual. Hysteria keeps to the plane of ’preservation of the species’, paranoia (dementia praecox) to the plane of self-preservation, i.e., autoeroticism. A patient once told me: ’Everything that happens has something so gripping about it!’ Autoeroticism serves as a purposive defence against this. The psychoses (the incurable ones) should probably be regarded as defensive encapsulations that have misfired, or rather, have been carried to extremes.... Autoeroticism, as an overcompensation of conflicts with reality, is largely teleological."
What is important here was that Jung regarded autoeroticism as a form of the urge for self-preservation. The individual encapsulated himself in order to escape from conflicts with reality - the rigidness of the symptoms were an indication of this. Freud replied that Jung’s observations had struck a responsive chord in him and he described Jung as "the only one capable of making an original contribution"....64 But when Freud attempted to further elaborate the formulation in question, he, strangely enough, dismissed the teleological theory.65 Once again, he merely outlined the concepts of de-cathexis and projection of the image which he considered to be the core of paranoia. As for hysteria and obsessional neurosis, Freud delineated the aetiology as follows. They arose from a defect in the development of genital primacy, whereas paranoia originated from a defect in an earlier phase of development, namely, in the transition from autoeroticism to object-love. However, he rejected the teleology which Jung saw in the regression to autoeroticism. The severity and inaccessibility which were characteristic of psychosis need not, in Freud’s opinion, be explained as the consequence of the individual’s encapsulation in an attempt of protect himself against the threat of the outside world. Freud believed that these phenomena were adequately explained by projection. Once the image was projected, it reached the subject through the perception and what came into the psychic system through the perception ipso facto evaded the reality-testing since the latter was to be found precisely within the perception. The paranoiac’s delusion was thus
63. 72J. 64. 74F. 65. 76F.
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posited beyond all doubt and, for this reason, the illness had such a severe and inaccessible character. Jung replied that his views on the paranoia question seemed to differ quite considerably from Freud’s. He admitted, however, that he had some difficulty in following Freud’s line of thought.66 He presented his own (somewhat confused) analysis of a particular case, asking Freud to apply his theory to it. The matter remained unclear. Freud did not respond directly to Jung’s request since, in the meantime, he had received Jung’s paper for the Amsterdam Congress together with the article, Complexes and the Cause of Disease in the Case of Dementia Praecox, written by Jung and Bleuler.67 In this article, Jung and Bleuler presented their respective views on the organic basis of dementia praecox. Bleuler held a primary, organic disturbance, which he considered as not having been sufficiently studied, to be the direct cause of primary psychic symptoms. The classical symptomatology of the illness was merely concerned with the secondary outcome of the primary symptoms and it was on this level that the psychic determination of the Freudian model operated. Jung, on the other hand, denied the existence of these primary symptoms. Although he accepted an organic causality in his toxin hypothesis, he left unanswered the question whether this organic process was primary or whether it was the consequence of affects which were too intense. It seems that Jung had made no previous mention of this publication to Freud. The latter was therefore displeased and even suggested that Jung attached such importance to the organic side simply in order to placate the medical public.68 Jung replied that he had never lost sight of the importance of the organic side but, for him, this did not exclude the psychological approach. The brain, he said, was not a piano upon which the soul could play at will.69 Meanwhile, the Salzburg Congress was about to begin. This meeting provided a forum for the continuation of the discussions on dementia praecox and also resulted in a personal conflict between Jung and Karl Abraham. Moreover, the problem of dementia praecox was emphasized in a particularly painful and practical manner by the situation of Otto Gross.
66. 79J. 67. E. BLEULER and C.G. JUNG, Komplexe und Krankheitsursachen bei Dementia Praecox In: Zentralblatt für Nervenheilkunde 31 (1908) 220-227 (not translated into English). 68. 82F. 69. 83J.
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Abraham and the First Psychoanalytical Publication The theme of dementia praecox, which had disappeared from the correspondence between Freud and Jung during the summer of 1907, due to the impending Amsterdam Congress, was continued meanwhile in the correspondence between Freud and Abraham. Karl Abraham (1877-1925) had studied psychiatry in Berlin and later joined the staff of the Burghölzli at the end of 1904. From January 1907 onward, he was first assistant under Jung who was then first Oberartz, which meant that he came just after Bleuler in the hospital hierarchy.70 Jung did not care much for Abraham. He reproached him for remaining aloof with regards to team research while keeping a careful eye on everything in progress and listening whenever Jung and Bleuler were discussing their results and hypotheses, then suddenly coming up with a publication, as if he had done the pioneering research.71 It was precisely with such a publication that Abraham introduced himself to Freud. In 1907, Abraham sent him the article On the Significance of Juvenile Traumas for the Symptomatology of Dementia Praecox.72 In his introduction, Abraham affirmed that Bleuler and Jung had clearly demonstrated that the same mechanisms occurred in dementia praecox as Freud had discovered in hysteria. For this reason, it had seemed worthwhile to investigate whether infantile sexuality was at the basis of the more advanced symptoms of dementia praecox in the same way as in hysteria. Abraham then presented some case material to demonstrate that, in the course of the analysis, the same traumatizing sexual facts could be found and that the symptoms could be connected with these facts. Clearly then, the article dealt with the central theme of the correspondence between Jung and Freud. This probably accounted for Jung’s antipathy whenever Freud inquired about Abraham.73 Freud, however, rather liked the article because the problem of sexuality was directly dealt with while Jung and Bleuler still showed a certain reluctance to take this approach. Incidentally, it should be noted that Abraham also employed Jung’s model here. The symbolic expressions found in dementia praecox were explained as the consequence of a disturbance of attention.
70. See 35J. 71. 39J. 72. K. ABRAHAM, On the Significance of Juvenile Traumas for the Symptomatology of Dementia Praecox. In: K. ABRAHAM, Clinical Papers and Essays on Psychoanalysis, New York, Basic Books, 1955, 13-20. 73. See 39J, 40F and 41J.
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This marked the beginning of the correspondence between Freud and Abraham. Jung was obviously jealous.74 Soon afterwards, Abraham sent Freud the text of another article, The Experiencing of Sexual Traumas as a Form of Sexual Activity.75 Following Freud’s example, he here investigated the exact relation between the traumatic experiences recounted by patients and their later illnesses. The article, for the most part, contained a number of anamneses from which Abraham concluded that while the trauma certainly determined the content of the symptoms, the ultimate cause of the illness was to be found in the abnormal psychosexual constitution of the patient as a child. From this perspective, the traumatic events were not seen as accidental but as being provoked by the child himself in most cases. According to Abraham, this was valid for hysteria as well as for dementia praecox. In each case, there was an abnormal development of the libido in that the child reached maturity too early or his sexual instinct was abnormally strong. This led to the sexual experiences which were partly provoked by the child himself. At a later stage, he attempted to repel these memories. In hysteria, this took place through conversion and in obsessional neurosis, by means of displacement.76 Thus far, Abraham faithfully reflected Freud’s experience prior to the latter’s abandoning the trauma theory. The only new element in the article was the affirmation that the analysis of dementia praecox patients had yielded similar results. Abraham then adopted an original standpoint, namely, that in addition to the two repression mechanisms of the neuroses (conversion and displacement), dementia praecox also used a third mechanism: the creation of a delusion of self-indictment, which was then displaced to different images.77 According to Abraham, it was simply a matter of constitution which determined why one defence mechanism was used in the first case and another in the second.78 In his opinion, the distinction between the various illnesses was undoubtedly situated in the psychosexual area yet he preferred to await further investigations before giving a more detailed account.
74. 39J. 75. The Experiencing of Sexual Traumas as a Form of Sexual Activity. In: Selected Papers of Karl Abraham, New York, Basic Books, 1968, 47-63. 76. Ibid., p. 55. 77. Ibid., p. 55-56. 78. Ibid., p. 57.
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Having read Abraham’s article, Freud wrote to him, explaining his theory on regression to autoeroticism as the core of dementia praecox.79 Freud believed that the disposition to dementia praecox, which Abraham was looking for, was to be found in the fact that the evolution from autoeroticism to object-love had never been completed.80 Meanwhile, Abraham left the Burghölzli (November 1907) following a quarrel. It seems that he, as a German, felt somewhat slighted by the Swiss. On his trip to Berlin, where he intended to start a private practice, he stopped off in Vienna to visit Freud. The latter immediately took kindly to him, especially since both of them were Jews. For a while after the visit, the correspondence between them contained only a few references to the problem of dementia praecox and mostly dealt with Abraham’s new practice. However, when Abraham received an invitation to the Salzburg Congress, accompanied by a request to deliver a short lecture, he thought this would be the ideal opportunity to give a synthetic exposition of the problem. He announced that he would lecture on ‘The Psycho-Sexual Differences between Hysteria and Dementia Praecox’. There was little new material in the lecture as far as our purposes are concerned. It was a clear, well-structured exposition which demonstrated how, in dementia praecox, the libido was withdrawn from the object and was discharged in autoeroticism while in hysteria, there was an excessive affective cathexis of the object. The point emphasized by Abraham was that regression to autoeroticism also implied a loss of sublimations, since these had originated from repressed autoerotic components. He located the predisposition to dementia praecox in a defect in the development from autoeroticism to object-love. With such patients, there had never been a complete transition from one to the other. The problem of projection, however, was not touched upon by Abraham. It seems then that this theme, which received a thorough treatment in the letters Freud exchanged with Jung, was never discussed in his correspondence with Abraham. With this lecture and its subsequent publication, Abraham put his name to the first psychoanalytic synthesis of the problem. Jung was probably more than a little irritated by the lecture, especially by Abraham’s concluding remark that:81
79. Letter of Freud to Abraham, 5-7-1907. In: A Psychoanalytic Dialogue. The Letters of Sigmund Freud and Karl Abraham, 1-4. 80. Letter of Freud to Abraham, 26-7-1907. In: ibid., p. 5. 81. K. ABRAHAM, The Psycho-Sexual Differences between Hysteria and Dementia Praecox In: Selected Papers of Karl Abraham, p. 78.
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"A great part of the pathological manifestations of dementia praecox would, it seems to me, be explicable if we assumed that the patient has an abnormal psychosexual constitution in the direction of autoeroticism. Such an assumption would render the recently discussed toxin theory unnecessary."
That same morning, Jung delivered his lecture also dealing with dementia praecox. In his presentation, he contended that his toxin hypothesis did not exclude a psychological approach.82 Unfortunately, the text of his lecture has been lost.83 The Case of Otto Gross The problem of dementia praecox was highlighted in Salzburg by the case of Otto Gross (1877-1919). It seems that Gross, a psychiatrist and former assistant of Kraepelin, had recently turned to psychoanalysis. Freud was pleased to have him and considered him, next to Jung, as the most brilliant of his followers, even though he had heard from Jung that Gross had a very complex and somewhat unbalanced personality.84 Shortly before the Salzburg Congress however, Freud was informed that Gross had become addicted to opium and had started to show symptoms of paranoia. Freud suggested to Jung that they use the Congress, which Gross was expected to attend, to have the latter admitted to the Burghölzli.85 Gross agreed to be admitted to the Burghölzli. It had been Freud’s original plan that Jung would only give a withdrawal treatment and that he himself would later commence with his analysis in October.86 Jung, however, proceeded immediately with the analysis. Gross’ treatment meant a great deal to Jung personally, though it was conducted in a manner quite far removed from the strict rules of the present-day technique. Jung wrote that he was occupied with Gross night and day. Whenever the analysis ceased to make progress, roles were reversed and Gross had to analyze Jung. Within two weeks, Jung felt that the analysis was practically complete and that Gross’s withdrawal from
82. See the biographical notes in The Freud/Jung Letters under 85J. 83. Jung always took the organic factors of schizophrenia into consideration, partly because of the similarity between the fantasies of schizophrenics and drug users. See C.G. JUNG, Schizophrenia, C.W. III, § 582. 84. See 34F. 85. 84F, 85J. 86. 90F, 94F.
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opium had been successful.87 As for the diagnosis, Jung first considered obsessional neurosis but soon came to realize that this was a case of dementia praecox.88 He was rather disappointed in his originally high expectations from the therapy. A month and a half after being admitted, Gross escaped from the Burghölzli by jumping over a garden wall and he returned to Munich. Jung remarked somewhat bitterly that he had only succeeded in providing Gross with one more delusion, namely, that he had been cured by Jung.89 The analysis of Gross had a very strong influence on Jung. He claimed that he had discovered so many aspects of his own nature in Gross that he seemed like a twin brother.90 Moreover, the analysis had led Jung to a further development in his views on dementia praecox. What he found particularly striking in the analysis was the constant uncovering of very early infantile material which did not lead to any psychic development. It seemed as if the events of early childhood remained eternally new and operative. Although the patient could be made aware of this fact, the infantile material remained the inexhaustible source of all affects:91 "... he reacts to today’s events like a six-year-old boy, for whom the wife is always the mother, every friend, everyone who wished him well or ill always the father, and whose world is a boyish fantasy filled with heaven knows what monstrous possibilities."
Jung considered this as characteristic of dementia praecox. The illness was directly determined by the earliest infantile sexual complex whereas in hysteria, the complex was mediated by a complex belonging to later life. Jung expressed this metaphorically. "In hysteria, there is both Pompeii and Rome, in dementia praecox only Pompeii".92 The fact that dementia praecox occurred in later life was simply deceptive; it was nothing but the occasion of a secondary conflict. Upon closer investigation, it was evident that the patient had become ill in early infancy when sexuality was still completely autoerotic. This accounted for the persistent autoeroticism and devaluation of reality in dementia praecox patients.93
87. 95J. 88. 98J. 89. 98J. 90. 98J. 91. 98J. 92. 98J. 93. 98J.
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In his reply, Freud expressed his doubt as to whether the predisposition to dementia praecox was actually to be found in a very early infantile fixation. He admitted, however, that he was still very uncertain about the differentiation between fixation and repression. He also wondered whether the diagnosis of paranoia was correct in Gross’ case or whether it was in fact a case of obsessional neurosis with negative transference, which could also explain the apparent absence of transference.94 Jung replied that he believed he had observed certain typical features of dementia praecox such as infantile fixation, infantile association and absolute incurability - the permanent exclusion of certain components of reality - which led him to exclude hysteria.95 The problem was discussed once again during Freud’s visit to Zurich in September 1908, when he had occasion to meet Jung’s patient Babette (whose case Jung had described in The Psychology of Dementia Praecox). Upon his return, Freud wrote that one of his patients who had no history of dementia praecox suddenly announced: "I am an officers’ corps". This seemingly paranoid statement, very similar to the utterance of Jung’s patient Babette, was to be interpreted here as an hysterical formula. Freud observed that, in the patient, the officers’ corps, by way of the Latin term cor, cordis, led to cardiac symptoms. There was, as it were, an unconscious paranoia which led Freud to admit to Jung that there was some truth in the latter’s statement that analysis guided hysteria patients along the road to dementia praecox.96 While it seems that Jung was not surprised by this phenomenon, he was still amazed by the fact that the replacement of reality by such products could be purely psychogenic in origin.97 It is difficult to fully understand the content of these last letters. There were obvious references to what Jung and Freud had discussed in Zurich. The relation between hysteria and dementia praecox became somewhat clearer in their correspondence of December 1908 and particularly within the context of their discussions on autoeroticism.98 Jung once more expressed his agreement with Freud that autoeroticism was the most striking characteristic of dementia praecox. However, he pointed out that certain forms of autoeroticism could also be
94. 99F. 95. 100J. 96. 110F. 97. 111J. 98. 121J.
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found in hysteria and that "actually every repressed complex was autoerotic".99 Both dementia praecox and hysteria began in the same way. For some reason, the libido did not find compensation in reality and this led to autoeroticism. In hysteria, there was an attempt to compensate for this regression into autoeroticism by means of an excessive re-cathexis of the object. In dementia praecox, this attempt at compensation failed and only then did autoeroticism find its specific form which was characteristic of the illness. Freud pointed out that Jung was still using the concept of autoeroticism in a very broad sense.100 Jung included fantasy in autoeroticism while Freud chose to restrict the concept to the objectless. Freud, nonetheless, gave occasion for misunderstanding by saying that Jung’s conception of paranoia agreed exactly with his own.101 Furthermore, Freud’s statement, that the problem of a precise definition of the concept ‘autoeroticism’ involved the problem of the distinction between fantasy and reality102, must surely have given Jung the impression that he had a correct understanding of Freud. Conclusion Upon reviewing the period between Jung’s visit to Vienna and Freud’s visit to Zurich, it appears that the misunderstanding concerning autoeroticism was particularly relevant for the change in the relationship between Freud and Jung. Freud was especially eager to convince Jung of the enormous role which sexuality played in human life. He believed that he had succeeded in doing so when Jung, like himself, came to accept autoeroticism as constituting the core of dementia praecox. For Jung, however, autoeroticism did not only signify the autoerotic search for pleasure with one’s own body but also included the whole erotic fantasy world into which one could withdraw. What gradually emerged then was Jung’s very different view on the relation between drive, thought and reality. This developed by reflecting on infantile sexuality, which Freud had previously
99. 121J. 100. 122F. 101. "What you write about paranoia tallies exactly with certain of the hypotheses we, Ferenczi and I, worked out in Berchtesgaden, ..." 122F. 102. "May I suggest that you should not use the term autoerotism as inclusively as H. Ellis, that it should not include hysterical utilizations of libido, but only truly autoerotic states, in which all relation with objects have been abandoned." 122F.
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constructed from the vantage point of the adult but which was now directly observed by both Jung and Freud. In the meantime, Jung offered some noteworthy suggestions on the ‘teleological’ function of autoeroticism. Many of these were in keeping with Freud’s later theory of narcissism. It is surprising then that Freud resolutely discarded these suggestions. The most probable explanation is that, owing to his conception of the psychic apparatus, Freud was primarily concerned with the problem of projection and did not as yet deal with the problem of the ego. Infantile Sexuality (September 1908 - September 1909) The Jahrbuch für psychoanalytische und psychopathologische Forschungen was established at the Salzburg Congress. As editor, Jung had occasion to read most of the publications on psychoanalysis. The first issue of the Jahrbuch began with Freud’s analysis of ‘Little Hans’, which immediately raised the issue of infantile sexuality and the role of the father. Jung received the manuscript of this analysis in August 1908103 which may account for the fact that he immediately started to write the article, The Significance of the Father in the Destiny of the Individual, for that same issue of the Jahrbuch. Jung himself presented the article to Freud as a sign of loyalty to the Freudian cause.104 At the Salzburg Congress, Freud had reproached Jung for his continuing reluctance to accept the role of sexuality in the human psyche, associating this reluctance to the abiding influence of Bleuler’s authority. The latter was even more hesitant than Jung with regards to all theories of sexuality. Things became rather unpleasant when Abraham, whom Jung had never forgiven for his Salzburg lecture, wrote several times to Freud, informing him that psychoanalysis was considered outdated in Zurich.105 Consequently, it was with more than a little anxiety that Freud went to Zurich in September. He found Bleuler to be most hesitant but he was reassured of Jung’s loyalty and pleased that the relation between Jung and Bleuler was almost at an end.106
103. See 104F. 104. 117J. 105. Letter of Abraham to Freud, 16-7-1908 and 31-7-1908. In: A Psychoanalytic Dialogue. The Letters of Sigmund Freud and Karl Abraham, p. 44-49. 106. Letter of Freud to Abraham, 29-9-1908. In: ibid., p. 51-52.
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The Significance of the Father It was in this atmosphere that Jung wrote The Significance of the Father in the Destiny of the Individual. The article mainly dealt with four brief case studies which showed the decisive role of the father relation in the child’s later life. Three of the four cases concerned patients who had unconsciously structured their lives according to the model imposed upon them by their relationship with their fathers and who had succumbed to neurosis the moment they broke this pattern. Jung did not elaborate upon this very much. For instance, he simply gave a two page outline of a female patient who was suffering from depressive moods, nocturnal fear, palpitations of the heart and light nervous spasms. The anamnesis revealed that, as a child, she had been her father’s favorite while her sister had been favoured by her mother. The father died when the patient was eight years old. As a faithful widow, the mother always impressed upon the children the need to venerate the deceased father. During adolescence, the patient fell in love exclusively with older men and, at the age of twentyfour, she married a widower of forty-four. He died four years later and for eighteen years, she remained a faithful widow. Finally at the age of fortysix, faced with the prospect of menopause, she suddenly felt a great need for love. Through a marriage bureau, she married the first available man, in this case, a rather coarse, violent man of sixty who had already been married twice and had been divorced by both wives in turn. She persevered with him for five years and when she finally got a divorce, neurosis set in. Jung pointed out the transparency of the case. Until she was fortysix, the patient experienced nothing but a faithful reproduction of her family milieu. Sexuality, which finally announced itself urgently but too late, led her to accept a poor reincarnation of the father-surrogate. The failure of this attempt marked the beginning of neurosis. This was a good illustration of Jung’s views concerning the relation between infancy and later life. In infancy and early childhood (between 1 and 5 years), a certain constellation was imprinted upon the child, a certain manner of reacting. The child learned to conform to the parental pattern. The ‘parent constellation’ arising from this process of conformity should be understood within the context of the concept of associationism in Jung’s theory of complexes. The child’s ego complex constellated associations following the same type of pattern as that of the parents. Jung’s theory was based on the research performed by one of his students, Emma Fürst, who had conducted association tests in twenty-four families. She had found that the father and son, on the one hand, and the mother and
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daughter, on the other, usually belonged to the same reaction type. If, for instance, the mother generally reacted to the association test with value judgments, the daughter would do likewise. The anamneses thus led Jung to the general conclusion that the child adapted to his parents and lived out his life in accordance with the constellation received in this manner. Jung wondered what made children attach themselves to their parents so strongly that they remained under the parents’ influence for the rest of their lives. It was at this point that Jung introduced the sexuality of the child, which, even at that stage, influenced the child’s relationship to his parents. By way of illustration, Jung described the case of an eight year old boy who suffered from enuresis. Jung drew attention to the typical attitude of rivalry in the boy who was subject to attacks of fear at night because he had dreamed that a black snake or a black man wanted to kill his mother. The boy’s crying had the effect of removing his mother from his rival. He also had dreamed that he himself was bitten by a black snake, which Jung interpreted as a homosexual component. The boy identified himself with his mother, who was being aggressively overpowered in coitus. In this perspective, enuresis was regarded as a surrogate for sexual desire. Jung’s view was as follows. Because the child had sexual desires, he conformed to his parents, adopting the parental constellation and possibly remaining its captive for life. Freud’s influence was unmistakable here, particularly in Jung’s conclusion:107 "The infantile attitude, it is evident, is nothing but infantile sexuality. If we now survey all the far-reaching possibilities of the infantile constellation, we are obliged to say that in essence our life’s fate is identical with the fate of our sexuality."
There was, however, little mention of infantile sexuality as such. Jung merely pointed out that the son felt as if he was his father’s rival. He added that the father’s influence on the child was greater than the mother’s. Even if the mother’s role appeared predominant, one could usually discern the figure of the grandfather behind the mother. Concerning female patients as well, Jung emphasized the father’s role in the
107. C.G. JUNG, The Significance of the Father in the Destiny of the Individual, C.W. IV, § 739 (original text in the footnote). Although the Collected Works limit themselves mostly to the last revised edition of Jung’s works, in this particular case the original text of the article is given in footnote. The detailed confrontation of both versions gives a very sharp view on the way in which Jung later on modified his insights.
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anamneses. Nevertheless, from the results of Emma Fürst’s research, it appeared more likely that the stronger relations were rather between father and son on the one hand and mother and daughter on the other. Jung, however, did not explain how those elements were reconciled. Consideration was also given to the opposition between desires imprinted by the parental constellation and personal desires arising in the adolescent life. In the second case description, for example, Jung remarked:108 "The neurosis set in the moment the libido was withdrawn from the infantile relationship and for the first time came a bit nearer to an individually determined goal. In this as in the previous case, the family constellation proved to be by far stronger, so that the narrow field of neurosis was all that was left over for the struggling individuality."
A similar remark can be found elsewhere:109 "In the most formative period between the first and the fifth year all the essential characteristics, which fit exactly into the parental mould, are already developed, for psychoanalytical experience teaches us that the first signs of the later conflict between the parental constellation and the individual’s longing for independence, of the struggle between repression and libido (Freud), occur as a rule before the fifth year."
The question which arose here was what was the origin of these sexual desires which were in opposition to the parental constellation. In Jung’s opinion, it seemed that they simply arose spontaneously in the individual. The equations parent constellation = repression and individual independence = libido seemed to point in this direction but Jung did not really consider the question. On the very first page, he defined the term ‘libido’ as the ‘energy of the will’. Jung wrote: "Libido is what in older psychiatry is called ‘will’ or ‘tendency’. The Freudian term is ‘denominatio a potiori’."110 Clearly then, Jung’s remarks here amounted to no more than paying lip service to Freud’s theory of infantile sexuality. Another important section of The Significance of the Father in the Destiny of the Individual was the three pages on religion and collective history. Jung began with a reference to Freud’s article Obsessive Actions
108. Ibid., § 715. 109. Ibid., § 701. (Translation slightly modified to be nearer to the German original in the Jahrbuch 1 (1909) p. 159). 110. Ibid., § 693 (original text in the footnote).
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and Religious Practices.111 In this article, Freud indicated the parallel between religious rites and the neurotic obsessive ceremony, drafting the following hypothesis: both obsession and religion were based upon the fact that certain drives were denied fulfilment. Their fundamental difference was to be found in the nature of the repressed drives. In obsession, only the sexual drives were repressed while in religion, there was repression of all the egotistical and anti-social components of the instinctual life. In his conclusion, Freud adopted the following view on cultural history: the prerequisite for the development of human culture seemed to lie in the foregoing of the direct primary fulfilment of instincts. This was largely the task of religion which required man to sacrifice his instinct to the gods. The claim of religion, that revenge belonged to the gods alone, was an expression of the fact that man had relinquished his anti-social tendencies. The gods therefore were originally endowed with all human vices. Since the gods held the right of exacting revenge, man could not make use of it. It should be noted that nowhere in this description did Freud use the terms ‘projection’ or ‘identification’. In The Significance of the Father in the Destiny of the Individual, Jung proceeded along the same lines as Freud, from reflection on the role of the father in the life of the individual to more general ideas on the meaning of religion. Jung did, however, employ the term ‘identification’. He presented the following outline. The religion of the Old Testament raised the father to the level of a god in an incomplete and unsuccessful sublimation. This merely led to neurotic fear. Then came the prophets, who accomplished the identification with Yahweh; in other words, complete sublimation. Christ, who came to fulfil the prophecies, eliminated the fear of God, teaching that the true relation to God was one of love.112 It is in this article that we find all elements of the Oedipus complex, including identification described for the first time in psychoanalytic literature. This was not the end of Jung’s presentation of religion. He further analyzed its development in the life of the individual. In this analysis, certain elements which were to be characteristic of later Jungian thought can be clearly discerned. As a child, man lived spontaneously under the parent’s authority as if under a destiny. As the child grew, however, a
111. S. FREUD, Obsessive Actions and Religious Practices, S.E. IX, 115-127, G.W. VII, 127139. 112. C.G. JUNG, The Significance of the Father in the Destiny of the Individual, C.W. IV, § 738 (original text in the footnote).
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conflict arose between the infantile constellation and the emerging individuality. A consequence of this was that the parents’ influence was repressed but did not disappear, thus making itself felt from the unconscious often in rather mysterious ways. This was the root of ‘religious sublimations’. At the same time, the father image was split up in a remarkable way. The place of the father with his constellating virtues and faults was now taken up, on the one hand, by an absolute and exalted God, who was credited with sublime love, and, on the other hand, by the devil, who was attributed with the lower sexual drive. In neurosis, this conflict was pushed to the extreme. God became the symbol of the strongest form of sexual repression while the devil became the symbol of sexual desire. By splitting up, the father constellation became like the head of Janus with its yes and no components, as did all unconscious complexes.113 What was particularly striking in Jung’s representation was his concept of the conflict as taking place between on the one hand, the constellation, which the child had received from its parents, and on the other hand, individuality, which apparently originated through maturation from an innate germ. Another point to be noted was the theme of the splitting up of the components. Here one could already discover traces of the later theory of enantiondromia. Unfortunately, Jung did not treat this theme more fully in the article. We do not have any comment made by Freud concerning this article. It is possible that he did not read it until the publication of the Jahrbuch in March 1909. That same month, Jung visited Freud in Vienna and many matters were discussed. In the meantime however, The Significance of the Father in the Destiny of the Individual was no longer at the centre of attention since both Freud and Jung were fascinated by the observations on Jung’s daughter Agathli, whose reaction to the birth of her brother in late 1908 showed remarkable similarities to ‘Little Hans’. Jung published his observations on his daughter in the following issue of the Jahrbuch, under the title Psychic conflicts in a Child. For the occasion, ‘Agathli’ was called ‘Anna’.114
113. Ibid., § 741 (original text in the footnote). 114. According to the catalogue of Jung’s manuscripts in the Library of the University of the Swiss Confederation (ETH) in Zurich, the original title for the study was Observations on the Origin and the Development of a Phobia in a Four-Year-Old Girl, (Beobachtungen über Entstehung und Verlauf einer Phobie bei einen 4-jährigen Mädchen), reflecting Freud’s Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-Year-Old Boy.
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Little Anna Freud regarded his Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-Year-Old Boy as the confirmation, through direct observation, of his theory of infantile sexuality, which he had earlier deduced from the analysis of adult patients. The basic element of the boy’s (little Hans) phobia proved to be rivalry with his father for the possession of his mother. It also became unmistakably clear that fear of castration held a central position in the rivalry attitude. With little Hans, one also came across various infantile fantasies concerning pregnancy and birth as well as the burning question of the father’s mysterious role in all of this. Jung had already read Freud’s manuscript when, on the occasion of the birth of his son Franz (December 1908), his four-year-old daughter Agathli (little Anna) appeared to have many questions and fantasies which sounded very similar to those of little Hans. From January until August 1909, Jung gave a detailed account of this to Freud who showed a lively interest in the new information for his own hypothesis. These reports were finally published in 1910.115 The question troubling Anna was, of course, where did children come from? It was observed that, while playing, she tried to picture how this would happen. The stork story had made her suspicious from the very beginning since her mother’s pregnancy had not passed unnoticed. After she had realized that the baby came out of the mother, she tried to imagine how it got out of the mother’s body and then how it had gotten there in the first place. Did it come out of the anus like excrement? Was it thrown up? Did the child get into the mother through the mouth? And finally, what was the role of her father in all this? There was much symbolism in her fantasies. She dreamed, for instance, of Noah’s Ark with a trap-door at the bottom, through which the animals fell out. However, more important than these and other fantasies which showed an obvious Oedipal character, was the theoretical context in which Jung placed his observations. On this point, his hypothesis was different and even poorer than Freud’s. In the first place, there was a short phobic episode. At night, Anna often woke her parents in fear, because of an earthquake. During the day, she was also preoccupied with this theme. Whenever she was taken for a walk, she asked whether they would not return to find the house destroyed by an earthquake. A stone on the road was also from an earthquake. Once
115. Psychic Conflicts in a Child, C.W. XVII, § 1-179. It is clear from 151J that the article had already been edited before the trip to America in September 1909. One of his lectures in Worcester dealt with this article.
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she was told that earthquakes only occurred in places where there were volcanoes, she never tired of looking at atlases, in which she wanted to be shown all the volcanoes. Jung did not analyze the content of the phobia. He merely indicated that this phobia began during a period when Anna distrusted her parents because they had told her the stork story. The fear generated by this distrust fixated itself upon the theme of the earthquake of Messian, which had recently been discussed at table. Anna’s interest in volcanoes disappeared the moment she was told that children grew in their mothers’ bodies. Jung’s explanation did not proceed from a content analysis of the phobia but from the ‘typical process of introversion’. This was the first explicit mention of the term in Jung’s writings. The distrust caused by the stork story caused the child to withdraw part of her love for her parents. The libido which had been cathected in the parents thus became objectless and was ‘introverted’. In other words, it was directed towards the subject herself and it expressed itself in a heightened fantasy. Introversion then was a compensation for the de-cathexis of the object.116 "The elegiac reveries express the fact that part of the love, which formerly belonged, and should belong, to a real object, is now introverted, that is, it is turned inwards into the subject and there produces an increased fantasy activity."
This passage was extended with a footnote: "This process is altogether typical. When life comes up against an obstacle, so that no adaptation can be achieved and the transference of libido to reality is suspended, then introversion takes place. That is to say, instead of the libido working towards reality there is increased fantasy activity which aims at removing the obstacle, or at least removing it in fantasy, and this may in time lead to a practical solution. Hence the exaggerated sexual fantasies of neurotics, who in this way try to overcome their specific repression."
It seems then that the term ‘introversion’ corresponded exactly to the concept of autoeroticism as understood by Jung. In a de-cathexis of a libidinous object, reality was replaced by fantasy. What we also find here is Jung’s theory that this withdrawal of the libido into the individual’s own fantasy world served to protect the individual. Jung considered that since Anna was only four years old and consequently possessed little
116. Ibid., § 13.
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capacity for sublimation, introversion could do no more than produce some slight symptoms. Fear was released so that Anna once again, just as a few years before, attempted to force her mother’s love by crying at night.117 What was new in Jung’s theory was the affirmation that introversion prepared a solution for the reality conflict. However, Jung’s precise position on this point remained unclear. In the case of Little Anna, he only mentioned that once she had been told the truth about birth, she conquered her phobia for volcanoes by imagining that she had a big brother who could do everything and who protected her. In the meantime, however, trust had been restored from the outside, so that the phobic episode seemed to have been brought to an end by a solution to the reality conflict rather than by introversion itself. Signs of Reversal The most significant expressions of Jung’s theoretical insights in the period between Freud’s visit to Zurich and the trip to America were The Significance of the Father in the Destiny of the Individual and ‘Little Anna’. After the publication of ‘Little Hans’, Freud was especially concerned with the analysis of the ‘Ratman’. There was little mention of this in his letters to Jung. He merely stated that he was fascinated by the case since it provided him with a deeper insight into the nature of obsessional neurosis. The correspondence in this period was rather poor on the theoretical level except for the sections on the treatment of Otto Gross and the observations of Little Anna. The letters mostly dealt with problems of organizing and some reflections on the evolution of the psychoanalytic movement. Nevertheless both gave certain indications of new insights. Freud wrote several times that he was obsessed by the idea of a central complex as the basis of all neuroses.118 The term ‘Oedipus complex’ was not yet mentioned here but having noted the central position of castration in the analysis of ‘Little Hans’ and the ‘Ratman’, Freud summarized this central complex in the following way: fear of the father and distrust in adults. Both of these elements could be completely transferred to the analyst.119
117. Ibid., § 18. 118. 118F, 129F. 119. 129F.
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Jung was also in search of a central complex but a complex that was connected with the prospective tendencies of the human psyche. "If there is a ‘Psychoanalysis’, there must also be a ‘Psychosynthesis’ which creates future events according to the same laws."120 This term seems thus to have been coined by Jung. We know that he met R. Assagnoli (18881974) a few months later. The following year, the latter defended his famous thesis on ‘Psychosynthesis’.121 Coinciding with his faith in the hidden teleology of the psyche was Jung’s renewed interest in parapsychological phenomena, both of which were connected to a very complex affective relation to Freud. When Jung visited Freud in March 1909, they discussed parapsychology and precognition. Freud dismissed the topic as so much nonsense. Just then, a loud bang was heard from the next room. Jung immediately predicted a second bang which was actually heard. At the time of the event, Freud was rather bewildered. However, he later wrote to Jung that with the latter’s departure, the impression made by the event had also disappeared. During the same visit, they had also discussed the father-son relation between them.122 Once he had returned home, Jung wrote to Freud that he was happy since he now felt free of any oppressive paternal authority.123 Freud replied bitterly:124 "It is strange that on the very same evening when I formally adopted you as eldest son and anointed you - in partibus infidelium - as my successor and crown prince, you should have divested me of my paternal dignity, which divesting seems to have given you as much pleasure as I, on the contrary, derived from the investiture of your person."
In September 1909, Jung and Freud travelled to America together, where they had both been invited by Stanly Hall to accept an honorary doctorate from Clark University. Their personal problems came to the surface as early as the port of Bremen, where they embarked on the trip with Dr. Sandor Ferenczi. At table, they discussed the well-preserved prehistoric bodies which had been found in the marshes of Northern Germany. The topic made Freud nervous and he repeatedly asked Jung what he was hinting at with the story of these bodies. Then Freud suddenly fainted. He later explained that he had been convinced that Jung 120. 138J. 121. G. WEHR, Jung. A Biography, p. 111. 122. 139F and C.G. JUNG, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p. 152-154. 123. 138J. 124. 139F.
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wished him dead. Such affective problems were regularly discussed by Jung and Freud, especially when they were doing collective dream analyses.125 In his autobiography, Jung wrote that one of the turning points in his relation with Freud was when the latter refused to reveal certain matters from his private life during one of these dream analyses because he was afraid of undermining his own authority.126 At Clark University, Freud delivered a series of lectures On Psychoanalysis. Jung gave three lectures: one on his association test, one on family constellations and one on his analysis of ‘Little Anna’. Conclusion After a period of hesitation, Jung came to accept the role of sexuality in psychic development. It appeared to Freud as if Jung had finally accepted the nucleus of the psychoanalytical theory. On closer examination, however, it can be seen how, from the very beginning, Jung viewed psychic phenomena from a quite different perspective. While Freud’s attention was mainly focused on a detailed analysis of the sexual drive, Jung remained preoccupied with the constitution of the subject. A typical example of the latter perspective was Jung’s misunderstanding of the return to autoeroticism as a regression into a fantasy world. In light of von Hartmann’s Romantic view of the unconscious and with the later evolution of Jung’s thought in mind, one can clearly express Jung’s conception in the following way: the unconscious was the mother of the conscious. Fantasy was the lower form of psychic activity from which thought and orientation to the outside world later developed. Jung evidently discerned a certain teleology. Fantasy played a role in the constitution of the ego and was concerned with psychic selfpreservation. In his analysis of Little Anna, Jung was not primarily concerned with finding parallels with the case of Little Hans. His attention was mainly focused on the mechanism of introversion, which he did not merely regard as a morbid, regressive phenomenon but also as a return to the source. Jung clearly saw this constitution of the subject as taking place from within. The conflict between parental constellation and individuality about which he spoke, could hardly be thought of as anything other than individuality unfolding itself through a process of maturation.
125. C.G. JUNG, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p. 155-156. 126. Ibid., p. 154.
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Freud, on the other hand, placed much more emphasis on the influence of the outside world on the subject. In ‘Little Hans’ and the ‘Ratman’, the father-figure was central. It was not long before Freud arrived at his most explicit thesis: the difference between pleasure and reality. Apart from this difference in their final views on the unconscious, we have seen both Freud and Jung beginning to reflect upon the problem of culture and religion. Both of them felt that culture and religion involved the renunciation of an immediate fulfilment of drives. Both still valued religion positively. It was religion which gave rise to culture. As for schizophrenia, it is quite remarkable how Freud combined dementia praecox and paranoia in a theory which brought together observations from both syndromes. It is also apparent that Freud displayed a spontaneous affective repulsion for an organic approach, whereas Jung did not find a somatic approach irreconcilable with psychological analysis.
Chapter VI
The Discovery of Mythology (1909-1911)
From the Journey to the United States until the Congress at Weimar Up until their journey to the United States, the relationship between Freud and Jung had developed within the context of their common aspiration to disseminate and expand the theory and practice of psychoanalysis. However, along with several personal problems which had arisen, they had also encountered a number of misunderstandings on the theoretical level. Yet ultimately, all of this occurred within the fundamental awareness that both men were working towards the same goal. From this point on however, the situation changed and the divergences between them constantly came more clearly to the fore. When surveying the period extended between their journey to the United States in September 1909 and their definitive break at the congress at Munich in September 1913, the following key moments can be distinguished. It was during this period that Jung discovered and enthusiastically explored the topic of mythology with the problem of incest at its core. Freud followed Jung’s progress on this topic with much interest. At the same time, Freud was attempting to nuance his own views on dementia praecox and paranoia using Schreber’s autobiography which he had become acquainted with through Jung. Both Jung and Freud published the results of their research in the first part of the Jahrbuch which appeared in August 1911. Jung’s contribution was the first part of his Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido1 while Freud submitted Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning as well as Psycho-Analytic Notes on an Autobiographical Account of a Case of Paranoia, which dealt
1. The Collected Works give only the completely revised edition of 1952. There exists an older translation by B. Hinkle, under the misleading title: Psychology of the Unconscious. A Study of the Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido. A Contribution to the History of Evolution of Thought, London, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1921. To avoid confusion with an other book of Jung bearing the title Psychology of the Unconscious, we will refer to the former using as title the litteral translation of the German title Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido, thus: Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido.
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with his study of Schreber. From all outward appearances, a climate of close cooperation still seemed to exist. Both authors congratulated each other and voiced their mutual agreement with the obtained conclusions. After the summer and the congress at Weimar (September 1911) however, the divergences between Freud and Jung became more strongly expressed. While Jung wrote the second part of Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido, Freud started his Totem and Taboo, a work that slowly developed into a reply to Jung. Their greatest point of difference eventually revolved around Jung’s expanding of the notion of libido. The Discovery of Mythology Upon his return from the United States, Jung delved eagerly into the subject of mythology and the science of comparative religions. The trip had more than likely spurred his interest in this direction. Religious sensitivity and the supernatural in all forms had never been foreign to Jung. Moreover, Ferenczi, who had accompanied Freud on the trip, was equally fascinated by parapsychological phenomena. Upon returning to Vienna, he had even convinced Freud to go along on a visit to a medium in Berlin.2 Freud applauded Jung’s interest in mythology and symbolism and took an active part in the research himself. He was not as pleased with Jung’s fascination with parapsychology and occult phenomena. Yet, due to the fact that Ferenczi was also interested in such phenomena, he allowed himself to be partially convinced that it was a worthwhile enterprise to investigate these matters with the aid of psychoanalysis. Nevertheless, he could not completely put aside his reservations.3 While Ferenczi was primarily drawn to telepathy, Jung’s main interest lay with the study of mythology and religions. Freud gladly shared these interests. Indeed, applying the psychoanalytic theory to historical material was not new. The previous year, Riklin had published the work Wunscherfüllung und Symbolik im Märchen in Schriften zur angewandten Seelenkunde, a series edited by Freud. In the same series, Abraham’s Traum und Mythus and Rank’s Der Mythus von der Geburt des Helden had recently appeared.
2. See The Freud/Jung Letters, footnote at 158F. 3. See 254J, 255F and 260F.
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In October 1909, shortly after he had begun his research,4 Jung reported to Freud that, by using mythology, incest could be demonstrated as being the core complex of neurosis.5 Jung found a very telling example in the writings of Herodotus. Ares, who was raised outside of his native country, returned home in order to sleep with his mother. The attendants however, did not recognize him and he was refused access to the city. Ares gathered some supporters, overpowered the attendants and slept with his mother. The yearly commemoration of this myth saw the fight against the attendants ritually re-enacted with such vehemence that often many people were injured. Jung moreover encountered these same elements of incest, bloody fights and even self-chastisement which could go as far as castration, in the cults of Isis, Cybele, Atargatis and Hekate. Another element which Jung discovered, was that dying and resurrecting gods could always be interpreted in a phallic manner (Orpheus, Thammuz, Osiris, Adonis). In reply to Jung’s enthusiastic statements, Freud wrote that much of what he had reported sounded surprisingly new. Freud was especially struck by the fact that myths portrayed a desire for the mother and that self-castration could be interpreted as the punishment for this desire.6 Two weeks later, Jung announced that he had encountered a very archaic feature in Greek mythology, namely, the existence of the dactyls and the cabeiri who should not be regarded as phallic gods but as gods of the elements.7 This had left Jung with the impression that only the great gods, who were the subjects of the epic myths, were phallic. The importance of this notion becomes clear when one considers the context into which Jung situated his research on mythology and which he explicitly
4. The Freud/Jung Letters mention in a rather cursory manner which books Jung read in this regard. Although the matter is not without importance, the references provided are uncorrect. In fact, Jung read: TH. INMAN, Ancient Pagan and Modern Christian Symbolism Exposed and Explained, (1st ed.: 1869), 2nd ed.: New York, 1874. F. CREUZER, Symbolik und Mythologie der alten Völker, Leipzig, 1810-1812 (2nd ed.: 1819-1822; 3rd ed.: 1836-1843; reprint: New York, Arno Press, 1978, 6 vol). (According to Creuzer (1771-1858), the religions of the ancient world stemmed from an original, pure monotheism but popular belief forced them toward polytheism. The mystery cults managed to keep them in their purest form). R. KNIGHT, A Discourse on the Worship of Priapus and its Connection with the Mystic Theology of the Ancients, London, 1768 (and not1868). This book was written by the famous Richard Payne Knight (1750-1824). It caused such a scandal that the author endeavored to purchase all of the copies of his offending publication. See The Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, vol. XI. 5. 162J. 6. See 163F. 7. 165J.
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propounded here for the first time. According to Jung, the human psyche could only be understood in light of history. As in the case of anatomy, psychology must interpret ontogeny by means of phylogeny. Although it probably escaped Freud, the following was implied. Just as the phallic gods appeared at a later stage than the gods of the elements, sexuality also originated as a differentiation of a more archaic instinctual substratum. Further in the same letter, Jung rather abruptly asked whether Freud would be so kind as to provide a definition of the notion ‘libido’ since he himself had not been able to draw up a satisfactory definition of the concept. In conclusion, he wrote just as abruptly that he had developed a rather clear opinion on dementia praecox. With these allusions, Jung indicated in an amazingly short period of time all the elements that would later comprise the core of Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido, although these references can only be distinguished in retrospect. Freud was puzzled at Jung’s request. He replied that he had already clearly defined the libido in the first lines of Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality:8 "The libido is the analogon to hunger, for which, in the sexual context, the German language has no word except the ambiguous ‘Lust’".
He further inquired if Jung had also noticed that insights into the theories concerning infantile sexuality were a conditio sine qua non for the understanding of mythology. Jung responded by stating that undoubtedly, one could recognize traces of infantile sexual theories in mythology but, for him, the main concern still seemed to lay in the struggle with incest which prompted sexual repression "or is it the other way round?"9 This last phrase, which announced the complete reversal of Jung’s thought process, went unnoticed by Freud. Moreover, the bulk of their correspondence at that time centred around a number of practical problems, especially the organization of the Nurenberg Congress scheduled for the end of March. During the same period between October 1909 and the beginning of 1910, Freud zealously worked on his redaction of Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of his Childhood.10 He had begun analysis of a patient who seemed to be the exact image of the great artist and scientist, at least as
8. 169F. 9. 170J. 10. See especially 158F, 160F, 166F, 179F, 185F.
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far as his transformation of sexuality into a drive for knowledge was concerned.11 This analysis offered Freud the opportunity to study Da Vinci more closely. With regard to the content of his research however, we learn very little from his correspondence with Jung. Only on one occasion did Freud express the idea which he was developing in Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of his Childhood: the ultimate basis of the need for religion was to be found in the helplessness which every person experienced as a child. The repercussion of this experience entailed that, for the rest of their lives, people could no longer conceive of a world without parents. Man "makes for himself a just God and a kindly nature, the two worst anthropomorphic falsifications he could have imagined". Reflecting upon this, Freud deemed the insight to be "very banal". Moreover, "it was derived, incidentally, from the instinct of self-preservation, and not from the sexual instinct, which adds its spice later on."12 In his reply, Jung did not comment upon this statement. When Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of his Childhood was published in early June 1910, he again did not react to the passage in the article where Freud expressed this idea.13 At the end of January 1910, Jung delivered a lecture on symbolism.14 In his report to Freud, he claimed that he had attempted to prove that an individual’s fantasy primarily reflected his inner conflicts but that the forms which were employed, were typically mythical. Freud congratulated him on this insight because it signaled, for him, that Jung had clearly abandoned his view of the symbol as a form of ‘vague thinking’ and was pursuing Freud’s line of thought. This line of thought led in the direction of the ‘archaic repressive’ which both men hoped to disclose by means of mythology and the development of language.15 Thus, the various elements in their correspondence which we have touched upon until now, reveal that both authors were preoccupied with the issue of ‘religion’. Since Freud and Jung, for the most part, were
11. 158F. 12. 171F. 13. 198J. 14. 175F. 15. "Your deepened view of symbolism has all my sympathy. Perhaps you remember how dissatisfied I was when in agreement with Bleuler all you had to say of symbolism was that it was a kind of ‘unclear thinking’. True, what you write about it now is only a hint, but in a direction where I too am searching, namely, archaic regression, which I hope to master through mythology and the development of language. It would be wonderful if you could do a piece on the subject for the Jahrbuch." 177F.
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dealing with organizational arrangements, their correspondence did not allow for a systematic discussion or exposition on the topic. The issue of religion became very concrete however when Freud suggested that the psychoanalysts as a group join the ‘International Order for Ethics and Culture’.16 The ‘International Order for Ethics and Culture’ was founded in 1908 at Frankfurt-am-Main with the aspiration of becoming an influential organization which would counter ‘obscurantistic and reactionary forces’ in society and which would defend a socialist ethics based on science in opposition to the classical order.17 On a practical level, the organization considered its purpose to be the moral and financial support of progressive trends, the dissemination of public statements on the occasion of important events and the education of young people by means of youth movements. Freud was drawn to the association because of its aggressive yet practical goals and he suggested that the psychoanalysts join as a group.18 Jung was not very pleased with this proposition and did not exactly hide his discontentment over what, for him, seemed to be a laicized form of religion.19 His main reproach was that an order which attempted to appeal to mankind only through reason lacked the deep, instinctual and mythical power which was operative in religion. Further, the movement, just as any ‘interest group’ ran the danger of bleeding to death within ten years:20 "Religion can be replaced only by religion. Is there perchance a new saviour in the International Order? What sort of new myth does it hand out for us to live by? Only the wise are ethical from sheer intellectual presumption, the rest of us need the eternal truth of myth.... An ethical fraternity, with its mythical Nothing, not infused by any archaic-infantile driving force, is a pure vacuum..."
However, Jung did not dispute the need for addressing the ethical issue of sexual freedom which was one of the movement’s concerns. He reflected that he himself was uncertain as to which side the scale between the Dionysian and the Apollonian aspects would best tilt. Sometimes, it 16. 174F. 17. Information on the founding and the statutes of the ‘Internationaler Orden für Ethik und Kultur’ can be found in: Annuaire de la Vie Internationale, Brussels, 1910-1911. 18. It was stipulated that both individuals and groups could join. 19. 178J. The Order did have some traits of a pseudo-Church. The members accepted their proper jurisdiction within the order and the meetings were held with a certain ritual which was revealed only to members. 20. 178J.
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seemed that it would be worthwhile to reinstate some of the ‘old cultural stupidities’, such as monasteries. Yet on the other hand, he viewed religion as not necessarily in opposition to sexuality. The enmity of religion toward sexuality, often encountered in history, evolved more as a deterioration of authentic religion. Thus a historically based need for ascesis which survived its time and which went beyond its purpose ultimately turned religion into a ‘Misery Institute’. Instead of joining a certain combative ethical movement as a group, Jung preferred to await the slow infiltration of psychoanalysis into society, starting from different centers. When this occurred, the sense of eros would also be rediscovered in Christianity.21 "Yet what infinite rapture and wantonness lie dormant in our religion, waiting to be led back to their true destination! A genuine and proper ethical development cannot abandon Christianity but must grow up within it, must bring to fruition its hymn of love, the agony and ecstasy over the dying and resurgent god, the mystic power of the wine, the awesome anthropophagy of the Last Supper - only this ethical development can serve the vital forces of religion."
To this presentation of affairs, Freud coolly replied that he did not intend to replace religion by anything else. "This need must be sublimated."22 Shortly thereafter, on March 30 and 31 1910, the Congress of Nurenberg took place, during which the International Society for Psychoanalysis was officially founded. Jung was elected as president. In the meantime, Freud abandoned his plan to join the International Order for Ethics and Culture as a group.23 Following the congress, Freud and Jung spent a day together in Rothenburg where Jung introduced Freud to Schreber’s book Memoirs of my Nervous Illness.24 Freud was immediately fascinated with Schreber’s case. From that time on, his correspondence with Jung was frequently interspersed with Schreber’s bizarre expressions which Jung had pointed out to him.25
21. 178J. 22. 179F. 23. A short statement was published in the Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse, Bd 1, nr. 3 (December 1910) announcing the possibility of joining as an individual. 24. D.P. SCHREBER, Denkwürdigkeiten eines Nervenkranken, Leipzig, (1st ed.: 1903) Vienna, Ulstein, 1973. 25. See among other letters: 186J, 187F, 197F.
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Freud however only read the book during the following summer. By now, Jung’s interest led him to the study of Christian symbolism and of the relationship between early Christianity and the Mithras cult. Gradually, Jung came to understand that the core complex of the human psyche consisted in a profound disturbance between satisfying the libido and procreation due to the prohibition of incest. The astral religions which have the solar cycle as their central theme, poignantly expressed this problem. Just as the sun rose again after the winter season, so did mankind become fertile in spite of the prohibition of incest (and its influence on the libido).26 Unfortunately, the text of the first redaction of Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido, in which Jung initially attempted to formulate his insights with regard to religion, has been lost. In June 1910, Jung had sent this text to Freud, who commented upon it at length.27 Freud’s reply has been preserved but since the text he was referring to is no longer extant, his comments are difficult to place. However, it becomes apparent that even in this first redaction of Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido, Jung employed the fantasies of Miss Miller, which would later be the guideline of the definitive version. On the theoretical level, Freud directed his criticism specifically at Jung’s expression that "sexuality destroys itself". Jung’s next letter allows a reconstruction of the discussion with regard to this point.28 Jung had been particularly struck by certain images which represented various sexual symbols as being in conflict with each other. With regard to this, the key representation of the Mithras cult had especially amazed him. Mithras was depicted as sacrificing a bull. In the same presentation, a snake and a dog appeared as leaping at the wound inflicted by the sacrificial knife. Jung interpreted this as the expression of a conflict intrinsic to the sexual drive itself. The Mithras representation, just as the representation of Christ’s death on the cross, signified a sacrifice that took place both voluntarily and involuntarily. According to Jung’s line of thought, this conflict within sexuality could only be rooted in one event: the prohibition of incest. Because of
26. "The ‘nuclear complex’ seems to be the profound disturbance - caused by the incest prohibition - between libidinal gratification and propagation. The astral myth can be solved in accordance with the rules of dream interpretation: Just as the sun mounts higher and higher after the winter, so will you attain to fruitfulness in spite of the incest barrier (and its odious effects on your libido)." 196J. 27. 199aF. 28. Id.
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the prohibition, the libido was cut off from the shortest and easiest route to gratification. Consequently, the libido as such was repressed and quite a bit of effort was needed in order to later retrieve it from this state of repression and to make fertility possible. With regard to this process, the religious representation of Christ and Mithras for example, portrayed a hero who voluntarily fulfilled the demands made by the prohibition of incest. They denied themselves an immediate sexual gratification. The believer could then identify with this mythic example which aided him in his struggle with his own drives. Due to this denial of direct gratification, culture emerged. The part of the letter in which Jung expressed these thoughts was very concise. The original text, which Freud had read, may have been more lucid. The text of the letter was also very ambiguous with regard to one point in particular. Jung wrote:29 "There must be something very typical in the fact that the symbol of fecundity, the useful and generally accepted (not censured) alter ego of Mithras (the bull) is slain by another sexual symbol. The self-sacrifice is voluntarily and involuntarily at once (the same conflict as in the death of Christ) ... What it boils down to is a conflict at the heart of sexuality itself. The only possible reason for this conflict seems to be the incest prohibition which struck at the root of primitive sexuality. You could also say: the incest prohibition blocks the nearest and most convenient outlet for the libido and makes it altogether bad. Somehow the libido has to free itself from this repression since it must reach its propagative goal ... This conflict must have been deadly serious ... Hence the imperative need for the prototype of a hero who understands how to accomplish of his own free will what the repression is after - namely, temporary or permanent renunciation of fruitfulness, ... in order to realize the ethical ideal of the subjugation of instinct."
The ambiguity lay in situating the prohibition of incest. While Jung stated that this prohibition formed the basis of the conflict within sexuality, the examples he presented illustrated that the prohibition was not imposed from the outside but was the expression of an antinomy which could be intrinsic to the sexual drive itself. Upon analyzing the Mithras representation, Jung expounded that the religious representation of the hero who voluntarily sacrificed his libido was intended to help people in voluntarily fulfilling the demands of repression. The primary conflict was situated not so much between Mithras
29. 200J.
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and the bull. Rather, it took place between the bull and the snake (or the dog), thus between two aspects of the libido. Jung offered yet another example along the same lines. The raven was often encountered as a symbol in Mithraism. It was the messenger of the gods which informed Mithras of the sacrifice demanded of him. According to Jung, this bird could also be interpreted as the ‘force compelling one toward culture’, which was apparently intrinsic to sexuality itself. In any case, in Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido, Jung reduced the prohibition of incest to the symbolic expression of the inner divergence within the sexual drive. Most likely, this notion influenced what he wrote to Freud. The appearance of the term ‘archaic sexuality’, which in his conflict with Freud became the polemic concept par excellence, points in this direction. The idea of ‘a sexuality which destroys itself’ greatly distressed Freud. He indicated to Jung that it was superfluous to search for connections between the various sexual symbols. All the symbols involved were merely an accumulation of images concerning the concept of castration. If it were left up to him, Freud would remain with the theory that the Mithras image was a mythological projection of repression. The sublimated part of man (the conscious ego: Mithras) sacrificed his drive (the bull).30 Jung was not convinced that his opinion was so farfetched. He thanked Freud for his criticism and revised his text accordingly. The first part of the text was published more than a year later, in August 1911. During that same period, Freud continued writing his Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning which he had begun a few days before he received the first redaction of Jung’s Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido. He hoped that Jung would not consider the work plagiarism.31 However, Freud’s main efforts were channelled toward his work on ‘Schreber’. The issues raised in Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido were hardly discussed in the correspondence between Jung and Freud during this time. They merely made mention of the themes of Jung’s research. Jung’s assumption, that Miss Miller’s fantasies in fact represented a salvation mystery, was confirmed.32 Jung also discovered a Priapus image which portrayed the god as laughingly pointing to a snake biting his penis. He interpreted this as a confirmation of the inner conflict
30. 199aF. 31. 199F. 32. 213J.
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within the libido.33 In passing, a few other remarks were made which nevertheless had enormous implications. Thus, in March 1911, concerning his break with Adler, Freud wrote that Adler had accused him of employing circular reasoning: "Where does repression originate? In culture. Where does culture originate? In repression." Freud simply remarked that he found Adler’s criticism to be a tasteless play on words since he could not see a contradiction if the concept was formulated in the following manner. The individual repeats the same process of repression which his ancestors endured and the residue of which could still be found in culture.34 In passing, Freud also asked Jung if the following definition of the symbol would be of any use to him:35 "Can you do anything with this formula: the symbol is an unconscious substitute for a conscious concept; symbol formation is the initial stage of concept formation, just as repression is the forerunner of judgment."
Jung replied that he had some difficulties with the definition. How could one, in light of such a definition, explain the fact that the symbol was sometimes employed, substituting more vague notions for unequivocal notions, in order to serve repression? When an Indian myth explained the origin of first man by using the images from the art of weaving (the warp and the woof for example, derived from the loom), it did not imply the construction of a new notion. On the contrary, something already known (to the listener) was given new meaning. A certain libidinous cathexis was transferred to series of intellectual parallels.36 In August 1911, the volume of the Jahrbuch containing Freud’s Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning as well as his ‘Schreber’ and the first part of Jung’s Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido was published. In the same letter in which Freud thanked Jung for the recent issue of the Jahrbuch and in which he stated his eagerness to read Jung’s text, he also announced that, for some time, he had been active in certain research which Jung would find surprising. Without telling Jung, Freud was alluding to the fact that he had started writing Totem and Taboo.
33. 215J. 34. 240F. 35. 241F. 36. 243J.
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180 Fantasy and Insanity
The psychiatric problematic had not completely slipped to the background in the correspondence between Jung and Freud. The issues of Schreber and paranoia certainly formed the core of this problematic while the different ways in which both authors viewed the problem had already become clear in their correspondence following Freud’s publication of Notes upon a Case of Obsessional Neurosis (hereafter referred to as ‘Ratman’).37 This grave case of obsessional neurosis had, among other things, revealed to Freud the importance of the sadistic components of the libido. Jung was particularly struck by the insight that obsessive thoughts were substituted for actions in a repressive manner. He immediately found a parallel in dementia praecox where thoughts replaced reality also in a repressive manner.38 The context in which Jung situated this insight became evident in his reflection on the sadistic components which Freud had interpreted as constitutional elements of the libido. Jung had great difficulty accepting Freud’s interpretation because, according to him, the libido in essence was more closely related to masochism than to sadism. This led him to synthesize his thoughts on neurosis as follows:39 "I don’t like the idea of sadism being constitutional. I think of it rather as a reactive phenomenon, since for me the constitutional basis of the neuroses is the imbalance between libido and resistance (self-assertion). If, at the start, the libido displayed too strong an attraction or need for love, hate would soon appear by way of compensation, and would subtract a good deal of the work of gratification from the masochistic libido (which by nature is much more nearly akin to masochism than to sadism). I think this is the basis for the immense self-assertion that appears later on in obsessional neurosis: the patient is always afraid of losing his ego, must take revenge for every act of love, and gives up the sexually destructive obsessional system only with the greatest reluctance. Obsessional neurosis never gets lost in actions and adventures as in the case of hysteria, where ego-loss is a temporary necessity. Obviously the self-assertion in obsessional neurosis is far exceeded in Dementia praecox."
Jung misunderstood the notion ‘libido’ in the same way that he misunderstood autoeroticism as we have earlier indicated. According to him,
37. S. FREUD, Notes upon a Case of Obsessional Neurosis, G.W. VII, 379-463, S.E. X, 151249. 38. 168J. 39. 168J.
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the libido designated an orientation toward a real object in the outside world. In his text, the core of every neurotic conflict was defined as a disproportion between ‘libido’ and ‘resistance’ or ‘self-affirmation’ (Resistenz). Viewed in this context, masochism stood closer to the essence of the libido while sadism was the reaction of self-affirmation which feared losing itself in the objects. The constitutional basis of neuroses could then be specified as follows. Where the libido was predominant, hysteria would originate; where self-affirmation dominated, the ego would encapsulate itself against the outside world in a limited degree in cases of obsessional neurosis or more profoundly in instances of dementia praecox. By way of concluding, Jung remarked that the quest for a specific sexual constitution for every psychic disorder appeared to him to be extremely difficult. Thus, for the present, he found it much easier to maintain the solution of posing a specific oversensitivity as the general basis of neuroses while viewing other, more abnormal conditions as reaction phenomena.40 To this, Freud replied that the constitutional character of sadism could hardly be questioned since biology sufficiently proved it to be an original component of the sexual drive.41 Concerning the issue of a disposition toward neurosis, he completely agreed with the hypothesis that neurosis essentially involved a conflict between the ego and the libido. While Adler and Jung researched the topic starting primarily from the ego, Freud preferred to approach the matter from the aspect of the libido. He did admit that he had not yet sufficiently studied the ego. Freud himself regretted this since, in instances of obsessional neurosis as in cases of dementia praecox, it was precisely the reactions formed by the ego that drew attention. Yet what really fascinated him was the way in which the libido, in a concealed manner, again made its influence felt precisely in the defence mechanism. Although in this letter, Freud conceded that until then he had paid too little attention to the ego, he reproached Jung for his inclination to follow Adler. He also accused Jung of using his unfamiliarity with the ego as an excuse to do injustice to the libido theory.42 Freud did not delve into Jung’s concern for the relationship between the ego and the libido or,
40. 168J. 41. 169F. As in Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, Freud interpreted sadism as a form of aggression. Later on, he related sadism to the death drive (unfortunately translated as ‘death instinct’ in the S.E.) in a way very similar to the position Jung defended here. 42. 169F.
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more precisely, for the question whether a too strongly developed libidinous object relation could eventually threaten the ego. In any case, this announced the problematic issue which Freud would later develop in the direction of narcissism and Jung, toward the introversion-extroversion polarity. It is therefore regretful that we no longer have Freud’s answer to the letter in which Jung dealt with his discovery of the surprisingly frequent presence of homosexuality.43 The analysis of Schreber led Freud to establish a connection between neuropsychotic symptoms and the formation of myths. As early as October 1910, Freud shared the main lines of his interpretation with Jung without yet speaking of the theoretical considerations which he would later link with it.44 The text was completed in December 1910.45 In their correspondence, the issue was not discussed any further. Shortly before the issue of the Jahrbuch containing ‘Schreber’, Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning and Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido appeared, Jung offered some remarks on dementia praecox which foreshadowed the second part of Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido. He spoke of how he had slowly come to the conviction that all cases of dementia praecox were characterized by an inner fantasy world which originated due to the libido introversion. In the paranoid form of dementia praecox, this interior world suddenly broke into the outside world in a distorted manner, as was the case with Schreber. Jung further had the impression that the libido introversion not only attained the level of infantile material as was the case in hysteria, but reached much deeper, into the historical layers of the unconscious. The Essential Publications The dialogue then taking place between Jung and Freud found its literary expression in their separate publications in the first part of the 1911 issue of the Jahrbuch which appeared in August that year. Three topics were discussed: the sense of reality and its disappearance, religion and dementia praecox. We will discuss these publications by comparing them according to themes. But first of all, we would like to briefly present them as they individually appeared. In Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental
43. 180J. 44. 218J. 45. 225F.
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Functioning, Freud further developed the representation of the psychic apparatus which he had already introduced in The Interpretation of Dreams. He now raised the question concerning the relationship between this mechanism and exterior reality. The fact that this interrelationship could more or less disappear, demonstrated that it was not self-evident. Upon closer analysis, Freud attempted to outline the transformations of the psychic apparatus which accompanied such an acknowledgment of reality. Freud’s ‘Schreber’ examined Daniel Paul Schreber’s book, entitled Memoirs of my Nervous Illness, in which he autobiographically recounted the delusion he developed during a certain period of his mental illness. In line with the divine plan of salvation, Schreber was to be changed into a woman, impregnated by God and to give birth to a new race of people. In his discussion of Schreber’s book, Freud analyzed the delusion and briefly mentioned the topic of religion - though a lot less than might be expected. He also explained the theoretical model by which he had tried to comprehend dementia praecox and paranoia as well as the distinction between them. Just as ‘Schreber’, Jung’s Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido was designed as a commentary on certain autobiographical material. In this work, Jung discussed the fantasies and poems of Miss Miller, an American patient of Theodor Flournoy, who herself had recorded the circumstances in which these fantasies arose and had thus attempted to gain some sort of autoanalytical insight into them. The first part of Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido discussed two of Miss Miller’s poems: the ‘Hymn to the Creator’ and the ‘Song of the Moth’. The discussion of this material was preceded by a theoretical passage concerning two kinds of thinking, intentional and fantastic, which formed a counterbalance to Freud’s Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning. The Sense for Reality Freud’s Belief in the Opposition between Pleasure and Reality Before Freud, Pierre Janet had already recognized the loss of a sense for reality as an important characteristic of neurosis. Instances of dementia praecox in which patients lost all interest for what occurred outside of them proved even more clearly that a sense for reality was not all that self-evident. In Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning, Freud raised the question as to which psychic structures this sense for reality relied upon and how these structures came into being.
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In The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud had described the human psyche as a closed system exclusively directed at finding an outlet for feelings of discomfort caused by periodical tensions which in turn were due to organic needs. In Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning, Freud’s point of departure was the same. The human psyche fundamentally operated according to the principle of lust or aversion and in its original condition, it did not take into account the objective reality outside of the subject. When desires were not satisfied, they were projected onto reality as a hallucination by means of a reversed operation of the psychic apparatus. Remnants of this archaic mode of functioning could still be found in the dreams of adults. This hallucinatory attempt at gratification was of course destined to fail. Man was necessarily compelled to submit himself to the ‘principle of reality’. Because man was forced to change reality if he wanted to obtain realistic gratification, the human psyche could deploy a number of functions in order to alter reality. One of these functions was the mind which, according to Freud, originated in the fact that the psyche was not able to take only representations into account but also the connections between these representations. Thanks to its attachments to the remnants of words, thinking evolved into conscious thinking.46 As with other psychic functions which emerged due to the reality principle, the purpose of the mind consisted in the ability to control reality and thus to ensure oneself of a lasting satisfaction. Freud defined thinking as experimental acting in miniature. Smaller affective investments were at stake and a smaller outlet for frustrated feelings was needed. Man apparently did not succeed in making his psychic system operate completely according to the reality principle. Alongside the act of thinking, we can distinguish the act of fantasizing as a type of thinking which, while it connected representations with each other, did not submit itself to the reality principle. It sought immediate fulfilment in the pure representation of what was pleasant.47 Besides this, Freud also pointed out that the ego, on the one hand, and the libido, on the other hand, separately underwent the installation process of the reality principle. While the ego submitted to this principle relatively quickly, the libido did not because in its initial stage, it was autoerotic. This fact entailed that reality was far less obstructive in the
46. S. FREUD, Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning, S.E. XII, p. 221, G.W. VIII, p. 233. 47. Ibid., S.E. XII, p. 222, G.W. VIII, p. 234.
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search for fulfilment. Next, a period of latency set in which delayed the urge toward fulfilment for quite some time. Only after that was the object of the libido chosen. The libido thus came under the influence of the reality principle at a much later stage than the ego drives. Since both fantasy and the libido were controlled by the pleasure principle, they easily combined with each other. In fantasy, erotic themes were primarily involved. Freud indicated that although their connection could grow very strong, genetically it was only of secondary importance.48 In essence, Freud’s view can be summarized as follows. Since the pleasure principle alone did not suffice to obtain gratification, man accepted the reality principle as ultimately being in service of the former principle. The thought process was one of the functions prompted into existence because of this. Yet it did not occur without difficulty since fantasy arose at the same time, as a form of thinking which was not willing to submit itself to the reality principle. In a second stage, fantasy bound itself to the libido which, like fantasy yet contrary to the ego drives, did not easily submit itself to the reality principle. The question as to what exactly should be understood by ego drives was not touched upon by Freud in this text. Jung’s Belief in the Real Efficiency of Symbolism. The chapter in Jung’s Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido entitled ‘Two Ways of Thinking’ departed from a position of opposition between intentional thinking and fantasy in such a way that, at first sight, it appeared to repeat Freud’s distinction between the principles of pleasure and reality. Jung defined intentional thinking as logical thinking directed toward the reality outside of the subject. Intentional thinking operated through words and was structured as dialogue. In opposition to this, fantasy was an easier form of thinking which spontaneously arose when one gave up the more demanding process of intentional thinking. Linguistic structures and the meaningfulness of words faded so as to make room for a sort of automatic game of images and feelings while attention for reality gave way to wishful thinking. The difference between Jung and Freud concerning this issue consisted in the fact that Jung situated fantastic thinking at the origin of intentional thinking. Jung had encountered the former way of thinking in history, namely, in mythology which he rather broadly viewed as continuing until the end of antiquity. He also
48. Ibid., S.E. XII, p. 222-223, G.W. VIII, p. 235.
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encountered fantastic thinking in children. Jung therefore concluded that these fantastic thought processes formed the archaic groundwork of intentional thinking both from the phylogenetic and the ontogenetic point of view. That was why it reappeared as a phenomenon of regression as soon as intentional thinking was given up and one sought the fulfilment of fantasy and dreams. Jung himself synthesized his view as follows:49 "..., we saw that phantastic thinking is a characteristic of antiquity, of the child, and of lower races; but now we know also that our modern and adult man is given over in large part to the same phantastic thinking, which enters as soon as the directed thinking ceases. A lessening of the interest, a slight fatigue, is sufficient to put an end to the directed thinking, the exact adaptation to the real world, and to replace it with fantasies."
Thus fantastic thought revealed the archaic layer of the human psyche. Jung did not see it merely as a relic. Rather, he considered it to be the substratum of a more developed form of thinking. He further specified the role of fantastic thinking as follows. It allowed the expression of wishes which could no longer or not yet be consciously acknowledged.50 "This rule can be applied generally to mythical tradition. It does not set forth any account of the old events, but rather acts in such a way that it always reveals a thought common in humanity, and once more rejuvenated."
Elsewhere, he wrote:51 "The conscious fantasies tell us of mythical or other material of undeveloped or no longer recognised wish tendencies in the soul."
The words ‘not yet’ in this quotation lead us away from Freud and open up a perspective on the Romantic concept of the unconscious which Jung, with explicit references to Fichte and Schelling, put forward here.52 For Freud as well as for Jung, fantasy contained an archaism. The direct adaptation to reality was abandoned and regressive tendencies were allowed. Yet, in explaining this on a psychological level, they chose to go in different directions.
49. C.G. JUNG, Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido, Eng. transl. (Psychology of the Unconscious), p. 16; in: Jahrbuch 3 (1911), p. 144. 50. Ibid., p. 20, In: Jahrbuch 3 (1911), p. 150 (italics from the original). 51. Ibid., p. 20; in: Jahrbuch 3 (1911), p. 151 (italics from the original). 52. Ibid., p. 273 (=note 37 on p. 19); in: Jahrbuch 3 (1911), p. 148.
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The archaic element in fantasy, according to Freud, was the element of pleasure, not that of thinking. Insofar as fantasy was a thought process (an ordered row of representations which performed experimental actions at a low level of energy), it originated at the source of the intentional thought process, namely, in the reality principle. In abstract, the following processes could be distinguished. First, there was the mere pleasure principle which sought a substitute for missed occasions of actual gratification through the phenomenon of hallucination (and thus not in fantasy). When this attempt failed, thinking developed under the imperative of the reality principle. Nevertheless, a portion of the emerging thought process remained governed by the pleasure principle. That was fantasy. In order to explain this, Freud simply put forward the principle of the least effort. The psyche disliked abandoning its old sources of lust in order to find new ones.53 In Freud’s view therefore, thinking and fantasy were considered as parallel phenomena. The former did not originate in the latter. Rather, both found their origin in the cooperation of two equal factors: the pleasure principle as the inner law of the psyche and the reality principle which, as an intervention from the outside, denied gratification. Jung’s reasoning was quite different. From the fact that fantasy arose as soon as intentional thinking stopped and that it clearly contained archaic traits, Jung automatically concluded that fantasy was a lower form from which intentional thinking emerged through an evolutionary process. He clearly employed the Romantic-evolutionist scheme in which every dynamic was located in the interior of the organism. Freud, on the contrary, situated the dynamic principle in an intervention coming from outside of the organism, namely, from reality. He viewed reality as that which could be observed by the human senses in an unequivocal manner. The distinction between Jung’s and Freud’s conceptual framework influenced their further development of the matter. Jung set out to discover the moment in history when this mutation of fantastic into intentional thinking occurred. He discovered it in the use of Scholasticism during the Middle Ages and more specifically, in its (at first sight) rather sterile discussions. One discussed for example the question whether Christ would have been able to complete the work of salvation had he come to the world in the form of a pea. According to Jung, these discussions were considered ‘dialectic gymnastics’ by which the spoken symbol, the word,
53. S. FREUD, Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning, S.E. XII, p. 222, G.W. VIII, p. 234.
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received a direct, absolute meaning and ultimately attained the substance which the logos, even at the end of antiquity, could only temporarily attain in myths. Scholasticism’s greatest contribution was the establishment of a highly intellectual sublimation which formed the conditio sine qua non for the development of science and technology.54 Both Freud and Jung had noticed that the content of fantasies was often of an erotic nature. Freud had explained this fact by a secondary connection between fantasy and the libido both of which escaped, for the greater part, the reign of the reality principle. Jung, however, considered this connection between fantasy and libido to be intrinsic. Later, in the second part of Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido, he used an evolutionist framework to outline how fantasy emerged from sexuality, which he called the ‘primordial libido’. In the first part of the work, Jung anticipated this view by stating that it was not surprising that sexuality was so often involved in fantasies since, in mythological thinking, it was so prominent.55 In Jung’s view, it was precisely myths and religions which were the instruments used in the development from instincts to culture. Religion and Projection Freud: Religion Belongs to the Past One of the phenomena which continuously obstructed the psychoanalytical practice was the possibility of negative influence of moral and religious concepts as well as social relationships on the health of the human psyche. The temptation to think that without these cultural factors life would be much better and that a ‘return to nature’ would solve many problems, was at times very great. From the very beginning, Freud viewed culture as a repressive factor and the libido as a repressed nature.56 This did not imply that Freud simply viewed culture as ‘one great farce’, as Jung wrote in his autobio54. "Its whole nature lies in dialectic gymnastics which have raised the symbol of speech, the word, to an almost absolute meaning, so that it finally attained to that substantiality which expiring antiquity could lend to its logos only temporarily, through attributes of mystical salvation. The great work of scholasticism, however, appears to be the foundation of a firmly knitted intellectual sublimation, the conditio sine qua non of the modern scientific and technical spirit." C.G. JUNG, Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido, Eng. transl. (Psychology of the Unconscious), p. 12; in: Jahrbuch 3 (1911), p. 138. 55. Ibid., p. 21; in: Jahrbuch 3 (1911), p. 151. 56. The following should be kept in mind. During this period, the theory of identification with all its implications was not yet present in Freud’s thinking.
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graphy.57 The main idea of Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, that normalcy was situated between perversion and neurosis, and the introduction of the reality principle in Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning pointed to the necessity of a healthy psyche in order to reconcile the pleasure principle with the acknowledgment of reality. Freud thus deemed a certain degree of renunciation of direct gratification of one’s urges to be imperative. It was in this context that Freud, and also Jung, situated religion. In the already discussed article entitled Obsessive Actions and Religious Practices, Freud expounded that religion contributed in allowing mankind to renounce a direct fulfilment of constitutionally inherent drives. Socially damaging inclinations as well as the execution of revenge were entrusted to the gods. Along the same lines, Freud wrote in Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning that myths and religions were the articulation of the intrapsychic impressions made by the substitution of the reality principle for the pleasure principle.58 In a consequent manner, myths and religions attempted to dissuade mankind from every experience of pleasure by their central theme of reward in the life hereafter. According to Freud, however, this attempt failed and the pleasure principle could only be conquered by science which offered both intellectual desire and practical usefulness. Freud thus came to the following affirmation:59 "The doctrine of reward in the after-life for the - voluntary or enforced renunciation of earthly pleasures is nothing other than a mythical projection of this revolution in the mind. Following consistently along these lines, religions have been able to effect absolute renunciation of pleasure in this life by means of a compensation in a future existence; but they have not by this means achieved a conquest of the pleasure principle. It is science which comes nearest to succeeding in that conquest; science too, however, offers intellectual pleasure during its work and promises practical gain in the end."
This left many questions unanswered, especially concerning the dynamic and the efficiency of this projection, into which Freud did not delve. We learn more concerning this topic in his analysis of Schreber. As far as religion was concerned, the central theme of this analysis was the reversal of a persecution complex (which had caused Schreber to
57. C.G. JUNG, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p. 150. 58. S. FREUD, Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning, S.E. XII, p. 223, G.W. VIII, p. 236. 59. Ibid., S.E. XII, p. 223-224, G.W. VIII, p. 236.
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view his physician, Flechsig, as trying to sexually abuse him) into megalomania. Schreber perceived himself as chosen by God to save mankind. He was therefore to be slowly changed into a woman. At the end of time, God would impregnate him and he would give birth to a new human race. The greater part of Freud’s ‘Schreber’ was dedicated to an analysis of the content of both delusions. Freud proved that in the persecution complex as well as in the religious megalomania, homosexual desires formed the key theme. According to Freud, the homosexual elements in Schreber’s sexuality had, for some reason, been disturbed to such an extent that the homosexual (feminine) constitution, which had previously characterized Schreber’s relationship with his father, had once again come to the fore. In an initial stage, the father figure was transferred to Flechsig who, as a physician, fit this role very well since Schreber’s father had been a physician. Schreber consequently defended himself against these homosexual tendencies by means of a persecution complex. It was Flechsig and not Schreber himself, who wanted to enter into a homosexual relationship. Schreber had to continuously defend himself against this sexual aggression. The religious megalomania formed a second phase of the defence against these same homosexual desires. An analysis of Schreber’s concept of God left no room for doubt that, when describing God’s characteristics, Schreber had his father in mind. In his relationship with this God, Schreber developed the ambivalent feelings of love and hatred which characterize every relation between a father and child. For Schreber, God was not only the object of worship but also the object of derision. He was a God who apparently did not know how to deal with people and who therefore could only offer happiness to depersonalized corpses. God’s power was limited. His mere existence was threatened when one felt extremely angry since the divine nerves, which were entwined with the human nerves, could no longer disentangle themselves from their grip. These were the main lines of Freud’s analysis of the two delusions. Freud noted, however, that the analysis of the contents of a delusion did not necessarily explain the mechanism which aroused the delusion. Sexual wishes and fantasies relating to one’s father could be encountered in people who were not suffering from paranoia. A conceptual interpretation of symptoms did not answer the question of why wishes, whose existence had been revealed, expressed themselves in a paranoid form.60
60. S. FREUD, Psycho-Analytic Notes on an Autobiographical Account of a Case of Paranoia, S.E. XII, p. 59, G.W. VIII, p. 295.
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In light of Freud’s previous writings, one would expect a discussion on projection and one is inclined to think that Freud would now apply the notion of projection, which he had earlier described as the defence mechanism of paranoia, to the phenomena of religion. Schreber’s religious delusion seemed to be cut out for Freud to further develop the ideas which he had summarily posited in Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of his Childhood. This idea stated that the god was nothing but an enlarged father, the product of every person’s infantile need for security. Even as an adult, one could not forego an almighty, just God and a trustworthy, sheltering mother earth.61 Freud did not fulfil these expectations. Not only did he not mention the origin of religion in his analysis of Schreber, he explicitly revoked the theory that projection was the typical defence mechanism of paranoia, which he had earlier defended in Further Remarks on the NeuroPsychoses of Defence. In opposition to what he had stated there, Freud now affirmed that projection was only influential in the formation of symptoms. The real mechanism of defence, which had to be clearly distinguished from the symptom formation process, consisted of the decathexis of the object.62 When discussing projection, Freud seemed to be more hesitant than ever. After pointing out certain difficulties concerning the notion, he explicitly stated that he did not intend to deal exhaustively with the topic in the Schreber analysis but that he would devote a separate article to the problem. That article, however, which was to be part of Freud’s series on metapsychology, was never published.63 Nevertheless, from the sundry reflections which Freud could not resist making, we can gather some perspective on his opinion. In anticipation of what we will later discuss more elaborately, we can posit that Freud perceived projection as the mechanism which exercised its proper function in the constitution of every subjectivity and which seemed to be intrinsically connected to narcissism. That projection was so conspicuous, especially as a symptom of paranoia, was a consequence of the fact that the libido, which had detached itself from the object due to the process of repression, had regressed toward narcissism.
61. S. FREUD, Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of his Childhood, S.E. XI, p. 123, G.W. VIII, p. 195. 62. S. FREUD, Psycho-Analytic Notes on an Autobiographical Account of a Case of Paranoia, S.E. XII, p. 65-71, G.W. VIII, p. 302-308. 63. See the editor’s introduction to Freuds Papers on Metapsychology, S.E. XIV, p. 106.
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The symptom formation which was the reappearance of the repressed content and which could be conceived of as an attempt toward healing, employed the mechanism of projection in a renewed and strengthened manner due to the fact that projection was linked to narcissism. Initially, it was also true that, thanks to the mechanism of projection, the objectdirected subjectivity could arise from narcissism. If, for Freud, projection became a mechanism that fulfilled its proper role in the constitution of subjectivity, then it could not comprehensively explain the origin of religion in its specific form. He even gave the impression of trying to circumvent the specifically religious aspect in his interpretation. The chapter, which theoretically discussed the paranoid mechanism, was implicitly introduced as an analysis of the persecution complex and not of the religious megalomania.64 In passing, Freud did touch upon a few elements of religious megalomania in the chapter, such as the theme of the divine rays which were emitted and later retracted. Freud interpreted this particular theme as a projected endopsychic apperception of libidinous cathexis and decathexis.65 Yet he did not mention the difference in structure between the two delusions. This left a central question unanswered. What was meant by the replacement of a persecution complex by a religious megalomania? One would think that Freud would have explicitly dealt with the question, especially since he had pointed out that the religious delusion, which had replaced the persecution complex, had brought Schreber to a certain degree of healing. Freud did indicate some elements in this context such as castration. Castration was less threatening in the religious delusion than in the persecution complex since, in a religious delusion, it was assigned to the life hereafter. For instance, Schreber was compensated for his emasculation by being given the honour of becoming the saviour of mankind.66 Nevertheless, Freud’s reflection remained very superficial. He did not delve into the several structuring mechanisms of a psyche involved in the religious phenomenon.
64. S. FREUD, Psycho-Analytic Notes on an Autobiographical Account of a Case of Paranoia, S.E. XII, p. 59, G.W. VIII, p. 295. 65. Ibid., S.E. XII, p. 78-79, G.W. VIII, p. 315. 66. Ibid., S.E. XII, p. 48, G.W. VIII, p. 283-284.
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Jung: The Past Spontaneously Reoccurs. The first volume of Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido analyzed two poems which had spontaneously come to Miss Miller’s mind while she was falling asleep: the ‘Hymn to the Creator’ and the ‘Song of the Moth’. The circumstances which gave occasion to the ‘Hymn to the Creator’ were the following. Miss Miller had travelled throughout Europe and, tired and overwhelmed by all her experiences, she had embarked at Odessa for a cruise. Her hectic travel schedule gave way to a quiet, dreamy sojourn aboard a ship. One evening during the cruise, she heard one of the ship’s officers sing. As she was falling asleep, she became aware of a poem, fitting the melody of his song, which praised the creator for having made sound, light and love. By referring to several parallels and by investigating other artistic creations mentioned by Miss Miller, Jung sought to demonstrate that the figure of the creator praised in the song in fact referred to the Italian officer who, by his singing, had greatly charmed Miss Miller. At first sight, the framework of Jung’s analysis seemed to agree with Freud’s analysis of Schreber, though with a distinct difference. Jung not only relied on Miss Miller’s personal associations for his interpretations but also on a great deal of ethnological and cultural-historical material. Contrary to Freud, who had left the problem of the origin of religion out of his analysis of Schreber, Jung did go into the question of why precisely erotic impressions communicated themselves in religious representations. In this context, Jung appealed to three closely related mechanisms: introversion, regression and projection. Jung dealt with the notion of introversion first. Before even discussing the ‘Hymn to the Creator’, Jung devoted a chapter to demonstrating that Miss Miller’s personality was easily inclined towards introversion.67 She continuously and passionately directed her libido towards objects around her and was easily impressed by them. But time and again, she flinched from the possibility of achieving true satisfaction from any cathexis of the libido. Consequently, the libido withdrew itself from the cathected object and created some sort of fulfilment in fantasy by means of an imaginary interaction with an inner object which substituted for the exterior object in reality.
67. See the chapter ‘The Miller Phantasies’ in Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido, Eng. transl. (Psychology of the Unconscious), p. 22-26; in: Jahrbuch 3 (1911), p. 153-158.
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Jung indicated this introversion mechanism in Miss Miller’s composition of the ‘Hymn to the Creator’. She ignored the erotic impression made on her by the singing officer. This caused her fantasy to compensate for the missed opportunity of love by composing a hymn addressed to a divine man who reigns over a shiny star-filled sky, who lets his melody ring out throughout the universe and who brings the heart of every creature to life. Up until this point in Jung’s Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido, we encounter the concept of introversion as it was presented in previously discussed texts, especially in ‘Little Anna’. Introversion was the process by which an intensified activity of fantasy tried to compensate for the need created by the decathexis of an object in reality. With regards to this, we have often pointed to the misunderstanding between Jung and Freud concerning the ‘libidinous decathexis of the object’. What was new in the first part of Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido was the fact that Jung closely related introversion to regression and projection. The ‘Hymn to the Creator’, which was the result of introversion, did not portray the singing officer as the object of fantasy. Rather, a substitute, the divine creator, represented the fascinating sailor, as became unequivocally clear from the context. The mere occurrence of this substitution implied the presence of still other mechanisms. It was here that Jung introduced the topics ‘regression’ and ‘projection’. The mechanism of regression consisted of the replacement of the actual object of the libido, the singing officer, by an earlier object, namely, the father. In the wake of this replacement, projection occurred causing the father to be replaced in turn by the god who, according to Jung, had been a projection of the father image from time immemorial. The process can be synthesized as follows. The consequence of introversion, regression and projection was that the father, whose memory was tenderly called to mind because of a regressive moment triggered by Miss Miller’s unfulfilled love for the officer, revealed himself in fantasy as the image of God. More than likely, we are representing Jung’s thoughts much more sharply in this summary than they would have appeared to the reader of the often drawn out passages in Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido. Jung frequently interchanged the terms ‘introversion’, ‘regression’ and ‘projection’, giving us the impression that, ultimately, he understood them as three aspects of one and the same process. Jung’s intention, in any case, was not to develop a detailed analysis of the several mechanisms. Rather, he was preoccupied with the question of whether the process
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of introversion, as it deployed itself in the individual, was not a repetition of some sort of hereditary scheme which also exercised its proper function in phylogeny. One of the most clear and concise passages of Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido, in which Jung expounded this thought, started with an explicit reference to the historical stratification of the human mind:68 "A further peculiarity which seems to rest upon the historic strata of the unconscious, is this - that an erotic impression, to which conscious acknowledgment is denied, usurps an earlier and discarded transference and expresses itself in that. Therefore, it frequently happens, for example, that among young girls at the time of their first love, remarkable difficulties develop in the capacity for erotic expression, which may be reduced analytically to disturbances through a regressive attempt at resuscitation of the father image, or the ’Father-Imago’. Indeed, one might presume something similar in Miss Miller’s case, for the idea of the masculine creative deity is a derivation, analytically and historically psychological, of the ’Father-Imago’, and aims, above all, to replace the discarded infantile father transference in such a way that for the individual the passing from the narrow circle of the family into the wider circle of human society may be simpler or made easier." In the light of this reflection, we can see, in the poem and its ’Praeludium’, the religious, poetically formed product of an introversion depending upon the surrogate of the ‘Father-Imago’."
What can be found on the topic of religion in this text was, for the greater part, a repetition of what Freud had written in Obsessive Actions and Religious Practices and of what Jung had written complementing this in The Significance of the Father in the Destiny of the Individual. Religion was viewed as offering symbolic fulfilment to those instincts which could not be satisfied directly. Religion thus allowed culture to arise. Prohibited wishes were primarily incestuous by their nature which meant that one could state:69 "In religion the regressive reanimation of the father-and-mother imago is organized into a system."
68. C.G. JUNG, Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido, Eng. transl. (Psychology of the Unconscious), p. 29; in: Jahrbuch 3 (1911), p. 163-164. See also p. 36 and 38 (p. 174 and p. 178 in the original German text). 69. Ibid., p. 53; in: Jahrbuch 3 (1911), p. 202. See also p. 29 and p. 38 (p. 164 and p. 177 in the original German text). Italics from the original.
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Jung frequently reconsidered the notion that religious projection, since it had been operative for so many centuries, must have clearly fulfilled an important function and thus could not be perceived of as a mere accidental phenomenon. According to Jung, not much was achieved when one only pointed out the instinctual foundation of religion. One needed to take notice of the goal pursued by the complex transformations of the libido:70 "I think that one should view with philosophical admiration the strange paths of the libido and should investigate the purposes of its circuitous ways. It is not too much to say that we have herewith dug up the erotic root, and yet the problem remains unsolved."
With regard to the function of religion within the evolution of culture, Jung called to mind the fact that religions, especially Christianity and the Mithras cult, originated as a reaction against a decadent culture which had revealed the destructive aspect of a mere instinctual lifestyle all too clearly. For our generation, which is confronted with the reactive strength of Christianity that has developed to an exaggerated dimension during the past two millennia, it seems hard to imagine the significance of unbridled desires. Sexuality however, was capable of destroying man and thus itself. The instincts were able to avoid this fate by being projected and giving rise to myths, religion and culture and thus, by sublimation.71 This same process, phylogenetically operative at the root of different religions, was encountered on an individual level as well, as could be seen in Miss Miller’s case. An erotic impression, with which she could not cope, was transposed into a ‘Hymn to the Creator’. It seemed as if the mechanism was ready for use as soon as there was the slightest occasion, both in the individual and in collective history. This, however, did not imply that the value which could be attributed to the process of religious formation was the same in both cases. In the main religious systems, dangerous drives were sublimated while, at the same time, the importance of relationships with others, the ‘brothers’, was explicitly stressed. Religious formation did not isolate people. Quite the contrary! The desexualization achieved by religion acted to the advantage of social relationships.72 This could not be said of Miss Miller’s spontaneous religious expression. Out of her lonesome reverie, which isolated her from
70. Ibid., p. 39; in: Jahrbuch 3 (1911), p. 178. 71. Ibid., p. 41-42; in: Jahrbuch 3 (1911), p. 183-184. 72. Ibid., p. 39-41; in: Jahrbuch 3 (1911), p. 179-182.
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human contact, she sang the praises of the creator. Yet the erotic impulse which she vented in this composition should have had a real place in normal life.73 The notion that ontogeny repeated phylogeny and the application of this notion to the phenomenon of religion brings us to the core of the first part of Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido. Underneath the often unclear accumulation of religious and cultural-historical material lay Jung’s central conviction that only a profound insight into history would allow for the comprehension of the fundamental, inner core of the individual, since the individual constituted only one element of this broader historical process. We encounter an explicit affirmation of Jung’s conviction in the very first pages of his work. In opposition to previous psychoanalytical studies which intended to disclose historical problems, starting from knowledge gained through the analysis of the individual’s unconscious, Jung now wanted to shed new light on the individual history, starting from his insights on collective history.74 The purpose of his method was to give "a glimpse away from the incoherent multiplicity of the present to a higher coherence in history."75 For the reader who critically studies Jung’s text, the precise way in which Jung conceived of this connection between the individual psyche and a broader historical process is still very unclear, especially in the first part of Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido. With enthusiastic intuition, Jung compiled a vast amount of material which was to demonstrate that the phenomenon of religion was a ‘product of nature’. It was the result of mechanisms connected to the instincts from the very beginning which engraved the broad finality of the cosmos on the individual. As part of an intentional process of nature, the individual participated time and again in the inner logic of the cosmos’ evolution. In his haste to pursue this interest, Jung forgot to analyze these mechanisms in detail, both on the individual level and on the level of cultural development. One has the impression that Jung situated the integration of the individual psyche along with the broader developmental history within heredity. The notion that this integration might occur in any manner other than by man’s participating in the biological order, seemed not to have been influential. Jung appeared to spontaneously presuppose that the psyche, or rather the pattern which caused the psyche to emerge from the
73. Ibid., p. 43-44; in: Jahrbuch 3 (1911), p. 188. 74. Ibid., p. 2-3; in: Jahrbuch 3 (1911), p. 122-123. 75. Ibid., p. 1; in: Jahrbuch 3 (1911), p. 121.
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physical aspect, was transmitted from individual to individual as an innate capacity by means of heredity. Thus, after considering projection as an important mechanism since it had functioned in religion throughout the ages, Jung wrote that, ‘biologically speaking’, an exercise of psychic projection must have been important.76 Jung reasoned as follows. Throughout the ages, new religions came into being and demonstrated the operation of the introversion - regression - projection triad. It was inconceivable that this process was senseless. That the process was an intrinsic capacity of human drives was exemplified in the fact that, even now, it could spontaneously occur in individuals. We must admit that these individual creations did not necessarily possess the greatness of the religions present in history and also that they were sometimes rather morbid phenomena. According to Jung, the origin of the dynamic which initiated this process must be sought within the structure of the libido itself and not in the dialectic between the libido and cultural history which, as exterior reality, forced itself on the individual and possessed its own substance. This was also the meaning of Jung’s rather obscure statement that ‘passion destroys itself’.77 That sentence concluded the analysis of Miss Miller’s second poem, the ‘Song of the Moth’, by which Jung intended to prove that sexuality yielded both creativity and self-destruction. By his analysis, Jung hoped to point out that sexuality, viewed as a drive, found within itself the tendency to transcend itself. Conclusion Freud hardly dealt with the question of the origin of religion. The mechanism of projection, which he had initially conceived of as a rather simple defence mechanism, had developed into such a complex phenomenon that he intended to set it aside for further study. This implied that from then on, religion, insofar as it was conceived of as the result of the projection mechanism, could only be discussed with reticence.
76. "There is to be seen biologically in this ideal an exercise of psychological projection (of the paranoidian mechanism, as Freud would express it)." Ibid., p. 39; in: Jahrbuch 3 (1911), p. 179. 77. "The power of God is threatened by the seduction of passion: a second fall of angels menaces heaven. Let us translate this mythological projection back into the psychological, from whence it originated. Then it would read: the power of the good and reasonable ruling the world wisely is threatened by the chaotic primitive power of passion; therefore passion must be exterminated; that is to say, projected into mythology. ... for passion destroys itself. The libido is God and Devil". Ibid., p. 65; in: Jahrbuch 3 (1911), p. 222.
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All of the texts which Freud devoted to the topic of religion, spoke of projection. As early as in the article Obsessive Actions and Religious Practices, which was written before there was any contact between Jung and Freud, Freud affirmed that, in religion, the gods assumed socially damaging tendencies and thus, emancipated mankind. In other words, human vindictiveness created for itself a revengeful god. Since such a god claimed the sole right to acts of vengeance, the belief in a vindictive god put an end to the chain of violent revengeful acts among people.78 This was basically the idea which Jung further developed. Projection, although Freud did not use this term, was a mechanism which exercised its proper function in the development of culture. When we read the few passages which Freud devoted to religion during the period we have just discussed, it is conspicuous that Freud grew more and more cautious about attributing a necessary place to religion in the development of culture. The notion, found in a letter to Jung as well as in Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of his Childhood, that religion was rooted in the helplessness of a child who, later as an adult, still needed a heavenly father and mother, hardly expressed anything positive concerning religion. In Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning, Freud advanced the opinion that religion helped believers to relinquish the pleasure principle and to accept the reality principle by presenting them with a reward in the life hereafter. However, Freud immediately added that religion was unsuccessful in this attempt and that only science could satisfactorily reconcile man with reality.79 In opposition to Freud, Jung further developed Freud’s first conviction, that the phenomenon of religion fulfilled a well-defined function within cultural history. In doing this, Jung outlined a broad evolutionist framework in which the Romantic philosophy of nature became explicitly clear. Just as he had interpreted fantasy as the preliminary stage of intentional thought, he also presented religion as the fertile ground from which human culture sprang. In both cases, the same idea was fundamentally present. What Jung had written concerning religion in the first part of Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido was generally repeated in the second part where he discussed the imagination. The drives, which vented themselves on the instinctual level as a blind discharge of energy, were at a certain moment objectified into representations. This exchange
78. S. FREUD, Obsessive Actions and Religious Practices, S.E. IX, p. 127, G.W. VII, p. 139. 79. S. FREUD, Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning, S.E. XII, p. 223, G.W. VIII, p. 236.
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of direct gratification for fulfilment through a representation could be viewed as a moment of mutation (although Jung did not employ this term) by which the spirit emerged from the biological instincts. The Structure of the Psyche Jung: Introversion is the Mother of True Identity Introversion, whose role in the origin of religion we have already discussed, became the concept par excellence to express the intrapsychic dynamic of the individual. Jung placed introversion in dialectic opposition to transference. This constituted the initial impetus toward the introversion-extroversion polarity which was to become the core of the later Jungian system. Originally, Jung employed the term ‘introversion’ in relation to schizophrenia. He used the term for the first time when, in a survey of psychoanalytical literature, he reviewed Riklin’s article Ueber Versetzungsbesserungen in the 1910 edition of the Jahrbuch. In this review, Jung did not limit himself to a matter-of-fact presentation of Riklin’s text. Without explicitly stating so, Jung placed the data of Riklin’s article into a theoretical framework which was clearly his own and which had been lacking in Riklin’s writing. It was here that Jung utilized the term ‘introversion’ without any further specification, as if such terminology was already widely in vogue.80 A letter to Freud, which Jung wrote during the period when he was compiling his reviews of Swiss psychoanalytical literature, also clearly revealed that, from the very beginning, he linked dementia praecox with
80. Riklin’s Ueber Versetzungsbesserungen described how the condition of a number of people suffering from dementia praecox suddenly improved when they were moved from one building to another within the psychiatric clinic, due to renovation work. The change of environment apparently agreed well with them. Riklin also briefly described the design of the new buildings and pointed out, among other things, that the new surroundings were more suitable than the old ones for applying work therapy which, at that time, was becoming popular. Jung reviewed the text as follows. "Especially in the commonest case, dementia praecox, this draws the patient out of his introversion and transfers his interest to reality." That was why work therapy obtained better results than the bed treatment which, quite to the contrary, enhanced the patient’s ‘introversion’ and daydreaming. Jung further stated that Riklin, by means of the two case studies, had well shown ‘how the introversion comes about, where the transference of interest to the outside world fails, and how the process of introversion goes much further than simple wish-fulfilment in fantasy would require." C.G. JUNG, Abstracts of the Psychological Works of Swiss Authors, C.W. XVIII, § 10071025.
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introversion.81 This letter dealt with Johann Honegger (1885-1911)82, who had earlier consulted Jung when he was suffering from psychosis. Jung wrote:83 "The young man is very intelligent and subtle-minded; wants to take up psychiatry, once consulted me because of loss of reality-sense lasting a few days. (Psychasthenia = libido introversion = Dem. praec.)"
From these texts, it becomes clear that Jung was now frequently using the notion of ‘introversion’ although he had not yet presented a thorough definition of the concept. Such a definition was finally provided in the article Psychic conflicts in a Child, which we have already mentioned. Strangely enough, in this text, Jung did not relate introversion to schizophrenia as he had done in his previous writings. The term seemed to now receive a broader significance. Jung designated introversion as a ‘typical process’. When an obstacle inhibited the venting of the libido into the outside world, the libido withdrew within a fantasy world. For example, the mechanism of introversion deployed itself in ‘little Anna’ because she compensated for her shaken trust in her parents by means of dreams. Both Jung’s review of Riklin’s article and the already examined analysis of ‘little Anna’ create the suspicion that Jung was speaking of the same phenomenon when he used the terms introversion and ‘autoeroticism’. He had always employed ‘autoeroticism’ in a rather broad sense which Freud disliked. Our suspicion is confirmed by an explicit note in Jung’s short article, A Criticism of Bleuler’s Theory of Schizophrenic Negativism, which he published in the same issue of the Jahrbuch in which the first part of Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido appeared. He wrote:84 "Autism (Bleuler) = autoeroticism (Freud). For some time I have employed the concept of introversion for this condition."
In Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido, two new elements were added regarding the concept of introversion. First, dementia praecox was explicitly called introversion neurosis. Further, Jung stated that
81. 148J. 82. For further information, see The Freud/Jung Letters, note 2 concerning letter 148J. 83. 148J. 84. C.G. JUNG, A Criticism of Bleuler’s Theory of Schizophrenic Negativism, C.W. III, note at § 429.
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introversion could reach as deep as the ‘historical layers of consciousness’. In reply to the criticism which one could direct at Bleuler’s concept ‘schizophrenia’, Jung suggested the terminology ‘introversion neurosis’.85 He was opposed to the term ‘schizophrenia’ because it far too closely reflected a dissociative process along the lines of hysteria. Jung placed hysteria and dementia praecox in opposition to each other. In hysteria, transference was dominant while in dementia praecox, introversion was the prominent mechanism. Jung thus placed ‘transference’ and ‘introversion’ in polar opposition to each other. Transference consisted in the cathexis of an object located in the outside world. Introversion, on the other hand, signalled the decathexis of such an object which resulted in the search for compensating fulfilment within the inner world of fantasy. Since for Jung, it was evident that introversion was accompanied by regression and since he was convinced that the psyche, innate in every individual, still contained traces of the developmental stages from a distant past, it also appeared self-evident that a profound introversion descended into the historical stratification of the human mind until it reached its most primitive moments. This explained how schizophrenics could attain the level of mankind’s latent capability of forming myths:86 "From all these signs it may be concluded that the soul possesses in some degree historical strata, the oldest stratum of which would correspond to the unconscious. The result of that must be that an introversion occurring in later life, according to the Freudian teaching, seizes upon regressive infantile reminiscences taken from the individual past. That first points out the way; then, with stronger introversion and regression (strong repressions, introversion psychoses), there come to light pronounced traits of an archaic mental kind which, under certain circumstances, might go as far as the re-echo of a once manifest, archaic mental product."
85. The English translation gives wrongly: "These case fall under Bleuler’s description of Schizophrenia, a name which connotes a psychological fact, and might easily be compared with similar facts in hysteria", while Jung meant "...and might easily be confused with similar facts in hysteria" ("...Schizophrenie, welcher Name allerdings eine psychologische Tatsache impliziert, die mit ähnlichen Tatbeständen bei Hysterie leicht verwechselt werden könnte"). C.G. JUNG, Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido, Eng. transl. (Psychology of the Unconscious), p. 274-275 (=note on p. 26); in: Jahrbuch 3 (1911), p. 159. 86. Ibid., p. 19; in: Jahrbuch 3 (1911), p. 149. The English ‘re-echo’ translates the German ‘Wiederbelebung’, which is stronger: ‘to live it through for a second time’.
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Viewed in itself, introversion was thus not necessarily a schizophrenic process. That which caused dementia praecox was not so much the specificity of the mechanism but rather the fact that introversion reached so deeply. Although Jung did not say this in so many words, he did imply that there was only a gradual difference between a regular daydream and schizophrenia. It is unnecessary to repeat that, in the background of the theory concerning the schizophrenic process, we can once again detect Jung’s concept of the unconscious. Jung immediately applied the notion that ontogeny repeated phylogeny to the similarities discovered between mythology, a child’s world and the expressions of a schizophrenic. At the same time, these observations were placed within the framework of the philosophy of nature which, in an obvious manner, interpreted such convergences as the repeated awakening of hereditarily transmitted seeds. Within this same context, our attention should not only be drawn to the notion ‘introversion’, which was introduced by Jung as a substitute for ‘autoeroticism’ and which he moreover had given a completely different content in comparison to Freud. Less conspicuous but just as important was the way in which Jung reversed the meaning of the term ‘transference’. By placing transference in opposition to introversion and by interpreting introversion as a regression toward more archaic forms which the psyche previously used in order to function, transference was in fact presented as a mechanism which was of secondary importance with regards to these archaic layers of the psyche. Moreover, transference continued to be dependent on these archaic layers in order to operate. Thus, the notion ‘transference’ designated an exposition of the unconscious heritage and thus a deployment aimed at reality of what was inherent to the individual as a structured capacity. Compared to the content of the unconscious, which was transmitted by means of hereditary processes, transference established a second moment. This representation takes us very far from Freud’s point of view. Freud: Identity is Established by Narcissism At the basis of Freud’s analysis of Schreber, we find the conviction, which had gradually developed, that homosexuality was the core problem of paranoia. Both Jung and Ferenczi had also reached the same conclusion
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in their respective analytical practices.87 Moreover, homosexual components seemed to exercise an influential role in other disorders as well. This became very clear in Freud’s analysis of the ‘Ratman’s’ obsessional neurosis.88 A reflection on homosexuality was thus deemed necessary. Nothing is more complex than the way in which Freud slowly endeavoured to gain some insight into the phenomenon of homosexuality. Throughout his life, he continued to distinguish various types of homosexuality while also placing limits upon his own attempts to explain the phenomenon.89 Originally, he departed from a rather clear position which formed the basis of the logic behind Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. In this work, he had divided sexual deviations into ‘inversions’ and ‘perversions’. The former concerned the sexual ‘object’ or the person to whom someone addressed his or her sexual drive. The latter dealt with the sexual ‘goal’ or the type of pursued erotic behavior. Freud presented us with a rather lengthy discussion on homosexuality in the very first pages of Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. However, upon reading this more closely, it becomes clear that Freud did not elaborate on homosexuality because he held a specific interest in the topic nor because he experienced it as a particularly problematic issue. Quite the contrary! In this text, Freud merely criticized all of the then current explanations of the phenomenon. First of all, he demolished the theory of degeneration. Then, he pulverized the position of the contemporary homo-activists who held that a homosexual’s intimate life was of a gender different than his or her body. Freud did not compose an explanation of his own but, apparently, that was not the purpose of the text. The fact that homosexuality existed established for him proof that the selection of a sexual object took place according to a process which was completely independent from the process that determined the preference of a certain
87. See S. FREUD, Psycho-Analytic Notes on an Autobiographical Account of a Case of Paranoia, S.E. X, p. 59, G.W. VIII, p. 295. See also 70 F, 110 F, 117 J, 214 F. Ferenczi’s article Ueber die Rolle der Homoseksualität in der Pathogenese des Paranoia was published in the same issue of the Jahrbuch (August 1911) as the articles we are discussing now. 88. S. FREUD, Notes upon a Case of Obsessional Neurosis, S.E. X, p. 151-249, G.W. VII, p. 380-463. 89. In much of the literature, one encounters a vulgarized cliche image of Freud’s thoughts on sexuality which could easily be disputed. It would indeed be very worthwhile to systematically examine Freud’s tentative search and the way in which he, time and again, abandoned his previous theories. It would also prove interesting to compare these theories to what later psychoanalysts wrote about sexuality. The most fascinating book concerning homosexuality written from a psychoanalytical point of view is that of J. DURANDEAUX, Du renoncement homosexuel au double jeu du charme, Paris, 1977.
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sexual behavior (the sexual goal). Introversion and perversion were thus two radically different matters. In the rest of Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, Freud dealt with the theory of erogenous zones, infantile sexuality and the growth toward maturity during which one had to discover the happy medium between sublimation and suppression. Within the framework of Freud’s then primary object of study, hysteria, this was very understandable. Jung was more than likely correct when he stated that the concept of ‘erogenous zones’, as developed by Freud in Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, still depended on the theory of the ‘spasmogenic zones’ which were encountered in hysteria.90 While in his analyses he constantly encountered the phenomenon of homosexuality in its diverse appearances, Freud’s thoughts on the topic remained unclear. Contrary to what one might conclude from contemporary vulgarized literature, it was not the special relationship between the homosexual and his mother which initially caught Freud’s attention. He was far more fascinated by the relationship between father and son and, more specifically, by the ‘fear of castration’ which constituted part of that relationship. This had proven to be the main issue in ‘Little Hans’. Freud further observed the presence of such ‘father complexes’ in many adults, for example in the analysis of the ‘Ratman’. Often, these same complexes proved to be detrimental in the relationship between Freud himself and his followers. In writing his analysis of Schreber, Freud tried to combine various parts of his research under the phenomenon of homosexuality. Up until then, he had not sought for an explanation of the problem of the selection of the sexual object. He had devoted his complete attention to the evolution of the sexual goal and the problematic integration of the polymorphous-pervert infantile sexuality. Indubitably, Freud had discussed the influence of parental figures but only in a general way. The attempt to comprehend neurosis as well as dementia praecox by means of psychoanalysis had sharply confronted him with the following question. How did the cathexis of an object occur? Gradually, it dawned on him that the phenomenon which appeared as homosexuality in so many analyses, in fact originated in the first object choice a person made in his life. Homosexuality revealed a stage of development between the choice of an object and the preceding moment, when only autoerotic pleasure existed. This insight led Freud to introduce the notion ‘narcissism’ into the 1910 edition of Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality and in ‘Schreber’.
90. C.G. JUNG, The Theory of Psychoanalysis, C.W. IV, § 245.
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By means of narcissism, Freud later established a connection between the developmental route of the object selection and of the organization of the sexual goal. The scheme then went as follows. Once the erogenous zones were united under the primacy of the genital zone, the individual perceived his own body as an object of love for a period of time. Within this love for oneself, the genitals occupied an important place. This stage, called narcissism, constituted a necessary moment of development. When this stage was lacking, the individual would not be capable of becoming really attached to an object.91 The next step, from narcissism toward object choice, passed through a homosexual stage in which a person of the same gender was loved. Only after this homosexual phase could a heterosexual object choice occur. The homosexual components did not simply disappear. They were diverted from the sexual goal and rerouted into social relationships.92 The analysis of Schreber was the first publication where Freud dealt with the notion of ‘narcissism’ rather extensively. The concept, however, had already been discussed within the context of the meetings of the Viennese psychoanalysts. The same notion was briefly referred to in Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of his Childhood and, as mentioned, added in a footnote in the 1910 edition of Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality.93 Although these texts were very brief, they well complemented the exposition in ‘Schreber’. On 10 November 1909, I. Sadger (1867-194?) presented to the Viennese psychoanalysts a case study in which homosexuality played an important role.94 In the discussion following the presentation, Freud offered some reflections concerning narcissism as Sadger had dealt with it in the case study. Freud advanced that narcissism was not an isolated phenomenon but a necessary moment within the development from autoeroticism toward object love. There had to be a moment when one was in love with oneself, which Freud further defined as being in love with one’s own genitalia, in order to progress toward loving other, yet similar objects. In the normal evolution of this process, one substituted the father figure for
91. Perhaps we should further explain the phrase: "because it feels too vulnerable". We must also call to mind that Jung had pointed out to Freud that the schizophrenic patient experienced everything as ‘too gripping". Freud however was not yet that explicit here. 92. S. FREUD, Psycho-Analytic Notes on an Autobiographical Account of a Case of Paranoia, S.E. XII, p. 60-61, G.W. VIII, p. 297-298. 93. S. FREUD, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, S.E. VII, p. 145, G.W. V, p. 44. 94. H. NUNBERG and E. FEDERN, Minutes of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society, (Meeting 86) vol. II; p. 312-313. I. Sadger disapeared during World War II.
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oneself as the object of love. Very soon afterwards, the father became the object of feelings of rivalry. According to Freud, this signalled the delicate point of departure from which the homosexual development started to follow its own course. Recapitulating, Freud concluded that every person originally had two sexual objects: himself and the woman (mother). Future sexual orientation depended on the way in which the person would or would not free himself from these ties. More clearly than in his text on Schreber, Freud’s comments on Sadger’s case study allow us to observe how narcissism prepared the way for identification with the father. This touched upon a second, important fact established by narcissism. Not only did it make the object choice possible but narcissism also established a person’s identity. This element was very important in light of the further development of Freudian thought of which the Oedipus complex gradually became the core. More specifically, concerning the father identification, we can discern in Freud’s remarks a clear distinction between identification on a narcissistic basis and a later, constitutive identification which neutralized the oedipal rivalry. This distinction will be explicitly stated in the ‘Wolfman’ analysis.95 It is therefore indeed remarkable that in the two other texts, Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of his Childhood and the footnote of the 1910 edition of Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, we encounter a somewhat different presentation of matters where the father figure is not to be found. Both of these texts stated that future homosexuals had experienced very intense ties with their mothers during childhood. Later, when repressing their love toward the mother figure, they identified themselves with the mother and extended this love to members of their own sex in order to love them in the same way that they were loved by their mothers.96 According to Freud, this love relationship was in fact a regression toward narcissism.97
95. S. FREUD, On the History of the Psycho-Analytic Movement, S.E. XVII, p. 27, 46-47, 6364, 109-112, G.W. XII, p. 51, 73-74, 94, 144-147. 96. S. FREUD, Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of his Childhood, S.E. XI, p. 99-100, G.W. VIII, p. 169-170; Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, S.E. VII, p. 144-145, G.W. V, p. 44. 97. There is of course no absolute contradiction between the intervention following Sadger’s exposition and these texts, especially when one takes into account Freud’s reflection that mothers of future homosexuals were often very mannish (Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of his Childhood S.E. XI, p. 99, G.W. VIII, p. 169) and when one called to mind the castration complex. We merely wish to point out to the reader that, at this time, Freud did not attempt to articulate these elements in a systematic manner.
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Was it precisely because Freud, on the one hand, had observed that Schreber’s father was so overwhelmingly present in Schreber’s inner world while, on the other hand, in Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of his Childhood, he had written that homosexuals had lacked an energetic and virile father, that he did not mention the connection between narcissism and the identification with the father in his analysis of Schreber? Or was it because he was of the opinion that paranoia resulted from repressing homosexuality so that a paranoiac was the exact opposite of the manifest homosexual who had allowed his preference to infiltrate consciousness? In any case, in ‘Schreber’, Freud superficially characterized Schreber’s homosexuality as fostering ‘feminine’ (passive homosexual) desires with regard to his father.98 These desires were in fact the consequence of previously feared, yet now sought after phantasms of castration.99 In the theoretical chapter with which Freud concluded his study and in which he introduced the notion ‘narcissism’, he no longer mentioned the influence of either the father or the mother. He merely posed that in the development of the individual, there was a stage where that individual perceived himself as the object of love. The further evolution toward a heterosexual phase passed through a homosexual phase, where someone of the same sex was desired. Finally, Freud’s attention was drawn to the fact that these homosexual feelings later found an outlet in social relationships. He pointed out that a paranoiac usually succumbed to the disorder the moment his or her social recognition was affected. As a consequence, homosexual feelings no longer found an outlet and threatened to inundate consciousness. Projection, Fixation on the Past and the Theory of Drives In his theoretical reflection based on the case of ‘Schreber’, Freud did not go into the origin of religion nor did he undertake a more precise analysis of the formation process of identity as it passed through the stage of narcissism. Instead, he examined the complementary relationship between narcissism and object love. Remaining faithful to the schemes which he had developed in his correspondence with Jung, Freud intended to prove that the core process of psychosis consisted in the fact that the cathexis of the object was removed and consequently, the libido was directed to the ego.
98. S. FREUD, Psycho-Analytic Notes on an Autobiographical Account of a Case of Paranoia, S.E. XII, p. 47, G.W. VIII, p. 283. 99. Ibid., S.E. VIII, p. 56, G.W. VIII, p. 292.
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In this libidinous cathexis of the ego, Freud further distinguished an autoerotic and a narcissistic cathexis. To this, Freud linked another distinction which he had previously rejected, namely, the distinction between paranoia and dementia praecox.100 In cases of dementia praecox, according to Freud, regression reached the level of the truly archaic autoeroticism while paranoia only went as deep as narcissism. Freud therefore concluded that the aetiology of paranoia was to be found in a fixation on narcissism. The point of departure for dementia praecox however, lay in a much earlier fixation, the earliest development from autoeroticism toward narcissism.101 At this point in the exposition, we are suddenly confronted with the issue of projection once again. After dealing with the specific process of the disorder (the decathexis of the object), Freud devoted a few words to the return of the repressed content, namely, the symptom formation process or delusion. According to Freud, delusion should be understood as an attempt, although failing, to reconstruct the world which had been lost due to the libidinous decathexis.102 He further discovered that there were two types of delusions depending on the specific point of fixation of both disorders. In cases of dementia praecox, delusion took on the form of a hallucination and therefore of wish fulfilment. Remarkably enough, Freud spoke of a ‘hysterical’ mechanism in such cases. In instances of paranoia, on the other hand, delusion was established by means of the projection mechanism.103 When considering this reflection in all its implications, one would tend to conclude that, in Freud’s view, hallucination had to be a mechanism which in essence was related to autoeroticism and that projection was connected to narcissism. Hallucination and projection thus would both be mechanisms which, in a consecutive order, exercised a specific function in the constitutive process of the ‘ego’. In a failed attempt at recovery, these mechanisms would then be called up again in the symptoms. In light of the connection between narcissism and identification in Freud’s logic, one would also expect to find a relationship
100. Slowly, we can start using the term ‘schizophrenia" instead of ‘dementia praecox" without any fear for anachronisms. The term, coined by Bleuler who would introduce it into the general psychiatric language by means of his handbook (1911), was already known to psychoanalysts. Freud, however, still employed ‘dementia praecox" when writing ‘Schreber’ and even attempted to introduce ‘paraphrenia" instead of ‘schizophrenia’. Ibid., S.E. XII, p. 76, G.W. VIII, p. 312-313. 101. Ibid., S.E. XII, p. 61, 72, G.W. VIII p. 298-299, 309-310. 102. Ibid., S.E. VIII, p. 71, G.W. VIII, p. 308. 103. Ibid., S.E. XII, p. 77, G.W. VIII, p. 313.
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between projection and identification. Freud, however, was not that explicit in ‘Schreber’. What did the notion ‘fixation’ entail here? Was neurosis really determined by the past to such a degree that the patient was always restricted by it? Or rather, was it not the case that a patient reinterpreted his past on the basis of a pathological ‘regression’ determined by a conflict in the present? Because the latter view was presented by Jung in The Theory of Psychoanalysis as a criticism addressed to Freud, we should briefly examine Freud’s notion of ‘fixation’. It was his reflection on the notion of repression which led Freud to the concept of fixation. It had quickly become apparent to him that repression formed the core of all neuroses. Freud was then faced with the questions why some people became neurotic and others did not and why different forms of neuroses were chosen as a defence. He searched for the answer to these questions in a certain weakness within the psychic constitution which had existed from the very first years. The patient remained fixated on one of the stages of the libido’s development. Freud distinguished three moments in repression. First, there was fixation which was the condition for, as well as the precursor of, repression. A specific drive or a component of a drive failed to go the anticipated normal path of development and therefore ‘behaved like one belonging to the system of the unconscious, like one that is repressed’.104 Secondly, actual repression took place by means of the activity of the higher conscious systems of the ego. This was an active process. However, the already present unconscious forces were drawn in and influenced it. Finally, there was a return of the repressed contents. This aspect expressed itself in pathology: repression failed and, consequently, the libido returned to the point of fixation.105 This scheme, the problematic of which was again taken up by Freud in 1923 in The Ego and the Id, contained many tacit implications which Jung would later develop. Freud’s main purpose in introducing the notion of fixation was to establish a connection between the actual conflict of neurosis and the infantile moments which activated it. He hoped to relate each case of neurosis to a different stage in the human psyche’s development. In the meantime however, Freud had mentioned an ‘anticipated normal path of development’. He had also suggested that a drive which was maintained on the infantile level ‘behaved like one belonging to the
104. Ibid., S.E. XII, p. 67, G.W. VIII, p. 304. 105. Ibid., S.E. XII, p. 67-68, G.W. VIII, p. 303-305.
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system of the unconscious’. This statement implied the emergence of consciousness from the unconscious according to certain internal laws as Jung had already described it. As mentioned above, Freud did state that repression was an active process initiated by the ego. However, he also added that the already present unconscious forces cooperated with the process. This raised the question as to what actually caused a psychic conflict. The unconscious acted as both the consequence and the cause of repression. It could even be perceived of as the consequence of a primary repression which produced the unconscious ex nihilo. Freud’s distinction between the principles of pleasure and reality argued in favor of this. Nevertheless, one could also think along the lines of the Romantic concept of the unconscious as Jung had employed it. This line of thinking was supported by the notion of a normal path of development and the idea that a drive which did not develop, behaved like one belonging to the system of the unconscious. The consideration of the conceptual model evoked by fixation was not simply an academic concern. The complete concept of therapy was at stake here. Should the true cause of a psychic disturbance be situated in the past so that tracing this past acted to remove the obstacles found within it? This became the theory which Freud defended and in which he propounded the idea of the ‘timelessness’ of the unconscious. One could also pose that the disorder was initiated by a conflict in the present and that the subsequent regression reprocessed old memories, making them appear to be at the root of the psychic disorder. Jung held this latter opinion, concluding that tracing more and more infantile memories actually enhanced the pathological disorder. One important issue in ‘Schreber’ is still left for discussion, namely, the theory of drives. This was exactly the point at which Jung directed his criticism in Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido. Concerning Schreber’s experience of a ‘destruction of the world’, Freud had raised the question whether such a total loss of interest in outside reality could really be sufficiently explained by the withdrawal of the libido and its residue in the ego. Voices had warned Schreber that the accomplishments of 14,000 years of world history were lost and that the world had a future of only 212 years. Schreber was already discovering traces of this impending destruction. People surrounding him were only ‘miracled up, cursorily improvised’.106 He even felt as if he were the only true human still alive. Could such a rupture with reality be sufficiently explained by a
106. Ibid., S.E. XII, p. 70, G.W. VIII, p. 307.
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libidinous decathexis? In this context, Freud clearly understood ‘libido’ as ‘sexuality’. He immediately posed that there had to be still other drives which kept the connection with reality intact. In Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning, Freud had discussed the ego drives, the drives par excellence which forced the acceptance of an autonomous reality. What stopped these drives from keeping the relation with reality in order? With much hesitation, Freud wondered whether the distinction between the ego drives and the libido was as clear-cut as he had originally presumed. It is obvious why he hesitated. His distinction was used to explain why such a phenomenon as repression even existed. There had to be an opposition between the ego-drives and the libido. Freud himself posed the question whether or not he should develop a more complex structure in which the processes unfolding within the libido had secondary repercussions on the ego. Freud’s text on this matter, extensively quoted by Jung in his criticism, went as follows:107 "Are we to suppose that a general detachment of the libido from the external world would be an effective enough agent to account for the ’end of the world’? Or would not the ego-cathexes which still remained in existence have been sufficient to maintain rapport with the external world? To meet this difficulty we should either have to assume that what we call libidinal cathexis (that is, interest emanating from erotic sources) coincides with interest in general, or we should have to consider the possibility that a very widespread disturbance in the distribution of the libido may bring about a corresponding disturbance in the ego-cathexes. But these are problems which we are still quite helpless and incompetent to solve. It would be otherwise if we could start off from some well-grounded theory of instincts; but in fact we have nothing of the kind at our disposal. We regard instinct as being the concept on the frontier-line between the somatic and the mental, and see in it the psychical representative of organic forces. Further, we accept the popular distinction between egoinstincts and a sexual instinct; ... We can no more dismiss the possibility that disturbances of the libido may react upon the ego-cathexes than we can overlook the converse possibility - namely, that a secondary or induced disturbance of the libidinal processes may result from abnormal changes in the ego."
Thus, Freud was aware of the fact that the relationship between the ego and the libido still remained a completely unsolved mystery. He concluded with the suspicion that, in cases of paranoia, a disturbance 107. Ibid., S.E. XII, p. 73-75, G.W. VIII, p. 311-312.
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within the libidinous realm was primarily involved which also had repercussions within the ego. Proof of this was found in the fact that reality did not completely disappear. The patient continued to relate to it as can be seen in his attempts at explaining his perception of ‘miracled up, cursorily improvised people.’ According to Freud, the changing relationship to the outside world probably had to be ascribed to the libidinous decathexis. This, however, did not take away the fact that the ego drives remained unexplained. Some Biographical Notes During the period between their journey to the United States and the publication of the first part of Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido, many things occurred between Freud and Jung which, because of their personal repercussions, should be pointed out. First of all, there was the issue of the father complex between them which continued to influence their relationship. Although in this period, it seemed to be less of a problem than before their journey to the United States.108 More important in the meantime however, were the difficulties with Bleuler.109 When the International Association for Psychoanalysis was founded at the Congress of Nurenberg in March 1910, Bleuler initially refused to join it. This created a difficult situation since Bleuler was a coeditor of the Jahrbuch. However, both parties agreed that the Jahrbuch should remain a forum for open discussions. Bleuler then published Die Psychoanalyse Freuds, a long and nuanced article in the second volume of the Jahrbuch in 1910.110 He later met Freud in Munich at Christmas that year and the controversial disagreements between them seemed to be tentatively resolved. Bleuler subsequently joined the association.111 In the meantime however, another article by Bleuler appeared, entitled Zur Theorie des schizophrenen Negativismus, in which he introduced the notion ‘ambivalence’. By means of this concept, he was searching for an explanation concerning the schizophrenic’s negativism in the face of contrasting representations within the association process. According to Bleuler, every representation in the human psyche was associatively connected to its
108. See 155J, 156F, 180J, 182F, 205F, 231J. 109. See especially 160F, 188F, 189J, 190F, 199J, 210J, 211J, 213J, 230J, 226F. 110. See with regard to this context, 226F. 111. Once Bleuler had left Munich, Jung used the occasion to meet Freud. See The Freud/Jung Letters, note after 229J.
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opposite. In normal situations, this would aid to subject in acting cautiously without disturbing the regular course of the association process. In instances of schizophrenia however, this mechanism was disorganized so that the contrasting representation could prevail upon the ordinarily prevalent representation for no apparent reason.112 Freud requested that Jung compose a critical reply to this article.113 In April 1911, Jung published A Criticism of Bleuler’s Theory of Schizophrenic Negativism in which he reproached Bleuler for treating a schizophrenic’s negativism as a secondary phenomenon which neglected the fundamental psychoanalytical insight that defences were always located at well-defined points within the psyche.114 The relationship between Bleuler and Jung, in the meantime, had grown very tense. In July 1911, Jung wrote to Freud that his personal ties with Bleuler had almost completely been severed.115 Besides the break with Bleuler, Jung also had to cope with the tragedy of Johann Jakob Honegger’s suicide. Honegger had consulted Jung during a period when he was suffering from psychosis. Jung had grown very fond of him and had supported him in his decision to specialize in psychiatry and psychoanalysis. Jung had even contemplated establishing a joint practice with Honegger. However, in March 1911, Honegger committed suicide.116 During this same period, Freud had become acquainted to a young man of Honegger’s age, Victor Tausk (1879-1919). Freud felt that Tausk was destined for a brilliant career in psychoanalysis. Unfortunately, his life would also end in suicide.117 During the period which we are now surveying, the rupture with Alfred Adler also weighted heavily upon Freud. He wrote to Jung that this
112. Jung especially reacted against Bleuler’s statement: "Negativistic phenomena can arise directly on the basis of these propensities, since positive and negative psychisms are substitutes for one another indiscriminately." Quoted in C.G. JUNG, A Criticism of Bleuler’s Theory of Schizophrenic Negativism, C.W. III, § 425. 113. 216F. 114. This text was then published in the first volume of the 1911 Jahrbuch, Jung wrote: "Psychoanalysis has shown to our satisfaction that resistance is never ‘indiscriminate’ or meaningless, and that, consequently, there is no such thing as a capricious playing with opposites. The systematic character of resistance holds good, as I think I have shown, for schizophrenia as well." C.G. JUNG, A Criticism of Bleuler’s Theory of Schizophrenic Negativism, C.W. III, § 426. 115. 265J. 116. See especially 162J, 170J, 175J, 180J, 193J, 196J, 246J. 117. See P. ROAZEN, Brother Animal. The Story of Freud and Tausk, New York, Knopf, 1969.
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incident had once again torn open the wounds which he had sustained in his dispute with Wilhelm Fliess.118 The break between Adler and Freud did not personally affect Jung though. Adler had been the leader of the Viennese group and as such, he had always regarded the dominance of the Swiss within the psychoanalytical association with feelings of jealousy. However, on a theoretical level, the rupture with Adler gave Freud the occasion to make a few sarcastic remarks concerning certain psychoanalysts who allowed themselves to be completely duped by a ‘clown’, which was ultimately all that the ego was.119 Indirectly these remarks could also be applied to Jung’s interest in the ego. During these same months, both Jung and Freud discovered their ‘myths’. As time passed on, Freud grew more and more fascinated by the Oedipus myth. In November 1910, Freud indicated to Jung that he had learned that Oedipus was originally a phallic demon, such as the dactyls, and that his name had merely meant ‘erection’.120 Later, in May 1911, Freud attended a performance of Oedipus Rex in Vienna.121 Jung, at this time, had become strongly impressed by Goethe’s Faust. He had seen a performance of the play in January 1911 and the rumour that he was a natural great grandchild of Goethe, contributed to the fact that he recognized himself in the play.122 Since February 1911, Freud had alluded several times to the fact that he had started a new and elaborate project.123 However, it was only after the publication of the first part of Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido in August 1911 that Freud explicitly told Jung that he was researching the problem of the origin of religion just as Jung. He had commenced writing Totem and Taboo.124 In many ways, the summer of 1911 constituted an important turning point for the psychoanalytic movement. The break with Adler became definitive; the first part of Jung’s Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido was published; Freud had started Totem and Taboo; the relationship between Bleuler and Jung came to an end; and moreover, Bleuler’s 118. See 223F, 228F. 119. "I would never have expected a psychoanalyst to be so taken in by the ego. In reality the ego is like the clown in the circus, who is always putting in his oar to make the audience think that whatever happens is his doing." 238F. 120. 160F. 121. 255F. 122. 234F, 268F. 123. 270F. 124. 230J.
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book Dementia Praecox or the Group of Schizophrenias was to be published in early October.125 Nevertheless, the understanding between Freud and Jung seemed to be optimal at the Association’s congress at Weimar in September 1911.126 Freud sincerely congratulated Jung for Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido127 just as Jung had congratulated Freud upon the publication of ‘Schreber’.128 Freud wrote that he had hardly any comments concerning Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido since both he and Jung had come to the conclusion that the Oedipus complex constituted the root of all religious feelings.129 Yet, at a Wednesday evening meeting of the Viennese group, it became clear that Freud could not simply accept the core of Jung’s theory, namely, the intrinsic conflict within the sexual drive. On that Wednesday, 29 November, 1911, Sabina Spielrein presented a lecture on the topic of ‘transformation’.130 Spielrein had first been Jung’s patient, then his mistress and finally, a student. Under his direction, she had written the article Die Destruktion als Ursache des Werdens in which Jung’s principle of competition within sexuality formed the central theme. She had recently moved from Zurich to Vienna where she joined the group and presented an outline of the article to the Viennese group. The most interesting aspect of Spielrein’s exposition was that, in agreement with the biologist Mechnikov, she explicitly spoke of a ‘death wish’ in order to indicate the destructive component of the libido. By means of several examples, she then attempted to prove that, in various myths, the notions of death and sacrifice were related to the creation of new life. Freud made use of this discussion to criticize Jung’s Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido. First of all, he criticized Jung’s mere accumulation of mythological material without making any distinction between 125. See 272J. 126. E. JONES, Sigmund Freud. Life and Work, II, p. 95-96. 127. 270F and notes about the congress in The Freud/Jung Letters after 270F. 128. 243J. 129. 270F. 130. H. NUNBERG and E. FEDERN, The Minutes of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society, New York, International Universities Press, (4 vol.), 1962-1975, vol. III, p. 329-335. Concerning Sabina Spielrein, see A. CAROTENUTO and C. TROMBETTA, Diario di una segretta simetria. Sabina Spielrein tra Jung e Freud, Rome, Astrolabia, 1980. The French translation was extensively elaborated upon. It included, for example, an attempt to interpret her work in light of Lacan’s theories: Sabina Spielrein entre Freud et Jung, éd. française de M. Guibal et J. Nobécourt, Paris, Aubier - Montaigne, 1981.
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the original form of a myth and its later derivations. Concerning the notion of an intrinsic opposition within the sexual drive itself, Freud stated that, in essence, he was not opposed to the idea but he would like to see it proven on the basis of individual analyses. Conclusion Can it be said that Freud and Jung were truly concerned with the notion of religion in their analyses of Schreber’s and Miss Millers’ fantasy worlds? At this point, we should view all the facts which we have gleaned in light of the distinctions made at the beginning of this study. When Freud spoke of religion, he was primarily referring to morality. This became apparent from the very first pages of the work Obsessive Actions and Religious Practices, published in 1907. Here, he interpreted religion as the instrument by which society succeeded in repressing socially damaging tendencies and channelled them toward a symbolic fulfilment. Placed in this context, the discussion between Freud and Jung concerning whether or not the newly founded International Society for Psychoanalysis should join the International Order for Ethics and Culture was characteristic. Freud was opposed to religion because, according to him, it exercised its moral function in an overly oppressive manner. Without a doubt, social order and morality were necessary but they should be grounded on a scientific basis. Jung, on the contrary, spoke of the mystical power of religion. Any sort of organization for the promotion of ethics and culture which based itself on mere reason would eventually grow into a syndicate of special interests which would necessarily bleed to death after a short while. As an initial interpretation of these two approaches, we could pose that Jung made a clear distinction between religion and morality, just as Schleiermacher had done. Freud, however, made no such distinction. One wonders whether Freud’s Jewish background, which left little room for such a distinction, influenced his view. Mystical tendencies were even less popular in Judaism than in Christianity. Or was Freud merely influenced by the 19th century scientism which based its polemics on the interwovenness of religion and morality, typical of the time? In any case, in the work Totem and Taboo (1912-13), written as a reply to Jung, Freud still spoke of religion as morality’s instrument. It was only in The Future of an Illusion (1927) that Freud finally approached religion as a separate type of experience. In this work, he admitted to Romain Rolland (18661944) that if indeed an experience such as an ‘oceanic experience’ existed, then religion probably consisted of a unique experience of reality as well.
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If that were the case, then religion should not be merely understood as a system of representations to which people adhered because it produced a moral effect. All of this however did not impede Freud from concluding that religion was an ‘illusion’. Nevertheless, in his later works, such as Civilization and its Discontents (1930) and Moses and Monotheism (1939), the moral interpretation of religion and the theme of the ‘renouncement of drives’ were once again the key issues. In Jung’s statements concerning religion, it became clear that he did not consider the concept to be fundamentally a system of representations upholding a certain set of morals, although that interpretation was not completely absent from his writings. He did mention the development of culture and the renunciation of the instinct. However, he did not primarily attempt to reconstruct the origin of a social morality by means of these notions. He devoted his attention to the specific character of the experience of an ‘inner’ world which he claimed to have observed in the fantasies of children as well as in schizophrenic delusion and religious symbolism. The distinction between both of these approaches to religion probably explains why Freud, as opposed to Jung, reacted only slightly to the rather conspicuous element of ‘religion’ when analyzing the process of schizophrenic delusion. Yet all of the components employed by Jung in his interpretation of religion were present in Freud’s analysis of Schreber though Freud clearly experienced some difficulty in fitting them together coherently. The initial questions raised by Freud concerning Schreber’s delusion were the same questions posed in the very beginning of his correspondence with Jung. What constituted the relationship with ‘reality’ and what caused it to rupture? Freud maintained the distinction between rupture (decathexis) and repair (projection). Yet he admitted that he was at a loss as far as projection was concerned. It seems justified to ask if he did not have the same difficulties with decathexis. Jung criticized Freud with regard to this issue. Freud himself must have sensed that something was lacking in his explanation. If that had not been the case, he probably would not have reopened the discussion on the issue of decathexis after the famous passage of his text where paranoia was explained by means of linguistic formulations capable of denying the awareness ‘I love him’ (I love her, I hate him, etc.), upon which Lacan later vividly commented. The question that needed to be answered with regard to the process of decathexis concerned the sexual nature of the instincts which determined the relationship with reality. Freud apparently remained faithful to
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the model of transition from autoeroticism to object love which he had employed from the very beginning. He merely complemented it with the intermediary stages of narcissism and homosexuality. In fact, Freud profoundly confused the dichotomy, introduced in Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, between sexuality as the experience of pleasure of a creature which perceived itself as an individual (the original issue of the sexual purpose), on the one hand, and the sexual attachment to another human being (the sexual object), on the other hand. Thus, a person’s relationship with reality was, in a way, characterized by an experience of identity which in turn was involved with some sort of sexual pleasure. The problem had become complicated yet one thing was certain. Perception did not constitute the cornerstone of the human relationship to reality. Freud, in fact, had come across a problematic issue here which went far beyond the issue of religion, namely, the credibility of any theory. One had to abandon a simplistic explanation for the ‘reality principle’. The fact that people were affected by a ‘theory’ could not be explained by stating that specific theory referred to representations which, supposedly, everyone could personally verify. Rather, people were affected by a theory because the belief in that theory relied on some sort of awareness of one’s identity or on some process such as the cathexis of reality by means of the ‘libido’. These same elements were also encountered in Jung’s writings, although he spoke more explicitly about religion. Yet one wonders if he allowed himself to be blinded by the similarities, as far as content was concerned, between a child’s fantasy world, schizophrenic delusion and religious symbolism. Without questioning these respective experiences of reality, he employed their similarities in order to postulate a mechanism responsible for different developments at the same time, such as the reversal of sexuality into culture, the creation of human identity and the production of a world full of symbols. The way Jung expanded the notion of ‘autoeroticism’ until he could replace it with ‘introversion’ was characteristic of this quest for a single mechanism which established ‘all of this’ in people. Later, within his own framework, Jung referred to the problematic of identification, and even of homosexuality, as being the consequences of such a mechanism. Jung distinguished archetypes within the inner world which nourished the individual while he was engaged in the introversion process. In his own conceptual framework, he integrated Freud’s concept of identification, using the notion ‘persona’, and Freud’s thoughts on the problem of homosexuality, or, at least one aspect thereof, by the concept of ‘anima(-us)’.
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Although Jung, as opposed to Freud, clearly distinguished religion from morality, one still wonders what he understood by ‘religion’. It seemed as if the question posed at the beginning of his correspondence with Freud, concerning the difference between the experiences of ‘reality’ in psychosis and in neurosis, had disappeared. It was precisely this question which he should have posed with regard to the fantasy world of a child, the delusions of a schizophrenic and religious symbolism. Besides the similarities concerning content between the employed representations, it is questionable whether, in all three cases, the same type of relationship toward ‘reality’ was involved. One can justifiably wonder whether this type of relationship does not constitute the specific character of religion. It was precisely this question, which at first sight seemed to be the object of their profound discussions, that noticeably disappeared from their dialogue. Starting with the interpretation of the schizophrenic rupture with reality and Schreber’s experience of the ‘destruction of the world’, Freud and Jung began their last theoretical debate. Very soon afterwards however, they abandoned the subject of the sense for reality and commenced discussing the sexual significance of the libido and the relationship between fixation and repression. Yet, what was the specific character of religion? This question which had presented itself so stringently, was now being covered up.
Chapter VII
The Rupture (1911-1913) The Kreuzlingen Gesture (September 1911 - May 1912) Following the Weimar Congress of September 1911, both Freud and Jung zealously continued their research into the subjects of mythology and religion. Apparently, everything proceeded very well. Freud indicated to Jung that he had come across a mythical motif which could possibly be traced back to a phylogenetic heredity, namely, the motif of the doppelgänger or the weaker twin brother. This motif might represent the placenta which was a temporary part of every individual’s life just as a twin brother.1 Jung replied that he was quite pleased with Freud’s discovery and that he had found a parallel. Much of the water symbolism and many of the skin sensations of enwrapping and encoiling might stem from the intrauterine life with its experience of the amnion and the umbilical cord. This confirmed Jung’s suspicion that very early infantile memories related to foetal condition, birth and nursing were not individually acquired but were phylogenetically transmitted.2 That relations were rather strained between both men became clear in several letters from Jung’s wife, Emma, addressed to Freud from October till November 1911.3 Jung was initially not aware of the existence of these letters in which his wife expressed her fear of a growing distance between her husband and Freud. She particularly referred to Freud’s visit to Zurich on the occasion of the congress. During that visit, the subject of Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido had been almost intentionally avoided. Emma Jung also accused Freud of forcing her husband in the position of a rebellious son. In a third letter, she mentioned her personal difficulty with constantly living in her husband’s shadow and she sought some sympathy with Freud. From this letter, it also becomes clear that Jung had discovered the correspondence in the meantime and that he did not care for it at all. There was no fourth letter.
1. 274F. 2. 275J. 3. The letters were included in The Freud/Jung Letters following 277J, 279J, 282J respectively. Freud’s answers have been lost.
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We do not know how Freud responded to Emma. In any case, he did write to Jung during this period stating that he had reread Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido and had found many things to be so wellexpressed that they should be considered as definitive statements on the issue.4 Yet at the same time, he also felt that Jung’s Christian influence limited his horizon far too greatly. Shortly thereafter, in a letter to Freud dated 17 November, Jung asserted his belief that it was necessary to expand the libido theory and that he had attempted to do this in connection with Freud’s "Schreber". He supplemented the notion of the libido, as expressed in Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, with a genetic model.5 This alarmed Freud. He replied that he hoped there was no misunderstanding between them. He pointed out that, according to him, only the sexual drive could be called ‘libido’.6 To this, Jung responded that the problem of the ‘destruction of the world’ as found in Schreber’s case had made him sharply aware of the fact that the loss of the reality function in cases of dementia praecox could not be explained exclusively as a consequence of the repression of a sexually perceived libido. Again, Jung stated that he intended to solve this problem by means of a genetic concept of the libido. Yet he found it difficult to extensively discuss his conclusion in a letter and proposed to wait until Freud had read the second part of Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido. In fact, Jung had just completed the chapter dealing with the topic of the libido.7 In their correspondence, little mention was made of Freud’s research on the origin of religion. Freud frequently complained that the work progressed very slowly. He also expressed his surprise that Jung did not show more interest in his work. Yet Freud himself barely referred to the content of his research.8 By mid-January 1912, Freud had completed the article The Horror of Incest which would later become the first part of Totem and Taboo.9 Jung only read the text after its publication in March 1912.
4. "One of the nicest works I have read (again), is that of the well-known author on the "Transformations and Symbols of the Libido". In it many things are so well-expressed that they seem to have taken on definitive form and in this form impress themselves on the memory." 280F. 5. 282J. 6. 286F. 7. 287J. 8. 286F. 9. Under the more general title Some Points of Agreement between the Mental Life of Savages and Neurotics, he also announced the publication of two more articles: Taboo and
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January 1912 was a particularly difficult month for Jung due to the press campaign against psychoanalysis which had been sparked by one of his own writings. In the yearbook of a local printer named Rascher, Jung had published an article in which he sketched a popular interpretation of psychoanalysis.10 Not expecting the text to create such a scandal, he soon found himself obliged to publicly defend himself in the newspapers.11 After the storm had somewhat subsided, Jung continued writing the last chapter of Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido. In his correspondence with Freud, he indicated that the work mainly dealt with the mother image and with incest and that he was experiencing great difficulty in drawing it to a conclusion.12 Freud, in the meantime, was tackling the issue of taboo.13 He stated that he had discovered that taboos stemmed from affective ambivalence and, by means of this, he believed he could establish the origin of conscience.14 Thus, their correspondence merely indicated the themes with which both men were then occupied. In fact their letters also became shorter and less frequent. Moreover, they no longer contained a true exchange of ideas. This irritated Freud and he reproached Jung for neglecting their correspondence.15 Although Jung had to admit that he was a bad correspondent, he found it difficult to accept Freud’s authoritarian tone. He announced that the second part of Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido would be his ’declaration of independence’.16 In response to this Freud pointed out that he had never intellectually tyrannized Jung.17 All this caused the father-son conflict to flare up again. One of the ways it was expressed was through certain lapses and errors in their letters, to
Emotional Ambivalence and Animism, Magic and the Omnipotence of Thoughts. These three essays were compiled in Totem und Taboo in 1913, together with an initially unforeseen fourth essay. See 293F. 10. C.G. JUNG, New Paths in Psychology. The first edition of the C.W. VII gives in § 407436 the translation of an incomplete version of this text. See the G.W. VII, p. 268-291 (for obscure reasons, the German edition does not use paragraph numbering here). 11. C.G. JUNG, Two Letters on Psychoanalysis, C.W. XVIII, § 1034-1040 and Concerning Psychoanalysis, C.W. IV, § 197-202. 12. 300J. 13. 298F. 14. 306F. 15. 298F, 301F. 16. 303J, 311F. 17. 304F.
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which both parties began to react in a rather short-tempered manner.18 During this same period, Jung agreed to deliver several lectures at Fordham University in New York in September of that year. This entailed that the date for the annual congress had to be moved.19 Freud immediately concurred that Jung should accept the offer since it would enhance the propagation of psychoanalysis. He even suggested that the congress be cancelled for that year.20 On 10 March 1912, Jung wrote to Freud that he had completed the second part of Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido.21 The following April, by the time Jung read Freud’s The Horror of Incest, he had already sent the galleys of the second part of Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido back to the printer which meant that he could not add any corrections to his text.22 Thus, while there is a parallel development between both texts, they originated separately. However, reading Freud’s text did become for Jung the occasion for reopening a theoretical discussion in their correspondence. Freud had begun his essay from the perspective that, in all primitive cultures, the incest prohibition was encountered as the most fundamental law. Along with this opinion, he had included the observation that the desire for incest was a feature which was constantly met in the analysis of his patients. This had led him to conclude that the desire for incest was one of the deepest drives of the human psyche. Jung began his criticism with several arguments against Freud’s interpretation of the ethnological data involved. He pointed out that an incestuous relationship was primarily forbidden between the son and the mother while the father-daughter relationship was often not taken into consideration. Further, Jung did not understand why the incest prohibition had to be part of a patriarchal society. While the son was still young, the father, by his physical power alone, could easily defend his exclusive right to the mother. By the time the son had become an adult, both the mother
18. Among other texts, 298F concerning the slackening of the correspondence: "I find no triumph in you" instead of "... in it"; 304F : "If a third party was to read this passage, he would ask me why (instead of when) I had tried to tyrannize you intellectually, and I should have to say: I don’t know. I don’t believe I ever did." One of Jung’s errors later mentioned in their quarrel: "Even Adler’s cronies do not regard me as one of yours" (instead of "theirs"). 335J. 19. 307J. 20. 308F. Jones offers a different presentation of matters. 21. 305J. 22. 312J.
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and father had grown old and the mother was no longer attractive. Thus the incest prohibition was not particularly necessary as an institution within the patriarchal society. It might have been useful in a primitive, matriarchal society which was characterized by general promiscuity and thus by a real danger of incest. Yet the prohibition was never found in these instances, which led Jung to doubt that a universal prohibition was actually directed against a real danger of incest.23 Jung expressed his own theory in a very cautious and ambiguous manner. According to him, the incest prohibition was only secondary, relying on a more fundamental structure, namely, the special relationship between a child and its mother. The prohibition was then ’merely a formula or ceremony of atonement in re vili’.24 Freud was not aware of the direction which Jung had taken by these rather sibylline indications. Thus he responded to Jung’s criticism by discussing the ideas of initial promiscuity, the rights of the mother and the role of the father in various cultures.25 In response to this, Jung unequivocally stated what he had intended to demonstrate. The incest prohibition emerged only after the connection between the free-floating anxiety and infantile material had been established. The sexual desire to commit incest was not of central importance with regard to the prohibition. Rather, the key element was the special infantile bond with the mother which was recathected in a regressive movement. Jung cautioned Freud not fall into the trap of the trauma theory for a second time. The trauma which appeared to be so dominant in the lives of patients, had turned out to be a construction which gave infantile moments a new significance. In the same way, the incest prohibition did not imply the existence of a factual desire for incest as its origin.26 In his reply, Freud stated that he finally understood what Jung intended yet he still failed to comprehend why Jung found it necessary to make such a turn.27 What else but an incestuous desire could be at the basis of the incest prohibition? He did admit that the mistake he had made
23. 313J. 24. "I therefore think that the incest prohibition (understood as primitive morality) was merely a formula or ceremony of atonement in re vili: what was valuable for the child - the mother - and is so worthless for the adult ... acquires an extraordinary value thanks to the incest prohibition, and is declared to be desirable and forbidden .... Evidently, the object of the prohibition is not to prevent incest but to consolidate the family ...." 313J. 25. 314F. 26. 315J. 27. 316F.
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with regard to the trauma theory, which Jung had recalled, should have taught him to be more cautious. Nevertheless his concept of the pleasure principle forced him to strongly dislike Jung’s view. He loathed the regressive explanation and could not help but see in it a reference to Adler’s theories. In the same letter, Freud announced that he would visit Binswanger at Kreuzlingen during the Pentecost holidays but that his schedule would not allow him to travel on to Zurich. Later Freud claimed that, by this, he was implicitly suggesting that Jung come to Kreuzlingen to see him.28 Jung answered that he had not received the letter until after Pentecost and he believed that Freud had deliberately mailed the letter too late. Freud, on the other hand, was convinced that he had mailed the letter in enough time and he supposed Jung was ill-disposed. Further angry letters followed. Among other things, Jung announced that he would present his new theories in his lectures at Fordham University29 and that he had well understood Freud’s gesture at Kreuzlingen.30 On 7 September 1912, Jung left for the United States. His series of lectures was later published in The Theory of Psychoanalysis.31 During his absence, the second part of Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido was published. As she had been instructed, Emma Jung immediately sent a copy to Freud on 10 September 1912. Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido The Genetic Theory of the Libido Freud had concluded ‘Schreber’ with an open question as to whether a libidinous decathexis sufficiently explained the profound loss of the sense of reality experienced in instances of dementia praecox. This question became the point of departure for the second part of Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido, the first chapter of which was devoted to expanding the concept of the libido. Jung initially attempted to focus the problem by comparing dementia praecox to neurosis. According to Freud, a repression of the libido was involved in both cases. Yet Jung pointed out that a radical loss of the
28. The text of the letter went as follows: "I shall be closer to you geographically during the Whitsun weekend. On the evening of the 24th I shall be leaving for Constance to see Binswanger. I am planning to be back on the following Tuesday. The time is so short that I shall not be able to do more". 316F. 29. 321J. 30. 320J. 31. The German text appeared in the first volume of the 1913 Jahrbuch.
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sense of reality was not encountered in either hysteria or in obsessional neurosis. In these cases, the non-sexual psychological adjustment to reality was maintained. However, in cases of dementia praecox, the degree of derealization was such that, along with sexuality, other instincts had to influence this collapse as well.32 Subsequently, this gave Jung an occasion to reflect upon the Freudian concepts of the libido and the ego drives. According to Jung, Freud’s theory had been developed in conformance with the model of a theory of components. The core notion of Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality held that certain bodily functions or parts, initially not of a sexual nature, could be cathected by sexuality. In a secondary moment, the mouth for example could receive the erotic significance expressed by a kiss. Thus, Freud applied the hypothesis of bundled drives. According to this hypothesis, the human psyche consisted of a number of separate drives which could combine with each other in a secondary instance. Sexuality was originally only one of these partial drives. Along with it, there existed other partial drives which Freud barely mentioned.33 By means of this hypothesis, Freud wished to explain the fact that certain objects or functions could be given a sexual significance which, viewed in themselves, they did not possess. Even Jung could not deny that fact. This conceptual model did not pose any difficulties to the psychological analysis of neurosis. Yet with regard to psychosis, it did cause certain difficulties which led Jung to question the aspect of the components in Freud’s libido theory. Without intending to deny the established facts, Jung attempted to find a solution by means of a genetic concept of the libido.34 Nevertheless, when surveying the history of evolution, the existence of separate, instinctual elements which combined themselves in a secondary instance seemed rather implausible. Even the popular distinction between the urge for self-preservation and the urge for the preservation of the species, on which Freud based himself, was originally not so clear. The first form of multiplication was division which was where growth and procreation were fused into one process. In the further course of evolution, growth and procreation differentiated. The process of procreation, which was initially based on a surplus
32. C.G. JUNG, Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido, Engl. transl. (Psychology of the Unconscious) p. 79; in: Jahrbuch 4 (1912), p. 175. 33. Ibid., p. 77; in: Jahrbuch 4 (1912), p. 172. 34. Ibid., p. 79; in: Jahrbuch 4 (1912), p. 176.
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of procreative material and a coincidental fertilization, gradually gave way to a new process by which fertilization and the care of the young were much more efficient. What we refer to as ‘a sense of reality’ for the most part found its origin in this ‘ceremony’, which included finding a partner, building a nest and taking care of the young as its most important aspects.35 Thus, according to Jung, Freud’s affirmation that one’s sense of reality was closely connected to sexuality, contained much truth. What was at stake, however, was where one situated the term ‘sexuality’. In light of its evolution, it would be best to define the libido as a fundamental, vital drive which originally combined the processes of procreation and self-preservation. Due to the ensuing differentiation of this vital drive or primordial libido, the various, more specific drives - of which the sexual drive as it was later experienced was only one - came into being. In order to clearly posit this distinction, Jung spoke of the ‘recent sexual aspect’ as opposed to the vital drive or primordial libido which he equated with Schopenhauer’s concept of the will.36 According to Jung, his genetic concept of the libido solved the problems encountered by Freud when he attempted to apply his theory of components to psychosis. The repercussions of the libido component on the other instinctual components, observable in cases of psychosis but not in cases of neurosis, no longer posed a problem. In neurosis, the ‘recent sexual’ aspect was lifted from the outside world while in psychosis, a greater part of what originated in the primordial libido was withdrawn.37 Thus, the core of Jung’s theory stated that all human drives stemmed from one fundamental vital urge or primordial libido and that sexuality in the strict sense took up only a small portion of what developed from this primordial libido. This was also what he meant by the sometimes confusing term ‘desexualized primordial libido’ which pertained to those elements of the primordial libido which did not transform into the ‘recent sexual’. According to Jung, this view did not detract any significance from the facts observed by Freud. While Freud spoke of the libidinous cathexis of another instinct, the same phenomenon could be considered as a moment of differentiation within the primordial libido. The emergence psychic functions which split off from the primordial libido was a process
35. Ibid., p. 82-83; in: Jahrbuch 4 (1912), p. 180. 36. Ibid., p. 81-82; in: Jahrbuch 4 (1912), p. 178-180. 37. Ibid., p. 83; in: Jahrbuch 4 (1912), p. 181-182.
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which constantly repeated itself in every individual. In the case of sublimation, this process occurred without any disadvantages to the individual involved. Otherwise, one spoke of repression.38 The genetic theory was therefore also valid for neurosis. Unlike the theory of components, it could more efficiently explain that, in the case of an aggravated neurosis, psychotic episodes could occur.39 Within the context of his conceptual model, Jung found it necessary to revoke the terminological equation he had earlier posited between Freud’s ‘autoeroticism’ and Bleuler’s ‘autism’. The term ‘autoeroticism’ was best reserved for neurotic processes where the actual repression of a differentiated recent sexuality was at stake. On the other hand, Bleuler’s term ‘autism’ was more appropriate when dealing with psychotic processes which affected the broader fundament of instinctual life.40 Up until this point, Jung had merely attempted to demonstrate that this genetic model of the libido was better equipped to explain the psychoanalytical data than Freud’s theory of components. However, he went beyond this when he interpreted the archaic characteristics of schizophrenic productions as a direct confirmation of his hypothesis. In cases of dementia praecox, one encountered fantasies which seemed to have originated directly from mythology. Exceptional instances left aside, such fantasies were not found in cases of hysteria. According to Jung, the reason for this was obvious. In hysteria, only one of the drives, namely recent sexuality, was repressed. The relationship to the outside world was thus maintained. Yet we notice how repressed sexuality began to express itself in an earlier form of transference. For example, it brought the parental images back into the experience in a regressive manner. In cases of dementia praecox however, the complete instinctual cathexis was removed from reality. Once again, regression occurred and the older mythical relationship to reality took form.41 Jung dealt with the characteristics of the mythical stage and its function within the history of evolution in other chapters of his work. In the meantime, his chapter on the genetic theory of the libido led him to adopt the following stance. The libido should be conceived of in terms of evolutionist differentiation and not in terms of composition.
38. Ibid., p. 83; in: Jahrbuch 4 (1912), p. 181. 39. Ibid., p. 84; in: Jahrbuch 4 (1912), p. 183. 40. Ibid., p. 84; in: Jahrbuch 4 (1912), p. 182. 41. Ibid., p. 84-85; in: Jahrbuch 4 (1912), p. 183-184.
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Symbol and Desexualization Following the chapter concerning the genetic concept of the libido, Jung wrote a chapter in which he intended to demonstrate, by means of an example, the importance of the formation of symbols in cultural history. This led Jung to determine that the formation of symbols was a ‘fantastical formation of analogies’ which took place as the consequence of an inner urge to find analogies and thus, to desexualize the libido. What struck Jung about the manifold sexual symbols and rites which were encountered was not so much their sexual content but also the fact that they expressed sexuality symbolically and not directly. Viewed in itself, it seemed rather strange that, for example, primitive people could solemnly dance to a overy monotonous melody for a whole night. Even when sexual symbols were involved, it would seem that a direct sexual act would offer more satisfaction in relieving sexual tension. Some rites characterized by sexual symbolism had anything but a pleasant nature. This indicated that more than a quest for satisfaction was operative. A coercion which forced the libido to replace its original object with surrogates was also involved.42 "Under these circumstances, the question arises why the primitive man endeavours to represent the sexual act symbolically and with effort, or, if this wording appears to be too hypothetical, why does he exert energy to such a degree only to accomplish practically useless things, which apparently do not especially amuse him? It may be assumed that the sexual act is more desirable to primitive man than such an absurd and, moreover, fatiguing exercises. It is hardly possible but that a certain compulsion conducts the energy away from the original object and real purpose, inducing the production of surrogates."
Jung immediately defined this coercion as an internal force since, in his view, it was inconceivable that an external obstacle could prompt such a quest for surrogates. It is remarkable that Jung found this conclusion so obvious. He stated that "the psychological compulsion for the transformation of the libido is based on an original division of the will".43 This quest, which led people away from a direct sexual gratification, gave rise to myths, rites and ultimately to culture and the development of a world view. Jung attempted to prove this by several examples. The universal sexual symbolism of making fire could be related to the fact that
42. Ibid., p. 94; in: Jahrbuch 4 (1912), p. 198. 43. Ibid., p. 94; in: Jahrbuch 4 (1912), p. 199.
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man had attempted to symbolically express coitus by piercing one wooden stick into another. He only accidentally discovered that this caused a fire.44 The ritual coitus imagery regarding the farmland and the sexual symbolism of ploughing transferred the libidinous urge for the sexual act to the agricultural domain. It was along these lines that Jung spoke of the formation of symbols as a ‘fantastical formation of analogies’ which desexualized the libido and enlarged the world view.45 In order to explain the process of desexualization, Jung related it to regression. The resistance prohibiting the sexual act caused the libido to regress from its actual process of transference to an older process. This could possibly be the relationship toward one’s parents, which would actually imply ‘incest’. Yet such a possibility was barred by the incest prohibition. The libido thus had no choice but to return to presexual stages of development, when it was primarily an urge for food. This last process ‘quasi-desexualized’ the libido:46 "The resistance against sexuality aims, therefore, at preventing the sexual act. It also seeks to crowd the libido out of the sexual function. We see, for example, in hysteria, how the specific repression blocks the real path of transference. Therefore, the libido is obliged to take another path, an earlier one, namely the incestuous road which ultimately leads toward the parents. Then the situation changes insofar that no earlier way of transference is left except that of the presexual stage of development, where the libido was still partly in the function of nutrition. By a regression to the presexual stage, the libido becomes quasi-desexualised. But as the incest prohibition signifies only a temporary and conditional restriction of the sexuality, only that part of the libido which is best designated as the incestuous component is pushed back to the presexual stage. The repression, therefore, concerns only that part of the sexual libido which wishes to permanently fix itself upon the parents. Only the incestuous component is withdrawn from the sexual libido and pushed back to the presexual stage. If the operation is successful, this component is desexualized and its portion of libido is prepared for an asexual application. However, it is to be assumed that this operation is accomplished only with difficulty because the incestuous libido, so to speak, must be artificially separated from the sexual libido, with wich it had been indistinguishably united for ages throughout the whole animal kingdom. The regression of the incestuous
44. Ibid., p. 93; in: Jahrbuch 4 (1912), p. 197. 45. Ibid., p. 86; in: Jahrbuch 4 (1912), p. 185-186. 46. Ibid., p. 95 (We have corrected the English translation on some crucial points); in: Jahrbuch 4 (1912), p. 199-200.
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component not only takes place with great difficulty but it also must carry a considerable sexual character with it into the presexual stage. The consequence of this is that the resulting phenomena, although stamped with the character of the sexual act, are, nevertheless, not really sexual acts de facto. They are derived from the presexual stage and are maintained by the repressed sexual libido. Therefore, they possess a double significance."
This explained why sexuality could clearly be recognized in the symbolism of making fire for instance, although the act as such no longer possessed a sexual nature. The erotic significance of the mouth, for example, originated in the same manner. This was not only expressed in the act of thumb-sucking but also in the development of the mouth as the instrument of the mating call and finally, of language.47 Jung further illustrated his exposition by means of several etymological elaborations and correlations between the myths and customs of various cultures. Yet ultimately, this did not help to clarify matters. His main hypothesis in any case was the following. The mere fact that sexual symbols existed implied that the human psyche harboured an inner resistance to an unmediated indulgence of sexuality. This inner discord of ‘libido against libido’ gave rise to a network of surrogates for sexual representation. Therefore, due to the desexualization of sexuality, culture could come about. Regression and Incest Following these two theoretical chapters, Jung continued with his analysis of Miss Miller’s fantasies. In this context, we can learn more about the relationship between desexualization and regression. His analysis concerned now the fantasy story of ‘Chiwantopel’, which Miss Miller had described as a ‘hypnagogic’ tragedy. As she was dozing off to sleep, she suddenly saw before her an Aztec named Chiwantopel. In the background, she heard a mass of people and horses and the sounds of a battle. Then she saw the images of a dream city, a rare tree and a blue cove in the sea. Next, the scene moved to a forest. Chiwantopel appeared on horseback. Another Indian drew near and aimed his bow at Chiwantopel. Chiwantopel however, had spotted the Indian and defiantly bared his breast to him whereupon the Indian disappeared. Chiwantopel then gave a monologue stating that he had left his father’s palace and had been travelling throughout the world for a hundred months in search of a woman who would understand him. Until then, he had not 47. Ibid., p. 98-99; in: Jahrbuch 4 (1912), p. 203-205.
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found her but he believed that sometime within ten thousand months, the woman who was destined for him would be born. Near the end of the monologue, Miss Miller saw a snake slither from under a thicket and bite both Chiwantopel and his horse, mortally wounding them with its venom. Chiwantopel said to the snake: "Thank you little sister, for putting an end to my wanderings." Miss Miller then saw a smoking volcano in the distance and while the earth began to quake, Chiwantopel died, uttering a last cry: "I have preserved my body untainted. She would understand that. You, Ja-ni-ma-wa, you understand me."48 For 250 pages, Jung attempted to further analyze this hypnagogic tragedy, employing the brief indications provided by Miss Miller. Time and again, he arrived at the observation that the various elements expressed a desire for the mother and could be described as incestuous. The wandering Chiwantopel, whom Miss Miller associated with the eternally wandering Jew Ahasverus49, who in turn was similar to the Islamic figure of Al Chadir, represented for Jung the image of the eternal nostalgia for the mother. The dream city50, the rare tree51 and the blue cove seen by Miss Miller, were also maternal symbols. Miss Miller also connected Chiwantopel to Popocatepetl, the volcano whose name attracted every child’s imagination, and to Ahamarama or Asurabama, ’the Assyrian who made clay tablets’.52 This connection with the anal aspect once again proved to Jung that Chiwantopel indubitably represented Miss Miller’s infantile personality. The fact that this infantile personality portrayed male characteristics was apparently not much of a problem for Jung. According to him, it was an evident consequence of the quest for a relationship with the mother.53 In order to further explain the significance of this quest, Jung sought out mythological parallels. The theme of incest which made it possible for one to conceive oneself again in the mother or, in other words, the theme of death and rebirth was of key importance in mythology. It would be unfeasible here to touch upon the vast amount of mythological themes which Jung related to this idea. The mythical image which expressed this central theme in a most general and pure form was that of the solar cycle.
48. Ibid., p. 238; in: Jahrbuch 4 (1912), p. 420. 49. Ibid., p. 119ff; in: Jahrbuch 4 (1912), p. 235ff. 50. Ibid., p. 129; in: Jahrbuch 4 (1912), p. 251. 51. Ibid., p. 132-133; in: Jahrbuch 4 (1912), p. 262. 52. Ibid., p. 115-119; in: Jahrbuch 4 (1912), p. 229-235. 53. Ibid., p. 240; in: Jahrbuch 4 (1912), p. 423.
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The sun rose from the sea, approached its zenith and returned back to the sea only to rise again. Jung spontaneously related the theme of life and death to the strictly sexual symbolism of the image of the solar cycle:54 "The primitive symbol, which designates that portion of the Zodiac in which the Sun, with the Winter Solstice, again enters upon the yearly course, is the goat, fish sign, the aigokeros. The Sun mounts like a goat to the highest mountain, and later goes into the water as a fish. The fish is the symbol of the child, for the child before his birth lives in the water like a fish, and the Sun, because it plunges into the sea, becomes equally child and fish. The fish, however, is also a phallic symbol, also a symbol for the woman. Briefly stated, the fish is a libido symbol, and, indeed, as it seems predominately for the renewal of the libido."
With regard to the core theme of mythology, namely incest, Jung found it essential to distinguish the sexual moment from the regressive moment. The deepest layer of incestuous fantasies consisted in the desire to once again become a child and to lead the uncomplicated, impersonal existence of a child in its mother’s womb. Into this nostalgia, a sexual moment was secondarily engraved. For the person who was no longer a child, such a return to the mother signified incest while rebirth became the notion of fertilizing the mother and thus giving existence to oneself:55 "I have to emphasize the point that is most especially the totality of the sun myth which proves us that the fundamental basis of the ‘incestuous’ desire does not aim at cohabitation, but at the special thought of becoming a child again, of turning back to the parent’s protection, of coming into the mother once more in order to be born again. But incest stands in the path to this goal, that is to say, the necessity of in some way again gaining entrance into the mother’s womb. One of the simplest ways would be to impregnate the mother, and to reproduce one’s self identically. But here the incest prohibition interferes; therefore, the myths of the sun or of rebirth teem with all possible proposals as to how incest can be evaded."
The theme of virginal birth, which appeared in most of the heroic myths, conveyed the following significance for Jung. The hero was the one who had succeeded in conceiving himself in the mother. As a counterbalance to the regressive tendency of the psyche, myths also expressed a progressive force which prompted man toward individuality and which led him to leave his parents. This progressive tendency expressed itself in the incest prohibition which should only sec-
54. Ibid., p. 123; in: Jahrbuch 4 (1912), p. 241-242. 55. Ibid., p. 138; in: Jahrbuch 4 (1912), p. 267.
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ondarily be interpreted in its sexual significance. The incest prohibition intended to impede regression. In myths, it was depicted by means of images which highlighted the terrifying character of the mother, such as the sphinxes, bloodthirsty goddesses, dragons guarding the desired treasure and so on. In the same context, Jung also explained the father images as being projections caused by a fear of incest, thus a fear of regression.56 After expressing a struggle between progression and regression, many myths employed the theme of sacrifice. The hero was required to sacrifice an animal, to be sacrificed himself or to be castrated. Such a sacrifice usually entailed the emergence of new life. As examples of this, Jung primarily pointed to the sacrifice of a horse in the teachings of the Upanishads57, the sacrifice of the bull by Mithras58, the castration of Attis59 and Christ’s sacrifice on the cross.60 This implied that the libido which was linked to the mother had to be sacrificed and that only subsequently could real life emerge. Yet, Jung’s explanation of exactly how this occurred contained an ambiguity. In some texts, he stated that the sacrifice represented the sacrificing of the incestuous libido. Just as the mythical hero sacrificed his relationship with the mother, so must this occur in real life.61 However, in other texts, he suggested that the sacrifice implied the surrender of oneself to the mother. By the act of offering a sacrifice to one’s mother in fantasy or ritual and thus by symbolically depicting one’s bondage, one actually detached oneself from her. Jung re-encountered this soteriological theme in the fantasy involving Chiwantopel. By this fantasy, the unconscious expressed a wish for the demise of the infantile personality, which could not help but look for the mother image everywhere. The progressive tendency within the libido (represented here by the snake) tried to conquer the infantile image which, out of loyalty toward the mother, fled from every sexual contact (for example, the childish defiance of exposing the breast caused the Indian and his bow and arrow to disappear). Thus, just as myths, the hypnagogic tragedy offered the example of what should occur.62
56. Ibid., p. 153-163; in: Jahrbuch 4 (1912), p. 293-308. 57. Ibid., p. 258-259; in: Jahrbuch 4 (1912), p. 448-450. 58. Ibid., p. 261-263; in: Jahrbuch 4 (1912), p. 454-456. 59. Ibid., p. 260-261; in: Jahrbuch 4 (1912), p. 451-453. 60. Ibid., p. 263; in: Jahrbuch 4 (1912), p. 456. 61. Ibid., p. 161-162; in: Jahrbuch 4 (1912), p. 307. 62. Ibid., p. 240; in: Jahrbuch 4 (1912), p. 423.
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Therefore, according to Jung, the crucial point in the theme of incest was not so much sexuality but rather the regressive tendency. He wrote:63 "Here I must recall that I give to the word ‘incest’ more significance than properly belongs to the term. Just as libido is the onward driving force, so incest is in some manner the backward urge into childhood. For the child, it cannot be spoken of as incest. Only for the adult who possesses a completely formed sexuality does the backwards urge become incest, because he is no longer a child but possesses a sexuality which cannot be permitted a regressive application."
Jung designated the regressive tendencies of the psyche as ‘will for death’ while he referred to the progressive processes as ‘will for life’.64 The aim of human life was ‘individuation’, the further differentiation of a child toward a personal life by which it could adopt a perspective with regard to the reality beyond it.65 The regressive tendency, on the contrary, implied a relapse into that which was non-differentiated. One could wonder what type of function this reciprocity between progression and regression exercised. It was here that Jung reintroduced the notion of sexuality. He contended that regression was directed to desexualizing a part of the libido and thus, giving rise to fantasy, world view and culture. Contrary to what he had affirmed concerning the sense of reality, Jung accepted that human thinking originated in sexuality in the strict sense of the word. According to him, the development of mental capacities in a child coincided with the first manifestations of sexuality (around 3 or 4 years of age). Moreover, this occurred around the same time that a child gradually began to leave its mother and learned to direct itself to the outside world. The emerging sexuality and the process of regression collaborated in order for this transition to take place. Sexuality eroticized a child’s love for its mother rendering it incestuous while a regressive moment transferred this love to a presexual stage where the libido could not find an adequate object. As a consequence, a number of secondary ob-
63. Ibid., p. 307 (footnote 46 from p. 146); in: Jahrbuch 4 (1912), p. 279 (footnote). 64. "Incest prohibition can be understood, therefore, as a result of regression, and as the result of a libidinous anxiety, which regressively attacks the mother. Naturally, it is difficult or impossible to say from whence this anxiety may have come. I merely venture to suggest that it may have been a question of a primitive separation of the pairs of opposites which are hidden in the will of life: the will for life and for death." Ibid., p. 257; in: Jahrbuch 4 (1912), p. 447. 65. Ibid., p. 328 (footnote from p. 244); in: Jahrbuch 4 (1912), p. 427-428 (footnote).
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jects which represented the primordial object - the mother - became cathected. This gave rise to fantasy and to mental capacities as a ‘desexualized usage’ of an originally sexual libido.66 The process can be thus summarized: when the libido became sexual and incestuous, it regressed and was subsequently desexualized. Thus, a child repeated the same process which was phylogenetically operative at the origin of myths and rites.67 "Thinking and a conception of the world arose from a shrinking back from stern reality, and it is only after man has regressively assured himself again of the protective parental power that he enters life wrapped in a dream of childhood shrouded in magic superstitions; that is to say, ’thinking’, for he, timidly sacrificing his best and assuring himself of the favour of the invisible powers, step by step develops to greater power, in the degree that he frees himself from his retrospective longing and the original lack of harmony in his being."
Fantastical thinking thus formed a transitional stage. It signified the means by which the individual rose above the instinctual level where every person was equal. Here however, we touch upon the distinction between myths and the role which they played in the course of history, on the one hand, and fantasies such as Miss Miller’s, on the other hand. Miss Miller desired to avoid the difficulties encountered in reality and therefore regressed into fantasy. This implied a flight from reality.68 Yet when fantastical thinking was healthy and exercised a specific function, as in myths, it served to make the transition to reality possible. Attempting a Theory of Psychoanalysis Jung’s lectures delivered at Fordham University, which were later compiled in The Theory of Psychoanalysis, were written during the summer of 1912 after he had become aware that Freud could not accept his version of the concept of the libido. Compared to Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido, the lectures had the advantage of being a clear and well-composed exposition. Jung left the issues of mythology and psychosis aside in order to devote his attention to the central themes of Freudian thought and to offer his own reflections. The following topics were discussed: Freud’s transition from the hypothesis of trauma to the
66. Ibid., p. 255; in: Jahrbuch 4 (1912), p. 444-445. 67. Ibid., p. 257-258; in: Jahrbuch 4 (1912), p. 447-448. 68. Ibid., p. 107-108 and p. 255; in: Jahrbuch 4 (1912), p. 218-219 and p. 445.
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hypothesis of repression, infantile sexuality, the concept of the libido, the Oedipus complex, the aetiology of neurosis and the therapeutic foundations of psychoanalysis. In his conclusion, he offered a brief presentation concerning the analysis of children. Time and again, Jung intended to demonstrate that the facts and the connections which Freud had established, indeed existed. Yet he also wanted to indicate that, within the framework of interpretation, a genetic and energetic concept of the libido and the centralizing of the concept of regression would significantly advance the research. The Genetic and Energetic Concept of Libido In Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido, Jung had based himself on the psychotic’s loss of reality in order to postulate the genetic concept of the libido which, in light of historical evolution, seemed to him more plausible than Freud’s theory of components. Jung briefly repeated this line of reasoning in The Theory of Psychoanalysis but further in the same work his attention was primarily directed toward the application of the concept to infantile sexuality. Freud had started from the fact that children unmistakably displayed a sense of lust when they were nursed and that, upon being satisfied, they manifested a condition of satisfaction similar to adults after orgasm. A second fact which had attracted his attention was that certain bad habits, such as thumb-sucking, which were often obstinately retained by children, frequently formed a bridge to other, clearly masturbatory actions. Freud therefore concluded that this primary experience of lust was, from the very start, sexually coloured. Thus, he arrived at the position that infantile sexuality was polymorphous-pervert; that it consisted of detached, erogenous zones which had not yet been organized. Yet according to Jung, two unspoken presuppositions were influential in this conclusion which he intended to critically review: the identification of lust with sexuality and the already mentioned theory of components. Freud had rather matter-of-factly moved from a child’s experience of lust when sucking his mother’s breast to the conclusion that sexual feelings were already involved at that stage. Jung, on the other hand, pointed out that this transition was only logically justifiable if lust and sexuality were seen as being the same phenomenon. As long as this fact was not established, one could not go beyond the observation that the experience of lust was related to every form of satisfaction of the urges, for an adult’s sexuality as well as for a child’s urge for food. According
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to the same logic, Freud’s terminology, which started from lust and moved to the sexual significance of nursing, should then also characterize coitus as a phenomenon of feeding.69 Freud’s second observation concerning a continuous transition from an experience of lust caused by various feeding functions to later, manifestly sexual acts, in no way proved that this first awareness of lust was already sexually oriented. Yet within the presuppositions of the theory of components, Freud naturally had to make such a transition. Therefore, he posed that all drives as well as their potential for reunification were in essence present from birth. From the later, clearly sexual significance which the mouth might assume, Freud thus spontaneously concluded that the same reunification of the urge for food and sexuality had to be present in a child as well, although with less intensity. What was problematic, however, was precisely this theory of components. The interpretation of these same facts seemed more plausible, according to Jung, when one employed a genetic concept. Initially, the vital drive or libido was primarily directed toward the growth of the organism and was thus preoccupied with food. The satisfying of this urge produced a feeling of lust which was related to the function. Gradually, when the child was between three and five years old, the instincts further differentiated giving rise to sexuality as an autonomous function. This happened very slowly which implied that the previous sources of pleasure were neither abruptly nor completely abandoned. This explained the gradual transition of an undifferentiated feeling of pleasure caused by the satiation with food to the typically sexual feeling of lust.70 Jung now connected an energetic aspect to his genetic concept of the libido. According to him, Freud’s theory of components did not offer any insight into the fact that certain libidinous components could apparently succeed one another in an individual’s life. With regard to this fact, Jung gave the example of the alternation between homosexual and heterosexual stages in the life of one of his patients.71 The theory of components was challenged by the enigmatic relationship between these two stages. Why did the homosexual component disappear at the exact moment when the heterosexual component emerged and vice versa? The idea of isolated autonomous components did not render the issue more comprehensible. A dynamic theory, however, that
69. C.G. JUNG, The Theory of Psychoanalysis, C.W. IV, § 238-241. 70. Ibid., § 262-263. 71. Ibid., § 247-249.
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viewed the libido as a quantum energy which could activate several expressions, would allow for an understanding of this interaction, according to Jung. In passing, it should be noted that Jung used the most precarious element of Freud’s theory of components as an example, namely, the existence of homosexual and heterosexual components. In principle, Freud’s Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality had made a sharp distinction between the process uniting the separate erotic components (the erotogenic zone) into the ‘sexual aim’ and the process leading toward the choice of a ‘sexual object’. Homosexuality belonged to the latter rather than the former process. In practice however, especially when dealing with paranoia, Freud had spoken of ‘homosexual components’ many times in his letters to Jung. In any case, Jung wished to view the libido as psychic energy which could express itself in different forms.72 "I maintain that the libido with which we operate is not only not concrete or known, but is a complete X, a pure hypothesis, a model or counter, and is no more concretely conceivable than the energy known to the world of physics."
Moreover, Jung hoped that this concept of energy would be as fruitful for psychoanalysis as it had been for physics. Within the framework of his genetic theory, he refused to give the Oedipus complex an initially sexual significance. He did not dispute the fact that children could reveal a feeling of very strong rivalry and envy with regard to possessing the mother. Yet he could not recognize a clear sexual significance in this fact. According to Jung, this envy was originally related to a still undifferentiated urge for food. In this sense, the mother represented the primary object of love for both male and female children. Only between the ages of three and five, when the sexual urge began to differentiate itself, did erotic elements gradually come into play. It was at that time that a girl developed the specific attitude toward her father, known as the Electra complex. Only during puberty, and only then if one was still too strongly attached to one’s parents, could the Oedipus (and the Electra) complex become manifestly incestuous and turn into a conflict.73 Yet in most cases, matters did not develop that far because religion, which symbolically expressed the relationship with one’s
72. Ibid., § 282. 73. Ibid., § 346-348.
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parents, formed a symbolic bridge by which one left the limited family circle behind.74 With regard to this problematic, Jung briefly referred to Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido when he pointed out that the symbolism of sacrifice was a core theme. Regression and the Reality of the Conflict After having presented his genetic and energetic concept of the libido, Jung introduced his hypothesis that the aetiology of neurosis was to be sought in the present and that infantile material, encountered in neurotic fantasies, should mainly be considered as the product of regression. According to Jung, Freud was still captivated by the trauma theory when he was searching for the origin of neurosis in very early infantile fantasies. The return to the past, which was quite evident within the framework of the trauma theory, should have been called into question after the discovery of the phenomenon of regression. Especially the fact that Oedipal fantasies could be encountered in most people indicated that something other than the fantasies themselves should be posited as the factual origin of neurosis. Consequently, Jung focused on the moment of the emergence of neurosis. He believed that it was here that the core conflict was to be found. Freud had paid some attention to that particular moment but he had considered the emergence of neurosis to be an auxiliary factor operating on the basis of a deeper, infantile conflict. Jung reversed the roles. The factual conflict was the most important element while, as a result, the libido became introverted and regressively formed the fantasies which Freud had mistakenly considered to be the origin of neurosis.75 The withdrawal of the libido in the face of an actual obstacle caused the regression. The libido, which could no longer find relief in the outside world, was turned inward and fell back on a wealth of memories into which it breathed new life.76 This was where the Oedipus complex, often extremely active in neurosis, drew its strength. In a situation of sexual maturity, the libido normally led the individual away from the narrow family ties. Here however, it recoiled from the new situation and regressed back to the old familiar paths of transference. Fierce incestuous fantasies emerged and within this setting, all childhood memories were remoulded.77 74. Ibid., § 348-350. 75. Ibid., § 354. 76. Ibid., § 365-367. 77. Ibid., § 377.
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Jung connected this concept of regression with a number of Freudian notions. What Freud called polymorphous-pervert infantile sexuality was considered by Jung to be the preliminary stages of a sexuality which still had to further differentiate itself. The adult’s perversion was a regression from a fully developed sexual libido to these infantile forms. As a consequence, Jung could not interpret such perversions as a mere relapse or fixation on the preliminary stages. The new element in an adult’s perversion was indeed the introduction of a differentiated sexual libido into what was previously a very undifferentiated search for pleasure.78 Infantile amnesia as well was a gradual emergence of the memory capacity rather than the consequence of an intentional repression of certain memories.79 The concept of a latency period, which could be described as a flower that bloomed, then drew back to a bud only to blossom once again, should likewise be abandoned. That which Freud called the receding of infantile sexuality was nothing more than the gradual differentiation of sexuality following a stage in which sexuality as such did not yet exist.80 Thus, virtually all of the elements to which Freud had attributed a causal role were interpreted by Jung as the consequence of a neurotic regression. As a result, Jung found himself confronted with the question as to what was the actual conflict which supposedly lay at the origin of neurosis. He sought the answer in the individual’s constitution. It seemed characteristic that neurosis emerged as soon as one’s living conditions changed and one was forced to adjust to a new situation. Every adjustment was found burdensome by any given organism, as could be observed when training animals. Jung therefore searched for the ultimate ground of neurosis in an innate vulnerability, the capacity for reaction or the instability of the individual. Often, this became apparent in the anamnesis. Already as a child, the future neurotic was worrisome. This did not imply that neurosis originated here but only that the sickly constitution was perceivable at that point. Thus the unstable constitution led to a neurotic prehistory which in turn reinforced the constitutional deficiency:81 "The ultimate and deepest root of neurosis appears to be the innate sensitiveness, which causes difficulties even to the infant at the mother’s breast, in the form of unnecessary excitement and resistance. The apparent aetiology of neurosis elicited by psychoanalysis is actually, in very many
78. Ibid., § 368. 79. Ibid., § 369. 80. Ibid., § 370. 81. Ibid., § 411.
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cases, only an inventory of careful selected fantasies, reminiscences, etc., aiming in a definite direction and created by the patient out of the libido he did not use for biological adaptation. Those allegedly aetiological fantasies thus appear to be nothing but substitute formations, disguises, artificial explanations for the failure to adapt to reality."
For Jung, regressive fantasies did not only have a morbid value. Therefore, he did not modify the psychoanalytic technique but continued to analyze these fantasies. The patient had cathected them together with his libido, making it necessary to deal with them if the libido was to be freed.82 Alongside their morbid character, the fantasies also yielded a teleological significance.83 For the neurotic who dreaded leaving his family and who did not dare to lead an autonomous life, the sexual content of his incestuous fantasies constituted some sort of rehearsal which enabled him to grow accustomed to sexuality. In this context, Jung also noted that, as far as dreams were concerned, a prospective function as well should be recognized, as Maeder had already demonstrated. Dreams did not contain prophesies. Rather, subtle combinations of tendencies which were operative in the individual and which prepared the future could be encountered.84 Jung did not delve into this but vaguely indicated this intuition. During his trip to the United States, Jung briefly presented the two central themes of The Theory of Psychoanalysis - the genetic and energetic concept of the libido and regression - in a lecture at the New York Academy of Medicine on 8 October 1912.85 Jung never discussed these issues theoretically with Freud. Jones writes that, after reading Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido, Freud claimed that he knew the exact page where Jung had derailed and that he had lost all interest for the rest of the work.86 It was the page where Jung quoted a passage from Freud’s analysis of Schreber and had concluded that the withdrawal of the sexual libido alone did not suffice as an explanation for the psychotic’s loss of his sense of reality. Two years later, in early 1914, Freud wrote in On the History of the Psycho-Analytic Movement:87 82. Ibid., § 420. 83. Ibid., § 415. 84. Ibid., § 452-454. 85. Cf. On Psychoanalysis, C.W. IV, § 557-575. The lecture indeed dates from 1912 and not from 1913 as is indicated in the C.W. See the note in The Freud/Jung Letters, after 356J. 86. E. JONES, Sigmund Freud Life and Work, II, p. 174. 87. S. FREUD, On the History of the Psycho-Analytic Movement, C.W. XIV, p. 60, G.W. X, p. 105.
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"Jung’s modification, on the other hand, loosens the connection of the phenomena with instinctual life; and further, as its critics (e.g. Abraham, Ferenczi and Jones) have pointed out, it is so obscure, unintelligible and confused as to make it difficult to take up any position upon it. Wherever one lays hold of anything, one must be prepared to hear that one has misunderstood it, and one cannot see how to arrive at a correct understanding of it."
According to Freud, Jung could not dismiss his disdain for the Oedipus complex. If he were able to overcome this dislike, he would have to acknowledge the presence of the complex in both religion and ethics.88 "The truth is that these people have picked out a few cultural overtones from the symphony of life and have once more failed to hear the mighty and primordial melody of the instincts."
The Rupture Upon his return from the United States, Jung wrote to Freud stating that his journey had contributed much to the dissemination of psychoanalysis and that his new presentation of the concept of the libido had eliminated many futile misunderstandings and much resistance.89 Freud answered that he could hardly consider this as progress and that Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido did not provide him with convincing proof of Jung’s concepts. He would wait until he had read the text of Jung’s lectures and then give his opinion. He expressed his hope, just as Jung had done, that their friendship would continue as well as the possibility for objective, business-like discussions concerning the theory.90 In the meantime, difficulties had arisen with regard to Stekel, the publisher of the Zentralblatt who, like Adler, had severed his relations with Freud. Since Stekel refused to hand over the control of the Zentralblatt, the International Association for Psychoanalysis considered what stance it should take. Jung convened the presidents of the local groups in November 1912 at Munich. On this occasion, the ‘Kreuzlingen Gesture’ was also discussed between Jung and Freud. Jung admitted that it simply involved a misunderstanding and they were quickly reconciled. During the luncheon which followed the conversation, they discussed the Egyptian Pharaoh Echnaton. Freud was convinced that Echnaton had introduced
88. Ibid., C.W. XIV, p. 62, G.W. X, p. 108. 89. 323J. 90. 314F.
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monotheism due to his relationship with his father. He found proof for this argumentation in the fact that Echnaton destroyed the name of his father Amon-hotep in all hieroglyphics. Jung challenged this explanation. According to him, the destruction could be sufficiently explained by the fact that the name Amon-hotep contained the name of Amon, a god from the previous pantheon, and that Echnaton wished to eliminate the names of all these previous gods in light of his new-found monotheism. At this moment in the discussion, Freud fainted and had to be carried outside by Jung.91 After the meeting in Munich, Jung wrote a letter to Freud in which he assured him that all the difficulties between them had now been cleared up. Moreover, he emphatically stressed his subservience to Freud.92 In his response, Freud stated that he was slowly beginning to discover what position he would take with regard to Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido. By means of the work, Jung had solved the enigma of all mysticism by proving that it was based on the "symbolic utilization of complexes that have outlived their function."93 At the same time, he also announced that Ferenczi would write a review of the work. This prompted Jung to compose an angry letter.94 A few more emotional letters were exchanged between them until 3 January, when Freud proposed to end their personal correspondence.95 After January 1913, their correspondence consisted only of a few business letters from Jung to Freud concerning practical issues. From that point onward, both men went their separate ways. Freud continued writing the last essay of Totem and Taboo, concerning the infantile regression of totemism, which he finished in May 1913.96 Among Jung’s letters, there is also a part of his correspondence with R. Loy, running from January until March 1913, concerning various psychotherapeutic problems.97 Loy, who was the director of the sanatorium of Montreux, had requested Jung for more detailed information on the psychoanalytic technique. In his responses, Jung stated that psychoanalytic 91. See C.G. JUNG, Memories, dreams, Reflections, p. 157 and E. JONES, Sigmund Freud Life and Work, I, p. 370 and II, p. 179. 92. 328J. 93. 329F. 94. 330J. 95. 342F. 96. See footnote at 334F. 97. Some Crucial Points in Psychoanalysis: A Correspondence between Dr Jung and Dr Loy, in C.G. JUNG, C.W. IV, § 576-669.
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treatment did not intend to bring the patient to a condition of least resistance or least displeasure. Rather, it aimed at teaching a patient to accept that he had disposal of an innate social law which every person should obey by keeping a balance between pleasure and displeasure.98 Jung emphatically pointed out that the demands of culture were innate in every person.99 In August 1913, Jung went to England to present two lectures. In the first lecture, Psycho-Analysis,100 Jung presented Freud’s reductive and sexual interpretation of psychic phenomena as being in need of a complement. In many cases, the sexual contents of the unconscious were not to be interpreted literally but rather symbolically and prospectively. The desires expressed in dreams and symbols were not only infantile material nor merely instinctual remnants. Rather, they were tendencies which were to be realized in the future but which, for the time being, could only express themselves in an archaic and symbolic manner. The second lecture repeated On Psychoanalysis which he had given the previous year in New York. At the congress in Munich in September 1913, Jung was re-elected as the international president by a small majority of votes. He delivered a lecture which dealt with the problem of psychological types.101 We will see further in which way Jung made the mechanism of compensation the focal point of the lecture. Freud’s last essay for Totem and Taboo, concerning the theme of the infantile regression of totemism, appeared in the last issue of Imago in 1913. We do not know what Jung thought of it however because their correspondence remained silent with regard to this issue. A rupture in their relationship could no longer be avoided. On 27 October 1913, in a very brief letter, Jung resigned his post as editor of the Jahrbuch. As justification for this move, he explained that he had learned from Maeder that Freud doubted his loyalty.102 On 20 April 1914, Jung resigned as the president of the International Association for Psychoanalysis.103 Jones claims that he resigned as a consequence of the destructive criticisms of Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido
98. Ibid., § 641-642. 99. Ibid., § 668. 100. Published with the title General Aspects of Psychoanalysis, C.W. IV, § 523-556. 101. C.G. JUNG, A Contribution to the Study of Psychological Types, C.W. VI, § 858-882. 102. 357J. 103. 358J.
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which had appeared in the Internationale Zeitschrift für ärztliche Psychoanalyse.104 Strangely enough, Jung also resigned as Privatdozent at the University of Zurich ten days later, on 30 April. This marked the beginning of a period which Jung himself described as his confrontation with the unconscious. During this same period, Freud continued his analysis of the ‘Wolfman’. We know that this young Russian man, who for the rest of his life was known as Freud’s most famous patient, began analysis in January 1910.105 After much wandering, he had come to Freud with a series of real difficulties. Since childhood, he had suffered from neurosis. The case study which Freud published, discussed only this infantile neurosis.106 In his introduction, Freud explained that the analysis had been stalled for a long time until he imposed a deadline upon himself for finishing the analysis. Only in the very last months of the analysis did the infantile neurosis surface and was Freud able to analyze it. We know that the Wolfman ended his treatment during Freud’s summer holiday in 1914. Freud’s confrontation with Jung’s revision of psychoanalysis therefore coincided with the moment when the Wolfman, pressured by Freud’s time constraint, allowed his infantile neurosis to be analyzed. It is not surprising that Freud directed his attention to this infantile neurosis and hoped to investigate whether or not the Wolfman’s memories could be traced back to actual events. In order to please Freud, the Wolfman searched for the book that contained a picture of a wolf which his sister had earlier used to scare him when he was a child. Freud was visibly relieved when the book was found. He could now prove that the image of a scary wolf was not a mere introspective construction in the Wolfman’s fantasy. Something real had taken place in the past. Freud proceeded to date the primordial scene as accurately as possible. Although ultimately, he considered it unlikely that such early perceptions existed, he intended to present as still plausible the fact that the Wolfman, as a child between the ages of one and one and a half, had witnessed his parents having sexual intercourse. According to Freud, the roots of neurosis had to lie in the past. While he was analyzing the Wolfman, Freud was also looking for proof that Jung was wrong and that neurotic fantasies about an erotic childhood were not the retrospective con-
104. E. JONES, Sigmund Freud Life and Work, II, p. 170. 105. See M. GARDINER (ED.), The Wolf-Man and Sigmund Freud, New York, 1971. 106. S. FREUD, From the History of an Infantile Neurosis, S.E. XVII, 1-122, G.W. XII, 27157.
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structions of an adult who had transformed his innocent memories in light of a present conflict. The analysis of the Wolfman, however, did not lead Freud to discuss religion, although there were more than enough reasons to do so. There was a striking parallel between the Wolfman and Schreber. The latter had initially suffered from a paranoid persecution complex which had him convinced that his physician wanted to sexually abuse him. The complex developed into a religious mania which somewhat comforted Schreber. On the other hand, the Wolfman suffered terrible anxiety attacks as a child. Yet these attacks were partially resolved when he became fascinated by religion. Due to the fact that he could identify himself with Christ in his imagination, the frightening character of the father-son relationship softened. Nevertheless, religion did not offer a perfect solution since an obsessional neurosis eventually grew out of this situation. Yet it was precisely religion which made the resolution of infantile neurosis possible. The neurosis was resolved the moment when the Wolfman identified himself with his militaristic tutor whom he considered to be a ‘real’ man. The father figure, the problematic of identification, religion.... All of the elements, frequently employed in the debate concerning religion were present here. Yet Freud did not pursue the debate. Apparently, his attention was primarily drawn to the effective impact of the past. We nevertheless re-encounter his interest in these matters in his later, important texts about religion. The crucial task for him continued to be the determination of whether or not actual facts were operative: in Totem and Taboo, the patricide and in Moses and Monotheistic Religion, the murder of Moses. The problem of ‘reality’: Is this question perhaps more fundamental than those which emerge from the different ‘uses’ of religion? Moreover, the question seemed to be related to the question concerning the essence of the ‘libido’, since a belief in the existence of a primordial event had direct implications for the acceptance of infantile sexuality and of polymorphous-pervert eroticism as a human tendency and also for the manner in which culture arose. The coherence of this question was of great concern to Freud. However, Jung’s criticism had affected him so deeply that he did not delve far into the immediately recognizable religious symbols such as the suffering image of Christ or the Trinity. Freud did analyze the way in which the Wolfman employed such symbols but only in the same way that he demonstrated how the tale of the seven goats became the carrier of the Wolfman’s very personal wishes and fears.
Chapter VIII
Conclusion Within the limits of this study, it would be impossible to follow in any detail the further development of either Jung’s or Freud’s work. For our purpose, the differences in their later work are less important than the issues which were no longer the subject of their discussions and which were left unresolved. These issues primarily centered around the development of the libido and its relationship with the experience of reality. Several types of this experience seemed to exist, depending on whether one was speaking of normal perception, of the belief in the truth of a theory, of religious beliefs or of delusion. Their respective relationships with distinct ‘stages’ of sexual development demanded for further investigation. However, this research was never undertaken, nor by Freud nor by Jung. The problem of the link between the reality problem and the libido problem remained unresolved, especially where it involved the problem of the reality in religion. It is often claimed that the definition of the concept of ‘libido’ constituted the crucial axis of the Freud-Jung alternative. That is indeed true. Yet, the more crucial issue connected with this notion should be situated in a place other than its usual location. One misses the point when one vaguely states that Freud intended to reduce culture as a whole to an extremely narrow concept of sexuality and that he viewed the individual as a being which was primarily determined by his past and, more specifically, by his sexual past. At the same time, Jung is said to have retained the unconscious’ tendency toward the future, to have enlarged the notion of the libido and thus not to have reduced culture to one great farce. Such general reflections, however, do no justice to the specific problem of ‘reality’ as we have met it here. Let us therefore again call to mind our main lines concerning the notion of ‘libido’. From the very beginning of his research, Freud discovered that, in instances of neurosis, the object of repression appeared to be of an erotic nature. On the basis of this discovery, he concluded that there was a relationship between sexuality and the perception of reality. Moreover, he quickly came to understand that sexuality itself was anything but an unambiguous and easily defined instinct. The distinction between homosexuality and perversion, which lay at the basis of Three
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Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, was a decisive factor in Freud’s discernment between the establishment of a sexual goal and the sexual object choice. Afterwards, new empirical data led him to raise questions concerning the relationship between the various types of eroticism and other failures in the experience of reality, which were different from neurotic repression. The schizophrenic loss of contact with reality ended in autoerotism while the structured and strong paranoiac system seemed to struggle with something what appeared to be homosexuality. Although the issue had grown more complex, the phrasing of the question had become more precise: what is the link between the different types of experience of ‘reality’ (perception, fantasy, theory, belief, delusion) and the elaboration of one’s sexual drive? The specific question of religious truth should be considered whithin this complex of questions. Due to the rupture between Jung and Freud, however, attention was no longer drawn to the coherence of this complex of questions. We have already observed how, following the discussion about Freud’s ‘Schreber’, their attention turned to Jung’s re-interpretation of the libido concept on the basis of a genetic and energetic perspective. In dealing with this undoubtedly important problematic, the reference to other, still pending questions fell from sight. Consequently, there was no further debate concerning the repercussions of their discussion on the distinction between neurosis and psychosis. They also did not raise the question of how the notion of ‘repression’ could be otherwise employed or how it could be distinguished from the other defense mechanisms (or should one say: ‘constitutional mechanisms’) of the human psyche. Nor did they raise questions such as how one might go about explaining an adult’s perverted sexuality, once one accepted the Jungian scheme. In their later work, neither author dealt with the question of ‘reality’ and ‘libido’ with the same insistence as when they had worked together. Freud dismissed the complexity of the religious phenomenon. Jung’s broad perspective on the historical evolution of the human mind disregarded the psychodiagnostic differentiations. He was apparently no longer interested in the detailed approaches to hysteria, to infantile sexuality and to psychosis, by which Freud had attempted to reconstruct the puzzle of the human mind. When one reads Jung’s later work, the lack of attention for clear diagnostic distinctions is striking.1 Apparently, the differences between the 1. Moreover, Jung rarely published any case studies. Thus, it is difficult to determine whether Jung assigned much importance in his practice to the distinction between the several psychopathological types. He does not seem to have drawn many theoretical conclusions. Further, the Jungian theory offers few instruments to the person who wishes to theoretically
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distinct types of loss of the sense for reality evaded Jung’s mind. Unlike his scant interest in psychodiagnostic distinctions, Jung’s interest in the various dimensions of the notion of ‘religion’ was quite strong. It seems that he possessed an uncanny intuition with regard to this field. His hypothesis that gnosis had played an influential role in the origin of Christianity was proven completely correct. Both theology and the history of religion owe Jung a tremendous debt since he used his personal influence to convince the Bollinger Foundation to purchase the Nag Hammadi texts. It is highly uncertain whether we would have ever discovered the content of these extremely important papyri dating from early Christianity without his intervention.2 The Religion of the People and Its Leader: Freud’s Concern Contrary to Jung, Freud continued to be preoccupied with the detailed analysis of as many aspects of psychopathology as possible, respecting the various distinctions. At the same time, he was also preoccupied with the re-integration of those aspects into the complex structure of the human mind. He did not always succeed in these tasks. We have already pointed out that he ultimately discarded his research on the projection process, which was nonetheless a crucial concept, leaving the issue unresolved. Like Jung, Freud was sometimes tempted to design grand syntheses which were built on very broad concepts. Is it truly coincidental that this is most true for the concept-pair which stemmed directly from Jung’s Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido: Freud’s ‘eros’ and ‘thanatos’, whereby the libido was reduced to a very general urge for unification? Freud also remained occupied with a number of crucial questions which he intended to research in detail. Typical for Freud, these questions appeared in remarks made on the side or in his footnotes, the place par excellence where Freud, time and again, presented his temporary syntheses for discussion. He remained loyal to his plan to distinguish the various psychopathological types one by one before reconstructing the total composition of the psyche on the basis of the discovered mechanisms. From the analysis of the ‘Wolfmann’ onward, Freud began investigating a new psychopathological theme, masochism. Until that time, he had underestimated the theme’s importance. He not only considered it as
consider the various clinical distinctions 2. G. WEHR, Jung. A Biography, p. 365-370. See also J.M. ROBINSON, The Discovery of the Nag Hammadi Codices. In: Biblical Archeologist 42 (1979) 206-224.
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an autonomous process but also as an element which, in different ways, played a role in the process of identification, the fascination with the figure of the leader, the formation of conscience, the civilizing of mutual male rivalry, homosexuality and finally, the formation of female desire. Freud often linked this research to religion by means of a comparison between the army and the Church; by the concept of an oceanic feeling; by the relationship between religion and morality; and especially, - and this seems to be the basic theme whenever Freud considers religion when he discussed the figure of Moses. However, the way Freud discussed religion was in sharp contrast to his concern for psychological distinctions. For Freud, religion was a massive concept or rather, an undifferentiated idea. He paid little attention to the various forms which religion could adopt. Religion was, according to him, primarily concerned with the renouncement of instincts and thus, with morality. When Romain Rolland pointed out to him that not every form of religion could be reduced to the oedipal feelings one entertained toward one’s parents as a child, Freud initially conceded in Civilization and Its Discontents, that perhaps for some people, this might be true. Yet he stated that he personally had never experienced the ‘oceanic feeling’ of security, to which Rolland referred. In the wake of this hesitant concession, Freud followed with an argument which, in one movement, dismissed the discussion about the possibility of a less infantile form of religion as being irrelevant: "Let us return to the common man and to his religion - the only religion which ought to bear that name."3 The intellectual who wanted to defend a higher form of religion was immediately reminded of Goethe’s famous words:4 "He who possesses science and art also has religion; but he who possesses neither of those two, let him have religion!"
In his text, Freud only mentioned religion as an institution which served morality. This cliché image, against which every theologian since Schleiermacher has rebelled, was apparently the only image of religion which Freud would accept. In spite of this fact, one does find some reflections in Freud’s work dealing with the complex ties between religion, reality and identity. Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921) dealt with the process of
3. S. FREUD, Civilization and Its Discontent, S.E. XXI, p. 74, G.W. XIV, p. 432. 4. Id.
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identification in light of the theme of the fascination with a leader. The fact that the army and the Church were chosen as typical examples of group formation processes has often aroused people’s imagination to such an extent that one only superficially considered the comparison. The importance of this text lay in the fact that Freud returned to the concept of hypnosis, the very first experience from which his whole work had originated. From the theories of narcissism and identification, to which the further development of psychopathology had led him, Freud looked back and by doing so, broadened the phrasing of the question. Freud investigated how one might become fascinated by someone to such a degree that one surrendered one’s own identity and entered into a relationship of hypnotic dependency. When dealing with this question, we once again come across all of the themes we have previously encountered. Freud apparently continued to be preoccupied with a number of problems in this realm although he was unable to propose definitive solutions to them. For instance, he repeatedly discussed the precise nature of the libidinous bond between the members of a group and their leader. Is such a bond homosexual? Or should one speak of a sexually indifferent sexual bond? Freud did not only pose these questions with descriptive or classifying intentions. For quite some time, he had voiced the suspicion that something along the lines of homosexuality had to be brought into relation with the reversal of aggression into mutual sympathy. In a footnote, Freud referred to an idea which he had already mentioned in passing in Totem and Taboo. It was probably due to their homosexuality that the exiled sons of the primordial tribe succeeded in emotionally detaching themselves from the primordial father and in rebelling against him.5 For the remainder of the narrative in Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, Freud remained loyal to the story which he had constructed in Totem and Taboo and which had so often been criticized for its simplicity. After having murdered the primordial father, the sons were overwhelmed by an enormous awareness of guilt. They posthumously deified the father and subsequently internalized his prohibitions under the guise of religion. Whatever one may think of this exposition, which found its origin in Darwin, it remains conspicuous that Freud gradually devoted more attention to the strength of the first emotional bond with the father. Thus,
5. S. FREUD, Totem and Taboo, S.E. XIII, p. 144, G.W. IX, p. 174. Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, S.E. XVIII, p. 124, G.W. XIII, p. 139.
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he must have been amazed by the emergence of aggression directed toward this figure. Homosexuality, which in ‘Schreber’ had been related to a specific moment of love toward a peer as a transitional stage between narcissism and object love, now became related to the reversal of aggression into sympathy as well. In his article Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, Freud attempted to interrelate all these new connections within a theory of identification. However, he did not completely succeed. Moreover, he realized that his study concerning group formation could lead to a further analysis of the phenomenon of religion. He thus concluded his study with a few notes concerning the relationship between adherence to a leader, inhibited sexuality and sublimation of sexuality within a religious framework. When reading these notes, one would expect that Freud would again take up his attempt to reconstruct religion which he had previously described in Totem and Taboo. What he had claimed there regarding the totem meal and the sacrifice could undoubtedly be revised in light of the concepts of masochism and identification. Yet this issue remained unresolved. Nevertheless, Freud had offered a number of indications leading in a certain direction when he was analyzing the functioning of the Catholic Church. He had pointed out that the parallelism between the army and the Church was not perfect. In the army, one intended to collectively combine aggression and to destroy the enemy while the Church claimed to preach love. Considering this, one arrived at the awareness that that form of love which did not merely consist of infantile dependency, only arose due to the transformation of aggression. Yet at the same time, Freud’s comparison between the army and the Church sharpened his perspective on the specific character of the Church as an institution which set out to transform aggression and therefore partly needed aggression as a breeding ground. Perhaps this is also the reason why Churches usually find it difficult to accept explicit homosexuality.6
6. Freud clearly continued to be plagued by this issue. Near the end of Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, he again brought it up. Initially, he stated in a rather trivial manner: "The Catholic Church had the best motives for recommending its followers to remain unmarried and for imposing celibacy upon its priests; but falling in love has often driven even priests to leave the Church. In the same way love for women breaks through the group ties of race, of national divisions, and of the social system and thus produces important effects as a factor in civilization." This was followed by the curious statement: "It seems certain that homosexual love is far more compatible with group ties, even when it takes the shape of inhibited sexual impulsions - a remarkable fact, the explanation of which might carry us far." S. FREUD, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, S.E. XVIII, p. 141, G.W. XIII, p. 159.
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Besides the different ways by which aggression and eroticism were linked in Freud’s comparison of army and Church, one can notice yet another distinction. The experience of a general’s presence, on the one hand, and Christ’s, on the other hand, is fundamentally different in nature especially when such presence is interpreted as a ‘physical’ presence. Yet if one speaks of ‘erotic’ ties, these representations of a more corporeal nature should be taken into account. Moreover, how should one understand the further evolution of this libidinous bond in instances where people flock around an idea rather than the image of a person? In addressing this question, Freud made only a few, very general suggestions which seem very Jungian. He proposed that, thanks to myths or more precisely, heroic myths, the individual might be able to step beyond mass psychology. Since the poet did not keep the myth to himself but shared it with others, he did not remain imprisoned in an inner fantasy world but rather returned to reality.7 These general ideas, however, obscured the fact that the problem concerning the coherence between the experience of reality and the libidinal development was still unresolved. Nevertheless, Freud did make some progress in Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego by focusing the problematic on the fascination which emanated from the primitive, immediately corporeal fantasm related to the father figure and on its repercussion for the individual’s experience of his own identity. The identification process, which nowadays is often reduced to what can be described by an empirical psychology or sociology, established its most basic foundation at this level. The question most central to religion and the various elements which we have found scattered throughout Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, concerned exactly how the specificity of the religious experience was related to the eroticizing of the individual’s ego. In connection with this, the question also concerned how one became fascinated by the supremacy appearing in the corporeal from of another person. Freud continued to struggle with this question and, more specifically, with the aspect which referred to the man - woman distinction. Yet, the issue ultimately remained unclear to him. His last great work, Moses and Monotheism, which he painstakingly completed before his death, again dealt
7. S. FREUD, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, S.E. XVIII, p. 136, G.W. XIII, p. 153.
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with the fascination for the father figure who was killed by his people but who was subsequently quasi-deified due to the feeling of guilt which had arisen. The basic scheme of Totem and Taboo was thus maintained. Yet Freud’s attention was drawn to the same problematic which had been his main concern in the Wolfman’s case. He delved into biblical studies and actually set out to prove that Moses really had been murdered.8 Why was it so important for Freud to prove that events such as these truly happened? Was it because, by doing so, he thought he could resolve the oppressive question which dealt with how the supreme and physical appearance of another person established one’s identity? Or was it out of a fear of becoming caught up in an endless, paranoia-like conceptual system of thinking? Perhaps, it involved both arguments. In any case, we should keep in mind that this issue affected the position of the psychoanalytical practice as well. For what is the ‘truth’ or ‘reality’ which is attained through analysis? Does it consist in the actual memory of facts which occurred yet were forgotten? Before we turn our attention to Jung, who unconsciously struggled with precisely the same questions and who, rather unexpectedly, put the same elements (homosexuality, identification, religion, experience of reality) together within an admittedly different theoretical framework, we should consider the following questions which played a key role in Jung’s thinking as well as in Freud’s. What is interpretation and what is its relationship to transference? The issue is best presented for discussion by returning to the very first psychological phenomenon with which both Freud and Jung had started their reflections, namely hypnosis. Freud had already employed this approach in Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego. After years of theorizing and widening the scope of the problematic, had they finally come to a better understanding of the phenomenon of hypnosis? Hypnosis and Interpretation In order to become better acquainted with the importance of hypnosis, a short cultural and historical excursion seems worthwhile here.
8. My gratitude goes to one of my students, D. Peeters, who investigated the information on which Freud based himself. Freud indeed seemed to have been well informed. Yet in light of contemporary biblical science, his hypothesis no longer appears to be valid. I refer to an article by a colleague who, after having read the student’s work, further researched the matter: J. LUST, Freud, Hosea and the Murder of Moses. In: Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses 65 (1989) 81-93.
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Psychiatry had emerged at the beginning of the 18th century due to the systematization of the ‘moral treatment’ by Ph. Pinel (1745-1826). He had developed a method which we, by means of an anachronistic term, could call ‘psychological manipulation’. Insane individuals might be healed when they were subjected to someone who was capable of overwhelming them to such a degree that they felt internally forced to surrender and thus, to abandon their ‘sickly ideas’.9 This actually pointed to the same phenomenon which Freud would later call ‘transference’. The main difference, however, was that Pinel employed this transference in order to manipulate the patient while Freud analyzed it and, by doing so, made the patient aware of how he had allowed himself to become dependent on others. However, we should return to the very early stages of psychiatry in order to consider yet another element which would later turn hypnosis into an extremely revealing phenomenon. The first decades of psychiatry were characterized by the controversial question of who was qualified to apply the moral treatment. Should it be the physician’s prerogative? Could not the philosopher, the priest or even the lawyer also qualify for this task? The common presupposition in this debate was that a special societal status was required in order for one to be able to make the profound impression needed for the moral treatment.10 Even the architectural design of psychiatric institutions as well as their internal organization were intended to again reinforce the feeling of being impressed by an overwhelming social personage. The confrontation with hypnosis, which had been therapeutically succesful, dealt a heavy blow to the proponents of the moral treatment. Then known as ‘animal magnetism’, hypnotism had become immensely popular since the time of F. Mesmer (1734-1815). His method of demonstrating this phenomenon by means of boxes filled with iron filings was well-known.11 The discussion at that time, however, had been limited to whether or not animal magnetism existed as a physical reality. Gradually, it had become clear that hypnosis consisted of a direct manipulation of one person by another person. For the adherents of the moral treatment,
9. PH. PINEL, Traité médico-philosophique sur l’aliénation mentale ou la manie, Paris, Richard, Caille & Ravier, an IX (1801), p. 58. 10. See P. VANDERMEERSCH (ed.), Psychiatrie, godsdienst en gezag. De ontstaansgeschiedenis van de psychiatrie in België als paradigma (Psychiatry, Religion and Authority. The Birth of Psychiatry in Belgium Considered as a Paradigm), Louvain, Acco, 1984. 11. R. DARNTON, Mesmerism and the End of the Enlightenment in France, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1968.
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it must have been a sobering observation that hypnosis apparently intervened much more profoundly than their own technique and also that an acknowledged social status did not seem to be necessary in order to influence a person to such a degree. Further, the study of hypnosis had given Freud the insight that hysteria was based on an analogous phenomenon and thus that it was caused by psychological factors. More specifically, hysteria emerged as the consequence of repression. Here, we must call to mind that Freud initially continued to employ hypnosis as a therapeutic instrument. By doing so, he intended to use the influence of his own person as a counterbalance to the patient’s unconscious attitude of ‘not wanting to know’. Later on, he abandoned the use of hypnosis because he obtained the same effect, so he stated, by insisting and by strongly affirming that the patient did know what he claimed he could not remember. Gradually, he even omitted even this insistence and adopted a merely expectant attitude. For in the meantime, it had become apparent to Freud that, in the course of analysis, the patient established a bond with his therapist and began to entertain all sorts of expectations and fears concerning him. This phenomenon, which Freud called ‘transference’, soon became the instrument par excellence for directing the ‘process of coming to consciousness’ which was ultimately the aim of the psychoanalytical treatment. One should, however, not imagine that certain traumatic or significant events from the past were simply reproduced within the psychoanalytical setting. Nevertheless, this could occur. In the analysis of the Wolfman, as well as that of the Ratman, Freud seemed pleased whenever he could give an example of this phenomenon.12 Freud then slowly directed his attention to the fact that the patient developed the same type of relationship toward his analyst as his relationship toward the parental figures which had characterized the construction process of his own identity when he was a child. To say the least, this seemed as important as the detection of repressed memories. By means of the relationship with his analyst, the patient was able to gain more insight into himself. This ‘himself’ should be viewed as the ideal image of the ego which a person developed in light of the parental figures and for which he was prepared to suppress a number of desires. Thanks
12. Namely, the Ratman’s dream in which he saw Freud’s daughter with excrement instead of eyes (S.E. X, p. 200, G.W. VII, p. 421) and the way in which the Wolfman’s constipation reacted to the progress of his treatment (S.E. XVII, p. 75, G.W. XII, p. 107). Is it truly coincidental that in both cases, the anal aspect was involved and connected to the homosexual element of the transferential relationship?
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to transference, the patient was offered an insight into his identification mechanisms and thus into his ‘himself’ as a repressive authority. Moreover, according to some of Freud’s followers, transference provided a climate of safety and understanding within which the patient could achieve a reconstruction of his identity. While keeping in mind the discussion concerning the moral treatment and the impact of the technique of hypnosis, we should now raise the following question. What caused the analyst to establish a relationship of transference? Was it the logical consequence of his social status? Or did status have nothing to do with it? In the latter case, are we confronted with something such as the mere fact of intersubjectivity? This question did not present itself to Freud. He was a physician and his patients had come to consult him with the same expectations as they would have of any general practitioner. Freud, however, did not act in the same way as the physicians of his time usually did. While his patients expected to undergo shock treatment, to be massaged or to be subjected to one of the other current medical techniques, Freud applied none of these. Often, it was said that he merely listened. But such a description is incomplete. It is true that Freud listened yet his listening had a typically analytical effect precisely because he did not act as his patients had spontaneously expected him to act. In the psychoanalytic practice of today, this procedure has become the rule of thumb. As an analyst, one does not comply to the patient’s expectations. The patient expects to be given advice yet none is offered. He expects to be punished yet no punishment follows. He expects to be supported or comforted and yet, neither of these is given. It must be made clear to the patient that the analyst is not the person from whom he should expect support, consolation or advice. Time and again, the analyst appears to be different than expected. The experience of a bond which continues to exist even though the analyst does not seem to fit the patient’s presupposed image, allows the analytical process to take its course. Yet what exactly is the process of awakening consciousness within the transferential relationship established by the analytical treatment? This question touches upon an issue which is still subject to discussion among the different trends within psychoanalysis which have derived from Freud. In any case, it is clear that the recognition of the transferential process implies more than the mere confrontation with the fact that one had perceived the analyst differently than he really was. For what is the ‘reality’ of the analyst? A true perception of the analyst must involve more than the fact that, when one accidentally meets him on the street or in a
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theater, he seems thinner, younger, less surly, less friendly and so forth than one’s image of him when one is lying on the couch. Admittedly, it might be worthwhile for the patient to learn that his analyst is divorced or has a boyfriend or girlfriend although he had never expected this to be the case. Yet ultimately, the transferential relationship concerns something much more fundamental and much less tangible. Time and again, the patient experiences that he feels, thinks, and reacts differently when this barely known figure is seated out of view than when he is not present. Even though most of the time the analyst remains silent, his presence is quite different from that of a tape recorder. Thus, the depiction of the analyst as one who ‘mirrors’, is completely false. Analysis confronts a person with the fact that it is impossible to remain indifferent by the presence of another person. The silent presence of the analyst makes one extremely aware of that which is inadvertently overlooked in everyday life because the other person usually responds and one replies to that response. Thus, one comes to realize that someone else’s presence cannot be overlooked. One cannot help but want something out of this relationship. That the other person does not make his intentions known so that one can discuss, negotiate or quarrel within him, which is what would normally happen, renders the other’s presence even more provocative. One cannot help but take the other into account. This insurmountable fact implies that the relationship of transference is a phenomenon which is extremely hard to break down. Freud himself experienced this in the case of the Wolfman. A second stage of analysis performed by Ruth Mack Brunswick was necessary in order to dissolve the transferential relationship between the Wolfman and Freud.13 The awareness that this relationship could not be equated with the mere distortion of a ‘normal relationship’, insofar as the latter is not a fiction, has been the subject of much discussion. Further, alot has been written concerning Freud’s conclusion that transference was actually a sincere expression of love and on his question as to whether analysis was ever really terminated.14 The attitudes which the various psychoanalytical associations have adopted with regard to these issues depended on the way which they further elaborated on Freud’s insights concerning the notions of narcissism and identification. In the United States, this problematic was
13. M. GARDINER (ed.), The Wolf-Man and Sigmund Freud, New York, Basic Books, 1971. 14. S. FREUD, The Dynamics of Transference, S.E. XII, 97-108, G.W. VIII, 361-374; Observations on Transference-Love, S.E. XII, 157-171, G.W. X, 305-321; Analysis Terminable and Interminable, S.E. XXIII, 209-253, G.W. XVII, 57-99.
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passed over for quite some time. Following Anna Freud, who stressed the defense mechanisms of the ego as the primary subject for further research, the trend in American psychoanalysis viewed the ego as the key element. Psychoanalysis in the United States became ‘ego-psychology’. That Freud had radically relativized the significance of the ego by means of his theory of narcissism was rediscovered only a few years ago. On the other hand, in France, J. Lacan has, from the very beginning of his work, focused on the fact that the ‘I’ originated in a lengthy developmental process. Reflecting upon Freud’s theoretical model of the ‘ego ideal’, especially where it was relevant for the distinction between neurosis and psychosis, Lacan situates the constitution of the ‘I’ in the interaction between an undefined desire and the words handed down by culture which somehow expressed that desire. What is the purpose of the psychoanalytical treatment in this context? It is definitely not the discovery of the true, unmasked self. Actually, the patient learns that such a true self does not exist even though it is very difficult to let go of that illusion. He constantly re-examines his past hoping that, by his recollection, he can gain a decisive handle on the central scenes - preferably, the primordial scene - which have made him what he is. The patient is doing the same thing that the Wolfman did or rather, that Freud did during his examinations of the Wolfman. He is looking for a permanent grounding in the past because that seems to offer the only absolute guarantee that the ‘I’ is not an illusion to itself. With this description of the alienating function performed by the reconstruction of the true self based on the past, Lacan actually concurs with Jung’s criticism of Freud. Yet Lacan takes his criticism a radical step further. He investigates what true individuality entails for the person. According to him, true individuality does not consist in a reference to an inner image of oneself - the ideal of the ‘I’. Rather, it is situated in the fact that the person is capable of abandoning the imaginary completion of this image and of choosing to become ‘someone’ by adopting one definite position from among the opposing possibilities provided by a certain culture: man or woman, father or son, father or daughter, mother or son and so forth. It is not our intention to investigate the justifiable manner in which Lacan integrates insights from structuralism and linguistics into his own interpretation of Freudian thought. We are dealing with the way in which the process of transference supports the psychoanalytical treatment and contributes to the ‘awakening of conscious’. This can be described rather well if one notes the negative moments in the process of transference. The
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patient is confronted with the realization that his analyst is not the one who takes care of him, who judges him, who offers advice and so on. To phrase it in a more popular manner, the analyst is neither father nor mother, brother nor sister. Moreover, while the analyst’s social dimension is equally as essential, he is neither a physician nor a police officer, neither a mentor nor an entertainer. Then what is he? That question is often answered with the statement: "he is merely an analyst and the patient needs to realize this." Yet what does being an analyst imply? For some people, it means having a recognized social image, precisely as an analyst. This reflection has brought us to the exact point where French psychoanalysis, in the footsteps of Lacan, has reproached American psychoanalysis for not thinking the process through radically enough. When psychoanalysis becomes an institution which is integrated into the social network, it is transformed into a ‘psychology of adaptation’. Psychoanalysis should therefore remain a separate discipline and not allow itself to be confused with psychiatry, psychotherapy, counselling or anything else of that nature. Actually, analysis should aim at radically confronting the patient with the fact that, in his experience of self, he cannot help but refer to ‘the other’ without that reference being completed by some concrete social image. Psychoanalysis is an attempt to confront the patient with the principle of otherness à l’état pur. But on the other hand, it immediately makes clear that the otherness à l’état pur can never be obtained in a direct face-to-face relationship. From the process of transference, the patient may learn that the other does not correspond to the image on which he has built his expectations. However, a clear perspective on exactly who this other person is, is still not offered. The ‘awakening of conscious’, made possible by transference, consists in the awareness that there are always other, possible references for situating the radical presence of the other besides the concrete references by which one had approached the analyst. Psychoanalysis endeavors to sustain the negative experience as long as possible. It follows hypnosis in that it posits that no social status is needed to engender transference. The difference, however, is that psychoanalysis interprets rather than offers suggestions. Contrary to Freud, that interpretation should not lead to filling lacunas in the memory. Another element which is equally as important is the fact that the story of his past, which the patient cannot refrain from relating, makes him realize that no single tale can neutralize the impact of the other person on him but that this other person can always be different and that he, the patient, can also be different.
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Can such a psychoanalytical relationship be maintained? It is definitely not a simple matter because it appears that, both in the psychoanalytical practice and in its theory formation, a number of currents are searching for something positive, beyond the destructive movement of transference, on which psychoanalysis could be based. Sometimes, one endeavors to attribute a separate social status to the psychoanalyst by which he would be granted a proper place within the social field of helping professions. Or one ultimately refers to the psychoanalytic theory in one’s interpretation in order to explain to the patient who he actually is. While at the beginning of analysis, it is annoying that the patient shields himself with theoretical concepts which he has picked up along the way, it sometimes occurs as analysis proceeds that one hears statements such as "that is probably a castration fantasm", "now, this is finally my oedipus complex" or "I really should accept that a thanatos drive compels me time and again to sabotage myself". Why is the appeal to either the established social order or to a theory which one seems to share with the patient, so attractive? Perhaps this can be explained by the fact that the confrontation with the fantasm of the supreme presence of the other’s corporeality is unbearable when it occurs outside of the framework of the social order and of theory formation. The negative movement, set in motion by the destruction caused by transference, carries the individual back to some sort of beginning stage of culture where the confrontations with the fascinating yet at the same time despicable aspects of brute corporeality; the necessary yet also relative social order which organizes people into a structured cohesion; and the healing but equally alienating power of theory formation all appear in a primitive mutual coherence. Precisely because psychoanalysis developed the practice of referring people to this beginning level, it comes across as a rival to religion and not because, when viewed as a theoretical construction, it might reduce religion. The vicissitudes of psychoanalysis, influenced by Lacan, are very instructive with regard to this point. It is precisely this trend which has been reproached for stressing the structural aspects (the ‘symbolic order’) of a culture, where an individual is accepted and has acquired his identity, to such a degree that it has overlooked sexuality and corporeality. Although Lacanian ideology refers to ‘castration’ more than any other psychoanalytical trend, it is indeed true that this ideology creates the impression that the underlying corporeal fantasm should be immediately interpreted as the fundamental symbol of the acceptance of ‘limitedness’ in a very broad sense. One often justifiably complains that the notion of
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the body has disappeared in Lacanian psychoanalysis although this is not completely true. In principle, there would have been enough room to incorporate it. Perhaps the notion of the body is present, but to an enormous and threatening proportion, as was the case when Jung and Freud were searching for the deepest instinctual basis of identity by means of their scheme: autoerotism - narcissism - homosexuality - object love. Indubitably, this scheme was too simplistic. However, for the first time, it expressed something which until then had been ‘ineffable’. The moralizing discourse often heard in Lacanian circles, which posits that the symbolic choice must be made, that there must be a differentiation, as if this is a duty and not merely a methodical description of an anthropological structure, and the fact that the problematic of homosexuality is either completely omitted or stashed away with the other perversions, precisely from where Freud had uncovered it, probably reveal that a part of the problem, with which Freud and Jung struggled, has astutely been investigated by the Lacanians but that another part of it has been repressed. A study of the history of the school founded by Lacan and its subsequent fragmentation into various groups would undoubtedly be very enlightening with regard to this point. Furthermore, their ambivalence toward religion is not coincidental. However, it is difficult to draw conclusions from Lacanian studies on religion for a broader application due to the uniqueness of the French situation. By means of the word ‘religion’, the specific opposition between scientistic anticlericalism and restoration Catholicism, which is still being defined in 19th century terms, is understood. Moreover, the words ‘religion’ and ‘laity’ confront the outsider with unrecognizable elements. When one reviews the development of psychoanalysis, from its beginnings in the practice of hypnosis, it definitely becomes clear that a struggle regarding the core problematic still exists. That problematic concerns several facets: the experience of one’s own identity as a being, characterized by eroticism, which searches for its own place in an unavoidable relationship with the other; the structuredness of the culture that determines the positions from which people can interact; and the designation of an expressed perspective on reality (theoria) as being true. Remarkably, we re-encounter the same problems in Jung’s work as well. However, in his theory of ‘archetypes’, he also left some of these problems unresolved. Nevertheless, his contribution might offer a complement to what Freud and his followers have said concerning religion.
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Jung’s Confrontation with the Unconscious After his rupture with Freud, Jung developed the following idea. A person must undergo a process of inner development which gradually leads him to a higher spiritual existence. During this process, he is guided by ‘archetypes’ or, to put it less accurately, by ‘primordial images’ which show him the direction he should follow at pivotal moments in his life. At the first stage, a person must confront the ‘shadow’ or the dark side of his personality. Jung often stated that by this, he was referring to the Freudian notion of the unconscious, the unconscious originating in repression. The confrontation with this shadowy side, which could not always be truly considered as an archetype, was designated as a task for the first part of a person’s life. In the second part of life, a man is confronted with his ‘anima’ and a woman with her ‘animus’. By translating the Latin terms, it becomes clear that a person must discover his ‘soul’ during this period. These archetypes make themselves known through dream images, through suddenly emerging infatuations and, in the case of the artist, through the representations with which he has to struggle in his creativity. The ‘anima’ appears in the form of a fascinating, yet often unattainable woman while the ‘animus’ appears in the form of a man or, more frequently, of several different men. In the Freudian context, one interpreted such elements as distant memories from childhood. In Jung’s framework, however, they were not considered as personal memories. Moreover, the images did not refer to another person. The archetypes anima and animus confront us with an aspect of ourselves. What is involved is a facet of our own personality which is of the opposite gender. During the first part of life, we were blind to this aspect yet in the second part, it forces itself upon us and requires integration. What should be understood by the aspect of ‘the opposite gender’ of one’s personality? Jung pointed out that, in the construction of one’s life, every person developed a certain number of possibilities and left others aside. However, Jung intended something more fundamental than the repression which could lead a person to hold back unpleasant experiences or inadmissable desires. Rather, the selection of possibilities takes place within the context of a certain project in life. A person has already attached himself to one single identity and he intends to maintain it. Although Jung was not so explicit, the process could be related to one’s sexual identity as follows. The possibilities which a person develops within his own life project become associated with the representation of his own gender while the non-developed possibilities become associated
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with the representation of the opposite gender. Since it is the person’s identity which is questioned at the dawn of the second part of life, one might interpret this moment as a confrontation with the ‘opposite gender’ of his personality. In other words, the person begins to realize that there is a wealth of possibilities which he has not yet developed, namely the realm of the collective unconscious. When investigating the source of Jung’s opinions on the unconscious, one usually refers to his self-analysis. In his autobiography, Jung revealed some information regarding his ‘confrontation with the unconscious’ which took place in the years following his rupture with Freud. The first dream which he recounted dated from the Christmas season of 1912. In his dream, Jung was seated in a beautiful renaissance-style chair in an Italian palace. A white dove landed near him and, through a metamorphosis, turned into an eight year old, blond-haired girl. Suddenly, the girl was once again a bird. She said that she could only change into a human being during the early hours of the night "because at that time, the male dove is occupied with the twelve dead". Time and again, Jung dreamed about corpses. For example, he dreamed about a series of tombstones dating from the 12th to the 19th century, whose sculptured statues upon closer investigation appeared to be still moving mummies. After having these dreams, Jung said that he then decided to start playing as he had done when he was a ten year old child. With collected rocks, he built a village at the shore of a lake. This turned into a ritual. Jung hesitated for some time before placing an altar in the village church, until he accidentally came across a unique red stone which had washed up on the shore. If Jung’s account in his autobiography is chronological, this event should have taken place during the period when he was preparing A Contribution to the Study of Psychological Types. As is mentioned above, that lecture was presented in Munich in September 1913, at the congress of the International Association for Psychoanalysis, the last congress Jung would attend. The lecture constituted a direct expression of the ideas which Jung had begun to develop in the wake of his break with Freud. Here, he posited that introversion should not solely be interpreted as a phenomenon of reaction. Some people have a natural disposition toward introversion while there are others who are predominantly extroverted. These are two different psychological types. Yet, a normally functioning individual has disposal of both dispositions. Even though one of the dispositions is dominant, depending on the personality type, the other disposition is
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prepared to act as a corrective if the dominant disposition becomes all too exclusive. A pathological state arises when the automatic correction fails. In order to make this claim, Jung referred to the characteristic distinction between hysteria and schizophrenia. Both pathologies entailed the exaggerated and almost exclusive activity of one or the other disposition. A pathological state, however, did not follow solely as a result of the exaggerated factor but also because of the regression which occurred. According to Jung, hysteria could be defined as ‘regressive extroversion’ and schizophrenia as ‘regressive introversion’. The compensation which occurred spontaneously in a healthy individual, was ultimately extracted by the pathological process although it was already too late. An hysteric’s exaggerated adherence to outward reality turned into an uninhibited submergence into an eroticized fantasy world. The contrary occurred in cases of schizophrenia. While the patient was originally inclined to retreat into his inner world to an extreme degree, he now lost all inhibitions. He became obnoxious and accosted everybody. Jung’s text questioned the content of this ‘inner world’. With Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido in mind, we are not surprised to read, in one short passage, that a schizophrenic’s inner world displayed very archaic characteristics and that the mythical creations of the primitive imagination dominated the patient’s personal memories.15 Precisely how should one conceive the constitution of the inner world? More than likely, Jung himself did not have a clear perspective on this question at that time. Moreover, his most stirring experiences in confronting the unconscious occurred only after the Congress in Munich. According to Jung’s own account, his confrontation with the unconscious began with something similar to a vision which he was able to date very precisely. On 12 December 1913, he experienced the sensation of sinking to a great depth until he had reached a cave in a subterranean mountainside. The entrance to the cave was guarded by a mummified dwarf. Nevertheless, Jung entered the cave and saw a red, luminous crystal. There was water flowing in the depth of the cave which was hidden by the crystal. The corpse of a blond-haired boy, wounded in the head, floated by, followed by a black scarab and a newly born, red sun. When Jung attempted to close off the mouth of the cave with the crystal,
15. C.G. JUNG, A Contribution to the Study of Psychological Types, C.W. VI, § 858, G.W. VI, § 931. In the English and the German versions of volume VI, the numbers of the paragraphs do not correspond.
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a stream of blood flowed out of it. When the blood finally stopped flowing, the vision was over. On 18 December, he had a terrible dream. Along with an unknown, wild, dark-skinned boy, Jung lay in wait in order to shoot ‘Siegfried’. At dawn, when Siegfried appeared, triumphantly riding a wagon filled with human bones, Jung and the boy fired the fatal shot. Jung then ran away in a panic. The dream continued with a relieving rain shower which erased all traces of the murder. At that moment Jung awoke, conscious of the obsessional need to either interpret the dream or commit suicide. In his autobiography, Jung recounted that he had gradually realized that, in the vision and the dream, he was facing the typically mythical theme of the death and resurrection of the hero. He recognized himself in Siegfried who had to be killed. He had to relinquish his conscious, dominating disposition and allow himself to be carried more passively by the less transparent forces which upheld life. But he insisted that this did not imply the abandoning of his conscious insight. On the contrary, if it was not for this insight and for the ethical responsibility for the daily cares of life, he would more than likely have gone insane. Yet first, he had to let the darkness, which surged up from the unconscious, emerge. Only afterwards should he try to comprehend it. Thus, similar to the hero, he would be born again after death. Jung interpreted the images which he saw surfacing in his dreams and visions as referring to his own identity. They did not refer to beloved ‘objects’ in the sense that Freud had attributed to ‘object love’. Jung diligently recorded his dreams and visions in a series of ‘black books’ which he later very carefully copied into the ‘Red Book’ in the style of a medieval manuscript. A number of persons reappeared more and more frequently in his dreams and fantasies such as a young girl who accompanied an older man, Salome and Elias. The figure of Elias later developed into Philemon, whom Jung considered to be his guardian spirit and with whom he held long, inner conversations. A woman’s voice resounded within him as well. Although he recognized the voice as that of a female patient who was involved with him in a very strong transferential relationship, he concluded that his inner person also harbored a female figure. From that time onward, he wrote his fantasies down as letters addressed to this inner female presence. The psychic environment in which Jung lived became more and more agitated. Jung again started perceiving all sorts of paranormal phenomena. At a certain moment, the doorbell would start to ring on its own. He wrote that his house was full of ghosts and that his children were also
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troubled by them. One evening, Jung sat down at his writing table in order to give these intruding spirits a hearing. During three evenings in 1916, Jung wrote the Seven Sermons to the Dead, a remarkable dialogue which started with the words:16 Seven exhortations to the dead, written by Basilides in Alexandria, the city where East and West meet. The First Sermon The dead came back from Jerusalem, where they did not find what they were seeking. They asked admittance to me and demanded to be taught by me, and thus I taught them: Hear Ye: I begin with nothing. Nothing is the same as fullness. In the endless state fullness is the same as emptiness. The Nothing is both empty and full. One may just as well state some other thing about the Nothing, namely that it is white or that it is black or that it exists or that it exists not. That which is endless and eternal has no qualities, because it has all qualities."
In his autobiography, Jung further recounted that he had drawn his first mandala after he finished writing Seven Sermons to the Dead. Of course, he did not yet understand it or so he claimed. However, when he went to serve as a commander in the Swiss army at the Château-d’Oeux in 1918-1919, he took up the practice of drawing a mandala every morning. From then onward, he used the technique as an instrument to read his inner disposition. What Jung wrote concerning this period of confrontation with the unconscious has obviously aroused the curiosity of a number of authors. All sorts of attempts at interpretation have been undertaken. Even those who are not adherents of the Jungian theory are often very interested in how the person involved was able to fend off impending psychosis. Further, it is conspicuous that, in his own interpretation of the process, Jung did not refer to either Freud or Toni Wolff, the woman who had entered his life as his patient and who became his confident and support during the difficult years of his confrontation with the unconscious. Insofar as one’s motives are not based on voyeurism, one can justifiably regret that
16. This translation was taken from S.A. HOELLER, The Gnostic Jung and the Seven Sermons to the Dead, London, The Theosophical Publishing House, 1982, p. 44. According to Hoeller, the conversations were recorded between 15 December 1915 and 16 February 1917. This however does not agree with Jung’s account in his autobiography. Jung himself situated the phenomenon of the ringing bell on a warm summer afternoon while the conversations were recorded shortly afterwards.
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Jung’s ‘Red Book’ still remains unaccessible and that Jung himself burned his correspondence with Toni Wolff from those years.17 Our study, however, has not intended to understand Jung as an individual nor to understand the formation of his theories in light of his personal experiences. Our task is to deal with the question of how the problems, unresolved in his debate with Freud, resurfaced in Jung’s later theory formation and what repercussions these problems had on the phenomenon of ‘religion’. The Jungian Scheme A first text which aids us in this task is a lecture which was given on 24 July 1914 in Aberdeen, entitled On Psychological Understanding.18 Here, Jung presented an elaborate plea to avoid working in a merely reductive manner, attempting to causally explain psychic disturbance as Freud did. He stressed that psychotherapy should also operate constructively. In order to lend force to this opinion, Jung employed two images which he often repeated in his later work. One did not succeed in explaining Goethe’s Faust by enumerating its historical sources and by unraveling the universally human motives in it. Nor did one explain the cathedral of Cologne as a work of art by pointing to the fact that it consisted of stones and thus could be studied mineralogically.19 The essence of a psychic disturbance did not merely consist of adherence to the past. It also expressed an attempt at progress, although that attempt failed. Therapy should therefore also support this second tendency directed toward the future. With regard to the question of how the therapist should go about doing this, Jung only proposed that the therapist should look for typical motives in the patient’s fantasies, from which a psychological trend of development might be read.20 In December 1916, Jung published an extremely important article entitled The Structure of the Unconscious in which one can find the blueprint of all of his later work.21 The core of the article consisted of the
17. See R.S. STEELE, Freud and Jung, Conflicts of Interpretation, London, Routlegde & Kegan Paul, 1982.p. 280-288. 18. Although the editors of the Gesammelte Werke have not indicated this, according to the Collected Works, this is undoubtedly the text which was reprinted as an epilogue in the 1914 edition of The Content of the Psychoses. 19. C.G. JUNG, On Psychological Understanding, C.W. III, § 391-399. 20. Ibid., § 422-423. 21. Because the original German text was apparently lost, the English edition of the Collected
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hypothesis that, alongside the personal unconscious, a collective unconscious also existed. In order to support his hypothesis, Jung argued that analysis never succeeded in completely depleting the unconscious. If it merely consisted of personal memories and repressed contents, then there would have to be a moment when the analysis actually reached the bottom of the unconscious. Experience, however, taught that analysis could go on forever. New erotic fantasies were constantly being produced. To explain this phenomenon, Jung could have simply referred to the influence of regression which, in light of a present conflict, constructed fantasies that seemed to stem from a distant past. However, Jung took it a step further. Appealing to the fact that every person was born with differentiated cerebral material, Jung posited that everyone possessed an innate collective unconscious. What did this collective unconscious consist of? Jung did not immediately delve into that question. Rather, he endeavored to devise a schematic outline of how individuality established itself and distinguished itself from collectivity. In a first stage, according to Jung, every person thought they were identical to what Jung called a ‘persona’. Referring to the original meaning of the word (persona means ‘mask’), Jung proposed that every person claimed a part of the collective unconscious with which he was born to be more explicitly his own and then cultivated it. The persona was thus a segment of the collective unconscious. Upon considering the contents of the persona, however, one found nothing uniquely individual. Individuality lay in the choice of elements from the collective unconscious which one had appropriated or, to put it differently, in the limitations which were established by the persona in the collective unconscious. With this model in mind, Jung endeavored to explain what occurred during analysis. Due to the fact that the persona dissolved as a result of the analytical process, the patient was brought into direct contact with the collective unconscious without any sort of protection. This often caused the patient to feel ‘deified’ as it were. His self-experience was reinforced
Works offered a translation of the French text as it had appeared in Archives de Psychologie (vol. XVI, 152-179). The corresponding volume of the German Gesammelte Werke appeared later. During its preparation, the original German text with many corrections inserted in the manuscript, seemed to have been discovered. Unfortunately, the editor’s indications do not allow the different redactional layers of Jung’s corrections to be distinguished. The text which is presented as the original appears to be older than the version published in the Archives de Psychologie and many additions, concerning issues such as the "anima", were clearly written later. Yet how much later? Did Jung only add them when he employed the text in writing his renowned booklet The Relations Between the Ego and the Unconscious? On the basis of the German edition, we can unfortunately not answer this question.
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because he felt that he was everything. This was dangerous since manic pathologies were laying in wait. Many patients protected themselves against these pathologies by regressively restoring the persona. This often took place by means of a reductive theory formation. One said, for example, that all one experienced was ‘only infantile sexuality’ or ‘only a hunger for power’. Once again, one shielded oneself from the collective unconscious. According to Jung, the true solution was found in acknowledging both aspects of the human psyche. In attempting to formulate this more precisely, Jung introduced a number of important notions in just a few phrases. The psychic phenomenon which implied the contact of the ego with the non-ego was called the attitude. One psychological function usually dominated within the attitude. Regarding this, Jung mentioned three functions in the text: feeling, thinking and intuition.22 According to him, the persona was always identical to a typical attitude where one single function was dominant. As a result, the other functions were repressed. The persona therefore inhibited the development toward greater individuality and thus had to be dissolved in order to attain further individuation. What should happen next? As in his previous article, Jung again proposed that one should look for the lifelines indicated by the unconscious itself. However, here he specified how this could be accomplished. The symbols produced by the unconscious should be approached ‘hermeneutically’. In other words, the patient should add analogous symbols to those of his own and, if his imagination did not suffice, the erudition of the therapist should provide related symbols. From this accumulation of related symbols, to which both the patient’s imagination and the knowledge of cultural history contributed, it should become sufficiently clear which goals the patient should strive after in the immediate future. Whether therapy ultimately succeeded depended not only on how one applied hermeneutics but also on the willpower and the moral input of the patient. The Structure of the Unconscious displayed practically all the elements of the classical Jungian system. Upon closer investigation, we discover even more than what has been expounded until now. For example, when referring to A Contribution to the Study of Psychological Types, Jung repeated that the introverted personality type favored thinking and the extroverted type favored feeling. He also mentioned a third
22. C.G. JUNG, The Structure of the Unconscious, C.W. VII, § 487.
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function in passing, namely intuition. Thus, he was well on his way to the classical scheme which he presented in 1921 in Psychological Types. We also notice the beginnings of another classically Jungian theme. While in The Structure of the Unconscious, Jung introduced the ‘persona’, he did not yet speak about the ‘anima’. However, the latter concept appeared in a revision of the resumé with which he concluded the published article. The ‘anima’ was defined as an ‘unconscious image of the subject’. In the same way that the persona summarized how one wished to appear to the outside world, the anima was the summary of how one related to the collective unconscious. It is tempting to let oneself be carried away by the subsequent development of Jung’s work which filled out the framework until it became the beautiful and complex figure of his typological schemes. Not coincidentally, the figure of the mandala was favored in those schemes. As far as the anima was concerned, one notices that, in the above mentioned resumé, it was not yet related to the image of the individual’s opposite gender. With regard to the mentioned functions, one might state that the addition of intuition to the thinking and feeling functions pointed to the fact that the sensation function would soon follow. That immediately introduced the perspective of Jung’s typology in its classical form, as later elaborated in Psychological Types. In that text, Jung started from four functions which could bring an individual into contact with what was beyond him: thinking, feeling, sensation and intuition. Each of these four functions could be primarily directed at either the outside world (for the extroverted type) or the inner world (for the introverted type). Thus, Jung distinguished eight different types: an extroverted type of thinking, feeling, sensation and intuition and four introverted equivalents. However, with regard to the reconstruction of Jung’s later work, the danger of such a fascination is that it too easily overlooks the ambiguous accumulation of explanatory notions which occurred here. When we endeavor to describe the components of the collective unconscious in terms more nuanced than Jung himself used, we arrive at two conclusions. First of all, the collective unconscious consisted of representations or, more precisely, of innate principles which caused humanity to continuously produce analogous representations. Jung’s reference to the differentiated cerebral material with which we are born and his method of ‘amplification’ (as he later called it), where the therapist clarified the symbolic representations, produced by the patient, using analogous images from cultural history, should be understood in this regard. Secondly, the collective unconscious consisted in a number of functions by which people
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could direct themselves toward reality and from among which they favored one certain function. The question which posed itself here concerned how one should conceive of the relationship between the functions and the representations, both of which have their origin in the unconscious. Furthermore, the question as to how the distinction between reality and fantasy and between reality and delusion came into being still remains. Jung was aware of the importance of the distinction. As far as the therapeutic practice was concerned, he insisted that the confrontation with the unconscious should be a conscious event and that the daily tasks of life should be respected as compelling, ethical duties. Yet in Jung’s theoretical reflection, one finds exactly the opposite articulation than one would expect. Unlike Freud, he did not wonder how a person learned to accept reality which existed autonomously, on the basis of primary hallucinatory wish fulfillment. For Jung, the problem seemed to lie in the fact that people spontaneously experienced a number of things as being autonomous, while these things were actually being created by their own inner world. One might say that by nature, people are too paranoid. Our task should be to accept that what seems to be foreign, really belongs to the collective unconscious which we share with all people. In his resumé at the end of The Structure of the Unconscious, Jung phrased the situation as follows:23 "The conscious and unconscious components of an impersonal, i.e., collective, nature constitute the psychological non-ego, the image of the objective world (the object-imago). These components may appear in analysis as projections of either feeling or judgment, but they are a priori collective, and identical with the object-imago; that is, they appear to be qualities of the object, and it is only a posteriori that they are recognized as psychological qualities."
It is conspicuous that one still finds all the theoretical questions which have dominated the debate between Freud and Jung from their first encounter onward although these questions were not always clearly delineated and although Jung was definitely moving in a different direction. From the beginning, the central question had been: what can the schizophrenic breach with reality teach us regarding the establishment of a normal cathexis of reality? The hypothesis that something must occur before the distinction arose between the ego and the non-ego resumed the Freudian theory of the reality principle. One might justifiably question
23. C.G. JUNG, The Structure of the Unconscious, C.W. VII, § 505.
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what Jung could accomplish with his own formulations. To do so does not necessarily mean to reproach Jung. In spite of the way in which the term ‘reality principle’ is so easily employed, Freud himself did nothing other than give the problem a name, as we have seen above. Upon considering the first formulation of Jung’s system, one might wonder in which direction Jung was looking in order to solve the question of how the contact with reality was established. Did it suffice to point to the differentiation of one of the psychological functions? Two reflections keep us from answering positively. Our first reflection concerns the basis on which Jung founded the distinction between these functions and their relation to the processes of introversion and extroversion. Secondly, we wonder how these functions are related to the other aspects of the collective unconscious, the persona and the anima. The issue concerning the functions left aside, we find ourselves in more familiar territory with these last two concepts. The persona might be considered as a new approach to the identification problematic while the anima might be seen as a reiteration of the homosexuality problematic. The correlation of these two problematics with the problem of the relationship toward reality constituted the very core of ‘Schreber’. If Jung had only talked about the persona and the anima in the same way that he later discussed the ‘self’, the evolution of his thought process would have been relatively easy to follow. Under the influence of his study of mythology, he would have pointed to the fact, merely by his terminology, that the parallel between mythology, fantasy and psychotic delusion needed further examining. The introduction of the functions, however, obscured the formation of his theory. Especially when he abandoned the introversionthinking and extroversion-feeling connection; when he posited that both introvert as well as extrovert thinking and introvert as well as extrovert feeling existed; and on top of that, when he claimed that both modalities also existed for sensation and intuition, the system seemed to go awry. In moments such as these, one is often inclined to draw a scheme as Jung did. But what does a scheme clarify? Or is the scheme itself the problem? Why do we have the impression that we know ourselves better when a graphic image is drawn which diametrically opposes ‘thinking’ to ‘feeling’ and so forth? The term ‘archetype’ offers little help to further clarify matters. However, the context in which it was first used is revealing. In July 1919, a symposium was held in London, entitled "Instinct and the Unconscious". It was in Jung’s contribution bearing the
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same title, that the term was coined.24 Jung started with a reference to the philosopher Bergson who held the notion of intuition as a human capacity as most important. According to Jung, intuition was "the unconscious, purposive apprehension of a highly complicated situation".25 How should we correctly understand this? Jung started with an example from the animal world to introduce intuition as a unique human capacity. The Yucca moth (Pronuba yucasella) must perform a rather complicated series of actions in order to procreate. First, the moth has to gather pollen from the Yucca flowers which only bloom during one night. It then works the pollen into a little ball, finds a second flower and drills a hole through its pistil. It lays its eggs in the hole and closes it off with the ball of pollen. The moth does this only once in its entire lifetime. There is no room for a learning process. The moth apparently possesses some innate knowledge which allows it to recognize the yucca flower at the right time and to carry out the procreation ritual. With this example in mind, the first definition of the archetype seems very clear. Jung defined the place of the archetypes within the collective unconscious as follows:26 "In this ‘deeper’ stratum we find also the a priori, inborn form of ‘intuition’, namely the archetypes of perception and apprehension, which are the necessary a priori determinants of all psychic processes. Just as his instincts compel man to a specific human mode of existence, so the archetypes force his ways of perception into specifically human patterns. The instincts and the archetypes together form the ‘collective unconscious’."
Posited as such, it seems that the archetype should be understood as an a priori by means of which a person approaches everything that is outside of himself. However, the archetypes mentioned by Jung in other texts, the persona, the anima and the self, were not involved with how the relationship toward the other was established. Rather, they were concerned with how one experienced oneself and how one was able to transform one’s identity. It was true, of course, that there was a connection between one’s self-experience and one’s directedness toward the other. But Jung never addressed that issue. Rather, he obscured it by postulating a parallel between the ‘inner’ and the ‘outer’ world. According to him, these same functions (thinking, feeling, sensation and intuition) brought us into contact with both worlds.
24. C.G. JUNG, Instinct and the Unconscious, C.W. VIII, § 263-282. 25. Ibid., § 269. 26. Ibid., § 270.
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The Lost Problematic We have now returned to the theme which occupied our attention at the beginning of the correspondence between Freud and Jung, namely Jung’s inability to follow Freud in his attempt to distinguish the schizophrenic decathexis of reality from the neurotic fascination with unconscious fantasms. Here we could perhaps enumerate the criticisms which were directed against Jung’s theory formation. His thought could ultimately be characterized as leaving no room for that which was beyond the person. One continues to recognize in Jung’s later thought the same paradigm of the Romantic concept of the unconscious which was present in his very first writings and lectures from his student days. Without refuting it, Jung passed over the problematic of identification as Freud had described it based on his clinical observations. While Freud, reflecting upon his clinical data, felt more and more obligated to view the ‘ego’ as something which only came into being due to the interaction with the other, Jung continued to consider the ego as the organic development of a form which was provided by nature from the very beginning with all the possibilities for self-development. The most important argument in this context was the similarity between the psychotic delusion and the symbolism in myths and religions. Jung constantly referred to this argument. However, the argument is also open to criticism. From an anthropological perspective, it has been sufficiently indicated that Jung erroneously isolated symbols from their respective contexts in order to compare them. Without being a fanatic structuralist, it is easy to see that Jung’s ‘amplification’ of symbolic material was indeed very broad. Further, one might reproach Jung for favoring the Eastern traditions rather than his own Judeo-Christian tradition when searching for something along the lines of a universal spiritual symbolism. Moreover, an a priori was involved in his endeavor to bring the West to a new spirituality based on the East. For the most part, these criticisms are justified and it would be needless to deal with them again.27 In the wake of our study, a second criticism appears to be equally as pressing. It concerns the distinction between the ways one ‘believes’ in symbols and in representations. In his search for archetypes, Jung amassed material from dreams, myths, fairy tales, children’s fantasies, delusions, spiritual traditions, alchemistic teachings and dogmatic formulations without taking into account the distinct
27. I have already expounded on these reflections elsewhere: P. VANDERMEERSCH, The Archetypes: A New Way to Holiness? In: R.L. MOORE (ed.), Carl Jung and Christian Spirituality, New York, Paulist Press, 1988, p. 146-166.
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way the individual allowed himself to be affected by these forms in ‘faith’. Nevertheless, this distinction is essential. A believer’s faith in his church’s dogmatic formulas is supposed to be different from a paranoiac’s faith in his delusional system or from a child’s belief in a fairy tale. All these different forms of symbolic stories are able to affect man’s inner world and, as such, all of them are ‘real’. However, they are ‘real’ in different ways. The point at which Jung had arrived in his discussion with Freud might have rise to a further examination of the different modalities of the act of faith without having to refer to perception as the starting point. Psychosis had indeed proven that cathexis, not perception, was the decisive element in distinguishing delusion from reality. A closer analysis of the erotic aspect of cathexis and, more specifically, of the distinction between schizophrenic autoerotism and that which presented itself in paranoia as homosexuality - to be distinguished from a homosexual’s homosexuality - would have been in order. These elements should also be examined in light of the experience of one’s own identity, of otherness and of ‘reality’. Furthermore, one should consider more closely the mediating function of language.28 If this had occurred, the problematic of faith would have been approached in a manner also recognizable to the theologian. For him, God’s transcendence as well as the distinction between true faith and superstition are central themes. No matter how great one might imagine God to be, for the critically reflecting believer, he is not an object among objects. His existence is of a different nature than the existence of the fragments of worldly reality which sometimes tend to overpower mankind. The oldfashioned depiction of God abiding in his own sphere, as well as the facts that one should not attempt to make images of him, that his name is unspeakable and that his presence can only be conceived through a form of absence, point to the unique character of the ‘reality experience’ which constitutes the core of religious faith. The specific task of the theologian consists in keeping this experience as pure as possible or rather, in purifying it time and again despite the distortions which arise whenever the experience is transmitted. Along with this, the theologian endeavors to unravel the complex connections between the erroneous ways of the individual heart, which allows itself to be affected by the experience of 28. If we do not consider this aspect more deeply, it is not to say that we fail to appreciate it. Quite the contrary! The pioneering work performed by J. Lacan and his school deserves praise. However, their fascination with the problematic of language, castration and the symbolic order sometimes had as a consequence that the primary Freudian question concerning the problematic of the libido and cathexis was suppressed (e.g. in the examination of "Schreber"). See e.g. J. LACAN, D’une question préliminaire à tout traitement possible de la psychose. In: Ecrits, p. 531-583
THE FREUD/JUNG DEBATE
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the absolute, and the established Churches which sometimes seem to place more importance in performing all sorts of social tasks rather than in tactfully transmitting religious wisdom. The problematic relationship between religion and sexuality, which he encountered in different forms throughout Church history, makes the theologian extremely curious as to what psychoanalysis might offer with regard to the various aspects of the ‘libido’ and their connection with several types of experiences of reality. Not much of this problematic, which constituted the center of the Freud-Jung debate, penetrated into the psychology of religion. Some of the terminology was adopted along with some parts of the theory but, for the most part, the context from which these were taken was overlooked. We have already indicated this with regard to Freudian thought. However, the Jungian term ‘archetype’ was also used in order to hide the problem. Most often, the term was employed to indicate that, in quite a number of different cultures and religions, one found similar motifs and fantasies which were capable of speaking to different peoples. It was used in a merely descriptive manner. The underlying problematic of the distinction between delusion and reality, between the I and the other and between the eroticized experience of the ego and the adherence to the other, was no longer being discussed. Viewed in a scientifically critical manner, the use of the term ‘archetype’ only designated an ostensible explanation. It granted phenomena a name in the same way that Molière’s physician attempted to explain his patient’s sleeping by means of ‘vis dormitiva’. Nevertheless, Jung’s thought contained an element which was lacking in Freudian thought. No matter how questionable it might appear on the level of theoretical explanation, Jungian thought nonetheless continued to focus on the complexity of the religious phenomenon. Thanks to historical research we are becoming more aware of the important role of gnosis in the emergence of Christianity. Upon reading such texts, we must admit that the Freudian perspective still needs to search for clues in order to understand this type of material. The transformation of the father and mother images into gods, goddesses, totem animals, angels or devils does not occur in gnosticism. Gnostic texts cannot be categorized as mere accounts in which one object is exchanged for another by displacement. Undoubtedly, typical motifs which a Freudian psychoanalysis would immediately recognize, especially bisexuality and androgyny, seem ubiquitous in the gnostic texts. However, the unique characteristic of these motifs is that several psychic functions are personified. Although Jung did not offer an explanation for this by means of his archetypes persona anima - self, he must be given credit for describing a phenomenon which demanded further examination. Gnosis is just as captivating as the Jungian
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thought which fascinates quite a number of people. The person who posits that such systems do not offer satisfactory theoretical explanations, still must clarify what causes these systems to be so captivating and what they bring about. This was what was at stake in the Freud-Jung debate regarding ‘theoria’ and reality. The material amassed by Jung in his texts filled the void left by the research in the field of the psychology of religion, which was performed along the lines of Freudian thought. Although admittedly many questions remained unresolved in the latter’s perspective, the concepts which Freud and his followers employed were clearer, his diagnostic distinctions were sharper and his flow of thought was more systematic. Still, religion was often reduced. Yet it was not reduced due to the adopted theoretical framework. Rather, religion was reduced by the choice of material which was or was not recognized as religious. We have already mentioned how certain religions and spiritual traditions, together with their characteristic expressions, were overlooked. Furthermore, a sociological trend which departed from the true psychoanalytical perspective often took over and narrowed the scope of study to only immediately observable phenomena. Thus, one spoke of ‘referential figures’ instead of ‘identification figures’, ‘repression’ became ‘suppression’, ‘cathexis’ became ‘finding important’ and so forth. Along with this, the religious system, as it presented itself in the wake of the secularization process in the West, was quasi-automatically chosen as the objective definition of the phenomenon of religion. Freudian psychoanalysis did not reflect upon its own rootedness within the Western process of secularization. Religion and psychoanalysis were viewed as two separate matters. Only in a secondary reflection did the question arise as to what one discipline could say about the other. Even the libido theory itself was often reduced to the isolated domain of mere sexuality. Based on Freud’s Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, a psychological scheme of development was drawn up presenting preprogrammed stages leading to normalcy. Sexuality was no longer considered as a much embracing problem, but rather as an instinct which was to find its discharge according to the laws of Masters and Johnson. The question regarding the complex connections between eroticism, the experience of reality and identity was simply discarded and forgotten in this development. To be forgotten is the worst reduction which psychology could inflict upon religion. Both the person who wants to deal with the problematic of religion on a fundamental level and from a psychological perspective, and the person who sets out to clarify the ultimate possibilities of the analytical treatment, have to resume the Freud-Jung debate where it stopped. But that would be the subject of another book!
Chronology 10 or 11 XII 1900
Jung named assistant to Paul Eugen Bleuler at the Burghölzli in Zurich.
4 VI - 25 VII 1902
Observations made on the woman whose case is studied in A Case of Hysterical Stupor in a Prisoner in Detention, C.W. I, § 226-300.
3 VI 1903
Admission to the Burghölzli of the spinning-craftsman whose case is described in On Simulated Insanity, C.W. I, § 301-355 and in Medical Opinion on a Case of Simulated Insanity, C.W. I, § 356-429.
VI 1905
Psychoanalytical treatment of a patient suffering from obsession by Jung (lasting 3 weeks). This case is set out in Psychoanalysis and Association Experiments, C.W. II, § 660-727.
1 X - 21 XII 1905
Psychoanalytical treatment of a hysterical female patient. This case is studied in Association, Dream, and Hysterical Symptom, C.W. II, § 793-862.
11 IV 1906
Freud writes a letter of thanks to Jung for sending him the Diagnostische Assoziationsstudien I. (1F)
27 V 1906
The Congress of the Süd-Westdeutschen Neurologen und Irrenärzte at Baden-Baden. In his lecture Aschaffenburg attacks Freud but Jung, in his turn, defends him. This incident brings on a correspondence between the two which unfortunatedly is lost. Jung will write a repartee on the lecture of Aschaffenburg: Freud’s Theory of Hysteria: A Reply to Aschaffenburg, C.W. IV, § 1-26. (Jones II, p. 124; 2J)
VI 1906
Freud reviews Jung’s association experiments in his lecture Psychoanalysis and the Establishment of Facts in Legal Proceedings, S.E. IX, 97-114, G.W. VII, 1-15.
VII 1906
The text of The Psychology of Dementia Praecox, C.W. III, § 1-316 is completed (as dated in the preface).
5 X 1906
Jung sends his thanks to Freud for the consignment of Collected Short Papers on the Theory of the Neuroses. (2J)
23 X 1906
Jung sends Freud the text of Association, Dream, and Hysterical Symptom, C.W. II, § 793-862. (4J) Jung starts the analysis of Sabina Spielrein. (4J)
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3-4 XI 1906
37th Versammlung Süd-Westdeutsche Irrenärzte at Tübingen. Jung defends Freud but maintains, according to his opinion, the disposition as the ultimate cause of the hysteria. (conference report)
26 XI 1906
Jung sends Freud a copy of his Freud’s Theory of Hysteria: A Reply to Aschaffenburg. (6J)
29 XII 1906
Freud receives Jung’s The Psychology of Dementia Praecox. (9J)
1 I 1907
Freud invites Jung to Vienna to discuss the problem of the dementia praecox. (11F)
3 III 1907
Jung visits Freud in Vienna with L. Binswanger. They were present at the Wednesday-evening meeting of the Viennese group on 6 March. (16J and Minutes I, p. 138)
IV - VI 1907
The dispute concerning paranoia and dementia praecox is the main theme in the correspondence between Freud and Jung.
26 V 1907
Jung completes Disturbances of Reproduction in the Association Experiment, C.W. II, § 918-938. (26J)
± 14 - ± 28 VI 1907
Jung visits the Salpêtrière in Paris and confers with Janet. After the visit, he is very disappointed. (31J and 33J)
25 VI 1907
The first letter of Freud to Abraham thanking him for the consignment of On the Significance of Juvenile Traumas for the Symptomatology of Dementia Praecox.
14 VII - ± 7 VIII
Jung fulfills his annual military service. (35J)
VII - VIII 1907
Correspondence between Freud and Abraham about dementia praecox at a time when this topic disappears in his correspondence with Jung who is preparing his lecture for the conference in Amsterdam.
2 - 7 IX 1907
First International Congress for Psychiatry and Neurology at Amsterdam. Jung becomes acquainted with Jones and delivers the speech The Freudian Theory of Hysteria, C.W. IV, § 27-63. (41J, 43J, 44J, Jones II, p. 36, Ellenberger, p. 668)
27 IX 1907
First meeting of the Freud group in Zurich. (46J, 47J, Jones II, p. 44 and 81)
1 X 1907
The ‘Ratman’ begins his analysis with Freud (which lasts until September 1908). (Editor’s introduction in S.E.)
THE FREUD/JUNG DEBATE
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6 X 1907
Abraham announces to Freud his resignation at the Burghölzli because he, as a German and Jew, had no chance of promotion. (48J)
28 X 1907
For the first time, Jung mentions his problems of transference in his relation with Freud. (49J)
26 XI 1907
In Zurich, Jung delivers the lecture: The Significance of Freud’s Teachings for Neurology and Psychiatry, C.W. XVIII, § 922.
End XI (24 - 29 ?)
Jones visits Jung in Zurich. (54J, Jones II, p. 43)
30 XI 1907
Jung proposes to Freud to organize a congress. (54J)
15 - 20 XII 1907
Abraham visits Freud in Vienna. (55F, 57F, Jones II, p. 38, letter of Abraham to Freud, 6 December 1907)
16 I 1908
Jung’s Lecture at the Rathaus in Zurich: The Content of the Psychoses, C.W. III, § 317-387.
27 I 1908
Freud receives the text of The Content of the Psychoses and will publish it in his Schriften zur angewandten Seelenkunde. (66F)
20 II 1908
Jung presents his view on the teleological meaning of auto-erotism in dementia praecox.
3 III 1908
Freud poses the problem of the relation between projection in hallucination and in paranoia. (76J)
14 III 1908
In his course of lectures Freud delves into the matter of Jung’s The Psychology of Dementia Praecox (80F).
14 IV 1908
Freud reads the text of Jung’s lecture from the congress at Amsterdam: The Freudian Theory of Hysteria, as well as Jung’s publication with Bleuler: Komplexe und Krankheitursachen bei Dementia Praecox. (82F)
19 IV 1908
Freud asks Jung for medical help for Otto Gross who is addicted to cocaine and seems to be developing a paranoia. (84F)
27 IV 1908
Zusammenkunft für Freudsche Psychologie (considered later as the First International Congress) in Salzburg. Abraham delivers the lecture The Psycho-Sexual Differences between Hysteria and Dementia Praecox and Jung delivers the lecture On Dementia Praecox. Foundation of the Jahrbuch. (Jones II, p. 45 ss.)
V 1908
Letters from Freud to Jung and Abraham asking them to settle their dispute. (87F, 91J, 92F, letters from Freud to Abraham, 3 and 9 May, letters from Abraham to Freud, 11 and 19 May)
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14 V 1908
Otto Gross stays at the Burghölzli and undergoes analysis with Jung. (93J, 94F)
25 V 1908
Jung announces that the analysis of Gross is virtually finished. (95J)
17 VI 1908
Gross escapes from the Burghölzli. Jung writes Freud about the difference between dementia praecox (Pompei) and hysteria (Pompei + Rome). (98J)
VI 1908
Abraham remarks to Freud that psychoanalysis is being abandonned in Zurich. (Letters from Abraham to Freud, 9, 16, 20, and 31 July) Freud decides to travel to Zurich to clarify the situation and also because Jung proposed to meet him for a discussion about the notions ‘dementia praecox’, ‘schizophrenia’ and ‘paranoia’. (100J, 101F, 102J, 103F, 106F)
5 VIII 1908
Freud sends Jung the text of the ‘Little Hans’ for the Jahrbuch. (104F)
22 VIII - 8 IX 1908
Jung spends his holiday in a cabin on the Säntis mountain.
18 - 21 IX 1908
Freud is Jung’s guest (in the Burghölzli and not in the house in Küssnacht, as Jones says (Jones II, p. 58)). Jung presents the patient Babette from The Psychology of Dementia Praecox. (Notes in the Freud/Jung Letters after 110F)
15 X 1908
For the first time Freud is analyzing a dementia praecox patient. (110F)
8 XI 1908
The second edition of The Interpretation of Dreams is ready. (112F)
Betw. 29 XI and 3XII Birth of Franz Jung, Jung’s third child. 3 XII 1908
Jung completes The Significance of the Father in the Destiny of the Individual, C.W. IV, § 693-744. (117J)
11 XII 1908
Freud is obsessed with discovering the ‘nuclear complex’ of the neuroses. (118F)
26 XII 1908
Freud points out to Jung that auto-eroticism must be considered as not having an object. (122F)
7 I 1909
Jung reports that his friend Pfister has started a campaign in favor of Freud. (124J)
I - VIII 1909
Report in the correspondence on the observations of Jung’s daughter Agathli (‘little Anna’). (126J, 128J, 129F, 132F, 133J, 134F...)
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Betw. 24 II and 7 III
The publication of the first volume of the Jahrbuch. (Footnote in the Freud/Jung Letters after 133J and the letter from Abraham to Freud, 7 March 1909)
25 - 30 III 1909
Jung’s visit to Freud in Vienna. Conversation about spiritism. Jung has probably just left the Burghölzli. (Biographical note in the Freud/Jung Letters after 137J and Memories, p. 150-152)
12 IV 1909
Jung advances the opinion that there exists a universal complex with prospective tendencies. He is glad to be relieved from the oppressive feeling of Freud’s authority. (138J)
16 IV 1909
Freud expresses his disappointment because Jung deprived him of his paternal authority. (138J)
25 IV 1909
Pfister’s first visit to Freud. (Jones II, p. 51)
End V 1909
Jung moves into his new house in Küssnacht. (142J)
Beginning of VI 1909 Jung’s patient, Speilrein, writes to Freud who in turn asks Jung for further clarification. Jung admits to having created a difficult situation with her. (143F, 144J, 145F, 147F, 148J) 12 VI 1909
Jung tells Freud that he too is invited by Clark University, so they can travel to America together. (146J)
21 VI 1909
Jung writes that Honegger, who consulted him during a psychotic period, wants to become a psychiatrist. Jung offers him support and encourages him to undergo an analysis. (148J)
20 VIII - 29 IX 1909 Freud, Jung and Ferenczi travel to America together. Just before their departure, Jung meets Assagnoli (18881974). (Wehr, p. 104) Freud and Jung are nominated for honorary doctorates at Clark University. X 1909
Jung zealously starts the study of mythology. (157J, 159J)
10 XI 1909
Freud defines the notion ‘narcism’ for the Viennese group. (Minutes III, p. 86)
27 XI 1909
During a seminar, Freud reviews Jung’s The Significance of the Father in the Destiny of the Individual. (163F, 166F)
2 XII 1909
Jung expresses the idea that the ontogenesis resumes the phylogenesis, regarding his study of mythology in this perspective. (165J)
286
14 XII 1909
PATRICK VANDERMEERSCH
After reading Freud’s analysis of the ‘Ratman’, Jung composes his remarks. (168J)
End 1909 - Beg. 1910 Freud writes ‘Leonardo’. (158F, 166F) I 1910
The ‘Wolfman’ begins his analysis with Freud. (Gardiner, p. 83)
13 I 1910
Freud proposes that the psychoanalysts, as a group, join the Internat. Orden für Ethik und Kultur. (174F, 178J, 179F)
End I 1910
Jung gives a series of lectures on symbolism. (170J, 175J)
13 II 1910
The second edition of Freud’s Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality is ready for publication. (179F)
8 III 1910
Jung departs for an urgent consultation in Chicago. He returns to be present at the Congress. (Letter from Emma Jung, 8 March 1910)
30 - 31 III 1910
Second International Congress at Nürenberg. Foundation of the International Psychoanalytical Association over which Jung presides. Jung presents the book of ‘Schreber’ to Freud. (Jones II, p. 75-77, notes in the Freud/Jung Letters after 183J)
IV 1910
Bleuler refuses to join the International Association. (189J, 190F, 191J, 193J)
V 1910
Publication of Freud’s Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of his Childhood, S.E. XI, 57-137, G.W. VIII, 127-211. (187F)
End V 1910
Foundation of the local branch of the I.P.A. in Zurich. (196J, 198J)
17 VI 1910
Jung reads ‘Leonardo’ and sends his approval to Freud (198J)
19 VI 1910
Freud offers his remarks on the first version of Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido. (199F)
VII - VIII 1910
Freud writes Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning, S.E. XII, 210-226, G.W. VIII, 230238. (199F, 205F)
24 IX 1910
During his vacation, Freud writes ‘Schreber’ but the work is not yet completed. (212F)
IX 1910
Bleuler writes an article stating precisely his position with regard to psychoanalysis. (210J, 211J)
THE FREUD/JUNG DEBATE
287
13 XI 1910
Bleuler’s article The Psychoanalysis of Freud. Defence and critical Remarks is completed (it will be published in the 2nd volume of the Jahrbuch 1910). (220J)
Beginning XII 1910
Both Freud and Jung have finished their texts: Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido I, Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning and ‘Schreber’. (224J, 225F)
25 - 26 XII 1910
Freud and Bleuler meet in Munich. Jung arrives after Bleuler’s departure to see Freud. (226F, 227J, Jones II, p. 158)
17 I 1911
Jung attends a performance of Goethe’s Faust. (230J)
12 II 1911
Freud begins Totem and Taboo, S.E. XIII, 7-161, G.W. IX, 1-194. (234F)
22 II 1911
Adler and Stekel resign as chairman and vice-chairman respectively of the Viennese branch. (238F, Jones II, p. 149)
28 III1911
Honegger commits suicide. (247J, 252J)
Beg. V 1911
Freud attends a performance of King Oedipus. (225F)
24 V 1911
The break with Adler. (Jones II, p. 149-150, 260F)
16 VI 1911
Jung delivers a lecture in Lausanne on the forms of the unconsious fantasy. (259J)
19 VII 1911
Jung notices that his personal relationship with Bleuler is nearly broken off. (265J)
VIII 1911
Publication of the first volume of the Jahrbuch which contains the first part of Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido, Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning and ‘Schreber’. (268F)
11 - 16 VIII 1911
Jung takes part in the First International Congress for Pedagogics at Brussels. He delivers a speech about a child analysis (inserted in The Theory of Psychoanalysis, C.W. IV, § 203-522). (269J)
29 VIII 1911
Toni Wolff (1888-1953) is mentionned for the first time (‘a new discovery of mine’) for her participation in the congress at Weimar. (269J)
1 IX 1911
Freud states to Jung that he is also busy with the problem of the origin of religion. (270F)
16 IX 1911
Freud is Jung’s guest at his new house in Küssnacht.
21 - 22 IX 1911
Third International Congress at Weimar. (Jones II, p. 96, notes in the Freud/Jung Letters after 270F)
288
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Beg. X 1911
Publication of Bleuler’s book Dementia Praecox or the Group of Schizophrenias. (272J)
30 X, 6, 14, 24 XI
Letter from Emma Jung to Freud.
13 XI 1911
Death of Helly Preiswerk (1881-1911). (ZumsteinPreiswerk, p. 147)
14 XI 1911
Jung reports to Freud that he is widening the notion of the libido. (282J)
End XI 1911
Bleuler leaves the International Association for Psychoanalysis. (286F)
11 XII 1911
The chapter on the libido for the second part of Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido is completed. (287J)
Half I 1912
Freud initially composes a theme which will be used later in Totem and Taboo. (298F)
End I 1912
Press campaign in Zurich against psychoanalysis. (295J, Jones II, p. 103, 159)
III 1912
Freud finishes the second chapter of Totem and Taboo. (306F)
22 III 1912
Jung agrees to deliver some lectures at the Fordham University in September 1912. (307J, 308F)
27 IV 1912
Jung writes that he has read Freud’s article on the fear for incest (which will become the first chapter of Totem und Taboo), but that the galleys of the second part of Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido have already been returned to the publisher so that changes in the text are impossible. (312J)
V 1912
Jung explains to Freud his idea concerning the meaning of incest. (312J, 313J, 314 F, 315F, 316F)
15 V 1912
Freud presents the second part of Totem and Taboo to the Viennese group. (editor’s introduction in S.E.)
24 V 1912
‘The Kreuzlingen gesture ’. (316F)
Summer - Automn
Foundation of the ‘commitee’ on the proposal of Jones. Jung travels to America (7 September- ?) and delivers an ’extension course’ at Fordham University. The text has been published in The Theory of Psychoanalysis (C.W. IV, § 2O3-522). On 8 October 1912 he delivers a lecture to the New York Academy of Medicine: On Psychoanalysis (to be found in the C.W. with the adapted title: Psychoanalysis and Neurosis) C.W. IV, § 557-575. (Notes in the Freud/Jung Letters after 321J)
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10 IX 1912
Emma Jung sends a copy of Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido II to Freud. (Letter from Emma Jung, 10 September 1912)
24 XI 1912
The chairmen of the local branches meet in Munich to place control of the Zentralblatt entirely in the hands of Stekel and to found a new Zeitschrift. Freud and Jung reach an understanding with regard to the ‘The Kreuzlingen gesture’. Freud has a fainting attack. (Notes in the Freud/Jung Letters after 327J)
XII 1912
Emotional letters pass between Freud and Jung. Freud proposes to stop their personal correspondence (3 January 1913). (342F)
12 I - III 1913
Correspondence between Jung and R. Loy: Some Crucial Points in Psychoanalysis: A Correspondence between Dr Jung and Dr Loy, C.W. IV, § 576-669.
15 I 1913
Freud presents the third part of Totem and Taboo to the Viennese group. (editor’s introduction in S.E.)
4 VI 1913
Freud proposes the Fourth part of Totem and Taboo to the Viennese group. (editor’s introduction in S.E.)
I 1913
Freud plans to write something about narcism. (S.E. XIV, p. 70)
5 VIII 1913
Jung’s lecture for the Psycho-Medical Society in London: General Aspects of Psychoanalysis, C.W. IV, § 523-556.
6 - 12 VIII 1913
17th International Congress for Medicine at London. Jung gives the same lecture which he delivered the previous year in New York: On Psychoanalysis (to be found in the C.W. with the adapted title: Psychoanalysis and Neurosis) C.W. IV, § 557-575.
IX 1913
Freud mentions in a letter to L. Andreas-Salome: "Timeless=unabreacted and no more." (L. AndreasSalome, p. 170)
7 - 8 IX 1913
Fourth International Congress at Munich. Jung talks about A Contribution to the Study of Psychological Types, C.W. VI, § 858-882, G.W. VI, § 931-950. Jung is re-elected as chairman with 30 votes out of 52. (Notes in the Freud/Jung Letters after 35J, Jones II, p. 113)
27 X 1913
Jung resigns from the editiorial board of the Jahrbuch. (358J)
XII 1913
Jung dreams that he shoots Siegfried (Zofingia Lectures, Editorial introduction by M.L. von Franz, p. XIX)
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I - II 1914
Freud writes On the History of the Psycho-Analytic Movement, S.E. XIV, 7-66, G.W. X, 44-113.
20 IV 1914
Jung resigns as chairman of the International Psychoanalytical Association. (358J)
30 IV 1914
Jung resigns as Privatdozent. (Notes in the Freud/Jung Letters after 358J)
End VI 1914
Termination of the analysis of the ‘Wolfman’. (Gardiner, p. 110)
24 VII 1914
Jung’s lecture in Aberdeen: On Psychological Understanding G.W. III, § 388-424.
Bibliography Since our study was devoted to a specific topic, it has not been our intention to give a complete bibliography on either Freud or Jung. After providing a few bibliographical notes, we will restrict ourselves to a list of the articles and books by Freud and Jung mentioned in our text together with the page numbers where these works are discussed. Thus the list will, at the same time, act as an index. Finally, we will give a selected bibliographical list with the full references of only the books and articles cited in our text and footnotes. Some Bibliographical Notes The German text of the complete works of S. Freud appeared originally in London (1940-1952) but has now also been published in Germany: S. FREUD, Gesammelte Werke, Frankfurt a.M., Fischer, 18 vol., 1960-1968. This series adopts the same chronological order, but not the same divisions of the volumes as the more complete English translation, which also offers a critical edition of the texts: The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, London, The Hogarth Press, 24 vol., 1953-1974. We refer to the German text by the siglum ‘G.W.’ and to the English text by ‘S.E.’ The correspondence between the two versions can be found, page by page, in Sigmund Freud Konkordanz und Gesamtbibliographie, Frankfurt a.M., Fischer, 1975. The complete works of C.G. Jung have also been published in German and in English. Unfortunately, the chronological order has not been maintained and, with only a few exceptions, the latest (and many times completely reworked) version of the text is given without any critical apparatus. The text of Jung’s works has a certain advantage over that of Freud’s. The volume numbers and even the paragraph numbers of each text correspond in both the German and English editions (a few discrepancies in vol. 6, 8, 11, 14 excepted...): Die gesammelte Werke von C.G. Jung, Zurich, Rascher, 1958-1970 and Olten, Walter, 20 vol., 1971- . The Collected Works of C.G. Jung, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 20 vol., 1953-1979. The siglum ‘C.W.’ followed by the paragraph number therefore refers to the same text in both versions without distinction, except in the few cases which are explicitly mentioned. In these case, the siglum ‘G.W.’ will be used for the German edition. During the time it took to complete both series, The English translations of various German titles have been changed. The reader who trusted the lists at the bottom of the earlier issued volumes might be deceived in the same way this author sometimes was. The instrument for avoiding such confusion is provided by the General Bibliography of C.G. Jung’s Writings, which forms the 19th volume of The Collected Works of C.G. Jung and gives the reciprocal crossreferences between the Collected Works and the Gesammelte Werke. For more bibliographical information on Freud, we refer to the bibliographical essay in P. GAY, Freud. A Life for our Time, New York, Norton, 1988. Concerning Jung, the information supplied by Gay on p. 759-760 is, however, rather brief and should be expanded.
292
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The majority of biographical studies on Jung depend almost exclusively on the autobiography recorded by A. Jaffé: JUNG C.G., Memories, Dreams, Reflections, New York, Pantheon Books, revised ed.: 1973. In the English translation, some parts of the German original are missing: Erinnerungen, Träume, Gedanken von C.G. Jung, aufgezeichnet durch Aniela Jaffé, (1st ed.: 1961) Olten, Walter, 6th ed., 1971. Additional information on Jung’s youth has been supplied by a friend of him: G. STEINER, Erinnerungen an Carl Gustav Jung, in: FR. GRIEDER, Basler Stadtbuch 1965. Jahrbuch für Kultur und Geschichte, Basel, von Helbing und Lichtenhahn, 117-163. Based primarily on this same material, two authors adopted opposite viewpoints in their respective attempts to offer a biography of Jung. A highly critical picture is given in P. STERN, C.G. Jung. The Haunted Prophet, New York, Braziller, 1976, which was translated from the original German: C.G. Jung. Prophet des Unbewussten. Eine Biographie, Munich, Piper, 1967. On the other hand, there is perhaps too much admiration in the work authored by Jung’s familiar: B. HANNAH, Jung: his Life and Work. A Biographical Memoir, New York, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1976. A more complete and objective work seems to be that of G. WEHR, Jung. A Biography, Boston & London, Shambhala, 1987, a translation of the original: Carl Gustav Jung. Leben, Werk, Wirkung, Munich, Kösel, 1985. Finally, two other books should be mentioned. One of the first attempts to give a presentation of Jung’s life and work was: E. BENNET, C.G. Jung, London, Barrie & Rockliff, 1961. A more recent and shorter work is that of: V. BROME, Jung. Man and Myth, London, MacMillan, 1978. For a more in-depth understanding of the Jungian theory, the fundamental work is P. HOMANS, Jung in Context. Modernity and the Making of a Psychology, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1979. Concerning the Freud-Jung debate, the following, rather partisan book in favor of Freud should be mentioned, since it has exercised a great deal of influence: E. GLOVER, Freud or Jung? London, Allen and Unwin, 1950. A much better yet barely noticed work was: A. DRY, The Psychology of Jung. A Critical Interpretation, London, Methuen, 1961. The theoretical divergence between both thinkers has been described from Jung’s perspective in: L. FREY-ROHN, From Freud to Jung. A Comparative Study of the Psychology of the Unconscious, New York, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1974, translated from the original: Von Freud zu Jung. Eine vergleichende Studie zur Psychologie des Unbewussten, Zurich, Rascher, 1969. This work is still superior to a more recent book which offers a comparison of the theories of both man: R. FETSCHER, Grundlinien der Tiefenpsychologie von S. Freud and C.G. Jung in vergleichende Darstellung, Stuttgart, Frommann-Holzberg, 1978. L. DONN, Freud and Jung. Years of Friendship, Years of Loss, New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1988, gives an overview of the relationship between the two but pays much less attention to the theoretical divergences involved. A very accurate account of the facts can be found in: R. STEELE, Freud and Jung. Conflicts of Interpretation, London, Routlegde & Kegan Paul, 1982.
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Another very interesting book should not go unmentionned here. Clearly influenced by contemporary French thought, this work focuses upon the problem of the foundation of authority and time in both Freud’s and Jung’s work. Very concise in the presentation of its argument, it presupposes a basic knowledge of both authors: G. HOGENSOHN, Jung’s Struggle with Freud, Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame Press, 1983. Bibliographical References and Index of the Texts by Freud and Jung Discussed in this Book The chronological organization of the S.E. allows us to refer in a clear way to Freud’s text by using the dates as they are given in this series. For Jung’s texts, such a organization is more difficult. The biblio-graphy in the 19th volume of the C.W. provides separate chronological lists of Jung’s works according to their publication in a particular language. Using the list as it is given for the English translation would be very confusing since it would in no way respect the real chronological order of Jung’s writings. We therefore will use the numbers given in the C.W. for the German text as follows. In the cases where a particular work was originally written by Jung in another language, while the German version appeared later, thus rendering the references from the German list in the C.W. confusing, we situated the text in its proper place in our list, indicating this fact with an asterisk (*) after the year. FREUD S., (1894a) The Neuro-Psychoses of Defence, S.E. III, 45-59, G.W. I, 59-73. (108, 109, 126) (1895b) On the Grounds for Detaching a Particular Syndrome from Neurasthenia under the Prescription ‘Anxiety Neurosis’, S.E. III, 85-115, G.W. I, 313-342. (134) (1895d) Studies on Hysteria, S.E. II, 48-305, G.W. I, 99-342. (48, 62, 67, 70, 72, 87, 96, 107-111, 113-114, 133) (1896a) Heredity and the Aetiology of the Neuroses, S.E. III, 141-156, G.W. I, 407-422. (133) (1896b) Further Remarks on the Neuro-Psychoses of Defence, S.E. III, 157-186, G.W. I, 377-403. (63, 114, 127, 133) (1896c) 133)
The Aetiology of Hysteria, S.E. III, 187-221, G.W. I, 423-459. (112,
(1898b) The Psychical Mechanism of Forgetfulness, S.E. III, 287-297, G.W. I, 517-527. (102) (1900a) The Interpretation of Dreams, S.E. IV, G.W. II/III. (61, 67, 72, 92, 94, 107, 110-111, 113) (1901a)
On Dreams, S.E. V, 633-686, G.W. II/III, 643-700. (61, 107, 113)
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(1901b) The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, S.E. VI, 1-279, G.W. IV, 5-310. (72, 102, 107, 113) (1905d) Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, S.E. VII, 123-243, G.W. V, 27-145. (72, 114, 133-135, 142, 145, 172, 181, 188, 203-207, 218, 222, 227, 240, 250, 279, 286) (1906a) My views on the Part played by Sexuality in the Aetiology of Neuroses, S.E. VII, 269-279, G.W. V, 147-159. (133) (1906c) Psychoanalysis and the Establishment of Facts in Legal Proceedings, S.E. IX, 97-114, G.W. VII, 1-15. (130) (1907b) Obsessive Actions and Religious Practices, S.E. IX, 115-127, G.W. VII, 127-139. (161, 190, 196, 200, 218) (1909b) Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-Year-Old Boy, S.E. X, 1-147, G.W. VII, 241-377. (130, 163) (1909d) Notes upon a Case of Obsessional Neurosis, S.E. X, 151-249, G.W. VII, 379-463. (130, 181, 205) (1910c) Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of his Childhood, S.E. XI, 57-137, G.W. VIII, 127-211. (173-174, 192, 198, 205-207, 285-286) (1911b) Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning, S.E. XII, 210-226, G.W. VIII, 230-238. (143, 170, 178-199, 211, 286-287) (1911c) Psycho-Analytic Notes on an Autobiographical Account of a Case of Paranoia, S.E. XII, 9-82, G.W. VIII, 240-320. (170, 192-193, 205, 207, 209) (1912-13) Totem and Taboo, S.E. XIII, 7-161, G.W. IX, 1-194. (170, 180, 216218, 223, 246-247, 249, 254-256) (1912b) The Dynamics of Transference, S.E. XII, 97-108, G.W. VIII, 361-374. (261) (1914d) On the History of the Psycho-Analytic Movement, S.E. XIV, 7-66, G.W. X, 44-113. (208, 244) (1915a) Observations on Transference-Love, S.E. XII, 157-171, G.W. X, 305321. (261) (1918b) From the History of an Infantile Neurosis, S.E. XVII, 1-122, G.W. XII, 27-157. (248) (1921c) Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, S.E. XVIII, 65-143, G.W. XIII, 71-161. (253-257) (1930a) Civilization and its Discontents, S.E. XXI, 57-145, G.W. XIV, 419-506. (219, 253) (1937c) Analysis Terminable and Interminable, S.E. XXIII, 209-253, G.W. XVII, 57-99. (261)
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- and K. ABRAHAM, A Psychoanalytic Dialogue. The Letters of Sigmund Freud and Karl Abraham, London, Hogath Press, 1965. - and L. ANDREAS-SALOME Briefwechsel, (ed. by E. Pfeiffer) Frankfurt a.M., Fischer, 2nd ed.: 1980. - and C.G. JUNG, The Freud/Jung Letters. The Correspondence Between Sigmund Freud and C.G. Jung, (ed. by W. Mc Guire), London, Hogarth Press, 1974. Original: Sigmund Freud - C.G. Jung Briefwechsel, Frankfurt a.M., Fischer, 1974. JUNG C.G., (1896-99)The Zofingia Lectures, (Supplementary volume A to the Collected Works) London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983. (44) (1902a) On the Psychology and Pathology of So-Called Occult Phenomena, C.W. I, § 1-150. (44-48, 70-72, 61-63, 69-72, 85, 105-106) (1902b) A Case of Hysterical Stupor in a Prisoner in Detention, C.W. I, § 226-300. (72, 87) (1903a)
On Manic Mood Disorder, C.W. I, § 187-225. (73, 82)
(1903b) On Simulated Insanity, C.W. I, § 301-355. (84, 87-90) (1904a) The Associations of Normal Subjects, C.W. II, § 1-498. (73, 76-77, 79, 83, 94-95, 101-103, 112, 113) (1904c) Medical Opinion on a Case of Simulated Insanity, C.W. I, § 356-429. (72, 88-89) (1905a)
Cryptomnesia, C.W. I, § 166-186. (73, 106)
(1905c) Experimental Observations on the Faculty of Memory, C.W. II, § 639659. (73, 92, 95, 97) (1905d) The Psychological Diagnosis of Evidence, C.W. I, § 478-484. (73, 76, 83, 85, 90-91) (1905h) The Reaction Time Ratio in the Association Experiments, C.W. II, § 560-638. (73, 83, 95-97, 110) (1906b) The Psychopathological Significance of the Association Experiment, C.W. II, § 863-917. (74) (1906d) A Third and Final Opinion on Two Contradictory Psychiatric Diagnoses, C.W. I, § 430-477. (74, 97) (1906g) Freud’s Theory of Hysteria: A Reply to Aschaffenburg, C.W. IV, § 1-26. (130-131, 145) (1906i) Psychoanalysis and Association Experiments, C.W. II, § 660-727. (74, 93, 98, 113, 130)
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(1906j) Association, Dream, and Hysterical Symptom, C.W. II, § 793-862. (74, 93-94, 100, 131) (1906k) The Psychological Diagnosis of Evidence, C.W. II, § 728-792. (73, 76, 83, 85, 90-91) (1907a) The Psychology of Dementia Praecox, C.W. III, § 1-316. (56, 71-74, 83, 101-103, 113, 122-124, 127-128, 131, 154) (1907e) Disturbances of Reproduction in the Association Experiment, C.W. II, § 918-938. (1445) (1908a)
The Content of the Psychoses, C.W. III, § 317-387. (147, 271)
(1908d) The Significance of Freud’s Teachings for Neurology and Psychiatry, C.W. XVIII, § 922. (1908m) The Freudian Theory of Hysteria, C.W. IV, § 27-63. (144-145, 282283) (1909c) The Significance of the Father in the Destiny of the Individual, C.W. IV, § 693-744. (157-164) (1910k) Psychic Conflicts in a Child, C.W. XVII, § 1-79. (163, 202) (1910m) Abstracts of the Psychological Works of Swiss Authors, C.W. XVIII, § 934-1025. (201) (1911-12*) Psychology of the Unconscious. A Study of the Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido. A Contribution to the History of Evolution of Thought, (transl. B. Hinkle), (1st ed.: 1916) London, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1921. To avoid confusion with another book by Jung bearing the title The Psychology of the Unconscious (1943, C.W. VII, § 1-201), we refer to the former using the literal translation of the German title Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido, thus: Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido. (56, 116, 170, 173, 177, 179, 180, 183, 184, 186-187, 189, 194-196, 198, 200-203, 212-218, 222-227, 238239, 241, 244-247, 252, 268-288) (1911-12*) Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido, see: Psychology of the Unconscious. (1911c) A Criticism of Bleuler’s Theory of Schizophrenic Negativism, C.W. III, § 425-437. (202, 215) (1912*) On Psychoanalysis. This same lecture was repeated by Jung in 1913 and can be found in the C.W. with the adapted title: Psychoanalysis and Neurosis, C.W. IV, § 557-575. (167, 244-247, 288-289) (1912d) New Paths in Psychology. The first edition of C.W. VII gave the translation of an incomplete version of this text in § 407-436. See G.W. VII, p. 268291 (for unknown reasons, the German edition does not employ paragraph numbering here). (223) (1912e+f) Two Letters on Psychoanalysis, C.W. XVIII, § 1034-1040. (223)
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(1912g) Concerning Psychoanalysis, C.W. IV, § 197-202. (223) (1913*) A Contribution to the Study of Psychological Types, C.W. VI, § 858882, G.W. VI, § 931-950. The numbers of the paragraphs do not correspond in the English and the German versions of volume VI. (247, 267-268, 273) (1913*) General Aspects of Psychoanalysis, C.W. IV, § 523-556. (247) (1913a) The Theory of Psychoanalysis, C.W. IV, § 2O3-522. (206, 211, 227, 238-239, 244) (1914a)
On Psychological Understanding, G.W. III, § 388-424. (271)
(1916*) The Structure of the Unconscious, C.W. VII, § 437-507. (271, 273, 275) (1919*) Instinct and the Unconscious, G.W. VIII, § 263-282. (276) (1935a) (271)
The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious, C.W.§ VII, 202-406.
(1958i)
Schizophrenia, C.W. III, § 553-584. (153)
(1962*) Memories, Dreams, Reflections, (1st ed.: 1961), New York, Pantheon Books, revised ed.: 1973. In the English translation, some parts of the German original: Erinnerungen, Träume, Gedanken von C.G. Jung, aufgezeichnet durch Aliela Jaffé, Olten, Walter, 6th ed., 1971, are missing. (41, 45, 166-167, 190, 246) - and E. BLEULER, Komplexe und Krankheitursachen bei Dementia Praecox In: Zentralblatt für Nervenheilkunde 31 (1908) 220-227. (149) - and S. FREUD, The Freud/Jung Letters. The Correspondence Between Sigmund Freud and C.G. Jung, (ed. by W. Mc Guire), London, Hogarth Press, 1974. Original: Sigmund Freud - C.G. Jung Briefwechsel, Frankfurt a.M., Fischer, 1974. - and R. LOY, (1914b) Some Crucial Points in Psychoanalysis: A Correspondence between Dr Jung and Dr Loy, in JUNG C.G., C.W. IV, § 576-669. (246) - and FR. PETERSON, (1907*) Psychophysical Investigations with the Galvanometer and Pneumograph in Normal and Insane Individuals, C.W. II, § 1036-1079. (73, 91, 124) - and CH. RIKSCHER, (1907*) Further Investigations on the Galvanic Phenomenon and Respiration in Normal and Insane Individuals, C.W. II, § 1180-1311. (73, 91)
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Bibliographical References of the Other Texts Quoted in this Book ABRAHAM K., On the Significance of Juvenile Traumas for the Symptomatology of Dementia Praecox, (1st ed. 1907). In: K. ABRAHAM, Clinical Papers and Essays on Psychoanalysis, New York, Basic Books, 1955, 13-20. - , The Experiencing of Sexual Traumas as a Form of Sexual Activity, (1st ed. 1907). In: Selected Papers of Karl Abraham, New York, Basic Books, 1968, 47-63. - , The Psycho-Sexual Differences between Hysteria and Dementia Praecox, (1st ed. 1908). In: Selected Papers of Karl Abraham, 64-79. - and K. ABRAHAM, A Psychoanalytic Dialogue. The Letters of Sigmund Freud and Karl Abraham, London, Hogarth Press, 1965. ALLPORT G.W., The Individual and His Religion, New York, MacMillan, 1950. - and J.M. ROSS, Personal Religious Orientation and Prejudice. In: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 5 (1967) 432-443. ANDREAS-SALOME L., The Freud Journal, New York, Basic Books, 1964. BATSON C.D. and W.L. VENTIS, The Religious Experience. A Social Psychological Experience, New York, Oxford University Press, 1982. BERCHERIE P., Les fondements de la clinique, Paris, Ornicar? & Seuil, 1980. BERGER P., The Sacred Canopy. Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion, New York, Doubleday, 1967. BETTELHEIM B., The Uses of Enchantment. The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales, London, Thames, 1976. BLEULER E., Versuch einer naturwissenschaftlichen Betrachtung der psychologischen Grundbegriffe. In: Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie und psychischgerichtliche Medicin 50 (1894) 133-168. - , Affektivität, Suggestibilität, Paranoia, Halle, Marhold, 1906. - , Bewusstsein und Assoziation. In: C.G. JUNG (ed.), Diagnostische Assoziationsstudien, vol. I, Leipzig, Barth, 1906, 229-257. - , Dementia Praecox or the Group of Schizophrenias, New York, International University Press, 1950. Original ed.: Dementia praecox oder Gruppe der Schizophrenien. In: G. ASCHAFFENBURG (ed.), Handbuch der Psychiatrie, Spezieller Teil, 4. Abteilung, 1. Hälfte, Leipzig, Deuticke, 1911. - and JUNG C.G., Komplexe und Krankheitursachen bei Dementia Praecox. In: Zentralblatt für Nervenheilkunde 31 (1908) 220-227. CAROTENUTO A. and C. TROMBETTA, Diario di una segretta simetria. Sabina Spielrein tra Jung e Freud, Rome, Astrolabia, 1980. French reworked translation: Sabina Spielrein entre Freud et Jung, éd. française de M. GUIBAL et J. NOBÉCOURT, Paris, Aubier-Montaigne, 1981. English translation of the Italian original: A Secret
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Symmetry. Sabina Spielrein Between Jung and Freud, New York, Pantheon Books, 1982. CLAPARÈDE E., Théodore Flournoy. Sa vie, son oeuvre. In: Archives de Psychologie 18 (1923) 1-125. CREUZER F., Symbolik und Mythologie der alten Völker, Leipzig, 1810-1812 (2nd ed.: 1819-1822; 3rd ed.: 1836-1843; reprint: New York, Arno Press, 1978, 6 vol). DARNTON R., Mesmerism and the End of the Enlightenment in France, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1968. DURANDEAUX J., Du renoncement homosexuel au double jeu du charme, Paris, Stock, 1977. ELLENBERGER H., The Discovery of the Unconscious. The History and Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry, London, Allen Lane, 1970. FERENCZI S., Ueber die Rolle der Homoseksualität in der Pathogenese des Paranoia. In: Jahrbuch für psychoanalytische und psychopathologische Forschungen 3 (1911) 101-119. FLOURNOY O., Théodore et Léopold. De Théodore Flournoy à la psychanalyse, Geneva, La Baconnière, 1986. FLOURNOY TH., Des Indes à la planète Mars. Etudes d’un cas de somnambulisme avec glossolalie, Geneva, Atar, 1900. Reprint: Paris, Seuil, 1983 and Genève, Slatkine Reprints, 1983. - , Métaphysique et psychologie, Geneva, Kundig, 1919. GANSER S., Ueber einen eigenartigen hysterischen Dämmerzustand. In: Archiv für Psychiatrie und Nervenkrankheiten 30 (1898) 633-640. An English translation appeared in the British Journal of Criminology 5 (1965) 120-130. GARDINER M. (ed.), The Wolf-Man and Sigmund Freud, New York, Basic Books, 1971. HARTMANN E. 7th ed.: 1876.
VON,
Philosophie des Unbewussten (1st ed.: 1869) Berlin, Duncker,
HOELLER S.A., The Gnostic Jung and the Seven Sermons to the Dead, Madras/London, The Theosophical Publishing House, 1982. INMAN TH., Ancient Pagan and Modern Christian Symbolism Exposed and Explained, Liverpool, for the author, 1869. JANET P., L’état mental des hystériques, (1st ed.: 1894) Paris, Alcan, 2nd ed.: 1911. - , L’automatisme psychologique. Essai de psychologie expérimentale sur les formes inférieures de l’activité humaine, Paris, Alcan, 1889. - , Les névroses, Paris, Flammarion, 1909. JASTROW J., La subconscience, Paris, Alcan, 1908.
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Name Index Abraham 150-153, 158, 171, 244 Allport 30, 31 Anna O. 62 Aschaffenburg 74-77, 130, 131, 141 Babette 124, 155 Batson 30, 31 Bercherie 116 Berger 23 Bettelheim 22 Binswanger 132, 226, 227 Bleuler 42, 45, 48, 55-61, 69-72, 76, 78-82, 85, 95-99, 107-109, 112, 116, 118-123, 128, 141-144, 149-151, 158, 174, 202-203, 210, 214, 215, 217, 230 Boisen 29 Carotenuto 217 Creuzer 172 Darnton 258 de Saussure 54 Dry 43, 65 Durandeaux 205 Ellenberger 42, 45, 48, 63 Emma 159, 160, 222, 227 Federn 207, 217 Ferenczi 156, 167, 171, 204, 205, 244, 246 Fliess 216 Flournoy 53-56, 61, 67, 70, 184 Freud, Anna 261 Ganser 73, 86, 87 Gardiner 248, 261 Gay 64 Grieder 42 Gross 146, 150, 153-155, 166 Hall 55, 167 Hartmann 37, 40, 41, 53, 167 Hoeller 269, 270 Honegger 202, 215 Inman 172 James 54 Jastrow 53 Jones 130, 132, 217, 225, 244, 246, 247 Kerner 64, 65 Klopfer 91 Knight 172 Kraepelin 48, 74-77, 116-118, 122, 128, 137, 153 Lacan 217, 219, 262-265, 279
304 Leonardo da Vinci Luckmann Maeder Marx Mesmer Miller Morel Nietzsche Nunberg Otto Peterson Pinel Riklin Roazen Robinson Rolland Ross Sadger Schleiermacher Schopenhauer Schreber Smith Staude Steele Steiner Stern Stollberg Stroeken Tausk van Belzen van Ouwerkerk Vandermeersch Ventis Veraguth Vergote Vogt Wehr Weima Wundt Ziehen Zumstein-Preiswerk
PATRICK VANDERMEERSCH
173, 174, 192, 200, 207-209 32 244, 247 18, 20 258 56, 177, 179, 184, 194-197, 199, 233, 234, 238 116, 117 43, 69, 105 207, 217 29, 43, 146, 150, 153, 166 73 257, 258 73, 76, 79, 82, 122, 171, 201, 202 215 252 219, 253 30 207, 208 15-18, 43, 218, 253 40, 43, 229 34, 170, 176, 177, 179-181, 183, 184, 191-194, 204, 206-212, 217-219, 221-223, 227, 244, 248, 251, 254, 276, 279 54, 55, 67 46 270 42 238 29 29 215 31 19 16, 19, 24, 258, 278 31 91 28, 32 53 42, 43, 166, 252 31 46, 53, 74, 77, 99, 132 45-48, 57, 59-61, 68, 69, 80, 83, 85, 99, 109 43, 44, 63, 71