Please assist with assignment
Criticallythink about Sigmund Freud and his Psychoanalytic Theory compared with the neo-Freudians and their associated theories pertaining to shaping personality. Familiarize yourself with Module 5’s objectives, introduction, videos, and articles. Use the articles in Module 5 as your primary reference, then use the St. Leo Online Library for peer review sources and to find relevance to this week’s topic.
Questions:
1. Sigmund Freud is the founder of psychoanalysis and significantly influenced the psychology field. Freud’s followers, the neo-Freudians, modified his views to create their own theories regarding shaping personalities. Choose one of the neo-Freudians from the readings/videos. How did his/her view differ from that of Freud and how were they similar?
2. This week’s reading emphasizes how Freud believed psychoanalysis was his creation, but he was not a stranger to the influx of criticism he received from his views (Freud, 1914). What are some of the major criticisms of his theory and how has it evolved to be utilized today?
Readings
Freud, S. (1917). The history of the psychoanalytic movement (A. A. Brill, Trans.).
Jung, C. G. (1921/1923). General description of the types. Chapter 10 of Psychological types (H.G. Bayes, Trans.).
Basic Overview of the Neo-Freudians
Classics in the History of Psychology
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Christopher D. Green
York University, Toronto, Ontario
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Psychological Types
C. G. Jung (
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9
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Translation by H. Godwyn Baynes (1923)
CHAPTER X
GENERAL DESCRIPTION OF THE TYPES
A. INTRODUCTION
In the following pages I shall attempt a general description of the types, and my first concern must be with the two general types I have termed introverted and extraverted. But, in addition, I shall also try to give a certain characterization of those special types whose particularity is due to the fact that his most differentiated function plays the principal role in an individual’s adaptation or orientation to life. The former I would term general attitude types, since they are distinguished by the direction of general interest or libido movement, while the latter I would call function-types.
The general-attitude types, as I have pointed out more than once, are differentiated by their particular attitude to the object. The introvert’s attitude to the object is an abstracting one; at bottom, he is always facing the problem of how libido can be withdrawn from the object, as though an attempted ascendancy on. the part of the object had to be continually frustrated. The extravert, on the contrary, maintains a positive relation to the object. To such an extent does he affirm its importance that his subjective attitude is continually being orientated by, and related to the object. An fond, the object can never have sufficient value; for him, therefore, its importance must always be paramount.
The two types are so essentially different, presenting so striking a contrast, that their existence, even to the
[
p. 413] uninitiated in psychological matters becomes an obvious fact, when once attention has been drawn to it. Who does not know those taciturn, impenetrable, often shy natures, who form such a vivid contrast to these other open, sociable, serene maybe, or at least friendly and accessible characters, who are on good terms with all the world, or, even when disagreeing with it, still hold a relation to it by which they and it are mutually affected.
Naturally, at first, one is inclined to regard such differences as mere individual idiosyncrasies. But anyone with the opportunity of gaining a fundamental knowledge of many men will soon discover that such a far-reaching contrast does not merely concern the individual case, but is a question of typical attitudes, with a universality far greater than a limited psychological experience would at first assume. In reality, as the preceding chapters will have shown, it is a question of a fundamental opposition; at times clear and at times obscure, but always emerging whenever we are dealing with individuals whose personality is in any way pronounced. Such men are found not only among the educated classes, but in every rank of society; with equal distinctness, therefore, our types can be demonstrated among labourers and peasants as among the most differentiated members of a nation. Furthermore, these types over-ride the distinctions of sex, since one finds the same contrasts amongst women of all classes. Such a universal distribution could hardly arise at the instigation of consciousness, ie. as the result of a conscious and deliberate choice of attitude. If this were the case, a definite level of society, linked together by a similar education and environment and, therefore, correspondingly localized, would surely have a majority representation of such an attitude. But the actual facts are just the reverse, for the types have, apparently, quite a random distribution. [p. 414] In the same family one child is introverted, and another extraverted.
Since, in the light of these facts, the attitude-type regarded as a general phenomenon having an apparent random distribution, can be no affair of conscious judgment or intention, its existence must be due to some unconscious instinctive cause. The contrast of types, therefore, as a, universal psychological. phenomenon, must in some way or other have its biological precursor.
The relation between subject and object, considered biologically, is always a relation of adaptation, since every relation between subject and object presupposes mutually modifying effects from either side. These modifications constitute the adaptation. The typical attitudes to the object, therefore, are adaptation processes. Nature knows two fundamentally different ways of adaptation, which determine the further existence of the living organism the one is by increased fertility, accompanied by a relatively small degree of defensive power and individual conservation; the other is by individual equipment of manifold means of self-protection, coupled with a relatively insignificant fertility. This biological contrast seems not merely to be the analogue, but also the general foundation of our two psychological modes of adaptation, At this point a mere general indication must suffice; on the one hand, I need only point to the peculiarity of the extravert, which constantly urges him to spend and propagate himself in every way, and, on the other, to the tendency of the introvert to defend himself against external claims, to conserve himself from any expenditure of energy directly related to the object, thus consolidating for himself the most secure and impregnable position.
Blake’s intuition did not err when he described the two forms as the “prolific” and the “devouring” [1] As is [p. 415] shown by the general biological example, both forms are current and successful after their kind ; this is equally true of the typical attitudes. What the one brings about by a multiplicity of relations, the other gains by monopoly.
The fact that often in their earliest years children display an unmistakable typical attitude forces us to assume that it cannot possibly be the struggle for existence, as it is generally understood, which constitutes the compelling factor in favour of a definite attitude. We might, however, demur, and indeed with cogency, that even the tiny infant, the very babe at the breast, has already an unconscious psychological adaptation to perform, inasmuch as the special character of the maternal influence leads to specific reactions in the child. This argument, though appealing to incontestable facts, has none the less to yield before the equally unarguable fact that two children of the same mother may at a very early age exhibit opposite types, without the smallest accompanying change in the attitude of the mother. Although nothing would induce me to underestimate the well-nigh incalculable importance of parental influence, this experience compels me to conclude that the decisive factor must be looked for in the disposition of the child. The fact that, in spite of the greatest possible similarity of external conditions, one child will assume this type while another that, must, of course, in the last resort he ascribed to individual disposition. Naturally in saying this I only refer to those cases which occur under normal conditions. Under abnormal conditions, i.e. when there is an extreme and, therefore, abnormal attitude in the mother, the children can also be coerced into a relatively similar attitude; but this entails a violation of their individual disposition, which quite possibly would have assumed another type if no abnormal and disturbing external influence had intervened. As a rule, whenever such a falsification of type takes place as a result of external [p. 416] influence, the individual becomes neurotic later, and a cur can successfully be sought only in a development of that attitude which corresponds with the individual’s natural way.
As regards the particular disposition, I know not what to say, except that there are clearly individuals who have either a greater readiness and capacity for one way, or for whom it is more congenial to adapt to that way rather than the other. In the last analysis it may well be that physiological causes, inaccessible to our knowledge, play a part in this. That this may be the case seems to me not improbable, in view of one’s experience that a reversal of type often proves exceedingly harmful to the physiological well-being of the organism, often provoking an acute state of exhaustion.
B. The Extraverted Type
In our descriptions of this and the following type it will be necessary, in the interest of lucid and comprehensive presentation, to discriminate between the conscious and unconscious psychology. Let us first lend our minds to a description of the phenomena of consciousness.
(1)THE GENERAL ATTITUDE OF CONSCIOUSNESS
Everyone is, admittedly, orientated by the data with which the outer world provides him ; yet we see that this may be the case in a way that is only relatively decisive. Because it is cold out of doors, one man is persuaded to wear his overcoat, another from a desire to become hardened finds this unnecessary; one man admires the new tenor because all the world admires him, another withholds his approbation not because he dislikes him but because in his view the subject of general admiration is not thereby proved to be admirable; one submits to [p. 417] a given state of affairs because his experience argues nothing else to be possible, another is convinced that, although it has repeated itself a thousand times in the same way, the thousand and first will be different. The former is orientated by the objective data; the latter reserves a view, which is, as it were, interposed between himself and the objective fact. Now, when the orientation to the object and to objective facts is so predominant that the most frequent and essential decisions and actions are determined, not by subjective values but by objective relations, one speaks of an extraverted attitude. When this is habitual, one speaks of an extraverted type. If a man so thinks, feels, and acts, in a word so lives, as to correspond directly with objective conditions and their claims, whether in a good sense or ill, he is extraverted. His life makes it perfectly clear that it is the objective rather than the subjective value which plays the greater role as the determining factor of his consciousness. He naturally has subjective values, but their determining power has less importance than the external objective conditions. Never, therefore, does he expect to find any absolute factors in his own inner life, since the only ones he knows are outside himself. Epimetheus-like, his inner life succumbs to the external necessity, not of course without a struggle; which, however, always ends in favour of the objective determinant. His entire consciousness looks outwards to the world, because the important and decisive determination always comes to him from without. But it comes to him from without, only because that is where he expects it. All the distinguishing characteristics of his psychology, in so far as they do not arise from the priority of one definite psychological function or from individual peculiarities, have their origin in this basic attitude. Interest and attention follow objective happenings and, primarily, those of the immediate environment. Not [p. 418] only persons, but things, seize and rivet his interest. His actions, therefore, are also governed by the influence of persons and things. They are directly related to objective data and determinations, and are, as it were, exhaustively explainable on these grounds. Extraverted action is recognizably related to objective conditions. In so far it is not purely reactive to environmental stimuli, it character is constantly applicable to the actual circumstances, and it finds adequate and appropriate play within the limits of the objective situation. It has no serious tendency to transcend these bounds. The same holdsgood for interest: objective occurrences have a well-nigh inexhaustible charm, so that in the normal course the extravert’s interest makes no other claims.
The moral laws which govern his action coincide with the corresponding claims of society, i.e. with the generally valid moral view-point. If the generally valid view were different, the subjective moral guiding line would also be different, without the general psychological habitus being in any way changed. It might almost seem, although it, is by no means the case, that this rigid determination by objective factors would involve an altogether ideal and complete adaptation to general conditions of life. An accommodation to objective data, such as we have described, must, of course, seem a complete adaptation to the extraverted view, since from this standpoint no other criterion exists. But from a higher point of view, it is by no means granted that the standpoint of objectively given, facts is the normal one under all circumstances. Objective conditions may be either temporarily or locally abnormal. An individual who is accommodated to such con certainly conforms to the abnormal style of his surroundings, but, in relation to the universally valid laws of life. He is, in common with his milieu, in an abnormal position. The individual may, however, thrive in such surroundings [p. 419] but only to the point when he, together with his whole milieu, is destroyed for transgressing the universal laws of life. He must inevitably participate in this downfall with the same completeness as he was previously adjusted to the objectively valid situation. He is adjusted, but not adapted, since adaptation demands more than a mere frictionless participation in the momentary conditions of the immediate environment. (Once more I would point to Spitteler’s Epimetheus). Adaptation demands an observance of laws far more universal in their application than purely local and temporary conditions. Mere adjustment is the limitation of the normal extraverted type. On the one hand, the extravert owes his normality to his ability to fit into existing conditions with relative ease. He naturally pretends to nothing more than the satisfaction of existing objective possibilities, applying himself, for instance, to the calling which offers sound prospective possibilities in the actual situation in time and place. He tries to do or to make just what his milieu momentarily needs and expects from him, and abstains from every innovation that is not entirely obvious, or that in any way exceeds the expectation of those around him. But on the other hand, his normality must also depend essentially upon whether the extravert takes into account the actuality of his subjective needs and requirements; and this is just his weak point, for the tendency of his type has such a strong outward direction that even the most obvious of all subjective facts, namely the condition of his own body, may quite easily receive inadequate consideration. The body is not sufficiently objective or ‘external,’ so that the satisfaction of simple elementary requirements which are indispensable to physical well-being are no longer given their place. The body accordingly suffers, to say nothing of the soul. Although, as a rule, the extravert takes small note of [p. 420] this latter circumstance, his intimate domestic circle perceives it all the more keenly. His loss of equilibrium is perceived by himself only when abnormal bodily sensations make themselves felt.
These tangible facts he cannot ignore. It is natural he should regard them as concrete and ‘objective’, since for his mentality there exists only this and nothing more — in himself. In others he at once sees “imagination” at work. A too extraverted attitude may actually become so regardless of the subject that the latter is entirely sacrificed to so-called objective claims; to the demands, for instance, of a continually extending business, because orders lie claiming one’s attention or because profitable possibilities are constantly being opened up which must instantly be seized.
This is the extravert’s danger; he becomes caught up in objects, wholly losing himself in their toils. The functional (nervous) or actual physical disorders which result from this state have a compensatory significance, forcing the subject to an involuntary self-restriction. Should the symptoms be functional, their peculiar formation may symbolically express the psychological situation; a singer, for instance, whose fame quickly reaches a dangerous pitch tempting him to a disproportionate outlay of energy, is suddenly robbed of his high tones by a nervous inhibition. A man of very modest beginnings rapidly reaches a social position of great influence and wide prospects, when suddenly he is overtaken by a psychogenic state, with all the symptoms of mountain-sickness. Again, a man on the point of marrying an idolized woman of doubtful character, whose value he extravagantly over-estimates, is seized with a spasm of the oesophagus, which forces him to a regimen of two cups of milk in the day, demanding his three-hourly attention. All visits to his fianceé are thus effectually stopped, and no choice is left to him [p. 421] but to busy himself with his bodily nourishment. A man who through his own energy and enterprise has built up a vast business, entailing an intolerable burden of work, is afflicted by nervous attacks of thirst, as a result of which he speedily falls a victim to hysterical alcoholism.
Hysteria is, in my view, by far the most frequent neurosis with the extraverted type. The classical example of hysteria is always characterized by an exaggerated rapport with the members of his circle, and a frankly imitatory accommodation to surrounding conditions. A constant tendency to appeal for interest and to produce impressions upon his milieu is a basic trait of the hysterical nature. A correlate to this is his proverbial suggestibility, his pliability to another person’s influence. Unmistakable extraversion comes out in the communicativeness of the hysteric, which occasionally leads to the divulging of purely phantastic contents; whence arises the reproach of the hysterical lie.
To begin with, the ‘hysterical’ character is an exaggeration of the normal attitude; it is then complicated by compensatory reactions from the side of the unconscious, which manifests its opposition to the extravagant extraversion in the form of physical disorders, whereupon an introversion of psychic energy becomes unavoidable. Through this reaction of the unconscious, another category of symptoms arises which have a more introverted character. A morbid intensification of phantasy activity belongs primarily to this category. From this general characterization of the extraverted attitude, let us now turn to a description of the modifications, which the basic psychological functions undergo as a result of this attitude. [p. 422]
(II) THE ATTITUDE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS
It may perhaps seem odd that I should speak of attitude of the ‘unconscious’. As I have already sufficiently indicated, I regard the relation of the unconscious to the conscious as compensatory. The unconscious, according to this view, has as good a claim to an I attitude’ as the conscious.
In the foregoing section I emphasized the tendency to a certain one-sidedness in the extraverted attitude, due to the controlling power of the objective factor in the course, of psychic events. The extraverted type is constantly tempted to give himself away (apparently) in favour of the object, and to assimilate his subject to the object. I have referred in detail to the ultimate consequences of this exaggeration of the extraverted attitude, viz. to the injurious suppression of the subjective factor. It is only, to be expected, therefore, that a psychic compensation of the conscious extraverted attitude will lay especial weight upon the subjective factor, i.e. we shall have to prove a strong egocentric tendency in the unconscious. Practical experience actually furnishes this proof. I do not wish to enter into a casuistical survey at this point, so must refer my readers to the ensuing sections, where I shall attempt to present the characteristic attitude of the unconscious from the angle of each function-type, In this section we are merely concerned with the compensation of a general extraverted attitude; I shall, therefore, confine myself to an equally general characterization of the compensating attitude of the unconscious.
The attitude of the unconscious as an effective complement to the conscious extraverted attitude has a definitely introverting character. It focusses libido upon the subjective factor, i.e. all those needs and claims which are stifled or repressed by a too extraverted conscious [p. 423] attitude. It may be readily gathered from what has been said in the previous section that a purely objective orientation does violence to a multitude of subjective emotions, intentions, needs, and desires, since it robs them of the energy which is their natural right. Man is not a machine that one can reconstruct, as occasion demands, upon other lines and for quite other ends, in the hope that it will then proceed to function, in a totally different way, just as normally as before. Man bears his age-long history with him in his very structure is written the history of mankind.
The historical factor represents a vital need, to which a wise economy must respond. Somehow the past must become vocal, and participate in the present. Complete assimilation to the object, therefore, encounters the protest of the suppressed minority, elements belonging to the past and existing from the beginning. From this quite general consideration it may be understood why it is that the unconscious claims of the extraverted type have an essentially primitive, infantile, and egoistical character. When Freud says that the unconscious is “only able to wish”, this observation contains a large measure of truth for the unconscious of the extraverted type. Adjustment and assimilation to objective data prevent inadequate subjective impulses from reaching consciousness. These tendencies (thoughts, wishes, affects, needs, feelings, etc.) take on a regressive character corresponding with the degree of their repression, ie. the less they are recognized, the more infantile and archaic they become. The conscious attitude robs them of their relatively disposable energycharge, only leaving them the energy of which it cannot deprive them. This remainder, which still possesses a potency not to be under-estimated, can be described only as primeval instinct. Instinct can never be rooted out from an individual by any arbitrary measures; it requires [p. 424] the slow, organic transformation of many generations to effect a radical change, for instinct is the energic [sic] expression of a definite organic foundation.
Thus with every repressed tendency a considerable sum of energy ultimately remains. This sum corresponds with the potency of the instinct and guards its effectiveness, notwithstanding the deprivation of energy which made it unconscious. The measure of extraversion in the conscious attitude entails a like degree of infantilism and archaism in the attitude of the unconscious. The egoism which so often characterizes the extravert’s unconscious attitude goes far beyond mere childish selfishness; it even verges upon the wicked and brutal. It is here we find in fullest bloom that incest-wish described by Freud. It is self-evident that these things are entirely unconscious, remaining altogether hidden from the eyes of the uninitiated observer so long as the extraversion of the conscious attitude does not reach an extreme stage. But wherever an exaggeration of the conscious standpoint takes place, the unconscious also comes to light in a symptomatic form, i.e. the unconscious egoism, infantilism, and archaism lose their original compensatory characters, and appear in more or less open opposition to the conscious attitude. This process begins in the form of an absurd exaggeration of the conscious standpoint, which is aimed at a further repression of the unconscious, but usually ends in a reductio ad absurdum of the conscious attitude, i.e. a collapse. The catastrophe may be an objective one, since the objective aims gradually become falsified by the subjective. I remember the case of a printer who, starting as a mere employé, worked his way up through two decades of hard struggle, till at last he was the independent possessor of a very extensive business. The more the business extended, the more it increased its hold upon him, until gradually every other interest [p. 425] was allowed to become merged in it. At length he was completely enmeshed in its toils, and, as we shall soon see, this surrender eventually proved his ruin. As a sort of compensation to his exclusive interest in the business, certain memories of his childhood came to life. As a child he had taken great delight in painting and drawing. But, instead of renewing this capacity for its own sake as a balancing side-interest, he canalized it into his business and began to conceive ‘artistic’ elaborations of his products. His phantasies unfortunately materialized: he actually began to produce after his own primitive and infantile taste, with the result that after a very few years his business went to pieces. He acted in obedience to one of our ‘civilized ideals’, which enjoins the energetic man to concentrate everything upon the one end in view. But he went too far, and merely fell a victim to the power of his subjective infantile claims.
But the catastrophic solution may also be subjective, i.e. in the form of a nervous collapse. Such a solution always comes about as a result of the unconscious counterinfluence, which can ultimately paralyse conscious action. In which case the claims of the unconscious force themselves categorically upon consciousness, thus creating a calamitous cleavage which generally reveals itself in two ways: either the subject no longer knows what he really wants and nothing any longer interests him, or he wants too much at once and has too keen an interest-but in impossible things. The suppression of infantile and primitive claims, which is often necessary on “civilized” grounds, easily leads to neurosis, or to the misuse of narcotics such as alcohol, morphine, cocaine, etc. In more extreme cases the cleavage ends in suicide.
It is a salient peculiarity of unconscious tendencies that, just in so far as they are deprived of their energy by a lack of conscious recognition, they assume a correspond- [p. 426] ingly destructive character, and as soon as this happen their compensatory function ceases. They cease to have a compensatory effect as soon as they reach a depth or stratum that corresponds with a level of culture absolutely incompatible with our own. From this moment the unconscious tendencies form a block, which is opposed to the conscious attitude in every respect ; such a bloc inevitably leads to open conflict.
In a general way, the compensating attitude of the unconscious finds expression in the process of psychic equilibrium. A normal extraverted attitude does not, of course, mean that the individual behaves invariably in accordance with the extraverted schema. Even in the same individual many psychological happenings may be observed, in which the mechanism of introversion is concerned. A habitus can be called extraverted only when the mechanism of extraversion predominates. In such a case the most highly differentiated function has a constantly extraverted application, while the inferior functions are found in the service of introversion, i.e. the more valued function, because the more conscious, is more completely subordinated to conscious control and purpose, whilst the less conscious, in other words, the partly unconscious inferior functions are subjected to conscious free choice in a much smaller degree.
The superior function is always the expression of the conscious personality, its aim, its will, and its achievement, whilst the inferior functions belong to the things that happen to one. Not that they merely beget blunders, e.g. lapsus linguae or lapsus calami, but they may also breed half or three-quarter resolves, since the inferior functions also possess a slight degree of consciousness. The extraverted feeling type is a classical example of this, for he enjoys an excellent feeling rapport with his entourage, yet occasionally opinions of an incomparable tactlessness [p. 427] will just happen to him. These opinions have their source in his inferior and subconscious thinking, which is only partly subject to control and is insufficiently related to the object ; to a large extent, therefore, it can operate without consideration or responsibility.
In the extraverted attitude the inferior functions always reveal a highly subjective determination with pronounced egocentricity and personal bias, thus demonstrating their close connection with the unconscious. Through their agency the unconscious is continually coming to light. On no account should we imagine that the unconscious lies permanently buried under so many overlying strata that it can only be uncovered, so to speak, by a laborious process of excavation. On the contrary, there is a constant influx of the unconscious into the conscious psychological process; at times this reaches such a pitch that the observer can decide only with difficulty which character-traits are to be ascribed to the conscious, and which to the unconscious personality. This difficulty occurs mainly with persons whose habit of expression errs rather on the side of profuseness. Naturally it depends very largely also upon the attitude of the observer, whether he lays hold of the conscious or the unconscious character of a personality. Speaking generally a judging observer will tend to seize the conscious character, while a perceptive observer will be influenced more by the unconscious character, since judgement is chiefly interested in the conscious motivation of the psychic process, while perception tends to register the mere happening. But in so far as we apply perception and judgment in equal measure, it may easily happen that a personality appears to us as both introverted and extraverted, so that we cannot at once decide to which attitude the superior function belongs. In such cases only a thorough analysis of the function qualities can help us to a sound opinion. During the analysis we must observe which [p. 428] function is placed under the control and motivation of consciousness, and which functions have an accidental and spontaneous character. The former is always more highly differentiated than the latter, which also possess many infantile and primitive qualities. Occasionally the former function gives the impression of normality, while the latter have something abnormal or pathological about them.
(III) THE PECULIARITIES OF THE BASIC PSYCHOLOGICAL FUNCTIONS IN THE EXTRAVERTED ATTITUDE
1. Thinking
As a result of the general attitude of extraversion, thinking is orientated by the object and objective data. This orientation of thinking produces a noticeable peculiarity.
Thinking in general is fed from two sources, firstly from subjective and in the last resort unconscious roots, and secondly from objective data transmitted through sense perceptions.
Extraverted thinking is conditioned in a larger measure by these latter factors than by the former. judgment always presupposes a criterion ; for the extraverted judgment, the valid and determining criterion is the standard taken from objective conditions, no matter whether this be directly represented by an objectively perceptible fact, or expressed in an objective idea ; for an objective idea, even when subjectively sanctioned, is equally external and objective in origin. Extraverted thinking, therefore, need not necessarily be a merely concretistic thinking it may equally well be a purely ideal thinking, if, for instance, it can be shown that the ideas with which it is engaged are to a great extent borrowed from without, i.e. are transmitted by tradition and education. The criterion of judgment, therefore, as to whether or no a thinking is extraverted, hangs directly upon the question: by [p. 429] which standard is its judgment governed — is it furnished from without, or is its origin subjective? A further criterion is afforded by the direction of the thinker’s conclusion, namely, whether or no the thinking has a preferential direction outwards. It is no proof of its extraverted nature that it is preoccupied with concrete objects, since I may be engaging my thoughts with a concrete object, either because I am abstracting my thought from it or because I am concretizing my thought with it. Even if I engage my thinking with concrete things, and to that extent could be described as extraverted, it yet remains both questionable and characteristic as regards the direction my thinking will take; namely, whether in its further course it leads back again to objective data, external facts, and generally accepted ideas, or not. So far as the practical thinking of the merchant, the engineer, or the natural science pioneer is concerned, the objective direction is at once manifest. But in the case of a philosopher it is open to doubt, whenever the course of his thinking is directed towards ideas. In such a case, before deciding, we must further enquire whether these ideas are mere abstractions from objective experience, in which case they would merely represent higher collective concepts, comprising a sum of objective facts ; or whether (if they are clearly not abstractions from immediate experience) they may not be derived from tradition or borrowed from the intellectual atmosphere of the time. In the latter event, such ideas must also belong to the category of objective data, in which case this thinking should also be called extraverted.
Although I do not propose to present the nature of introverted thinking at this point, reserving it for a later section, it is, however, essential that I should make a few statements about it before going further. For if one considers strictly what I have just said concerning [p. 430] extraverted thinking, one might easily conclude that such a statement includes everything that is generally understood as thinking. It might indeed be argued that a thinking whose aim is concerned neither with objective facts nor with general ideas scarcely merits the name ‘thinking’. I am fully aware of the fact that the thought of our age, in common with its most eminent representatives, knows and acknowledges only the extraverted type of thinking. This is partly due to the fact that all thinking which attains visible form upon the world’s surface, whether as science, philosophy, or even art, either proceeds direct from objects or flows into general ideas. On either ground, although not always completely evident it at least appears essentially intelligible, and therefore relatively valid. In this sense it might be said that the extraverted intellect, i.e. the mind that is orientated by objective data, is actually the only one recognized.
There is also, however — and now I come to the question of the introverted intellect — an entirely different kind of thinking, to which the term I “thinking” can hardly be denied: it is a kind that is neither orientated by the immediate objective experience nor is it concerned with general and objectively derived ideas. I reach this other kind of thinking in the following way. When my thoughts are engaged with a concrete object or general idea in such a way that the course of my thinking eventually leads me back again to my object, this intellectual process is not the only psychic proceeding taking place in me at the moment. I will disregard all those possible sensations and feelings which become noticeable as a more or less disturbing accompaniment to my train of thought, merely emphasizing the fact that this very thinking process which proceeds from objective data and strives again towards the object stands also in a constant relation to the subject. This relation is a condition sine qua non, without which no think- [p. 431] ing process whatsoever could take place. Even though my thinking process is directed, as far as possible, towards objective data, nevertheless it is my subjective process, and it can neither escape the subjective admixture nor yet dispense with it. Although I try my utmost to give a completely objective direction to my train of thought, even then I cannot exclude the parallel subjective process with its all-embracing participation, without extinguishing the very spark of life from my thought. This parallel subjective process has a natural tendency, only relatively avoidable, to subjectify objective facts, i.e. to assimilate them to the subject.
Whenever the chief value is given to the subjective process, that other kind of thinking arises which stands opposed to extraverted thinking, namely, that purely subjective orientation of thought which I have termed introverted. A thinking arises from this other orientation that is neither determined by objective facts nor directed towards objective data — a thinking, therefore, that proceeds from subjective data and is directed towards subjective ideas or facts of a subjective character. I do not wish to enter more fully into this kind of thinking here; I have merely established its existence for the purpose of giving a necessary complement to the extraverted thinking process, whose nature is thus brought to a clearer focus.
When the objective orientation receives a certain predominance, the thinking is extraverted. This circumstance changes nothing as regards the logic of thought — it merely determines that difference between thinkers which James regards as a matter of temperament. The orientation towards the object, as already explained, makes no essential change in the thinking function; only its appearance is altered. Since it is governed by objective data, it has the appearance of being captivated by the object, as though without the external orientation it simply could not [p. 432] exist. Almost it seems as though it were a sequence of external facts, or as though it could reach its highest point only when chiming in with some generally valid idea. It seems constantly to be affected by objective data, drawing only those conclusions which substantially agree with these. Thus it gives one the impression of a certain lack of freedom, of occasional short-sightedness, in spite of every kind of adroitness within the objectively circumscribed area. What I am now describing is merely the impression this sort of thinking makes upon the observer, who must himself already have a different standpoint, or it would be quite impossible for him to observe the phenomenon of extraverted thinking. As a result of his different standpoint he merely sees its aspect, not its nature; whereas the man who himself possesses this type of thinking is able to seize its nature, while its aspect escapes him. judgment made upon appearance only cannot be fair to the essence of the thing-hence the result is depreciatory. But essentially this thinking is no less fruitful and creative than introverted thinking, only its powers are in the service of other ends. This difference is perceived most clearly when extraverted thinking is engaged upon material, which is specifically an object of the subjectively orientated thinking. This happens, for instance, when a subjective conviction is interpreted analytically from objective facts or is regarded as a product or derivative of objective ideas. But, for our ‘scientifically’ orientated consciousness, the difference between the two modes of thinking becomes still more obvious when the subjectively orientated thinking makes an attempt to bring objective data into connections not objectively given, i.e. to subordinate them to a subjective idea. Either senses the other as an encroachment, and hence a sort of shadow effect is produced, wherein either type reveals to the other its least favourable aspect, The subjectively orientated thinking then appears [p. 433] quite arbitrary, while the extraverted thinking seems to have an incommensurability that is altogether dull and banal. Thus the two standpoints are incessantly at war.
Such a conflict, we might think, could be easily adjusted if only we clearly discriminated objects of a subjective from those of an objective nature. Unfortunately, however, such a discrimination is a matter of impossibility, although not a few have attempted it. Even if such a separation were possible, it would be a very disastrous proceeding, since in themselves both orientations are one-sided, with a definitely restricted validity; hence they both require this mutual correction. Thought is at once sterilized, whenever thinking is brought, to any great extent, under the influence of objective data, since it becomes degraded into a mere appendage of objective facts; in which case, it is no longer able to free itself from objective data for the purpose of establishing an abstract idea. The process of thought is reduced to mere ‘reflection’, not in the sense of ‘meditation’, but in the sense of a mere imitation that makes no essential affirmation beyond what was already visibly and immediately present in the objective data. Such a thinking-process leads naturally and directly back to the objective fact, but never beyond it ; not once, therefore, can it lead to the coupling of experience with an objective idea. And, vice versa, when this thinking has an objective idea for its object, it is quite unable to grasp the practical individual experience, but persists in a more or less tautological position. The materialistic mentality presents a magnificent example of this.
When, as the result of a reinforced objective determination, extraverted thinking is subordinated to objective data, it entirely loses itself, on the one hand, in the individual experience, and proceeds to amass an accumulation of undigested empirical material. The oppressive mass of more or less disconnected individual experiences [p. 434] produces a state of intellectual dissociation, which, on the other hand, usually demands a psychological compensation. This must consist in an idea, just as simple as it is universal, which shall give coherence to the heaped-up but intrinsically disconnected whole, or at least it should provide an inkling of such a connection. Such ideas as “matter” or “energy” are suitable for this purpose. But, whenever thinking primarily depends not so much upon external facts as upon an accepted or second-hand idea, the very poverty of the idea provokes a compensation in the form of a still more impressive accumulation of facts, which assume a one-sided grouping in keeping with the relatively restricted and sterile point of view; whereupon many valuable and sensible aspects of things automatically go by the board. The vertiginous abundance of the socalled scientific literature of to-day owes a deplorably high percentage of its existence to this misorientation.
2. The Extraverted Thinking Type
It is a fact of experience that all the basic psychological functions seldom or never have the same strength or grade of development in one and the same individual. As a rule, one or other function predominates, in both strength and development. When supremacy among the psychological functions is given to thinking, i.e. when the life of an individual is mainly ruled by reflective thinking so that every important action proceeds from intellectually considered motives, or when there is at least a tendency to conform to such motives, we may fairly call this a thinking type. Such a type can be either introverted or extraverted. We will first discuss the extraverted thinking type.
In accordance with his definition, we must picture a, man whose constant aim — in so far, of course, as he is a [p. 435] pure type — is to bring his total life-activities into relation with intellectual conclusions, which in the last resort are always orientated by objective data, whether objective facts or generally valid ideas. This type of man gives the deciding voice-not merely for himself alone but also on behalf of his entourage-either to the actual objective reality or to its objectively orientated, intellectual formula. By this formula are good and evil measured, and beauty and ugliness determined. All is right that corresponds with this formula; all is wrong that contradicts it; and everything that is neutral to it is purely accidental. Because this formula seems to correspond with the meaning of the world, it also becomes a world-law whose realization must be achieved at all times and seasons, both individually and collectively. Just as the extraverted thinking type subordinates himself to his formula, so, for its own good, must his entourage also obey it, since the man who refuses to obey is wrong — he is resisting the world-law, and is, therefore, unreasonable, immoral, and without a conscience. His moral code forbids him to tolerate exceptions; his ideal must, under all circumstances, be realized; for in his eyes it is the purest conceivable formulation of objective reality, and, therefore, must also be generally valid truth, quite indispensable for the salvation of man. This is not from any great love for his neighbour, but from a higher standpoint of justice and truth. Everything in his own nature that appears to invalidate this formula is mere imperfection, an accidental miss-fire, something to be eliminated on the next occasion, or, in the event of further failure, then clearly a sickness.
If tolerance for the sick, the suffering, or the deranged should chance to be an ingredient in the formula, special provisions will be devised for humane societies, hospitals, prisons, colonies, etc., or at least extensive plans for such projects. For the actual execution of these schemes the [p. 436] motives of justice and truth do not, as a rule, suffice; still devolve upon real Christian charity, which I to do with feeling than with any intellectual ‘One really should’ or I one must’ figure largely in this programme. If the formula is wide enough, it may play a very useful rôle in social life, with a reformer or a ventilator of public wrongs or a purifier of the public conscience, or as the propagator of important innovations. But the more rigid the formula, the more, does he develop into a grumbler, a crafty reasoner, and a self-righteous critic, who would like to impress both himself and others into one schema.
We have now outlined two extreme figures, between which terminals the majority of these types may be graduated.
In accordance with the nature of the extraverted attitude, the influence and activities of such personalities are all the more favourable and beneficent, the further one goes from the centre. Their best aspect is to be found at the periphery of their sphere of influence. The further we penetrate into their own province, the more do the unfavourable results of their tyranny impress us. Another life still pulses at the periphery, where the truth of the formula can be sensed as an estimable adjunct to the rest. But the further we probe into the special sphere where the formula operates, the more do we find life ebbing away from all that fails to coincide with its dictates. Usually it is the nearest relatives who have to taste the most disagreeable results of an extraverted formula, since they are the first to be unmercifully blessed with it. But above all the subject himself is the one who suffers most — which brings us to the other side of the psychology of this type.
The fact that an intellectual formula never has been and never will be discovered which could embrace the [p. 437] abundant possibilities of life in a fitting expression must lead — where such a formula is accepted — to an inhibition, or total exclusion, of other highly important forms and activities of life. In the first place, all those vital forms dependent upon feeling will become repressed in such a type, as, for instance, aesthetic activities, taste, artistic sense, the art of friendship, etc. Irrational forms, such as religious experiences, passions and the like, are often obliterated even to the point of complete unconsciousness. These, conditionally quite important, forms of life have to support an existence that is largely unconscious. Doubtless there are exceptional men who are able to sacrifice their entire life to one definite formula; but for most of us a permanent life of such exclusiveness is impossible. Sooner or later — in accordance with outer circumstances and inner gifts — the forms of life repressed by the intellectual attitude become indirectly perceptible, through a gradual disturbance of the conscious conduct of life. Whenever disturbances of this kind reach a definite intensity, one speaks of a neurosis. In most cases, however, it does not go so far, because the individual instinctively allows himself some preventive extenuations of his formula, worded, of course, in a suitable and reasonable way. In this way a safety-valve is created.
The relative or total unconsciousness of such tendencies or functions as are excluded from any participation in the conscious attitude keeps them in a relatively undeveloped state. As compared with the conscious function they are inferior. To the extent that they are unconscious, they become merged with the remaining contents of the unconscious, from which they acquire a bizarre character. To the extent that they are conscious, they only play a secondary rôle, although one of considerable importance for the whole psychological picture.
Since feelings are the first to oppose and contradict [p. 438] the rigid intellectual formula, they are affected first this conscious inhibition, and upon them the most intense repression falls. No function can be entirely eliminated — it can only be greatly distorted. In so far as feelings allow themselves to be arbitrarily shaped and subordinated, they have to support the intellectual conscious attitude and adapt themselves to its aims. Only to a certain degree, however, is this possible; a part of the feeling remains insubordinate, and therefore must be repressed. Should the repression succeed, it disappears from consciousness and proceeds to unfold a subconscious activity, which runs counter to conscious aims, even producing effects whose causation is a complete enigma to the individual. For example, conscious altruism, often of an extremely high order, may be crossed by a secret self-seeking, of which the individual is wholly unaware, and which impresses intrinsically unselfish actions with the stamp of selfishness. Purely ethical aims may lead the individual into critical situations, which sometimes have more than a semblance of being decided by quite other than ethical motives. There are guardians of public morals or voluntary rescue-workers who suddenly find themselves in deplorably compromising situations, or in dire need of rescue. Their resolve to save often leads them to employ means which only tend to precipitate what they most desire to avoid. There are extraverted idealists, whose desire to advance the salvation of man is so consuming that they will not shrink from any lying and dishonest means in the pursuit of their ideal. There are a few painful examples in science where investigators of the highest esteem, from a profound conviction of the truth and general validity of their formula, have not scrupled to falsify evidence in favour of their ideal. This is sanctioned by the formula; the end justifieth the means. Only an inferior feeling-function, operating seductively [p. 439] and unconsciously, could bring about such aberrations in otherwise reputable men.
The inferiority of feeling in this type manifests itself also in other ways. In so far as it corresponds with the dominating positive formula, the conscious attitude becomes more or less impersonal, often, indeed, to such a degree that a very considerable wrong is done to personal interests. When the conscious attitude is extreme, all personal considerations recede from view, even those which concern the individual’s own person. His health is neglected, his social position deteriorates, often the most vital interests of his family are violated — they are wronged morally and financially, even their bodily health is made to suffer — all in the service of the ideal. At all events personal sympathy with others must be impaired, unless they too chance to be in the service of the same formula. Hence it not infrequently happens that his immediate family circle, his own children for instance, only know such a father as a cruel tyrant, whilst the outer world resounds with the fame of his humanity. Not so much in spite of as because of the highly impersonal character of the conscious attitude, the unconscious feelings are highly personal and oversensitive, giving rise to certain secret prejudices, as, for instance, a decided readiness to misconstrue any objective opposition to his formula as personal ill-will, or a constant tendency to make negative suppositions regarding the qualities of others in order to invalidate their arguments beforehand-in defence, naturally, of his own susceptibility. As a result of this unconscious sensitiveness, his expression and tone frequently becomes sharp, pointed, aggressive, and insinuations multiply. The feelings have an untimely and halting character, which is always a mark of the inferior function. Hence arises a pronounced tendency to resentment. However generous the individual sacrifice [p. 440] to the intellectual goal may be, the feelings are correspondingly petty, suspicious, crossgrained, and conservative. Everything new that is not already contained formula is viewed through a veil of unconscious and is judged accordingly. It happened only in middle of last century that a certain physician, famed his humanitarianism, threatened to dismiss an assistant for daring to use a thermometer, because the formula decreed that fever shall be recognized by the pulse. There are, of course, a host of similar examples.
Thinking which in other respects may be altogether blameless becomes all the more subtly and prejudicially, affected, the more feelings are repressed. An intellectual standpoint, which, perhaps on account of its actual intrinsic value, might justifiably claim general recognition, undergoes a characteristic alteration through the influence of this unconscious personal sensitiveness; it becomes rigidly dogmatic. The personal self-assertion is transferred to the intellectual standpoint. Truth is no longer left to work her natural effect, but through an identification with the subject she is treated like a sensitive darling whom an evil-minded critic has wronged. The critic is demolished, if possible with personal invective, and no argument is too gross to be used against him. Truth must be trotted out, until finally it begins to dawn upon the public that it is not so much really a question of truth as of her personal procreator.
The dogmatism of the intellectual standpoint, however, occasionally undergoes still further peculiar modifications from the unconscious admixture of unconscious personal feelings; these changes are less a question of feeling, in the stricter sense, than of contamination from other unconscious factors which become blended with the repressed feeling in the unconscious. Although reason itself offers proof, that every intellectual formula can be no more than [p. 441] a partial truth, and can never lay claim, therefore, to autocratic authority; in practice, the formula obtains so great an ascendancy that, beside it, every other standpoint and possibility recedes into the background. It replaces all the more general, less defined, hence the more modest and truthful, views of life. It even takes the place of that general view of life which we call religion. Thus the formula becomes a religion, although in essentials it has not the smallest connection with anything religious. Therewith it also gains the essentially religious character of absoluteness. It becomes, as it were, an intellectual superstition. But now all those psychological tendencies that suffer under its repression become grouped together in the unconscious, and form a counter-position, giving rise to paroxysms of doubt. As a defence against doubt, the conscious attitude grows fanatical. For fanaticism, after all, is merely overcompensated doubt. Ultimately this development leads to an exaggerated defence of the conscious position, and to the gradual formation of an absolutely antithetic unconscious position; for example, an extreme irrationality develops, in opposition to the conscious rationalism, or it becomes highly archaic and superstitious, in opposition to a conscious standpoint imbued with modern science. This fatal opposition is the source of those narrow-minded and ridiculous views, familiar to the historians of science, into which many praiseworthy pioneers have ultimately blundered. It not infrequently happens in a man of this type that the side of the unconscious becomes embodied in a woman.
In my experience, this type, which is doubtless familiar to my readers, is chiefly found among men, since thinking tends to be a much more dominant function in men than in women. As a rule, when thinking achieves the mastery in women, it is, in my experience, a kind of thinking which results from a prevailingly intuitive activity of mind. [p. 442]
The thought of the extraverted thinking type is, positive, i.e. it produces. It either leads to new facts or to general conceptions of disparate experimental material. Its judgment is generally synthetic. Even when it analyses, it constructs, because it is always advancing beyond the, analysis to a new combination, a further conception which reunites the analysed material in a new way or adds some., thing further to the given material. In general, therefore, we may describe this kind of judgment as predicative. In any case, characteristic that it is never absolutely depreciatory or destructive, but always substitutes a fresh value for one that is demolished. This quality is due to the fact that thought is the main channel into which a thinking-type’s energy flows. Life steadily advancing shows itself in the man’s thinking, so that his ideas maintain a progressive, creative character. His thinking neither stagnates, nor is it in the least regressive. Such qualities cling only to a thinking that is not given priority in consciousness. In this event it is relatively unimportant, and also lacks the character of a positive vital activity. It follows in the wake of other functions, it becomes Epimethean, it has an ‘esprit de l’escalier’ quality, contenting itself with constant ponderings and broodings upon things past and gone, in an effort to analyse and digest them. Where the creative element, as in this case, inhabits another function, thinking no longer progresses it stagnates. Its judgment takes on a decided inherency-character, i.e. it entirely confines itself to the range of the given material, nowhere overstepping it. It is contented with a more or less abstract statement, and fails to impart any value to the experimental material that was not already there.
The inherency-judgment of such extraverted thinking is objectively orientated, i.e. its conclusion always expresses the objective importance of experience. Hence, not only does it remain under the orientating influence of objective [p. 443]
data, but it actually rests within the charmed circle of the individual experience, about which it affirms nothing that was not already given by it. We may easily observe this thinking in those people who cannot refrain from tacking on to an impression or experience some rational and doubtless very valid remark, which, however, in no way adventures beyond the given orbit of the experience. At bottom, such a remark merely says ‘I have understood it — I can reconstruct it.’ But there the matter also ends. At its very highest, such a judgment signifies merely the placing of an experience in an objective setting, whereby the experience is at once recognized as belonging to the frame.
But whenever a function other than thinking possesses priority in consciousness to any marked degree, in so far as thinking is conscious at all and not directly dependent upon the dominant function, it assumes a negative character. In so far as it is subordinated to the dominant function, it may actually wear a positive aspect, but a narrower scrutiny will easily prove that it simply mimics the dominant function, supporting it with arguments that unmistakably contradict the laws of logic proper to thinking. Such a thinking, therefore, ceases to have any interest for our present discussion. Our concern is rather with the constitution of that thinking which cannot be subordinated to the dominance of another function, but remains true to its own principle. To observe and investigate this thinking in itself is not easy, since, in the concrete case, it is more or less constantly repressed by the conscious attitude. Hence, in the majority of cases, it first must be retrieved from the background of consciousness, unless in some unguarded moment it should chance to come accidentally to the surface. As a rule, it must be enticed with some such questions as ‘Now what do you really think?’ or, again, ‘What is your private view [p. 444] about the matter?’ Or perhaps one may even use a little cunning, framing the question something this: ‘What do you imagine, then, that I really think about the matter?’ This latter form should be chosen when the real thinking is unconscious and, therefore projected. The thinking that is enticed to the surface this way has characteristic qualities; it was these I had in mind just now when I described it as negative. It habitual mode is best characterized by the two words ‘nothing but’. Goethe personified this thinking in the figure of Mephistopheles. It shows a most distinctive tendency to trace back the object of its judgment to some banality or other, thus stripping it of its own independent significance. This happens simply because it is represented as being dependent upon some other commonplace thing. Wherever a conflict, apparently essential in nature, arises between two men, negative thinking mutters ‘Cherchez la femme’. When a man champions or advocates a cause, negative thinking makes no inquiry as to the importance of the thing, but merely asks ‘How much does he make by it?’ The dictum ascribed to Moleschott: “Der Mensch ist, was er isst” (” Man is what he eats “) also belongs to this collection, as do many more aphorisms and opinions which I need not enumerate.
The destructive quality of this thinking as well as its occasional and limited usefulness, hardly need further elucidation. But there still exists another form of negative thinking, which at first glance perhaps would scarcely be recognized as such I refer to the theosophical thinking which is to-day rapidly spreading in every quarter of the globe, presumably as a reaction phenomenon to the materialism of the epoch now receding. Theosophical thinking has an air that is not in the least reductive, since it exalts everything to transcendental and world-embracing ideas. A dream, for instance, is no [p. 445] longer a modest dream, but an experience upon ‘another plane’. The hitherto inexplicable fact of telepathy is ,very simply explained by ‘vibrations’ which pass from one man to another. An ordinary nervous trouble is quite simply accounted for by the fact that something has collided with the astral body. Certain anthropological peculiarities of the dwellers on the Atlantic seaboard are easily explained by the submerging of Atlantis, and so on. We have merely to open a theosophical book to be overwhelmed by the realization that everything is already explained, and that ‘spiritual science’ has left no enigmas of life unsolved. But, fundamentally, this sort of thinking is just as negative as materialistic thinking. When the latter conceives psychology as chemical changes taking place in the cell-ganglia, or as the extrusion and withdrawal of cell-processes, or as an internal secretion, in essence this is just as superstitious as theosophy. The only difference lies in the fact that materialism reduces all phenomena to our current physiological notions, while theosophy brings everything into the concepts of Indian metaphysics. When we trace the dream to an overloaded stomach, the dream is not thereby explained, and when we explain telepathy as ‘vibrations’, we have said just as little. Since, what are ‘vibrations’? Not only are both methods of explanation quite impotent — they are actually destructive, because by interposing their seeming explanations they withdraw interest from the problem, diverting it in the former case to the stomach, and in the latter to imaginary vibrations, thus preventing any serious investigation of the problem. Either kind of thinking is both sterile and sterilizing. Their negative quality consists in this it is a method of thought that is indescribably cheap there is a real poverty of productive and creative energy. It is a thinking taken in tow by other functions. [p. 446]
3. Feeling
Feeling in the extraverted attitude is orientated by objective data, i.e. the object is the indispensable determinant of the kind of feeling. It agrees with objective values. If one has always known feeling as a subjective fact, the nature of extraverted feeling will not immediately be understood, since it has freed itself as fully as possible from the subjective factor, and has, instead, become wholly subordinated to the influence of the object. Even where it seems to show a certain independence of the quality of the concrete object, it is none the less under the spell of. traditional or generally valid standards of some sort. I may feel constrained, for instance, to use the predicate ‘beautiful’ or ‘good’, not because I find the object ‘beautiful’ or ‘good’ from my own subjective feeling, but because it is fitting and politic so to do; and fitting it certainly is, inasmuch as a contrary opinion would disturb the general feeling situation. A feeling-judgment such as this is in no way a simulation or a lie — it is merely an act of accommodation. A picture, for instance, may be termed beautiful, because a picture that is hung in a drawing-room and bearing a well-known signature is generally assumed to be beautiful, or because the predicate ‘ugly’ might offend the family of the fortunate possessor, or because there is a benevolent intention on the part of the visitor to create a pleasant feeling-atmosphere, to which end everything must be felt as agreeable. Such feelings are governed by the standard of the objective determinants. As such they are genuine, and represent the total visible feeling-function.
In precisely the same way as extraverted thinking strives to rid itself of subjective influences, extraverted feeling has also to undergo a certain process of differentiation, before it is finally denuded of every subjective [p. 447] trimming. The valuations resulting from the act of feeling either correspond directly with objective values or at least chime in with certain traditional and generally known standards of value. This kind of feeling is very largely responsible for the fact that so many people flock to the theatre, to concerts, or to Church, and what is more, with correctly adjusted positive feelings. Fashions, too, owe their existence to it, and, what is far more valuable, the whole positive and wide-spread support of social, philanthropic, and such like cultural enterprises. In such matters, extraverted feeling proves itself a creative factor. Without this feeling, for instance, a beautiful and harmonious sociability would be unthinkable. So far extraverted feeling is just as beneficent and rationally effective as extraverted thinking. But this salutary effect is lost as soon as the object gains an exaggerated influence. For, when this happens, extraverted feeling draws the personality too much into the object, i.e. the object assimilates the person, whereupon the personal character of the feeling, which constitutes its principal charm, is lost. Feeling then becomes cold, material, untrustworthy. It betrays a secret aim, or at least arouses the suspicion of it in an impartial observer. No longer does it make that welcome and refreshing impression the invariable accompaniment of genuine feeling; instead, one scents a pose or affectation, although the egocentric motive may be entirely unconscious.
Such overstressed, extraverted feeling certainly fulfils æsthetic expectations, but no longer does it speak to the heart; it merely appeals to the senses, or — worse still — to the reason. Doubtless it can provide æsthetic padding for a situation, but there it stops, and beyond that its effect is nil. It has become sterile. Should this process go further, a strangely contradictory dissociation of feeling develops; every object is seized upon with feeling- [p. 448] valuations, and numerous relationships are made which are inherently and mutually incompatible. Since such aberrations would be quite impossible if a sufficiently emphasized subject were present, the last vestige of a real personal standpoint also becomes suppressed. The subject becomes so swallowed up in individual feeling processes that to the observer it seems as though there were no longer a subject of feeling but merely a feeling process. In such a condition feeling has entirely forfeited its original human warmth, it gives an impression of pose, inconstancy, unreliability, and in the worst cases appears definitely hysterical.
4. The Extraverted Feeling-Type
In so far as feeling is, incontestably, a more obvious peculiarity of feminine psychology than thinking, the most pronounced feeling-types are also to be found among women. When extraverted feeling possesses the priority we speak of an extraverted feeling-type. Examples of this type that I can call to mind are, almost without exception, women. She is a woman who follows the guiding-line of her feeling. As the result of education her feeling has become developed into an adjusted function, subject to conscious control. Except in extreme cases, feeling has a personal character, in spite of the fact that the subjective factor may be already, to a large extent, repressed. The personality appears to be adjusted in relation to objective conditions. Her feelings correspond with objective situations and general values. Nowhere is this more clearly revealed than in the so-called ‘love-choice’; the ‘suitable’ man is loved, not another one; he is suitable not so much because he fully accords with the fundamental character of the woman — as a rule she is quite uninformed about this — but because [p. 449] he meticulously corresponds in standing, age, capacity, height, and family respectability with every reasonable requirement. Such a formulation might, of course, be easily rejected as ironical or depreciatory, were I not fully convinced that the love-feeling of this type of woman completely corresponds with her choice. It is genuine, and not merely intelligently manufactured. Such ‘reasonable’ marriages exist without number, and they are by no means the worst. Such women are good comrades to their husbands and excellent mothers, so long as husbands or children possess the conventional psychic constitution. One can feel ‘correctly’, however, only when feeling is disturbed by nothing else. But nothing disturbs feeling so much as thinking. It is at once intelligible, therefore, that this type should repress thinking as much as possible. This does not mean to say that such a woman does not think at all; on the contrary, she may even think a great deal and very ably, but her thinking is never sui generis; it is, in fact, an Epimethean appendage to her feeling. What she cannot feel, she cannot consciously think. ‘But I can’t think what I don’t feel’, such a type said to me once in indignant tones. As far as feeling permits, she can think very well, but every conclusion, however logical, that might lead to a disturbance of feeling is rejected from the outset. It is simply not thought. And thus everything that corresponds with objective valuations is good: these things are loved or treasured; the rest seems merely to exist in a world apart.
But a change comes over the picture when the importance of the object reaches a still higher level. As already explained above, such an assimilation of subject to object then occurs as almost completely to engulf the subject of feeling. Feeling loses its personal character — it becomes feeling per se; it almost seems as though the [p. 450] personality were wholly dissolved in the feeling of the moment. Now, since in actual life situations constantly and successively alternate, in which the feeling-tones released are not only different but are actually mutually contrasting, the personality inevitably becomes dissipated in just so many different feelings. Apparently, he is this one moment, and something completely different the next — apparently, I repeat, for in reality such a manifold personality is altogether impossible. The basis of the ego always remains identical with itself, and, therefore, appears definitely opposed to the changing states of feeling. Accordingly the observer senses the display of feeling not so much as a personal expression of the feeling-subject as an alteration of his ego, a mood, in other words. Corresponding with the degree of dissociation between the ego and the momentary state of feeling, signs of disunion with the self will become more or less evident, i.e. the original compensatory attitude of the unconscious becomes a manifest opposition. This reveals itself, in the first instance, in extravagant demonstrations of feeling, in loud and obtrusive feeling predicates, which leave one, however, somewhat incredulous. They ring hollow; they are not convincing. On the contrary, they at once give one an inkling of a resistance that is being overcompensated, and one begins to wonder whether such a feeling-judgment might not just as well be entirely different. In fact, in a very short time it actually is different. Only a very slight alteration in the situation is needed to provoke forthwith an entirely contrary estimation of the selfsame object. The result of such an experience is that the observer is unable to take either judgment at all seriously. He begins to reserve his own opinion. But since, with this type, it is a matter of the greatest moment to establish an intensive feeling rapport with his environment, redoubled efforts are now required [p. 451] to overcome this reserve. Thus, in the manner of the circulus vitiosus, the situation goes from bad to worse. The more the feeling relation with the object becomes overstressed, the nearer the unconscious opposition approaches the surface.
We have already seen that the extraverted feeling type, as a rule, represses his thinking, just because thinking is the function most liable to disturb feeling. Similarly, when thinking seeks to arrive at pure results of any kind, its first act is to exclude feeling, since nothing is calculated to harass and falsify thinking so much as feeling-values. Thinking, therefore, in so far as it is an independent function, is repressed in the extraverted feeling type. Its repression, as I observed before, is complete only in so far as its inexorable logic forces it to conclusions that are incompatible with feeling. It is suffered to exist as the servant of feeling, or more accurately its slave. Its backbone is broken; it may not operate on its own account, in accordance with its own laws, Now, since a logic exists producing inexorably right conclusions, this must happen somewhere, although beyond the bounds of consciousness, i.e. in the unconscious. Pre-eminently, therefore, the unconscious content of this type is a particular kind of thinking. It is an infantile, archaic, and negative thinking.
So long as conscious feeling preserves the personal character, or, in other words, so long as the personality does not become swallowed up by successive states of feeling, this unconscious thinking remains compensatory. But as soon as the personality is dissociated, becoming dispersed in mutually contradictory states of feeling, the identity of the ego is lost, and the subject becomes unconscious. But, because of the subject’s lapse into the unconscious, it becomes associated with the unconscious thinking — function, therewith assisting the unconscious [p. 452] thought to occasional consciousness. The stronger the conscious feeling relation, and therefore, the more ‘depersonalized,’ it becomes, the stronger grows the unconscious opposition. This reveals itself in the fact that unconscious ideas centre round just the most valued objects, which are thus pitilessly stripped of their value. That thinking which always thinks in the ‘nothing but’ style is in its right place here, since it destroys the ascendancy of the feeling that is chained to the object.
Unconscious thought reaches the surface in the form of irruptions, often of an obsessing nature, the general character of which is always negative and depreciatory. Women of this type have moments when the most hideous thoughts fasten upon the very objects most valued by their feelings. This negative thinking avails itself of every infantile prejudice or parallel that is calculated to breed doubt in the feeling-value, and it tows every primitive instinct along with it, in the effort to make ‘a nothing but’ interpretation of the feeling. At this point, it is perhaps in the nature of a side-remark to observe that the collective unconscious, i.e. the totality of the primordial images, also becomes enlisted in the same manner, and from the elaboration and development of these images there dawns the possibility of a regeneration of the attitude upon another basis.
Hysteria, with the characteristic infantile sexuality of its unconscious world of ideas, is the principal form of neurosis with this type.
5. Recapitulation of Extraverted Rational Types
I term the two preceding types rational or judging types because they are characterized by the supremacy of the reasoning and the judging functions. It is a general distinguishing mark of both types that their life is, to a [p. 453] large extent, subordinated to reasoning judgment. But we must not overlook the point, whether by ‘reasoning’ we are referring to the standpoint of the individual’s subjective psychology, or to the standpoint of the observer, who perceives and judges from without. For such an observer could easily arrive at an opposite judgment, especially if he has a merely intuitive apprehension of the behaviour of the observed, and judges accordingly. In its totality, the life of this type is never dependent upon reasoning judgment alone; it is influenced in almost equal degree by unconscious irrationality. If observation is restricted to behaviour, without any concern for the domestic interior of the individual’s consciousness, one may get an even stronger impression of the irrational and accidental character of certain unconscious manifestations in the individual’s behaviour than of the reasonableness of his conscious purposes and motivations. I, therefore, base my judgment upon what the individual feels to be his conscious psychology. But I am prepared to grant that we may equally well entertain a precisely opposite conception of such a psychology, and present it accordingly. I am also convinced that, had I myself chanced to possess a different individual psychology, I should have described the rational types in the reversed way, from the standpoint of the unconscious-as irrational, therefore. This circumstance aggravates the difficulty of a lucid presentation of psychological matters to a degree not to be underestimated, and immeasurably increases the possibility of misunderstandings. The discussions which develop from these misunderstandings are, as a rule, quite hopeless, since the real issue is never joined, each side speaking, as it were, in a different tongue. Such experience is merely one reason the more for basing my presentation upon the subjective conscious psychology of the individual, since there, at least, one has a definite objective footing, which completely [p. 454] drops away the moment we try to ground psychological principles upon the unconscious. For the observed, in this case, could undertake no kind of co-operation, because there is nothing of which he is not more informed than his own unconscious. The judgment would entirely devolve upon the observer — a certain guarantee that its basis would be his own individual psychology, which would infallibly be imposed upon the observed. To my mind, this is the case in the psychologies both of Freud and of Adler. The individual is completely at the mercy of the arbitrary discretion of his observing critic — which can never be the case when the conscious psychology of the observed is accepted as the basis. After all, he is the only competent judge, since he alone knows his own motives.
The reasonableness that characterizes the conscious management of life in both these types, involves a conscious exclusion of the accidental and non-rational. Reasoning judgment, in such a psychology, represents a power that coerces the untidy and accidental things of life into definite forms; such at least is its aim. Thus, on the one hand, a definite choice is made among the possibilities of life, since only the rational choice is consciously accepted; but, on the other hand, the independence and influence of those psychic functions which perceive life’s happenings are essentially restricted. This limitation of sensation and intuition is, of course, not absolute. These functions exist, for they are universal; but their products are subject to the choice of the reasoning judgment. It is not the absolute strength of sensation, for instance, which turns the scales in the motivation of action, but judgment, Thus, in a certain sense, the perceiving-functions share the same fate as feeling in the case of the first type, or thinking in that of the second. They are relatively repressed, and therefore in an inferior state of differentiation. This circumstance gives a particular stamp to the unconscious [p. 455] of both our types; what such men do consciously and intentionally accords with reason (their reason of course), but what happens to them corresponds either with infantile, primitive sensations, or with similarly archaic intuitions. I will try to make clear what I mean by these latter concepts in the sections that follow. At all events, that which happens to this type is irrational (from their own standpoint of course). Now, since there are vast numbers of men whose lives consist in what happens to them more than in actions resulting from reasoned intention, it might conceivably happen, that such a man, after careful analysis, would describe both our types as irrational. We must grant him, however, that only too often a man’s unconscious makes a far stronger impression upon one than his conscious, and that his actions often have considerably more weight and meaning than his reasoned motivations.
The rationality of both types is orientated objectively, and depends upon objective data. Their reasonableness corresponds with what passes as reasonable from the collective standpoint. Subjectively they consider nothing rational save what is generally considered as such. But reason is also very largely subjective and individual. In our case this share is repressed — increasingly so, in fact, the more the significance of the object is exalted, Both the subject and subjective reason, therefore, are always threatened with repression and, when it descends, they fall under the tyranny of the unconscious, which in this case possesses most unpleasant qualities. We have already spoken of its thinking. But, in addition, there are primitive sensations, which reveal themselves in compulsive forms, as, for instance, an abnormal compulsive pleasure seeking in every conceivable direction ; there are also primitive intuitions, which can become a positive torture to the individuals concerned, not to mention their entourage. Everything disagreeable and painful, everything disgusting, [p. 456] ugly, and evil is scented out or suspected, and these as a rule only correspond with half-truths, than which nothing is more calculated to create misunderstandings of the most poisonous kind. The powerful influence of the opposing unconscious contents necessarily brings about a frequent interruption of the rational conscious government, namely, a striking subservience to the element of chance, so that, either by virtue of their sensational value or unconscious significance, accidental happenings acquire a compelling influence.
6. Sensation
Sensation, in the extraverted attitude, is most definitely conditioned by the object. As sense-perception, sensation is naturally dependent upon the object. But, just as naturally, it is also dependent upon the subject; hence, there is also a subjective sensation, which after its kind is entirely different from the objective. In the extraverted attitude this subjective share of sensation, in so far as its conscious application is concerned, is either inhibited or repressed. As an irrational function, sensation is equally repressed, whenever a rational function, thinking or feeling, possesses the priority, ie. it can be said to have a conscious function, only in so far as the rational attitude of consciousness permits accidental perceptions to become conscious contents; in short, realizes them. The function of sense is, of course, absolute in the stricter sense; for example, everything is seen or heard to the farthest physiological possibility, but not everything attains that threshold value which a perception must possess in order to be also apperceived. It is a different matter when sensation itself possesses priority, instead of merely seconding another function. In this case, no element of objective sensation is excluded and nothing repressed (with the exception of the subjective share [p. 457] already mentioned). Sensation has a preferential objective determination, and those objects which release the strongest sensation are decisive for the individual’s psychology. The result of this is a pronounced sensuous hold to the object. Sensation, therefore, is a vital function, equipped with the potentest [sic] vital instinct. In so far as objects release sensations, they matter; and, in so far as it lies within the power of sensation, they are also fully accepted into consciousness, whether compatible with reasoned judgment or not. As a function its sole criterion of value is the strength of the sensation as conditioned by its objective qualities. Accordingly, all objective processes, in so far as they release sensations at all, make their appearance in consciousness. It is, however, only concrete, sensuously perceived objects or processes which excite sensations in the extraverted attitude; exclusively those, in fact, which everyone in all times and places would sense as concrete. Hence, the orientation of such an individual corresponds with purely concrete reality. The judging, rational functions are subordinated to the concrete facts of sensation, and, accordingly, possess the qualities of inferior differentiation, i.e. they are marked by a certain negativity, with infantile and archaic tendencies. The function most affected by the repression, is, naturally, the one standing opposite to sensation, viz. intuition, the function of unconscious perception.
7. The Extraverted Sensation Type
No other human type can equal the extraverted sensation-type in realism. His sense for objective facts is extraordinarily developed. His life is an accumulation of actual experience with concrete objects, and the more pronounced he is, the less use does he make of his experience. In certain cases the events of his life hardly deserve [p. 458] the name ‘experience’. He knows no better use for this sensed ‘experience’ than to make it serve as a guide to fresh sensations; anything in the least ‘new’ that comes within his circle of interest is forthwith turned to a sensational account and is made to serve this end. In so far as one is disposed to regard a highly developed sense for sheer actuality as very reasonable, will such men be esteemed rational. In reality, however, this is by no means the case, since they are equally subject to the sensation of irrational, chance happenings, as they are to rational behaviour.
Such a type — the majority arc men apparently — does not, of course, believe himself to be ‘subject’ to sensation. He would be much more inclined to ridicule this view as altogether inconclusive, since, from his standpoint, sensation is the concrete manifestation of life — it is simply the fulness [sic] of actual living. His aim is concrete enjoyment, and his morality is similarly orientated. For true enjoyment has its own special morality, its own moderation and lawfulness, its own unselfishness and devotedness. It by no means follows that he is just sensual or gross, for he may differentiate his sensation to the finest pitch of æsthetic purity without being the least unfaithful, even in his most abstract sensations, to his principle of objective sensation. Wulfen’s Cicerone des r¨cksichtlosen Lebensgenusses is the unvarnished confession of a type of this sort. From this point of view the book seems to me worth reading.
Upon the lower levels this is the man of tangible reality, with little tendency either for reflection or commanding purpose. To sense the object, to have and if possible to enjoy sensations, is his constant motive. He is by no means unlovable; on the contrary, he frequently has a charming and lively capacity for enjoyment; he is sometimes a jolly fellow, and often a refined æsthete. [p. 459]
In the former case, the great problems of life hinge upon a good or indifferent dinner; in the latter, they are questions of good taste. When he ‘senses’, everything essential has been said and done. Nothing can be more than concrete and actual; conjectures that transcend or go beyond the concrete are only permitted on condition that they enhance sensation. This need not be in any way a pleasurable reinforcement, since this type is not a common voluptuary; he merely desires the strongest sensation, and this, by his very nature, he can receive only from without. What comes from within seems to him morbid and objectionable. In so far as lie thinks and feels, he always reduces down to objective foundations, i.e. to influences coming from the object, quite unperturbed by the most violent departures from logic. Tangible reality, under any conditions, makes him breathe again. In this respect he is unexpectedly credulous. He will, without hesitation, relate an obvious psychogenic symptom to the falling barometer, while the existence of a psychic conflict seems to him a fantastic abnormality. His love is incontestably rooted in the manifest attractions of the object. In so far as he is normal, he is conspicuously adjusted to positive reality — conspicuously, because his adjustment is always visible. His ideal is the actual; in this respect he is considerate. He has no ideals related to ideas — he has, therefore, no sort of ground for maintaining a hostile attitude towards the reality of things and facts. This expresses itself in all the externals of his life. He dresses well, according to his circumstances ; he keeps a good table for his friends, who are either made comfortable or at least given to understand that his fastidious taste is obliged to impose certain claims upon his entourage. He even convinces one that certain sacrifices are decidedly worth while for the sake of style.
But the more sensation predominates, so that the [p. 460] sensing subject disappears behind the sensation, the more unsatisfactory does this type become. Either he develops into a crude pleasure-seeker or he becomes an unscrupulous, designing sybarite. Although the object is entirely indispensable to him, yet, as something existing in and through itself, it is none the less depreciated. It is ruthlessly violated and essentially ignored, since now its sole use is to stimulate sensation. The hold upon the object is pushed to the utmost limit. The unconscious is, accordingly, forced out of its me[accent]tier as a compensatory function and driven into open opposition. But, above all, the repressed intuitions begin to assert themselves in the form of projections upon the object. The strangest conjectures arise; in the case of a sexual object, jealous phantasies and anxiety-states play a great role. More acute cases develop every sort of phobia, and especially compulsive symptoms. The pathological contents have a remarkable air of unreality, with a frequent moral or religious colouring. A pettifogging captiousness often develops, or an absurdly scrupulous morality coupled with a primitive, superstitious and ‘magical’ religiosity, harking back to abstruse rites. All these things have their source in the repressed inferior functions, which, in such cases, stand in harsh opposition to the conscious standpoint; they wear, in fact, an aspect that is all the more striking because they appear to rest upon the most absurd suppositions, in complete contrast to the conscious sense of reality. The whole culture of thought and feeling seems, in this second personality, to be twisted into a morbid primitiveness; reason is hair-splitting sophistry — morality is dreary moralizing and palpable Pharisaism — religion is absurd superstition — intuition, the noblest of human gifts, is a mere personal subtlety, a sniffing into every corner; instead of searching the horizon, it recedes to the narrowest gauge of human meanness. [p. 461]
The specially compulsive character of the neurotic symptoms represent the unconscious counterweight to the laisser aller morality of a purely sensational attitude, which, from the standpoint of rational judgment, accepts without discrimination, everything that happens. Although this lack of basic principles in the sensation-type does not argue an absolute lawlessness and lack of restraint, it at least deprives him of the quite essential restraining power of judgment. Rational judgment represents a conscious coercion, which the rational type appears to impose upon himself of his own free will. This compulsion overtakes the sensation-type from the unconscious. Moreover, the rational type’s link to the object, from the very existence of a judgment, never means such an unconditioned relation as that which the sensation-type has with the object. When his attitude reaches an abnormal one-sidedness, he is in danger of falling just as deeply into the arms of the unconscious as he consciously clings to the object. When he becomes neurotic, he is much harder to treat in the rational way, because the functions to which the physician must appeal are in a relatively undifferentiated state; hence little or no trust can be placed in them. Special means of bringing emotional pressure to bear are often needed to make him at all conscious.
8. Intuition
Intuition as the function of unconscious perception is wholly directed upon outer objects in the extraverted attitude. Because, in the main, intuition is an unconscious process, the conscious apprehension of its nature is a very difficult matter. In consciousness, the intuitive function is represented by a certain attitude of expectation, a perceptive and penetrating vision, wherein only the subsequent result can prove, in every case, how much was [p. 462] ‘perceived-into’, and how much actually lay in the object.
Just as sensation, when given the priority, is not a mere reactive process of no further importance for the object, but is almost an action which seizes and shapes the object, so it is with intuition, which is by no means a mere perception, or awareness, but an active, creative process that builds into the object just as much as it takes out. But, because this process extracts the perception unconsciously, it also produces an unconscious effect in the object. The primary function of intuition is to transmit mere images, or perceptions of relations and conditions, which could be gained by the other functions, either not at all, or only by very roundabout ways. Such images have the value of definite discernments, and have a decisive bearing upon action, whenever intuition is given the chief weight; in which case, psychic adaptation is based almost exclusively upon intuition. Thinking, feeling, and sensation are relatively repressed; of these, sensation is the one principally affected, because, as the conscious function of sense, it offers the greatest obstacle to intuition. Sensation disturbs intuition’s clear, unbiassed, na[umlaut]ive awareness with its importunate sensuous stimuli; for these direct the glance upon the physical superficies, hence upon the very things round and beyond which intuition tries to peer. But since intuition, in the extraverted attitude, has a prevailingly objective orientation, it actually comes very near to sensation; indeed, the expectant attitude towards outer objects may, with almost equal probability, avail itself of sensation. Hence, for intuition really to become paramount, sensation must to a large extent be suppressed. I am now speaking of sensation as the simple and direct sense-reaction, an almost definite physiological and psychic datum. This must be expressly established beforehand, because, if I ask the intuitive how he is [p. 463] orientated, he will speak of things which are quite indistinguishable from sense-perceptions. Frequently he will even make use of the term ‘sensation’. He actually has sensations, but he is not guided by them per se, merely using them as directing-points for his distant vision. They are selected by unconscious expectation. Not the strongest sensation, in the physiological sense, obtains the crucial value, but any sensation whatsoever whose value happens to become considerably enhanced by reason of the intuitive’s unconscious attitude. In this way it may eventually attain the leading position, appearing to the intuitive’s consciousness indistinguishable from a pure sensation. But actually it is not so.
Just as extraverted sensation strives to reach the highest pitch of actuality, because only thus can the appearance of a complete life be created, so intuition tries to encompass the greatest possibilities, since only through the awareness of possibilities is intuition fullysatisfied. Intuition seeks to discover possibilities in the objective situation; hence as a mere tributary function (viz. when not in the position of priority) it is also the instrument which, in the presence of a hopelessly blocked situation, works automatically towards the issue, which no other function could discover. Where intuition has the priority, every ordinary situation in life seems like a closed room, which intuition has to open. It is constantly seeking outlets and fresh possibilities in external life. In a very short time every actual situation becomes a prison to the intuitive; it burdens him like a chain, prompting a compelling need for solution. At times objects would seem to have an almost exaggerated value, should they chance to represent the idea of a severance or release that might lead to the discovery of a new possibility. Yet no sooner have they performed their office, serving intuition as a ladder or a bridge, than they [p. 464] appear to have no further value, and are discarded as mere burdensome appendages. A fact is acknowledged only in so far as it opens up fresh possibilities of advancing beyond it and of releasing the individual from its operation. Emerging possibilities are compelling motives from which intuition cannot escape and to which all else must be sacrificed.
9. The Extraverted Intuitive Type
Whenever intuition predominates, a particular and unmistakable psychology presents itself. Because intuition is orientated by the object, a decided dependence upon external situations is discernible, but it has an altogether different character from the dependence of the sensational type. The intuitive is never to be found among the generally recognized reality values, but he is always present where possibilities exist. He has a keen nose for things in the bud pregnant with future promise. He can never exist in stable, long-established conditions of generally acknowledged though limited value: because his eye is constantly ranging for new possibilities, stable conditions have an air of impending suffocation. He seizes hold of new objects and new ways with eager intensity, sometimes with extraordinary enthusiasm, only to abandon them cold-bloodedly, without regard and apparently without remembrance, as soon as their range becomes clearly defined and a promise of any considerable future development no longer clings to them. As long as a possibility exists, the intuitive is bound to it with thongs of fate. It is as though his whole life went out into the new situation. One gets the impression, which he himself shares, that he has just reached the definitive turning point in his life, and that from now on nothing else can seriously engage his thought and feeling. How- [p. 465] ever reasonable and opportune it may be, and although every conceivable argument speaks in favour of stability, a day will come when nothing will deter him from regarding as a prison, the self-same situation that seemed to promise him freedom and deliverance, and from acting accordingly. Neither reason nor feeling can restrain or discourage him from a new possibility, even though it may run counter to convictions hitherto unquestioned. Thinking and feeling, the indispensable components of conviction, are, with him, inferior functions, possessing no decisive weight; hence they lack the power to offer any lasting. resistance to the force of intuition. And yet these are the only functions that are capable of creating any effectual compensation to the supremacy of intuition, since they can provide the intuitive with that judgment in which his type is altogether lacking. The morality of the intuitive is governed neither by intellect nor by feeling; he has his own characteristic morality, which consists in a loyalty to his intuitive view of things and a voluntary submission to its authority, Consideration for the welfare of his neighbours is weak. No solid argument hinges upon their well-being any more than upon his own. Neither can we detect in him any great respect for his neighbour’s convictions and customs; in fact, he is not infrequently put down as an immoral and ruthless adventurer. Since his intuition is largely concerned with outer objects, scenting out external possibilities, he readily applies himself to callings wherein he may expand his abilities in many directions. Merchants, contractors, speculators, agents, politicians, etc., commonly belong to this type.
Apparently this type is more prone to favour women than men; in which case, however, the intuitive activity reveals itself not so much in the professional as in the social sphere. Such women understand the art of utilizing every social opportunity; they establish right social con- [p. 466] nections; they seek out lovers with possibilities only to abandon everything again for the sake of a new possibility.
It is at once clear, both from the standpoint of political economy and on grounds of general culture, that such a type is uncommonly important. If well-intentioned, with an orientation to life not purely egoistical, he may render exceptional service as the promoter, if not the initiator of every kind of promising enterprise. He is the natural advocate of every minority that holds the seed of future promise. Because of his capacity, when orientated more towards men than things, to make an intuitive diagnosis of their abilities and range of usefulness, he can also ‘make’ men. His capacity to inspire his fellow-men with courage, or to kindle enthusiasm for something new, is unrivalled, although he may have forsworn it by the morrow. The more powerful and vivid his intuition, the more is his subject fused and blended with the divined possibility. He animates it; he presents it in plastic shape and with convincing fire; he almost embodies it. It is not a mere histrionic display, but a fate.
This attitude has immense dangers — all too easily the intuitive may squander his life. He spends himself animating men and things, spreading around him an abundance of life — a life, however, which others live, not he. Were he able to rest with the actual thing, he would gather the fruit of his labours; yet all too soon must he be running after some fresh possibility, quitting his newly planted field, while others reap the harvest. In the end he goes empty away. But when the intuitive lets things reach such a pitch, he also has the unconscious against him. The unconscious of the intuitive has a certain similarity with that of the sensation-type. Thinking and feeling, being relatively repressed, produce infantile and archaic thoughts and feelings in the unconscious, which may be compared [p. 467] with those of the countertype. They likewise come to the surface in the form of intensive projections, and are just as absurd as those of the sensation-type, only to my mind they lack the other’s mystical character; they are chiefly concerned with quasi-actual things, in the nature of sexual, financial, and other hazards, as, for instance, suspicions of approaching illness. This difference appears to be due to a repression of the sensations of actual things. These latter usually command attention in the shape of a sudden entanglement with a most unsuitable woman, or, in the case of a woman, with a thoroughly unsuitable man; and this is simply the result of their unwitting contact with the sphere of archaic sensations. But its consequence is an unconsciously compelling tie to an object of incontestable futility. Such an event is already a compulsive symptom, which is also thoroughly characteristic of this type. In common with the sensation-type, he claims a similar freedom and exemption from all restraint, since he suffers no submission of his decisions to rational judgment, relying entirely upon the perception of chance, possibilities. He rids himself of the restrictions of reason, only to fall a victim to unconscious neurotic compulsions in the form of oversubtle, negative reasoning, hair-splitting dialectics, and a compulsive tie to the sensation of the object. His conscious attitude, both to the sensation and the sensed object, is one of sovereign superiority and disregard. Not that he means to be inconsiderate or superior — he simply does not see the object that everyone else sees; his oblivion is similar to that of the sensation-type — only, with the latter, the soul of the object is missed. For this oblivion the object sooner or later takes revenge in the form of hypochondriacal, compulsive ideas, phobias, and every imaginable kind of absurd bodily sensation. [p. 468]
10. Recapitulation of Extraverted Irrational Types
I call the two preceding types irrational for reasons already referred to; namely, because their commissions and omissions are based not upon reasoned judgment but upon the absolute intensity of perception. Their perception is concerned with simple happenings, where no selection has been exercised by the judgment. In this respect both the latter types have a considerable superiority over the two judging types. The objective occurrence is both law-determined and accidental. In so far as it is law-determined, it is accessible to reason; in so far as it is accidental, it is not. One might reverse it and say that we apply the term law-determined to the occurrence appearing so to our reason, and where its regularity escapes us we call it accidental. The postulate of a universal lawfulness remains a postulate of reason only; in no sense is it a postulate of our functions of perception. Since these are in no way grounded upon the principle of reason and its postulates, they are, of their very nature, irrational. Hence my term ‘irrational’ corresponds with the nature of the perception-types. But merely because they subordinate judgment to perception, it would be quite incorrect to regard these types as unreasonable. They are merely in a high degree empirical; they are grounded exclusively upon experience, so exclusively, in fact, that as a rule, their judgment cannot keep pace with their experience. But the functions of judgment are none the less present, although they eke out a largely unconscious existence. But, since the unconscious, in spite of its separation from the conscious subject, is always reappearing on the scene, the actual life of the irrational types exhibits striking judgments and acts of choice, which take the form of apparent sophistries, cold-hearted criticisms, and an apparently purposeful [p. 469] selection of persons and situations. These traits have a rather infantile, or even primitive, stamp; at times they are astonishingly naive, but at times also inconsiderate, crude, or outrageous. To the rationally orientated mind, the real character of such people might well appear rationalistic and purposeful in the bad sense. But this judgment would be valid only for their unconscious, and, therefore, quite incorrect for their conscious psychology, which is entirely orientated by perception, and because of its irrational nature is quite unintelligible to the rational judgment. Finally, it may even appear to a rationally orientated mind that such an assemblage of accidentals, hardly deserves the name ‘psychology.’ The irrational type balances this contemptuous judgment with an equally poor impression of the rational; for he sees him as something only half alive, whose only aim in life consists in fastening the fetters of reason upon everything living, and wringing his own neck with criticisms. Naturally, these are gross extremes; but they occur.
From the standpoint of the rational type, the irrational might easily be represented as a rational of inferior quality; namely, when he is apprehended in the light of what happens to him. For what happens to him is not the accidental-in that he is master-but, in its stead, he is overtaken by rational judgment and rational aims. This fact is hardly comprehensible to the rational mind, but its unthinkableness merely equals the astonishment of the irrational, when he discovers someone who can set the ideas of reason above the living and actual event. Such a thing seems scarcely credible to him. It is, as a rule, quite hopeless to look to him for any recognition of principles in this direction, since a rational understanding is just as unknown and, in fact, tiresome to him as the idea of making a contract, without mutual discussion and obligations, appears unthinkable to the rational type. [p. 470]
This point brings me to the problem of the psychic relation between the representatives of the different types. Following the terminology of the French school of hypnotists, the psychic relation among the more modern psychiatrists is termed I ‘rapport’. Rapport chiefly consists in a feeling of actual accord, in spite of recognised differences. In fact, the recognition of existing differences, in so far as they are common to both, is already a rapport, a feeling of accord. If we make this feeling conscious to a rather high degree in an actual case, we discover that it has not merely the quality of a feeling that cannot be analysed further, but it also has the nature of an insight or cognitional content, representing the point of agreement in a conceptual form. This rational presentation is exclusively valid for the rational types; it by no means applies to the irrational, whose rapport is based not at all upon judgment but upon the parallelism of actual living events. His feeling of accord is the common perception of a sensation or intuition. The rational would say that rapport with the irrational depends purely upon chance. If, by some accident, the objective situations are exactly in tune, something like a human relationship takes place, but nobody can tell what will be either its validity or its duration. To the rational type it is often a very bitter thought that the relationship will last only just so long as external circumstances accidentally produce a mutual interest. This does not occur to him as being especially human, whereas it is precisely in this situation that the irrational sees a humanity of quite singular beauty. Accordingly each regards the other as a man destitute of relationships, upon whom no reliance can be placed, and with whom one can never get on decent terms. Such a result, however, is reached only when one consciously tries to make some estimate of the nature of one’s relationships with one’s fellow-men. Although a psychological conscientiousness of [p. 471] this kind is by no means usual, yet it frequently happens that, notwithstanding an absolute difference of standpoint, a kind of rapport does take place, and in the following way. The one assumes with unspoken projection that the other is, in all essential points, of the same opinion as himself, while the other divines or senses an objective community of interest, of which, however, the former has no conscious inkling and whose existence he would at once dispute, just as it would never occur to the latter that his relationship must rest upon a common point-of-view. A rapport of this kind is by far the most frequent; it rests upon projection, which is the source of many subsequent misunderstandings.
Psychic relationship, in the extraverted attitude, is always regulated by objective factors and outer determinants. What a man is within has never any decisive significance. For our present-day culture the extraverted attitude is the governing principle in the problem of human relationship; naturally, the introverted principle occurs, but it is still the exception, and has to appeal to the tolerance of the age.
C. THE INTROVERTED TYPE
(I) THE GENERAL ATTITUDE OF CONSCIOUSNESS
As I have already explained in section A (1) of the present chapter, the introverted is distinguished from the extraverted type by the fact that, unlike the latter, who is prevailingly orientated by the object and objective data, he is governed by subjective factors. In the section alluded to I mentioned, inter alia, that the introvert interposes a subjective view between the perception of the object and his own action, which prevents the action from assuming a character that corresponds with the objective situation. Naturally, this is a special case, mentioned by way of [p. 472] example, and merely intended to serve as a simple illustration. But now we must go in quest of more general formulations.
Introverted consciousness doubtless views the external conditions, but it selects the subjective determinants as the decisive ones. The type is guided, therefore, by that factor of perception and cognition which represents the receiving subjective disposition to the sense stimulus. Two persons, for example, see the same object, but they never see it in such a way as to receive two identically similar images of it. Quite apart from the differences in the personal equation and mere organic acuteness, there often exists a radical difference, both in kind and degree, in the psychic assimilation of the perceived image. Whereas the extraverted type refers pre-eminently to that which reaches him from the object, the introvert principally relies upon that which the outer impression constellates [sic] in the subject. In an individual case of apperception, the difference may, of course, be very delicate, but in the total psychological economy it is extremely noticeable, especially in the form of a reservation of the ego. Although it is anticipating somewhat, I consider that point of view which inclines, with Weininger, to describe this attitude as philautic, or with other writers, as autoerotic, egocentric, subjective, or egoistic, to be both misleading in principle and definitely depreciatory. It corresponds with the normal bias of the extraverted attitude against the nature of the introvert. We must not forget-although extraverted opinion is only too prone to do so-that all perception and cognition is not purely objective: it is also subjectively conditioned. The world exists not merely in itself, but also as it appears to me. Indeed, at bottom, we have absolutely no criterion that could help us to form a judgment of a world whose nature was unassimilable by the subject. If we were to ignore the subjective factor, it [p. 473] would mean a complete denial of the great doubt as to the possibility of absolute cognition. And this would mean a rechute into that stale and hollow positivism which disfigured the beginning of our epoch — an attitude of intellectual arrogance that is invariably accompanied by a crudeness of feeling, and an essential violation of life, as stupid as it is presumptuous. Through an overvaluation of the objective powers of cognition, we repress the importance of the subjective factor, which simply means the denial of the subject. But what is the subject? The subject is man — we are the subject. Only a sick mind could forget that cognition must have a subject, for there exists no knowledge and, therefore, for us, no world where ‘I know’ has not been said, although with this statement one has already expressed the subjective limitation of all knowledge.
The same holds good for all the psychic functions: they have a subject which is just as indispensable as the object. It is characteristic of our present extraverted valuation that the word ‘subjective’ occasionally rings almost like a reproach or blemish; but in every case the epithet ‘merely subjective’ means a dangerous weapon of offence, destined for that daring head, that is not unceasingly convinced of the unconditioned superiority of the object. We must, therefore, be quite clear as to what meaning the term ‘subjective’ carries in this investigation. As the subjective factor, then, I understand that psychological action or reaction which, when merged with the effect of the object, makes a new psychic fact. Now, in so far as the subjective factor, since oldest times and among all peoples, remains in a very large measure identical with itself — since elementary perceptions and cognitions are almost universally the same — it is a reality that is just as firmly established as the outer object. If this were not so, any sort of permanent and essentially changeless reality [p. 474] would be altogether inconceivable, and any understanding with posterity would be a matter of impossibility. Thus far, therefore, the subjective factor is something that is just as much a fact as the extent of the sea and the radius of the earth. Thus far, also, the subjective factor claims the whole value of a world-determining power which can never, under any circumstances, be excluded from our calculations. It is the other world-law, and the man who is based upon it has a foundation just as secure, permanent, and valid, as the man who relies upon the object But, just as the object and objective data remain by no means always the same, inasmuch as they are both perishable and subject to chance, the subjective factor is similarly liable to variability and individual hazard. Hence its value is also merely relative. The excessive development of the introverted standpoint in consciousness, for instance, does not lead to a better or sounder application of the subjective factor, but to an artificial subjectification of consciousness, which can hardly escape the reproach ‘merely subjective’. For, as a countertendency to this morbid subjectification, there ensues a desubjectification of consciousness in the form of an exaggerated extraverted attitude which richly deserves Weininger’s description “misautic”. Inasmuch as the introverted attitude is based upon a universally present, extremely real, and absolutely indispensable condition of psychological adaptation, such expressions as ‘philautic’, ‘egocentric’, and the like are both objectionable and out of place, since they foster the prejudice that it is invariably a question of the beloved ego. Nothing could be more absurd than such an assumption. Yet one is continually meeting it when examining the judgments of the extravert upon the introvert. Not, of course, that I wish to ascribe such an error to individual extraverts; it is rather the present generally accepted extraverted view which is by no means restricted to the extraverted [p. 475] type; for it finds just as many representatives in the ranks of the other type, albeit very much against its own interest. The reproach of being untrue to his own kind is justly levelled at the latter, whereas, this, at least, can never be charged against the former.
The introverted attitude is normally governed by the psychological structure, theoretically determined by heredity, but which to the subject is an ever present subjective factor. This must not be assumed, however, to be simply identical with the subject’s ego, an assumption that is certainly implied in the above mentioned designations of Weininger; it is rather the psychological structure of the subject that precedes any development of the ego. The really fundamental subject, the Self, is far more comprehensive than the ego, because the former also embraces the unconscious, while the latter is essentially the focal point of consciousness. Were the ego identical with the Self, it would be unthinkable that we should be able to appear in dreams in entirely different forms and with entirely different meanings. But it is a characteristic peculiarity of the introvert, which, moreover, is as much in keeping with his own inclination as with the general bias, that he tends to confuse his ego with the Self, and to exalt his ego to the position of subject of the psychological process, thus effecting that morbid subjectification of consciousness, mentioned above, which so alienates him from the object.
The psychological structure is the same. Semon has termed it ‘mneme’,[2] whereas I call it the ‘collective unconscious’. The individual Self is a portion, or excerpt, or representative, of something universally present in all living creatures, and, therefore, a correspondingly graduated kind of psychological process, which is born anew in every creature. Since earliest times, the inborn manner of acting [p. 476] has been called instinct, and for this manner of psychic apprehension of the object I have proposed the term archetype. I may assume that what is understood by instinct is familiar to everyone. It is another matter with the archetype. This term embraces the same idea as is contained in ‘primordial image’ (an expression borrowed from Jakob Burckhardt), and as such I have described it in Chapter xi of this book. I must here refer the reader to that chapter, in particular to the definition of ‘image’.
The archetype is a symbolical formula, which always begins to function whenever there are no conscious ideas present, or when such as are present are impossible upon intrinsic or extrinsic grounds. The contents of the collective unconscious are represented in consciousness in the form of pronounced tendencies, or definite ways of looking at things. They are generally regarded by the individual as being determined by the object-incorrectly, at bottom-since they have their source in the unconscious structure of the psyche, and are only released by the operation of the object. These subjective tendencies and ideas are stronger than the objective influence; because their psychic value is higher, they are superimposed upon all impressions. Thus, just as it seems incomprehensible to the introvert that the object should always be decisive, it remains just as enigmatic to the extravert how a subjective standpoint can be superior to the objective situation. He reaches the unavoidable conclusion that the introvert is either a conceited egoist or a fantastic doctrinaire. Recently he seems to have reached the conclusion that the introvert is constantly influenced by an unconscious power-complex. The introvert unquestionably exposes himself to this prejudice; for it cannot be denied that his definite and highly generalized mode of expression, which apparently excludes every other view from the outset, lends a certain countenance to [p. 477] this extraverted opinion. Furthermore, the very decisiveness and inflexibility of the subjective judgment, which is superordinated to all objective data, is alone sufficient to create the impression of a strong egocentricity. The introvert usually lacks the right argument in presence of this prejudice; for he is just as unaware of the unconscious, though thoroughly sound presuppositions of his subjective judgment, as he is of his subjective perceptions. In harmony with the style of the times, he looks without, instead of behind his own consciousness for the answer. Should he become neurotic, it is the sign of a more or less complete unconscious identity of the ego with the Self, whereupon the importance of the Self is reduced to nil, while the ego becomes inflated beyond reason. The undeniable, world-determining power of the subjective factor then becomes concentrated in the ego, developing an immoderate power claim and a downright foolish egocentricity. Every psychology which reduces the nature of man to unconscious power instinct springs from this foundation. For example, Nietzsche’s many faults in taste owe their existence to this subjectification of consciousness.
(II) THE UNCONSCIOUS ATTITUDE
The superior position of the subjective factor in consciousness involves an inferiority of the objective factor. The object is not given that importance which should really belong to it. Just as it plays too great a role in the extraverted attitude, it has too little to say in the introverted. To the extent that the introvert’s consciousness is subjectified, thus bestowing undue importance upon the ego, the object is placed in a position which in time becomes quite untenable. The object is a factor of undeniable power, while the ego is something very restricted [p. 478] and transitory. It would be a very different matter if the Self opposed the object. Self and world are commensurable factors; hence a normal introverted attitude is just as valid, and has as good a right to existence, as a normal extraverted attitude. But, if the ego has usurped the claims of the subject, a compensation naturally develops under the guise of an unconscious reinforcement of the influence of the object. Such a change eventually commands attention, for often, in spite of a positively convulsive attempt to ensure the superiority of the ego, the object and objective data develop an overwhelming influence, which is all the more invincible because it seizes upon the individual unawares, thus effecting an irresistible invasion of consciousness. As a result of the ego’s defective relation to the object — for a will to command is not adaptation — a compensatory relation to the object develops in the unconscious, which makes itself felt in consciousness as an unconditional and irrepressible tie to the object. The more the ego seeks to secure every possible liberty, independence, superiority, and freedom from obligations, the deeper does it fall into the slavery of objective facts. The subject’s freedom of mind is chained to an ignominious financial dependence, his unconcernedness of action suffers now and again, a distressing collapse in the face of public opinion, his moral superiority gets swamped in inferior relationships, and his desire to dominate ends in a pitiful craving to be loved. The chief concern of the unconscious in such a case is the relation to the object, and it affects this in a way that is calculated to bring both the power illusion and the superiority phantasy to utter ruin. The object assumes terrifying dimensions, in spite of conscious depreciation. Detachment from, and command of, the object are, in consequence, pursued by the ego still more violently. Finally, the ego surrounds itself by a regular system of safeguards (Adler has ably [p. 479] depicted these) which shall at least preserve the illusion of superiority. But, therewith, the introvert severs himself completely from the object, and either squanders his energy in defensive measures or makes fruitless attempts to impose his power upon the object and successfully assert himself. But these efforts are constantly being frustrated by the overwhelming impressions he receives from the object. It continually imposes itself upon him against his will; it provokes in him the most disagreeable and obstinate affects, persecuting him at every step. An immense, inner struggle is constantly required of him, in order to ‘keep going.’ Hence Psychoasthenia is his typical form of neurosis, a malady which is characterized on the one hand by an extreme sensitiveness, and on the other by a great liability to exhaustion and chronic fatigue.
An analysis of the personal unconscious yields an abundance of power phantasies coupled with fear of the dangerously animated objects, to which, as a matter of fact, the introvert easily falls a victim. For a peculiar cowardliness develops from this fear of the object; he shrinks from making either himself or his opinion effective, always dreading an intensified influence on the part of the object. He is terrified of impressive affects in others, and is hardly ever free from the dread of falling under hostile influence. For objects possess terrifying and powerful qualities for him-qualities which he cannot consciously discern in them, but which, through his unconscious perception, he cannot choose but believe in. Since his conscious relation to the object is relatively repressed, its exit is by way of the unconscious, where it becomes loaded with the qualities of the unconscious. These qualities are primarily infantile and archaic. His relation to the object, therefore, becomes correspondingly primitive, taking on all those peculiarities which characterize the primitive objectrelationship. Now it seems as though objects possessed [p. 480] magical powers. Strange, new objects excite fear and distrust, as though concealing unknown dangers; objects long rooted and blessed by tradition are attached to his soul as by invisible threads; every change has a disturbing, if not actually dangerous aspect, since its apparent implication is a magical animation of the object. A lonely island where only what is permitted to move moves, becomes an ideal. Auch Einer, the novel by F. Th. Vischer, gives a rich insight into this side of the introvert’s psychology, and at the same time shows the underlying symbolism of the collective unconscious, which in this description of types I am leaving on one side, since it is a universal phenomenon with no especial connection with types.
(III) PECULIARITIES OF THE BASIC PSYCHOLOGICAL FUNCTIONS IN THE INTROVERTED ATTITUDE
1. Thinking
When describing extraverted thinking, I gave a brief characterization of introverted thinking, to which at this stage I must make further reference. Introverted thinking is primarily orientated by the subjective factor. At the least, this subjective factor is represented by a subjective feeling of direction, which, in the last resort, determines judgment. Occasionally, it is a more or less finished image, which to some extent, serves as a standard. This thinking may be conceived either with concrete or with abstract factors, but always at the decisive points it is orientated by subjective data. Hence, it does not lead from concrete experience back again into objective things, but always to the subjective content, External facts are not the aim and origin of this thinking, although the introvert would often like to make it so appear. It begins in the subject, and returns to the subject, although it may [p. 481] undertake the widest flights into the territory of the real and the actual. Hence, in the statement of new facts, its chief value is indirect, because new views rather than the perception of new facts are its main concern. It formulates questions and creates theories; it opens up prospects and yields insight, but in the presence of facts it exhibits a reserved demeanour. As illustrative examples they have their value, but they must not prevail. Facts are collected as evidence or examples for a theory, but never for their own sake. Should this latter ever occur, it is done only as a compliment to the extraverted style. For this kind of thinking facts are of secondary importance; what, apparently, is of absolutely paramount importance is the development and presentation of the subjective idea, that primordial symbolical image standing more or less darkly before the inner vision. Its aim, therefore, is never concerned with an intellectual reconstruction of concrete actuality, but with the shaping of that dim image into a resplendent idea. Its desire is to reach reality; its goal is to see how external facts fit into, and fulfil, the framework of the idea; its actual creative power is proved by the fact that this thinking can also create that idea which, though not present in the external facts, is yet the most suitable, abstract expression of them. Its task is accomplished when the idea it has fashioned seems to emerge so inevitably from the external facts that they actually prove its validity.
But just as little as it is given to extraverted thinking to wrest a really sound inductive idea from concrete facts or ever to create new ones, does it lie in the power of introverted thinking to translate its original image into an idea adequately adapted to the facts. For, as in the former case the purely empirical heaping together of facts paralyses thought and smothers their meaning, so in the latter case introverted thinking shows a dangerous tendency [p. 482] to coerce facts into the shape of its image, or by ignoring them altogether, to unfold its phantasy image in freedom. In such a case, it will be impossible for the presented idea to deny its origin from the dim archaic image. There will cling to it a certain mythological character that we are prone to interpret as ‘originality’, or in more pronounced cases’ as mere whimsicality; since its archaic character is not transparent as such to specialists unfamiliar with mythological motives. The subjective force of conviction inherent in such an idea is usually very great; its power too is the more convincing, the less it is influenced by contact with outer facts. Although to the man who advocates the idea, it may well seem that his scanty store of facts were the actual ground and source of the truth and validity of his idea, yet such is not the case, for the idea derives its convincing power from its unconscious archetype, which, as such, has universal validity and everlasting truth. Its truth, however, is so universal and symbolic, that it must first enter into the recognized and recognizable knowledge of the time, before it can become a practical truth of any real value to life. What sort of a causality would it be, for instance, that never became perceptible in practical causes and practical results?
This thinking easily loses itself in the immense truth of the subjective factor. It creates theories for the sake of theories, apparently with a view to real or at least possible facts, yet always with a distinct tendency to go over from the world of ideas into mere imagery. Accordingly many intuitions of possibilities appear on the scene, none of which however achieve any reality, until finally images are produced which no longer express anything externally real, being ‘merely’ symbols of the simply unknowable. It is now merely a mystical thinking and quite as unfruitful as that empirical thinking whose sole operation is within the framework of objective facts. [p. 483]
Whereas the latter sinks to the level of a mere presentation of facts, the former evaporates into a representation of the unknowable, which is even beyond everything that could be expressed in an image. The presentation of facts has a certain incontestable truth, because the subjective factor is excluded and the facts speak for themselves. Similarly, the representing of the unknowable has also an immediate, subjective, and convincing power, because it is demonstrable from its own existence. The former says ‘Est, ergo est’ (‘It is ; therefore it is’) ; while the latter says ‘Cogito, ergo cogito’ (‘ I think ; therefore I think’). In the last analysis, introverted thinking arrives at the evidence of its own subjective being, while extraverted thinking is driven to the evidence of its complete identity with the objective fact. For, while the extravert really denies himself in his complete dispersion among objects, the introvert, by ridding himself of each and every content, has to content himself with his mere existence. In both cases the further development of life is crowded out of the domain of thought into the region of other psychic functions which had hitherto existed in relative unconsciousness. The extraordinary impoverishment of introverted thinking in relation to objective facts finds compensation in an abundance of unconscious facts. Whenever consciousness, wedded to the function of thought, confines itself within the smallest and emptiest circle possible — though seeming to contain the plenitude of divinity — unconscious phantasy becomes proportionately enriched by a multitude of archaically formed facts, a veritable pandemonium of magical and irrational factors, wearing the particular aspect that accords with the nature of that function which shall next relieve the thought-function as the representative of life. If this should be the intuitive function, the ‘other side’ will be viewed with the eyes of a Kubin or a Meyrink. If it is the feeling-function, [p. 484] there arise quite unheard of and fantastic feeling-relations, coupled with feeling-judgments of a quite contradictory and unintelligible character. If the sensation-function, then the senses discover some new and never-before-experienced possibility, both within and without the body. A closer investigation of such changes can easily demonstrate the reappearance of primitive psychology with all its characteristic features. Naturally, the thing experienced is not merely primitive but also symbolic; in fact, the older and more primeval it appears, the more does it represent the future truth: since everything ancient in our unconscious means the coming possibility.
Under ordinary circumstances, not even the transition to the ‘other side’ succeeds — still less the redeeming journey through the unconscious. The passage across is chiefly prevented by conscious resistance to any subjection of the ego to the unconscious reality and to the determining reality of the unconscious object. The condition is a dissociation-in other words, a neurosis having the character of an inner wastage with increasing brain-exhaustion — a psychoasthenia, in fact.
2. The Introverted Thinking Type
Just as Darwin might possibly represent the normal extraverted thinking type, so we might point to Kant as a counter-example of the normal introverted thinking type. The former speaks with facts; the latter appeals to the subjective factor. Darwin ranges over the wide fields of objective facts, while Kant restricts himself to a critique of knowledge in general. But suppose a Cuvier be contrasted with a Nietzsche: the antithesis becomes even sharper.
The introverted thinking type is characterized by a priority of the thinking I have just described. Like his [p. 485] extraverted parallel, he is decisively influenced by ideas; these, however, have their origin, not in the objective data but in the subjective foundation. Like the extravert, he too will follow his ideas, but in the reverse direction: inwardly not outwardly. Intensity is his aim, not extensity. In these fundamental characters he differs markedly, indeed quite unmistakably from his extraverted parallel. Like every introverted type, he is almost completely lacking in that which distinguishes his counter type, namely, the intensive relatedness to the object. In the case of a human object, the man has a distinct feeling that he matters only in a negative way, i.e., in milder instances he is merely conscious of being superfluous, but with a more extreme type he feels himself warded off as something definitely disturbing. This negative relation to the object-indifference, and even aversion-characterizes every introvert; it also makes a description of the introverted type in general extremely difficult. With him, everything tends to disappear and get concealed. His judgment appears cold, obstinate, arbitrary, and inconsiderate, simply because he is related less to the object than the subject. One can feel nothing in it that might possibly confer a higher value upon the object; it always seems to go beyond the object, leaving behind it a flavour of a certain subjective superiority. Courtesy, amiability, and friendliness may be present, but often with a particular quality suggesting a certain uneasiness, which betrays an ulterior aim, namely, the disarming of an opponent, who must at all costs be pacified and set at ease lest he prove a disturbing- element. In no sense, of course, is he an opponent, but, if at all sensitive, he will feel somewhat repelled, perhaps even depreciated. Invariably the object has to submit to a certain neglect; in worse cases it is even surrounded with quite unnecessary measures of precaution. Thus it happens that this type tends to [p. 486]
disappear behind a cloud of misunderstanding, which only thickens the more he attempts to assume, by way of compensation and with the help of his inferior functions, a certain mask of urbanity, which often presents a most vivid contrast to his real nature. Although in the extension of his world of ideas he shrinks from no risk, however daring, and never even considers the possibility that such a world might also be dangerous, revolutionary, heretical, and wounding to feeling, he is none the less a prey to the liveliest anxiety, should it ever chance to become objectively real. That goes against the grain. When the time comes for him to transplant his ideas into the world, his is by no means the air of an anxious mother solicitous for her children’s welfare; he merely exposes them, and is often extremely annoyed when they fail to thrive on their own account. The decided lack he usually displays in practical ability, and his aversion from any sort of re[accent]clame assist in this attitude. If to his eyes his product appears subjectively correct and true, it must also be so in practice, and others have simply got to bow to its truth. Hardly ever will he go out of his way to win anyone’s appreciation of it, especially if it be anyone of influence. And, when he brings himself to do so, he is usually so extremely maladroit that he merely achieves the opposite of his purpose. In his own special province, there are usually awkward experiences with his colleagues, since he never knows how to win their favour; as a rule he only succeeds in showing them how entirely superfluous they are to him. In the pursuit of his ideas he is generally stubborn, head-strong, and quite unamenable to influence. His suggestibility to personal influences is in strange contrast to this. An object has only to be recognized as apparently innocuous for such a type to become extremely accessible to really inferior elements. They lay hold of him from the [p. 487] unconscious. He lets himself be brutalized and exploited in the most ignominious way, if only he can be left undisturbed in the pursuit of his ideas. He simply does not see when he is being plundered behind his back and wronged in practical ways: this is because his relation to the object is such a secondary matter that lie is left without a guide in the purely objective valuation of his product. In thinking out his problems to the utmost of his ability, he also complicates them, and constantly becomes entangled in every possible scruple. However clear to himself the inner structure of his thoughts may be, he is not in the least clear where and how they link up with the world of reality. Only with difficulty can he persuade himself to admit that what is clear to him may not be equally clear to everyone. His style is usually loaded and complicated by all sorts of accessories, qualifications, saving clauses, doubts, etc., which spring from his exacting scrupulousness. His work goes slowly and with difficulty. Either he is taciturn or he falls among people who cannot understand him; whereupon he proceeds to gather further proof of the unfathomable stupidity of man. If he should ever chance to be understood, he is credulously liable to overestimate. Ambitious women have only to understand how advantage may be taken of his uncritical attitude towards the object to make an easy prey of him; or he may develop into a misanthropic bachelor with a childlike heart. Then, too, his outward appearance is often gauche, as if he were painfully anxious to escape observation; or he may show a remarkable unconcern, an almost childlike naivete. In his own particular field of work he provokes violent contradiction, with which he has no notion how to deal, unless by chance he is seduced by his primitive affects into biting and fruitless polemics. By his wider circle he is counted inconsiderate and domineering. But the [p. 488] better one knows him, the more favourable one’s judgment becomes, and his nearest friends are well aware how to value his intimacy. To people who judge him from afar he appears prickly, inaccessible, haughty; frequently he may even seem soured as a result of his anti-social prejudices. He has little influence as a personal teacher, since the mentality of his pupils is strange to him. Besides, teaching has, at bottom, little interest for him, except when it accidentally provides him with a theoretical problem. He is a poor teacher, because while teaching his thought is engaged with the actual material, and will not be satisfied with its mere presentation.
With the intensification of his type, his convictions become all the more rigid and unbending. Foreign influences are eliminated; he becomes more unsympathetic to his peripheral world, and therefore more dependent upon his intimates. His expression becomes more personal and inconsiderate and his ideas more profound, but they can no longer be adequately expressed in the material at hand. This lack is replaced by emotivity and susceptibility. The foreign influence, brusquely declined from without, reaches him from within, from the side of the unconscious, and he is obliged to collect evidence against it and against things in general which to outsiders seems quite superfluous. Through the subjectification of consciousness occasioned by his defective relationship to the object, what secretly concerns his own person now seems to him of chief importance. And he begins to confound his subjective truth with his own person. Not that he will attempt to press anyone personally with his convictions, but he will break out with venomous and personal retorts against every criticism, however just. Thus in every respect his isolation gradually increases. His originally fertilizing ideas become destructive, because poisoned by a kind of sediment of bitterness. His struggle against the influences emanating [p. 489] from the unconscious increases with his external isolation, until gradually this begins to cripple him. A still greater isolation must surely protect him from the unconscious influences, but as a rule this only takes him deeper into the conflict which is destroying him within.
The thinking of the introverted type is positive and synthetic in the development of those ideas which in ever increasing measure approach the eternal validity of the primordial images. But, when their connection with objective experience begins to fade, they become mythological and untrue for the present situation. Hence this thinking holds value only for its contemporaries, just so long as it also stands in visible and understandable connection with the known facts of the time. But, when thinking becomes mythological, its irrelevancy grows until finally it gets lost in itself. The relatively unconscious functions of feeling, intuition, and sensation, which counterbalance introverted thinking, are inferior in quality and have a primitive, extraverted character, to which all the troublesome objective influences this type is subject to must be ascribed. The various measures of self-defence, the curious protective obstacles with which such people are wont to surround themselves, are sufficiently familiar, and I may, therefore, spare myself a description of them. They all serve as a defence against ‘magical’ influences; a vague dread of the other sex also belongs to this category.
3. Feeling
Introverted feeling is determined principally by the subjective factor. This means that the feeling-judgment differs quite as essentially from extraverted feeling as does the introversion of thinking from extraversion. It is unquestionably difficult to give an intellectual presentation of the introverted feeling process, or even an approximate [p. 490] description of it, although the peculiar character of this kind of feeling simply stands out as soon as one becomes aware of it at all. Since it is primarily controlled by subjective preconditions, and is only secondarily concerned with the object, this feeling appears much less upon the surface and is, as a rule, misunderstood. It is a feeling which apparently depreciates the object; hence it usually becomes noticeable in its negative manifestations. The existence of a positive feeling can be inferred only indirectly, as it were. Its aim is not so much to accommodate to the objective fact as to stand above it, since its whole unconscious effort is to give reality to the underlying images. It is, as it were, continually seeking an image which has no existence in reality, but of which it has had a sort of previous vision. From objects that can never fit in with its aim it seems to glide unheedingly away. It strives after an inner intensity, to which at the most, objects contribute only an accessory stimulus. The depths of this feeling can only be divined — they can never be clearly comprehended. It makes men silent and difficult of access; with the sensitiveness of the mimosa, it shrinks from the brutality of the object, in order to expand into the depths of the subject. It puts forward negative feeling-judgments or assumes an air of profound indifference, as a measure of self-defence.
Primordial images are, of course, just as much idea as feeling. Thus, basic ideas such as God, freedom, immortality are just as much feeling-values as they are significant as ideas. Everything, therefore, that has been said of the introverted thinking refers equally to introverted feeling, only here everything is felt while there it was thought. But the fact that thoughts can generally be expressed more intelligibly than feelings demands a more than ordinary descriptive or artistic capacity before the real wealth of this feeling can be even approximately [p. 491] presented or communicated to the outer world. Whereas subjective thinking, on account of its unrelatedness, finds great difficulty in arousing an adequate understanding, the same, though in perhaps even higher degree, holds good for subjective feeling. In order to communicate with others it has to find an external form which is not only fitted to absorb the subjective feeling in a satisfying expression, but which must also convey it to one’s fellowman in such a way that a parallel process takes place in him. Thanks to the relatively great internal (as well as external) similarity of the human being, this effect can actually be achieved, although a form acceptable to feeling is extremely difficult to find, so long as it is still mainly orientated by the fathomless store of primordial images. But, when it becomes falsified by an egocentric attitude, it at once grows unsympathetic, since then its major concern is still with the ego. Such a case never fails to create an impression of sentimental self-love, with its constant effort to arouse interest and even morbid self-admiration just as the subjectified consciousness of the introverted thinker, striving after an abstraction of abstractions, only attains a supreme intensity of a thought-process in itself quite empty, so the intensification of egocentric feeling only leads to a contentless passionateness, which merely feels itself. This is the mystical, ecstatic stage, which prepares the way over into the extraverted functions repressed by feeling, just as introverted thinking is pitted against a primitive feeling, to which objects attach themselves with magical force, so introverted feeling is counterbalanced by a primitive thinking, whose concretism and slavery to facts passes all bounds. Continually emancipating itself from the relation to the object, this feeling creates a freedom, both of action and of conscience, that is only answerable to the subject, and that may even renounce all traditional values. But so much the more [p. 492] does unconscious thinking fall a victim to the power of objective facts.
4. The Introverted Feeling Type
It is principally among women that I have found the priority of introverted feeling. The proverb ‘Still waters run deep’ is very true of such women. They are mostly silent, inaccessible, and hard to understand; often they hide behind a childish or banal mask, and not infrequently their temperament is melancholic. They neither shine nor reveal themselves. Since they submit the control of their lives to their subjectively orientated feeling, their true motives generally remain concealed. Their outward demeanour is harmonious and inconspicuous; they reveal a delightful repose, a sympathetic parallelism, which has no desire to affect others, either to impress, influence, or change them in any way. Should this outer side be somewhat emphasized, a suspicion of neglectfulness and coldness may easily obtrude itself, which not seldom increases to a real indifference for the comfort and well-being of others. One distinctly feels the movement of feeling away from the object. With the normal type, however, such an event only occurs when the object has in some way too strong an effect. The harmonious feeling atmosphere rules only so long as the object moves upon its own way with a moderate feeling intensity, and makes no attempt to cross the other’s path. There is little effort to accompany the real emotions of the object, which tend to be damped and rebuffed, or to put it more aptly, are ‘cooled off’ by a negative feeling-judgment. Although one may find a constant readiness for a peaceful and harmonious companionship, the unfamiliar object is shown no touch of amiability, no gleam of responding warmth, but is met by a manner of apparent indifference or repelling coldness. [p. 493]
One may even be made to feel the superfluousness of one’s own existence. In the presence of something that might carry one away or arouse enthusiasm, this type observes a benevolent neutrality, tempered with an occasional trace of superiority and criticism that soon takes the wind out of the sails of a sensitive object. But a stormy emotion will be brusquely rejected with murderous coldness, unless it happens to catch the subject from the side of the unconscious, i.e. unless, through the animation of some primordial image, feeling is, as it were, taken captive. In which event such a woman simply feels a momentary laming, invariably producing, in due course, a still more violent resistance, which reaches the object in his most vulnerable spot. The relation to the object is, as far as possible, kept in a secure and tranquil middle state of feeling, where passion and its intemperateness are resolutely proscribed. Expression of feeling, therefore, remains niggardly and, when once aware of it at all, the object has a permanent sense of his undervaluation. Such, however, is not always the case, since very often the deficit remains unconscious; whereupon the unconscious feeling-claims gradually produce symptoms which compel a more serious attention.
A superficial judgment might well be betrayed, by a rather cold and reserved demeanour, into denying all feeling to this type. Such a view, however, would be quite false; the truth is, her feelings are intensive rather than extensive. They develop into the depth. Whereas, for instance, an extensive feeling of sympathy can express itself in both word and deed at the right place, thus quickly ridding itself of its impression, an intensive sympathy, because shut off from every means of expression, gains a passionate depth that embraces the misery of a world and is simply benumbed. It may possibly make an extravagant irruption, leading to some staggering act of an almost heroic character, to which, however, neither the object nor [p. 494] the subject can find a right relation. To the outer world, or to the blind eyes of the extravert, this sympathy looks like coldness, for it does nothing visibly, and an extraverted consciousness is unable to believe in invisible forces.
Such misunderstanding is a characteristic occurrence in the life of this type, and is commonly registered as a most weighty argument against any deeper feeling relation with the object. But the underlying, real object of this feeling is only dimly divined by the normal type. It may possibly express its aim and content in a concealed religiosity anxiously shielded, from profane eyes, or in intimate poetic forms equally safeguarded from surprise; not without a secret ambition to bring about some superiority over the object by such means. Women often express much of it in their children, letting their passionateness flow secretly into them.
Although in the normal type, the tendency, above alluded to, to overpower or coerce the object once openly and visibly with the thing secretly felt, rarely plays a disturbing role, and never leads to a serious attempt in this direction, some trace of it, none the less, leaks through into the personal effect upon the object, in the form of a domineering influence often difficult to define. It is sensed as a sort of stifling or oppressive feeling which holds the immediate circle under a spell. It gives a woman of this type a certain mysterious power that may prove terribly fascinating to the extraverted man, for it touches his unconscious. This power is derived from the deeply felt, unconscious images; consciousness, however, readily refers it to the ego, whereupon the influence becomes debased into personal tyranny. But, wherever the unconscious subject is identified with the ego, the mysterious power of the intensive feeling is also transformed into banal and arrogant ambition, vanity, and [p. 495] petty tyranny. This produces a type of woman most regrettably distinguished by her unscrupulous ambition and mischievous cruelty. But this change in the picture leads also to neurosis.
So long as the ego feels itself housed, as it were, beneath the heights of the unconscious subject, and feeling reveals something higher and mightier than the ego, the type is normal. The unconscious thinking is certainly archaic, yet its reductions may prove extremely helpful in compensating the occasional inclinations to exalt the ego into the subject. But, whenever this does take place by dint of complete suppression of the unconscious reductive thinking-products, the unconscious thinking goes over into opposition and becomes projected into objects. Whereupon the now egocentric subject comes to feel the power and importance of the depreciated object. Consciousness begins to feel ‘what others think’. Naturally, others are thinking, all sorts of baseness, scheming evil, and contriving all sorts of plots, secret intrigues, etc. To prevent this, the subject must also begin to carry out preventive intrigues, to suspect and sound others, to make subtle combinations. Assailed by rumours, he must make convulsive efforts to convert, if possible, a threatened inferiority into a superiority. Innumerable secret rivalries develop, and in these embittered struggles not only will no base or evil means be disdained, but even virtues will be misused and tampered with in order to play the trump card. Such a development must lead to exhaustion. The form of neurosis is neurasthenic rather than hysterical; in the case of women we often find severe collateral physical states, as for instance anæmia and its sequelæ.
5. Recapitulation of Introverted Rational Types
Both the foregoing types are rational, since they are founded upon reasoning, judging functions. Reasoning [p. 496] judgment is based not merely upon objective, but also upon subjective, data. But the predominance of one or other factor, conditioned by a psychic disposition often existing from early youth, deflects the reasoning function. For a judgment to be really reasonable it should have equal reference to both the objective and the subjective factors, and be able to do justice to both. This, however, would be an ideal case, and would presuppose a uniform development of both extraversion and introversion. But either movement excludes the other, and, so long as this dilemma persists, they cannot possibly exist side by, side, but at the most successively. Under ordinary circumstances, therefore, an ideal reason is impossible. A rational type has always a typical reasonal variation. Thus, the introverted rational types unquestionably have a reasoning judgment, only it is a judgment whose leading note is subjective. The laws of logic are not necessarily deflected, since its onesidedness lies in the premise. The premise is the predominance of the subjective factor existing beneath every conclusion and colouring every judgment. Its superior value as compared with the objective factor is self-evident from the beginning. As already stated, it is not just a question of value bestowed, but of a natural disposition existing before all rational valuation. Hence, to the introvert rational judgment necessarily appears to have many nuances which differentiate it from that of the extravert. Thus, to the introvert, to mention the most general instance, that chain of reasoning which leads to the subjective factor appears rather more reasonable than that which leads to the object. This difference, which in the individual case is practically insignificant, indeed almost unnoticeable, effects unbridgeable oppositions in the gross; these are the more irritating, the less we are aware of the minimal standpoint displacement produced by the psychological premise in the individual case. A [p. 497] capital error regularly creeps in here, for one labours to prove a fallacy in the conclusion, instead of realizing the difference of the psychological premise. Such a realization is a difficult matter for every rational type, since it undermines the apparent, absolute validity of his own principle, and delivers him over to its antithesis, which certainly amounts to a catastrophe.
Almost more even than the extraverted is the introverted type subject to misunderstanding: not so much because the extravert is a more merciless or critical adversary, than he himself can easily be, but because the style of the epoch in which he himself participates is against him. Not in relation to the extraverted type, but as against our general accidental world-philosophy, he finds himself in the minority, not of course numerically, but from the evidence of his own feeling. In so far as he is a convinced participator in the general style, he undermines his own foundations, since the present style, with its almost exclusive acknowledgment of the visible and the tangible, is opposed to his principle. Because of its invisibility, he is obliged to depreciate the subjective factor, and to force himself to join in the extraverted overvaluation of the object. He himself sets the subjective factor at too low a value, and his feelings of inferiority are his chastisement for this sin. Little wonder, therefore, that it is precisely our epoch, and particularly those movements which are somewhat ahead of the time, that reveal the subjective factor in every kind of exaggerated, crude and grotesque form of expression. I refer to the art of the present day.
The undervaluation of his own principle makes the introvert egotistical, and forces upon him the psychology of the oppressed. The more egotistical he becomes, the stronger his impression grows that these others, who are apparently able, without qualms, to conform with the present style, are the oppressors against whom he must guard and [p. 498] protect himself. He does not usually perceive that he commits his capital mistake in not depending upon the subjective factor with that same loyalty and devotion with which the extravert follows the object By the undervaluation of his own principle, his penchant towards egoism becomes unavoidable, which, of course, richly deserves the prejudice of the extravert. Were he only to remain true to his own principle, the judment of ‘egoist’ would be radically false; for the justification of his attitude would be established by its general efficacy, and all misunderstandings dissipated.
6. Sensation
Sensation, which in obedience to its whole nature is concerned with the object and the objective stimulus, also undergoes a considerable modification in the introverted attitude. It, too, has a subjective factor, for beside the object sensed there stands a sensing subject, who contributes his subjective disposition to the objective stimulus. In the introverted attitude sensation is definitely based upon the subjective portion of perception. What is meant by this finds its best illustration in the reproduction of objects in art. When, for instance, several painters undertake to paint one and the same landscape, with a sincere attempt to reproduce it faithfully, each painting will none the less differ from the rest, not merely by virtue of a more or less developed ability, but chiefly because of a different vision; there will even appear in some of the paintings a decided psychic variation, both in general mood and in treatment of colour and form. Such qualities betray a more or less influential co-operation of the subjective factor. The subjective factor of sensation is essentially the same as in the other functions already spoken of. It is an unconscious disposition, which alters [p. 499] the sense-perception at its very source, thus depriving it of the character of a purely objective influence. In this case, sensation is related primarily to the subject, and only secondarily to the object. How extraordinarily strong the subjective factor can be is shown most clearly in art. The ascendancy of the subjective factor occasionally achieves a complete suppression of the mere influence of the object; but none the less sensation remains sensation, although it has come to be a perception of the subjective factor, and the effect of the object has sunk to the level of a mere stimulant. Introverted sensation develops in accordance with this subjective direction. A true sense-perception certainly exists, but it always looks as though objects were not so much forcing their way into the subject in their own right as that the subject were seeing things quite differently, or saw quite other things than the rest of mankind. As a matter of fact, the subject perceives the same things as everybody else, only, he never stops at the purely objective effect, but concerns himself with the subjective perception released by the objective stimulus. Subjective perception differs remarkably from the objective. It is either not found at all in the object, or, at most, merely suggested by it; it can, however, be similar to the sensation of other men, although not immediately derived from the objective behaviour of things. It does not impress one as a mere product of consciousness — it is too genuine for that. But it makes a definite psychic impression, since elements of a higher psychic order are perceptible to it. This order, however, does not coincide with the contents of consciousness. It is concerned with presuppositions, or dispositions of the collective unconscious, with mythological images, with primal possibilities of ideas. The character of significance and meaning clings to subjective perception. It says more than the mere image of the object, though naturally only to him for whom the [p. 500] subjective factor has some meaning. To another, a reproduced subjective impression seems to suffer from the defect of possessing insufficient similarity with the object; it seems, therefore, to have failed in its purpose. Subjective sensation apprehends the background of the physical world rather than its surface. The decisive thing is not the reality of the object, but the reality of the subjective factor, i.e. the primordial images, which in their totality represent a psychic mirror-world. It is a mirror, however, with the peculiar capacity of representing the present contents of consciousness not in their known and customary form but in a certain sense sub specie aeternitatis, somewhat as a million-year old consciousness might see them. Such a consciousness would see the becoming and the passing of things beside their present and momentary existence, and not only that, but at the same time it would also see that Other, which was before their becoming and will be after their passing hence. To this consciousness the present moment is improbable. This is, of course, only a simile, of which, however, I had need to give some sort of illustration of the peculiar nature of introverted sensation. Introverted sensation conveys an image whose effect is not so much to reproduce the object as to throw over it a wrapping whose lustre is derived from age-old subjective experience and the still unborn future event. Thus, mere sense impression develops into the depth of the meaningful, while extraverted sensation seizes only the momentary and manifest existence of things.
7. The Introverted Sensation Type
The priority of introverted sensation produces a definite type, which is characterized by certain peculiarities. It is an irrational type, inasmuch as its selection among occurrences is not primarily rational, but is guided rather [p. 501] by what just happens. Whereas, the extraverted sensation-type is determined by the intensity of the objective influence, the introverted type is orientated by the intensity of the subjective sensation-constituent released by the objective stimulus. Obviously, therefore, no sort of proportional relation exists between object and sensation, but something that is apparently quite irregular and arbitrary judging from without, therefore, it is practically impossible to foretell what will make an impression and what will not. If there were present a capacity and readiness for expression in any way commensurate with the strength of sensation, the irrationality of this type would be extremely evident. This is the case, for instance, when the individual is a creative artist. But, since this is the exception, it usually happens that the characteristic introverted difficulty of expression also conceals his irrationality. On the contrary, he may actually stand out by the very calmness and passivity of his demeanour, or by his rational self-control. This peculiarity, which often leads the superficial judgment astray, is really due to his unrelatedness to objects. Normally the object is not consciously depreciated in the least, but its stimulus is removed from it, because it is immediately replaced by a subjective reaction, which is no longer related to the reality of the object. This, of course, has the same effect as a depreciation of the object. Such a type can easily make one question why one should exist at all; or why objects in general should have any right to existence, since everything essential happens without the object. This doubt may be justified in extreme cases, though not in the normal, since the objective stimulus is indispensable to his sensation, only it produces something different from what was to be surmised from the external state of affairs. Considered from without, it looks as though the effect of the object [p. 502] did not obtrude itself upon the subject. This impression is so far correct inasmuch as a subjective content does, in fact, intervene from the unconscious, thus snatching away the effect of the object. This intervention may be so abrupt that the individual appears to shield himself directly from any possible influence of the object. In any aggravated or well-marked case, such a protective guard is also actually present. Even with only a slight reinforcement of the unconscious, the subjective constituent of sensation becomes so alive that it almost completely obscures the objective influence. The results of this are, on the one hand, a feeling of complete depreciation on the part of the object, and, on the other, an illusory conception of reality on the part of the subject, which in morbid cases may even reach the point of a complete inability to discriminate between the real object and the subjective perception. Although so vital a distinction vanishes completely only in a practically psychotic state, yet long before that point is reached subjective perception may influence thought, feeling, and action to an extreme degree, in spite of the fact that the object is clearly seen in its fullest reality. Whenever the objective influence does succeed in forcing its way into the subject — as the result of particular circumstances of special intensity, or because of a more perfect analogy with the unconscious image — even the normal example of this type is induced to act in accordance with his unconscious model. Such action has an illusory quality in relation to objective reality, and therefore has a very odd and strange character. It instantly reveals the anti-real subjectivity of the type, But, where the influence of the object does not entirely succeed, it encounters a benevolent neutrality, disclosing little sympathy, yet constantly striving to reassure and adjust. The too-low is raised a little, the too-high is made a little lower; the enthusiastic is damped, the [p. 503] extravagant restrained; and the unusual brought within the ‘correct’ formula: all this in order to keep the influence of the object within the necessary bounds. Thus, this type becomes an affliction to his circle, just in so far as his entire harmlessness is no longer above suspicion. But, if the latter should be the case, the individual readily becomes a victim to the aggressiveness and ambitions of others. Such men allow themselves to be abused, for which they usually take vengeance at the most unsuitable occasions with redoubled stubbornness and resistance. When there exists no capacity for artistic expression, all impressions sink into the inner depths, whence they hold consciousness under a spell, removing any possibility it might have had of mastering the fascinating impression by means of conscious expression. Relatively speaking, this type has only archaic possibilities of expression for the disposal of his impressions; thought and feeling are relatively unconscious, and, in so far as they have a certain consciousness, they only serve in the necessary, banal, every-day expressions. Hence as conscious functions, they are wholly unfitted to give any adequate rendering of the subjective perceptions. This type, therefore, is uncommonly inaccessible to an objective understanding and he fares no better in the understanding of himself.
Above all, his development estranges him from the reality of the object, handing him over to his subjective perceptions, which orientate his consciousness in accordance with an archaic reality, although his deficiency in comparative judgment keeps him wholly unaware of this fact. Actually he moves in a mythological world, where men animals, railways, houses, rivers, and mountains appear partly as benevolent deities and partly as malevolent demons. That thus they, appear to him never enters his mind, although their effect upon his judgments and acts can bear no other interpretation. He judges and acts as [p. 504] though he had such powers to deal with; but this begins to strike him only when he discovers that his sensations are totally different from reality. If his tendency is to reason objectively, he will sense this difference as morbid; but if, on the other hand, he remains faithful to his irrationality, and is prepared to grant his sensation reality value, the objective world will appear a mere make-belief and a comedy. Only in extreme cases, however, is this dilemma reached. As a rule, the individual acquiesces in his isolation and in the banality of the reality, which, however, he unconsciously treats archaically.
His unconscious is distinguished chiefly by the repression of intuition, which thereby acquires an extraverted and archaic character. Whereas true extraverted intuition has a characteristic resourcefulness, and a ‘good nose’ for every possibility in objective reality, this archaic, extraverted intuition has an amazing flair for every ambiguous, gloomy, dirty, and dangerous possibility in the background of reality. In the presence of this intuition the real and conscious intention of the object has no significance; it will peer behind every possible archaic antecedent of such an intention. It possesses, therefore, something dangerous, something actually undermining, which often stands in most vivid contrast to the gentle benevolence of consciousness. So long as the individual is not too aloof from the object, the unconscious intuition effects a wholesome compensation to the rather fantastic and over credulous attitude of consciousness. But as soon as the unconscious becomes antagonistic to consciousness, such intuitions come to the surface and expand their nefarious influence: they force themselves compellingly upon the individual, releasing compulsive ideas about objects of the most perverse kind. The neurosis arising from this sequence of events is usually a compulsion neurosis, in which the hysterical characters recede and are obscured by symptoms of exhaustion. [p. 505]
8. Intuition
Intuition, in the introverted attitude, is directed upon the inner object, a term we might justly apply to the elements of the unconscious. For the relation of inner objects to consciousness is entirely analogous to that of outer objects, although theirs is a psychological and not a physical reality. Inner objects appear to the intuitive perception as subjective images of things, which, though not met with in external experience, really determine the contents of the unconscious, i.e. the collective unconscious, in the last resort. Naturally, in their per se character, these contents are, not accessible to experience, a quality which they have in common with the outer object. For just as outer objects correspond only relatively with our perceptions of them, so the phenomenal forms of the inner object are also relative; products of their (to us) inaccessible essence and of the peculiar nature of the intuitive function. Like sensation, intuition also has its subjective factor, which is suppressed to the farthest limit in the extraverted intuition, but which becomes the decisive factor in the intuition of the introvert. Although this intuition may receive its impetus from outer objects, it is never arrested by the external possibilities, but stays with that factor which the outer object releases within.
Whereas introverted sensation is mainly confined to the perception of particular innervation phenomena by way of the unconscious, and does not go beyond them, intuition represses this side of the subjective factor and perceives the image which has really occasioned the innervation. Supposing, for instance, a man is overtaken by a psychogenic attack of giddiness. Sensation is arrested by the peculiar character of this innervationdisturbance, perceiving all its qualities, its intensity, its transient course, the nature of its origin and disappearance [p. 506] in their every detail, without raising the smallest inquiry concerning the nature of the thing which produced the disturbance, or advancing anything as to its content. Intuition, on the other hand, receives from the sensation only the impetus to immediate activity; it peers behind the scenes, quickly perceiving the inner image that gave rise to the specific phenomenon, i.e. the attack of vertigo, in the present case. It sees the image of a tottering man pierced through the heart by an arrow. This image fascinates the intuitive activity; it is arrested by it, and seeks to explore every detail of it. It holds fast to the vision, observing with the liveliest interest how the picture changes, unfolds further, and finally fades. In this way introverted intuition perceives all the background processes of consciousness with almost the same distinctness as extraverted sensation senses outer objects. For intuition, therefore, the unconscious images attain to the dignity of things or objects. But, because intuition excludes the co-operation of sensation, it obtains either no knowledge at all or at the best a very inadequate awareness of the innervation-disturbances or of the physical effects produced by the unconscious images. Accordingly, the images appear as though detached from the subject, as though existing in themselves without relation to the person.
Consequently, in the above-mentioned example, the introverted intuitive, when affected by the giddiness, would not imagine that the perceived image might also in some way refer to himself. Naturally, to one who is rationally orientated, such a thing seems almost unthinkable, but it is none the less a fact, and I have often experienced it in my dealings with this type.
The remarkable indifference of the extraverted intuitive in respect to outer objects is shared by the introverted intuitive in relation to the inner objects. Just as the extraverted intuitive is continually scenting out new [p. 507] possibilities, which he pursues with an equal unconcern both for his own welfare and for that of others, pressing on quite heedless of human considerations, tearing down what has only just been established in his everlasting search for change, so the introverted intuitive moves from image to image, chasing after every possibility in the teeming womb of the unconscious, without establishing any connection between the phenomenon and himself. Just as the world can never become a moral problem for the man who merely senses it, so the world of images is never a moral problem to the intuitive. To the one just as much as to the other, it is an ae[]sthenic problem, a question of perception, a ‘sensation’. In this way, the consciousness of his own bodily existence fades from the introverted intuitive’s view, as does its effect upon others. The extraverted standpoint would say of him: ‘Reality has no existence for him; he gives himself up to fruitless phantasies’. A perception of the unconscious images, produced in such inexhaustible abundance by the creative energy of life, is of course fruitless from the standpoint of immediate utility. But, since these images represent possible ways of viewing life, which in given circumstances have the power to provide a new energic potential, this function, which to the outer world is the strangest of all, is as indispensable to the total psychic economy as is the corresponding human type to the psychic life of a people. Had this type not existed, there would have been no prophets in Israel.
Introverted intuition apprehends the images which arise from the a priori, i.e. the inherited foundations of the unconscious mind. These archetypes, whose innermost nature is inaccessible to experience, represent the precipitate of psychic functioning of the whole ancestral line, i.e. the heaped-up, or pooled, experiences of organic existence in general, a million times repeated, and condensed into types. Hence, in these archetypes all experiences are [p. 508] represented which since primeval time have happened on this planet. Their archetypal distinctness is the more marked, the more frequently and intensely they have been experienced. The archetype would be — to borrow from Kant — the noumenon of the image which intuition perceives and, in perceiving, creates.
Since the unconscious is not just something that lies there, like a psychic caput mortuum, but is something that coexists and experiences inner transformations which are inherently related to general events, introverted intuition, through its perception of inner processes, gives certain data which may possess supreme importance for the comprehension of general occurrences: it can even foresee new possibilities in more or less clear outline, as well as the event which later actually transpires. Its prophetic prevision is to be explained from its relation to the archetypes which represent the law-determined course of all experienceable things.
9. The Introverted Intuitive Type
The peculiar nature of introverted intuition, when given the priority, also produces a peculiar type of man, viz. the mystical dreamer and seer on the one hand, or the fantastical crank and artist on the other. The latter might be regarded as the normal case, since there is a general tendency of this type to confine himself to the perceptive character of intuition. As a rule, the intuitive stops at perception; perception is his principal problem, and — in the case of a productive artist-the shaping of perception. But the crank contents himself with the intuition by which he himself is shaped and determined. Intensification of intuition naturally often results in an extraordinary aloofness of the individual from tangible reality; he may even become a complete enigma to his own immediate circle. [p. 509]
If an artist, he reveals extraordinary, remote things in his art, which in iridescent profusion embrace both the significant and the banal, the lovely and the grotesque, the whimsical and the sublime. If not an artist, he is frequently an unappreciated genius, a great man ‘gone wrong’, a sort of wise simpleton, a figure for ‘psychological’ novels.
Although it is not altogether in the line of the introverted intuitive type to make of perception a moral problem, since a certain reinforcement of the rational functions is required for this, yet even a relatively slight differentiation of judgment would suffice to transfer intuitive perception from the purely æsthetic into the moral sphere. A variety of this type is thus produced which differs essentially from its æsthetic form, although none the less characteristic of the introverted intuitive. The moral problem comes into being when the intuitive tries to relate himself to his vision, when he is no longer satisfied with mere perception and its æsthetic shaping and estimation, but confronts the question: What does this mean for me and for the world? What emerges from this vision in the way of a duty or task, either for me or for the world? The pure intuitive who represses judgment or possesses it only under the spell of perception never meets this question fundamentally, since his only problem is the How of perception. He, therefore, finds the moral problem unintelligible, even absurd, and as far as possible forbids his thoughts to dwell upon the disconcerting vision. It is different with the morally orientated intuitive. He concerns himself with the meaning of his vision; he troubles less about its further æsthetic possibilities than about the possible moral effects which emerge from its intrinsic significance. His judgment allows him to discern, though often only darkly, that he, as a man and as a totality, is in some way inter-related with his vision, that [p. 510] it is something which cannot just be perceived but which also would fain become the life of the subject. Through this realization he feels bound to transform his vision into his own life. But, since he tends to rely exclusively upon his vision, his moral effort becomes one-sided; he makes himself and his life symbolic, adapted, it is true, to the inner and eternal meaning of events, but unadapted to the actual present-day reality. Therewith he also deprives himself of any influence upon it, because he remains unintelligible. His language is not that which is commonly spoken — it becomes too subjective. His argument lacks convincing reason. He can only confess or pronounce. His is the ‘voice of one crying in the wilderness’.
The introverted intuitive’s chief repression falls upon the sensation of the object. His unconscious is characterized by this fact. For we find in his unconscious a compensatory extraverted sensation function of an archaic character. The unconscious personality may, therefore, best be described as an extraverted sensation-type of a rather low and primitive order. Impulsiveness and unrestraint are the characters of this sensation, combined with an extraordinary dependence upon the sense impression. This latter quality is a compensation to the thin upper air of the conscious attitude, giving it a certain weight, so that complete ‘sublimation’ is prevented. But if, through a forced exaggeration of the conscious attitude, a complete subordination to the inner perception should develop, the unconscious becomes an opposition, giving rise to compulsive sensations whose excessive dependence upon the object is in frank conflict with the conscious attitude. The form of neurosis is a compulsion-neurosis, exhibiting symptoms that are partly hypochondriacal manifestations, partly hypersensibility of the sense organs and partly compulsive ties to definite persons or other objects. [p. 511]
10. Recapitulation of Introverted Irrational Types
The two types just depicted are almost inaccessible to external judgment. Because they are introverted and have in consequence a somewhat meagre capacity or willingness for expression, they offer but a frail handle for a telling criticism. Since their main activity is directed within, nothing is outwardly visible but reserve, secretiveness, lack of sympathy, or uncertainty, and an apparently groundless perplexity. When anything does come to the surface, it usually consists in indirect manifestations of inferior and relatively unconscious functions. Manifestations of such a nature naturally excite a certain environmental prejudice against these types. Accordingly they are mostly underestimated, or at least misunderstood. To the same degree as they fail to understand themselves — because they very largely lack judgment — they are also powerless to understand why they are so constantly undervalued by public opinion. They cannot see that their outward-going expression is, as a matter of fact, also of an inferior character. Their vision is enchanted by the abundance of subjective events. What happens there is so captivating, and of such inexhaustible attraction, that they do not appreciate the fact that their habitual communications to their circle express very, little of that real experience in which they themselves are, as it were, caught up. The fragmentary and, as a rule, quite episodic character of their communications make too great a demand upon the understanding and good will of their circle; furthermore, their mode of expression lacks that flowing warmth to the object which alone can have convincing force. On the contrary, these types show very often a brusque, repelling demeanour towards the outer world, although of this they are quite unaware, and have not the least intention of showing it. We shall form a [p. 512] fairer judgment of such men and grant them a greater indulgence, when we begin to realize how hard it is to translate into intelligible language what is perceived within. Yet this indulgence must not be so liberal as to exempt them altogether from the necessity of such expression. This could be only detrimental for such types. Fate itself prepares for them, perhaps even more than for other men, overwhelming external difficulties, which have a very sobering effect upon the intoxication of the inner vision. But frequently only an intense personal need can wring from them a human expression.
From an extraverted and rationalistic standpoint, such types are indeed the most fruitless of men. But, viewed from a higher standpoint, such men are living evidence of the fact that this rich and varied world with its overflowing and intoxicating life is not purely external, but also exists within. These types are admittedly one sided demonstrations of Nature, but they are an educational experience for the man who refuses to be blinded by the intellectual mode of the day. In their own way, men with such an attitude are educators and promoters of culture. Their life teaches more than their words. From their lives, and not the least from what is just their greatest fault, viz. their incommunicability, we may understand one of the greatest errors of our civilization, that is, the superstitious belief in statement and presentation, the immoderate overprizing of instruction by means of word and method. A child certainly allows himself to be impressed by the grand talk of its parents. But is it really imagined that the child is thereby educated? Actually it is the parents’ lives that educate the child — what they add thereto by word and gesture at best serves only to confuse him. The same holds good for the teacher. But we have such a belief in method that, if only the method be good, the practice of it seems to hallow the teacher. An inferior [p. 513] man is never. a good teacher. But he can conceal his injurious inferiority, which secretly poisons the pupil, behind an excellent method or, an equally brilliant intellectual capacity. Naturally the pupil of riper years desires nothing better than the knowledge of useful methods, because he is already defeated by the general attitude, which believes in the victorious method. He has already learnt that the emptiest head, correctly echoing a method, is the best pupil. His whole environment not only urges but exemplifies the doctrine that all success and happiness are external, and that only the right method is needed to attain the haven of one’s desires. Or is the life of his religious instructor likely to demonstrate that happiness which radiates from the treasure of the inner vision? The irrational introverted types are certainly no instructors of a more complete humanity. They lack reason and the ethics of reason, but their lives teach the other possibility, in which our civilization is so deplorably wanting.
11. The Principal and Auxiliary Functions
In the foregoing descriptions I have no desire to give my readers the impression that such pure types occur at all frequently in actual practice. The are, as it were, only Galtonesque family-portraits, which sum up in a cumulative image the common and therefore typical characters, stressing these disproportionately, while the individual features are just as disproportionately effaced. Accurate investigation of the individual case consistently reveals the fact that, in conjunction with the most differentiated function, another function of secondary importance, and therefore of inferior differentiation in consciousness, is constantly present, and is a — relatively determining factor. [p. 514]
For the sake of clarity let us again recapitulate: The products of all the functions can be conscious, but we speak of the consciousness of a function only when not merely its application is at the disposal of the will, but when at the same time its principle is decisive for the orientation of consciousness. The latter event is true when, for instance, thinking is not a mere esprit de l’escalier, or rumination, but when its decisions possess an absolute validity, so that the logical conclusion in a given case holds good, whether as motive or as guarantee of practical action, without the backing of any further evidence. This absolute sovereignty always belongs, empirically, to one function alone, and can belong only to one function, since the equally independent intervention of another function would necessarily yield a different orientation, which would at least partially contradict the first. But, since it is a vital condition for the conscious adaptation-process that constantly clear and unambiguous aims should be in evidence, the presence of a second function of equivalent power is naturally forbidden’ This other function, therefore, can have only a secondary importance, a fact which is also established empirically. Its secondary importance consists in the fact that, in a given case, it is not valid in its own right, as is the primary function, as an absolutely reliable and decisive factor, but comes into play more as an auxiliary or complementary function. Naturally only those functions can appear as auxiliary whose nature is not opposed to the leading function. For instance, feeling can never act as the second function by the side of thinking, because its nature stands in too strong a contrast to thinking. Thinking, if it is to be real thinking and true to its own principle, must scrupulously exclude feeling. This, of course, does not exclude the fact that individuals certainly exist in whom thinking and feeling stand upon the same [p. 515] level, whereby both have equal motive power in con~sdousness. But, in such a case, there is also no question of a differentiated type, but merely of a relatively undeveloped thinking and feeling. Uniform consciousness and unconsciousness of functions is, therefore, a distinguishing mark of a primitive mentality.
Experience shows that the secondary function is always one whose nature is different from, though not antagonistic to, the leading function : thus, for example, thinking, as primary function, can readily pair with intuition as auxiliary, or indeed equally well with sensation, but, as already observed, never with feeling. Neither intuition nor sensation are antagonistic to thinking, i.e. they have not to be unconditionally excluded, since they are not, like feeling, of similar nature, though of opposite purpose, to thinking — for as a judging function feeling successfully competes with thinking — but are functions of perception, affording welcome assistance to thought. As soon as they reached the same level of differentiation as thinking, they would cause a change of attitude, which would contradict the tendency of thinking. For they would convert the judging attitude into a perceiving one; whereupon the principle of rationality indispensable to thought would be suppressed in favour of the irrationality of mere perception. Hence the auxiliary function is possible and useful only in so far as it serves the leading function, without making any claim to the autonomy of its own principle.
For all the types appearing in practice, the principle holds good that besides the conscious main function there is also a relatively unconscious, auxiliary function which is in every respect different from the nature of the main function. From these combinations well-known pictures arise, the practical intellect for instance paired with sensation, the speculative intellect breaking through [p. 516] with intuition, the artistic intuition which selects. and presents its images by means of feeling judgment, the philosophical intuition which, in league with a vigorous intellect, translates its vision into the sphere of comprehensible thought, and so forth.
A grouping of the unconscious functions also takes place in accordance with the relationship of the conscious functions. Thus, for instance, an unconscious intuitive feeling attitude may correspond with a conscious practical intellect, whereby the function of feeling suffers a relatively stronger inhibition than intuition. This peculiarity, however, is of interest only for one who is concerned with the practical psychological treatment of such cases. But for such a man it is important to know about it. For I have frequently observed the way in which a physician, in the case for instance of an exclusively intellectual subject, will do his utmost to develop the feeling function directly out of the unconscious. This attempt must always come to grief, since it involves too great a violation of the conscious standpoint. Should such a violation succeed, there ensues a really compulsive dependence of the patient upon the physician, a ‘transference’ which can be amputated only by brutality, because such a violation robs the patient of a standpoint — his physician becomes his standpoint. But the approach to the unconscious and to the most repressed function is disclosed, as it were, of itself, and with more adequate protection of the conscious standpoint, when the way of development is via the secondary function-thus in the case of a rational type by way of the irrational function. For this lends the conscious standpoint such a range and prospect over what is possible and imminent that consciousness gains an adequate protection against the destructive effect of the unconscious. Conversely, an irrational type demands a stronger development of the rational auxiliary function [p. 517] represented in consciousness, in order to be sufficiently prepared to receive the impact of the unconscious.
The unconscious functions are in an archaic, animal state. Their symbolical appearances in dreams and phantasies usually represent the battle or coming encounter of two animals or monsters.
[
1] William Blake, Marriage of Heaven and Hell
[
2] Semon, Mneme, translated by Louis Simon (London: Allen & Unwin).
Classics in the History of Psychology
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The History of the Psychoanalytic Movement
Sigmund Freud (
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Translation by A. A. Brill (
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German original first published in the Jahrbuch der
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Translation first published in the Nervous and Mental Disease Monograph Series (No.
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New York: Nervous and Mental Disease Pub. Co.
I
If in what follows I bring any contribution to the history of the psychoanalytic movement nobody must be surprised at the subjective nature of this paper, nor at the rôle which falls to me therein. For psychoanalysis is my creation; for ten years I was the only one occupied with it, and all the annoyance which this new subject caused among my contemporaries has been hurled upon my head in the form of criticism. Even today, when I am no longer the only psychoanalyst, I feel myself justified in assuming that none can know better than myself what psychoanalysis is, wherein it differs from other methods of investigating the psychic life, what its name should cover, or what might better be designated as something else.
In the year 1909, when I was first privileged to speak publicly on psychoanalysis in an American University, fired by this momentous occasion for my endeavors, I declared that it was not myself who brought psychoanalysis into existence. I said that it was Josef Breuer, who had merited this honor at a time when I was a student and busy working for my examinations (1
8
80-1882).[1] Since then, well-intentioned friends have frequently repeated that I then expressed my gratitude out of all due proportion. They considered that, as on previous occasions, I should have dignified Breuer’s “cathartic procedure” as merely preliminary to psychoanalysis, and should have claimed that psychoanalysis itself only began with my rejection of the hypnotic technique and my introduction of free association. Now it is really a matter of indifference whether the history of psychoanalysis be considered to have started with the cathartic method or only with my modification of [p. 2] the same. I only enter into this uninteresting question because some opponents of psychoanalysis are wont to recall, now and then, that the art of psychoanalysis did not originate with me at all, but with Breuer. Naturally, this only happens to be the case when their attitude permits them to find in psychoanalysis something that is noteworthy; ion the other hand when their repudiation of psychoanalysis is unlimited, then psychoanalysis is always indisputably my creation. I have never yet heard that Breuer’s great part in psychoanalysis has brought him an equal measure of insult and reproach. As I have recognized long since that it is the inevitable fate of psychoanalysis to arouse opposition and to embitter people, I have come to the conclusion that I must surely be the originator of all that characterizes psychoanalysis. I add, with satisfaction, that none of the attempts to belittle my share in this much disdained psychoanalysis has ever come from Breuer himself, or could boast of his support.
The content of Breuer’s discovery has been so often presented that a detailed discussion of it here may be omitted. Its fundamental fact is that the symptoms of hysterical patients depend upon impressive but forgotten scenes in their lives (traumata). The therapy founded thereon was to cause the patients to recall and reproduce these experiences under hypnosis (catharsis), and the fragmentary theory, deduced from it was that these symptoms corresponded to an abnormal use of undischarged sums of excitement (conversion). In his theoretical contribution to the “Studies of Hysteria” Breuer, wherever obliged to mention conversion, has always added my name in parenthesis, as though this first attempt at a theoretical formulation was my mental property. I think this allotment refers only to the nomenclature, whilst the conception itself occurred to us both at the same time.
It is also well known that Breuer, after his first experience with it, allowed the cathartic treatment to rest for a number of years and only resumed it after I caused him to do so, on my return from Charcot. He was then an internist and taken up with a rather busy medical practice. I had become a physician quite reluctantly [p.
3
] but had, at that time, received a strong motive for desiring to help nervous patients or, at least, to learn to understand something of their conditions. I had placed reliance on physical therapy and found myself helpless in the face of disappointments that came to me with W. Erb’s “Electrotherapy,” so rich in advice and indications. If I did not, at that time, pilot myself independently to the opinion later announced by Moebius, that the successes of electrotherapy in nervous disorders are the results of suggestion, it was surely only the absence of these successes that was to blame. The treatment by suggestion in deep hypnosis seemed to offer me at that time sufficient compensation for the lost electrical therapy. I learned this treatment through the extremely impressive demonstrations of Liébault and Bernheim. But the investigation under hypnosis with which I became acquainted through Breuer, I found, owing to its automatic manner of working and the simultaneous gratification of one’s eagerness for knowledge, much more attractive than the monotonous and violent suggestive command which was devoid of every possibility of inquiry.
As one of the latest achievements of psychoanalysis, we have lately been admonished to put the actual conflict and the cause of the illness into the foreground of analysis. This is exactly what Breuer and I did in the beginning of our work with the cathartic method. We guided the patient’s attention directly to the traumatic scene during which the symptom had arisen, tried to find therein the psychic conflict and to free the repressed affect. We thus discovered the procedure characteristic of the psychic processes of the neuroses which I later named regression. The associations of the patients went back from the scene to be explained, to earlier experiences, and this forced the analysis which was to correct the present to occupy itself with the past. This regression led even further backwards: At first it went quite regularly to the time of puberty. Later, however, such failures as gaps in the understanding tempted the analytic work further back into the years of childhood which ;had, hitherto, been inaccessible to every sort of investigation. This regressive direction became an important characteristic of the [p. 4] analysis. It was proved that psychoanalysis could not clear up anything actual, except by going back to something in the past. It even proved that every pathological experience presupposes an earlier one which, though not in itself pathological, lent a pathological quality to the later occurrence. But the temptation to stop short at the known actual cause was so great that even in later analyses I yielded to it. In the case of the patient called “Dora,” carried out in 1899, the scene which caused the outbreak of the actual illness was known to me. I tried uncounted times to analyse this experience, but all that I could receive to my direct demands was the same scanty and broken description. Only after a long detour, which led through the earliest childhood of the patient, a dream appeared in the analysis of which the hitherto forgotten details of the scene were remembered, and this made possible the understanding and solution of the actual conflict. From this one example it may be seen how misleading is the above mentioned admonition and how much of a scientific regression it is to follow the advice of neglecting the regression in the analytic technique.
The first difference of opinion between Breuer and myself came to light on a question of the more intimate psychic mechanism of hysteria. He still favored a physiological theory, so to speak, and wished to explain the psychic splitting of consciousness of hysterical subjects by means of the non-communication of various psychic states (or states of consciousness, as we then called them). He thus created the theory of the “hypnoid states,” the results of which were supposed to bring the unassimilated foreign body into the “waking consciousness.” I had formulated this to myself less scientifically. I suspected everywhere tendencies and strivings analogous to those of everyday life and conceived the psychic splitting itself as a result of a repelling process, which I then called “defense” and later “regression.” I made a short-lived attempt to reconcile both mechanisms, but as experience showed me always the same and only one thing, my defense theory, I soon became opposed to Breuer’s theory of hypnoid states. [p. 5]
I am, however, quite certain that this difference of opinion had nothing to do with the parting of the ways which occurred soon afterward between us. The latter had a deeper reason, but it happened in such a manner that at first I did not understand it, and only later did I learn to interpret it, following many good indexes. It will be recalled that Breuer had stated, concerning his first famous patient, that the sexual element had been astonishingly undeveloped in her and had never contributed anything to her very marked morbid picture.[2] I have always wondered why the critics of my theory of the sexual etiology of the neuroses have not often opposed it with this assertion of Breuer, and up to this day I do not know whether in this reticence I am to see a proof of their discretion, or of their lack of observation. Whoever will reread the history of Breuer’s patient in the light of the experience gained in the last twenty years, will have no difficulty in understanding the symbolism of the snakes and of the arm. By taking into account also the situation at the sick-bed of the father, he will easily guess the actual meaning of that symptom-formation, His opinion as to the part sexuality played in the psychic life of that girl will then differ greatly from that of her physician. To cure the patient Breuer utilized the most intensive suggestive rapport which may serve us as prototype of that which we call “transference.” Now I have strong grounds to suppose that Breuer, after the disposal of the symptoms, must have discovered the sexual motivity of this transference by new signs, but that the general nature of this unexpected phenomenon escaped him, so that here, as though hit by “an untoward event,” he broke off the investigation. I did not obtain from him any direct information of this, but at different times he has given me sufficient connecting links to justify me in making this combination. And then, as I stood more and more decidedly for the significance of sexuality in the causation of the neuroses, Breuer was the first to show me those reactions of unwilling rejection, with which it was my lot to become so familiar later on, but which I had then not yet recognized as my unavoidable destiny. [p.
6
]
The fact that a grossly sexual, tender or inimical, transference occurs in every treatment of a neurosis, although this was neither desired nor induced by either party, has, for me, always seemed to be the most unshakable proof that the forces of the neuroses originate in the sexual life. This argument has surely not been seriously enough considered, for if it were, there would be no question as to where the investigation would tend. For my own conviction, it has remained decisive over and above the special results of the work of the analysis.
Some comfort for the bad reception which my theory of the sexual etiology of the neuroses met with, even in the closer circle of my friends–a negative space was soon formed about my person — I found in the thought that I had taken up the fight for a new and original idea. One day, however, my memories grouped themselves in such a way that this satisfaction was disturbed, but in return I obtained an excellent insight into the origin of our activities and into the nature of our knowledge. The idea for which I was held responsible had not at all originated with me. It had come to me from three persons, whose opinions could count upon my deepest respect; from Breuer himself, from Charcot, and from Chrobak, the gynecologist of our university, probably the most prominent of our Vienna physicians. All three men had imparted to me an insight which, strictly speaking, they had not themselves possessed. Two of them denied their communication to me when later I reminded them of this: the third (Master Charcot) might also have done so, had it been granted me to see him again. But these identical communications, received without my grasping them, had lain dormant within me, until one day they awoke as an apparently original discovery.
One day, while I was a young hospital doctor, I was accompanying Breuer on a walk through the town when a man came up to him urgently desiring to speak with him. I fell back and, when Breuer was free again, he told me, in his kindly, teacher-like manner, that this was the husband of a patient, who had brought him some news about her. The wife, he added, behaved in so conspicuous a manner [p. 7] when in company, that she had been turned over to him for treatment as a nervous case. He ended with the remark — “those are always secrets of the alcove.” Astonished, I asked his meaning and he explained the expression to me (“secrets of the conjugal bed”), without realizing how preposterous the matter appeared to me.
A few years later, at one of Charcot’s evening receptions, I found myself near the venerated teacher who was just relating to Brouardel a very interesting history from the day’s practice. I did not hear the beginning clearly but gradually the story obtained my attention. It was the case of a young married couple from the far East. The wife was a great sufferer and the husband was impotent, or exceedingly awkward. I heard Charcot repeat: “Tâchez donc, je vous assure vous y arriverez.” Brouardel, who spoke less distinctly, must have expressed his astonishment that symptoms as those of the young wife should have appeared as a result of such circumstances, for Charcot said suddenly and with great vivacity: “Mais, dans des cas pareils c’est toujours la chose génital, toujours — toujours — toujours.” And while saying that he crossed his hands in his lap and jumped up and down several times, with the vivacity peculiar to him. I know that for a moment I was almost paralyzed with astonishment, and I said to myself: “Yes, but if he knows this why does he never say so” But the impression was soon forgotten; brain-anatomy and the experimental production of hysterical paralysis absorbed all my interests.
A year later when I had begun my medical activities in Vienna as a private dozent in nervous diseases I was as innocent and ignorant in all that concerned the etiology of the neuroses as any promising academician could be expected to be. One day I received a friendly call from Chrobak, who asked me to take a patient to whom he could not give sufficient time in his new capacity as lecturer at the university. I reached the patient before he did and learned that she suffered from senseless attacks of anxiety, which could only be alleviated by the most exact information as to the whereabouts of her physician at any time in the day. When Chrobak [p. 8] appeared, he took me aside and disclosed to me that the patient’s anxiety was due to the fact that though she had been married eighteen years, she was still a virgo intacta, that her husband was utterly impotent. In such cases the physician can only cover the domestic mishap with his reputation and must bear it if people shrug their shoulders and say of him: “He is not a good doctor if in all these years, he has not been able to cure her.” He added: “The only prescription for such troubles is the one well-known to us, but which we cannot prescribe. It is:
Penis normalis
dosim
Repetatur !
I had never heard of such a prescription and would like to have shaken my head at my informant’s cynicism.
I certainly have not uncovered the illustrious origins of this vicious idea because I would like to shove the responsibility for it on others. I know well that it is one thing to express an idea once or several times in the form of a rapid aperçu, and quite another to take it seriously and literally to lead it through all opposing details and conquer for it a place among accepted truths. It is the difference between a light flirtation and a righteous marriage with all its duties and difficulties. Epouser les idées de — (to marry so and so’s ideas,) is, at least in French, a quite usual form of speech.
Other doctrines which were contributed to the cathartic method through my efforts thus transforming it into psychoanalysis, are the following: The theories of repression and resistance, the addition of the infantile sexuality, and the usage and interpretation of dreams for the understanding of the unconscious.
Concerning the theory of repression, I was certain that I worked independently. I knew of no influence that directed me in any way to it, and I long considered this idea to be original, till O. Rank showed us the place in Schopenhauer’s “The World as Will and Idea,” where the philosopher is struggling for an explanation for insanity.[3] [p. 9] What is there said concerning the striving against the acceptance of a painful piece of reality agrees so completely with the content of my theory of repression that, once again, I must be indebted to my not being well-read for the possibility of making a discovery. To be sure, others have read this passage and overlooked it, without making this discovery and perhaps the same would have happened to me, if, in former years, I had taken more pleasure in reading philosophical authors. In later years I denied myself the great pleasure of Nietzsche’s works, with the conscious motive of not wishing to be hindered in the working out of my psychoanalytic impressions by any preconceived ideas. Therefore, I had to he prepared — and am so gladly — to renounce all claim to priority in those many cases in which the laborious psychoanalytic investigation can only confirm the insights intuitively won by the philosophers.
The theory of repression is the main pillar upon which rests the edifice of psychoanalysis. It is really the most essential part of it, and is itself nothing other than the theoretical expression of an experience which can be repeated at pleasure whenever one analyzes a neurotic patient without the aid of hypnosis. One is then confronted with a resistance which opposes the analytic work by causing a failure of memory in order to block it. This resistance had to be covered by the use of hypnosis; hence the history of psychoanalysis proper only starts technically with the rejection of hypnosis. The theoretical value of the fact that this resistance is connected with an amnesia leads unavoidably to that conception of the unconscious psychic activities which is peculiar to psychoanalysis, and distinguishes it markedly from the philosophical speculations about the unconscious. It may, therefore, be said that the psychoanalytic theory endeavors to explain two experiences, which result in a striking and unexpected manner during the attempt to trace back the morbid symptoms of a neurotic to their source in his life-history; viz., the facts of transference and of resistance. Every investigation which recognizes these two facts and makes them the starting points of its work may call itself psychoanalysis, even if it lead to [p.
10
] other results than my own. But whoever takes up other sides of the problem and deviates from these two assumptions will hardly escape the charge of interfering with the rights of ownership through attempted imitation, if he insist upon calling himself a psychoanalyst.
I would very energetically oppose any attempt to count the principles of repression and resistance as mere assumptions instead of results of psychoanalysis. Such assumptions of a general psychological and biological nature exist, and it would be quite to the point to deal with them in another place. The principle of repression, however, is an acquisition of the psychoanalytic work, won by legitimate means, as a theoretical extract from very numerous experiences. Just such an acquisition, but of much later days, is the theory of the infantile sexuality, of which no count was taken during the first years of tentative analytic investigation. At first it was only noticed that the effect of actual impressions had to be traced back to the past. However, ” the seeker often found more than he bargained for.” He was tempted always further back into this past and finally hoped to be permitted to tarry in the period of puberty, the epoch of the traditional awakening of the sexual impulses. His hopes were in vain. The tracks led still further back into childhood and into its earliest years. In the process of this work it became almost fatal for this young science. Under the influence of the traumatic theory of hysteria, following Charcot, one was easily inclined to regard as real and as of etiological importance the accounts of patients who traced back their symptoms to passive sexual occurrences in the first years of childhood, that is to say, speaking plainly, to seductions. When this etiology broke down through its own unlikelihood, and through the contradiction of well-established circumstances, there followed a period of absolute helplessness. The analysis had led by the correct path to such infantile sexual traumas, and yet these were not true. Thus the basis of reality had been lost. At that time I would gladly have let the whole thing slide, as did my respected forerunner Breuer, when he made his unwished-for discovery. Perhaps I persevered only because I had no longer any choice of beginning something else. Finally I reflected that, after [p.
11
] all, no one has a right to despair if he has been disappointed only in his expectations. He merely needs to review them. If hysterics refer their symptoms to imaginary traumas, then this new fact signifies that they create such scenes in their phantasies, and hence psychic reality deserves to be given a place next to actual reality. This was soon followed by the conviction that these phantasies serve to hide the autoerotic activities of the early years of childhood, to idealize them and place them on a higher level, and now the whole sexual life of the child made its appearance behind these phantasies.
In this sexual activity of the first years of childhood, the concomitant constitution could finally attain its rights. Disposition and experience here became associated into an inseparable etiological unity, in that the disposition raised certain impressions to inciting and fixed traumas, which otherwise would have remained altogether banal and ineffectual, whilst the experiences evoked factors from the disposition which, without them, would have continued to remain dormant, and, perhaps, undeveloped. The last word in the question of traumatic etiology was later on said by Abraham, when he drew attention to the fact that just the peculiar nature of the child’s sexual constitution enables it to provoke sexual experiences of a peculiar kind, that is to say, traumas.
My formulations concerning the sexuality of the child were founded at first almost exclusively on the results of the analyses of adults, which led back into the past. I was lacking in opportunity for direct observation of the child. It was, therefore, an extraordinary triumph when, years later, my discoveries were successfully confirmed for the greater part by direct observation and analyses of children of very early years, a triumph that appeared less and less on reflecting that the discovery was of such a nature that one really ought to be ashamed of having made it. The deeper one penetrated into the observation of the child, the more self-evident this fact seemed, and the more strange, too, became the circumstances that such pains had been taken to overlook it.
To be sure, so certain a conviction of the existence and significance [p.
12
] of the infantile sexuality can be obtained only, if one follows the path of analysis, if one goes back from the symptoms and peculiarities of neurotics to their uttermost sources, the discovery of which explains what is explainable in them, and permits of modifying what can be changed. I understand that one can arrive at different conclusions if, as was recently done by C. G. Jung, one first forms for one’s self a theoretical conception of the nature of the sexual impulse and thereby tries to understand the life of the child. Such a conception can only be chosen arbitrarily or with regard to secondary considerations, and is in danger of becoming inadequate to the sphere in which it was to be utilized. Doubtless, the analytic way also leads to certain final difficulties and obscurities in regard to sexuality and its relation to the whole life of the individual; but these cannot be set aside by speculations, and must wait till solutions will be found by means of other observations or of observations in other spheres.
I shall briefly discuss the history of dream-interpretation. This came to me as the first-fruits of the technical innovation, after, following a dim presentiment, I had decided to replace hypnosis with free associations. It was not the understanding of dreams towards which my curiosity was originally directed. I do not know of any influences which had guided my interest to this or inspired me with any helpful expectations. Before the cessation of my intercourse with Breuer I hardly had time to tell him, in so many words, that I now knew how to translate dreams. During the development of these discoveries the symbolism of the language of dreams was about the last thing which became known to me, since, for the understanding of symbols, the associations of the dreamer offer but little help. As I have held fast to the habit of first studying things themselves, before looking them up in books, I was able to ascertain for myself the symbolism of dreams before I was directed to it by the work of Sherner. Only later I came to value fully this means of expression of dreams. This was partly due to the influence of the works of Steckel, who was at first very meritorious but who later became most perfunctory. The close connection between the psychoanalytic [p. 13] interpretation of dreams and the once so highly esteemed art of dream interpretation of the ancients only became clear to me many years afterwards. The most characteristic and significant portion of my dream theory, namely, the reduction of the dream distortion to an inner conflict, to a sort of inner dishonesty, I found later in an author to whom medicine but not philosophy is unknown. I refer to the engineer J. Popper, who had published “Phantasies of a Realist” under the name of Lynkeus.
The interpretation of dreams became for me a solace and support in those difficult first years of analysis, when I had to master at the same time the technique, the clinic and the therapy of the neuroses, when I stood entirely alone, and in the confusion of problems and the accumulation of difficulties I often feared to lose my orientation and my confidence. It often took a long time before the proof of my assumption, that a neurosis must become comprehensible through analysis, was seen by the perplexed patient, but the dreams, which might be regarded as analogous to the symptoms, almost regularly confirmed this assumption.
Only because of these successes was I in condition to persevere. I have, therefore, acquired the habit of measuring the grasp of a psychological worker by his attitude to the problem of dream interpretation, and I have noticed, with satisfaction, that most of the opponents of psychoanalysis avoided this field altogether, or if they ventured into it, they behaved most awkwardly. The analysis of myself, the need of which soon became apparent to me, I carried out by the aid of a series of my own dreams which led me through all the happenings of my childhood years. Even today I am of the opinion that in the case of a prolific dreamer and a person not too abnormal, this sort of analysis may be sufficient.
By unfurling this developmental history, I believe I have shown what psychoanalysis is, better than I could have done by a systematic presentation of the subject. The special nature of my findings I did not then recognize. I sacrificed, unhesitatingly, my budding popularity as a physician and an extensive practice among nervous patients, because I searched directly for the sexual origin of their [p.
14
] neuroses. In this way I gained a number of experiences which definitely confirmed my conviction of the practical significance of the sexual factor. Without any apprehension, I appeared as speaker at the Vienna Neurological Society, then under the presidency of Krafft-Ebing, expecting to be compensated, by the interest and recognition of my colleagues, for my own voluntary sacrifices. I treated my discoveries as indifferent contributions to science and hoped that others would treat them in the same way. Only the silence that followed my lectures, the space that formed about my person, and the insinuations directed towards me caused me to realize, gradually, that statements about the part played by sexuality in the etiology of the neuroses cannot hope to be treated like other communications. I realized that from then on I would belong to those who, according to Hebbel’s expression, “have disturbed the world’s sleep,” and that I could not count upon being treated objectively and with toleration. But as my conviction of the average correctness of my observations and the conclusions grew greater and greater, and as my faith in my own judgment was not small, any more than was my moral courage, there could be no doubt as to the issue of this situation. I decided to believe that it fell to my lot to discover particularly significant associations, and felt prepared to bear the fate which sometimes accompanies such discoveries.
This fate I pictured to myself in the following manner. I would probably succeed in sustaining myself through the therapeutic successes of the new treatment, but science would take no notice of me in my lifetime. Some decades later, another would surely stumble upon the same, now untimely things, compel their recognition and thus bring me to honor as a necessarily unfortunate forerunner. Meantime I arrayed myself as comfortably as possible à la Robinson Crusoe upon my lonely island. When I look back to those lonely years, from the perplexities and vexatiousness of the present, it seems to me it was a beautiful and heroic time. The “splendid isolation” did not lack its privileges and charms. I did not need to read any literature nor to listen to badly informed opponents. I was subject to no influences, and no pressure was brought to bear [p.
15
] on me. I learned to restrain speculative tendencies and, following the unforgotten advice of my master, Charcot, I looked at the same things again and often until they began of themselves to tell me something. My publications, for which I found shelter despite some difficulty, could safely remain far behind my state of knowledge. They could be delayed as long as I pleased, as there was no doubtful “priority” to be defended. “The Interpretation of Dreams,” for example, was completed in all essentials in the beginning of 1896, but was written down only in 1899. The treatment of “Dora” was finished at the end of 1899. The history of her illness was completed in the next two weeks, but was only published in 1905. Meantime my writings were not in the reviewed professional literature of the day. If an exception was made they were always treated with scornful or pitying condescension. Sometimes a colleague would refer to me in one of his publications in very short and unflattering terms, such as “unbalanced,” “extreme,” or “very odd.” It happened once that an assistant at the clinic in Vienna asked me for permission to attend one of my lecture courses. He listened devoutly and said nothing, but after the last lecture he offered to accompany me. During this walk he disclosed to me that, with the knowledge of his chief, he had written a book against my teachings, but he expressed much regret that he had only come to know these teachings better through my lectures. Had he known these before, he would have written very differently. Indeed, he had inquired at the clinic if he had not better first read “The Interpretation of Dreams,” but had been advised against doing so, as it was not worth the trouble. As he now understood it, he compared my system of instruction with the Catholic Church. In the interests of his soul’s salvation I will assume that this remark contained a bit of sincere recognition. But he ended by saying that it was too late to alter anything in his book as it was already printed. This particular colleague did not consider it necessary later on to tell the world something of the change in his opinions concerning my psychoanalysis. On the contrary, as permanent reviewer of a medical journal, he showed a preference to follow its development with his hardly serious comments. [p.
16
]
Whatever I possessed of personal sensitiveness was blunted those years, to my advantage. But I was saved from becoming embittered by a circumstance that does not come to the assistance of all lonely discoverers. Such a one usually frets himself to find out the cause of the lack of sympathy or of the rejection he receives from his contemporaries, and perceives them as a painful contradiction against the certainty of his own conviction. That did not trouble me, for the psychoanalytic fundamental principles enabled me to understand this attitude of my environment as a necessary sequence. If it was true that the associations discovered by me were kept from the knowledge of the patient by inner affective resistances, then this resistance must manifest itself also in normal persons as soon as the repressed material is conveyed to them from the outside. It was not strange that these latter knew how to give intellectual reasons for their affective rejections of my ideas. This happened just as often with the patients, and the arguments advanced — arguments are as common as blackberries, to borrow from Falstaff’s speech — were the same and not exactly brilliant. The only difference was that in the case of patients one had the means of bringing pressure to bear, in order to help them recognize and overcome their resistances, but in the case of those seemingly normal, such help had to be omitted. To force these normal people to a cool and scientifically objective examination of the subject was an unsolved problem, the solution of which was best left to time. In the history of science it has often been possible to verify that the very assertion which, at first, called forth only opposition, received recognition a little later without necessity of bringing forward any new proofs.
That I have not developed any particular respect for the opinion of the world or any desire for intellectual deference during those years, when I alone represented psychoanalysis, will surprise no one. [p.
17
]
II
Beginning with the year 1902 a number of young doctors crowded about me with the expressed intention to learn psychoanalysis, to practice it and to spread it. The impetus for this came from a colleague who had himself experienced the beneficial effects of the analytic therapy. We met on certain evenings at my residence, and discussed subjects according to certain rules. The visitors endeavored to orient themselves in this strange and new realm of investigation, and to interest others in the matter. One day a young graduate I of the technical school found admission to our circle by means of a manuscript which showed extraordinary sense. We induced him to go through college and enter the university, and then devote himself to the non-medical application of psychoanalysis. Thus the little society gained a zealous and reliable secretary, and I acquired in Otto Rank a most faithful helper and collaborator.
Soon the little circle expanded, and in the course of the next few years changed a good deal in its composition. On the whole, I could flatter myself that in the wealth and variety of talent our circle was hardly inferior to the staff of any clinical teacher. From the very beginning it included those men who later were to play a considerable, if not always a delectable, part in the history of the psychoanalytic movement. But these developments could not have been guessed at that time. I was satisfied, and I believe I did all I could, to convey to the others what I knew and had experienced. There were only two inauspicious circumstances which at least mentally estranged me from this circle. I could not succeed in establishing among the members that friendly relation which should obtain among men doing the same difficult work, nor could I crush out the quarrels about the priority of discoveries, for which there were ample opportunities in those conditions of working together. The difficulties of teaching the practise of psychoanalysis, which are particularly great, and are often to blame for the present rejection of psychoanalysis, [p. 18] already made themselves felt in this Viennese private psychoanalytic society. I myself did not dare to present an as yet incomplete technique, and a theory still in the making, with that authority which might have spared the others many a blind alley and many a final tripping up. The self-dependence of mental workers, their early independence of the teacher, is always gratifying psychologically, but it can only result in a scientific gain when during these labors certain, not too fre9uently occurring, personal relations are also fulfilled. Psychoanalysis particularly should have required a long and severe discipline and training of self-control. On account of the courage displayed in devotion to so ridiculed and fruitless a subject, I was inclined to tolerate among the members much to which otherwise I would have objected. Besides, the circle included not only physicians, but other cultured men who had recognized something significant in psychoanalysis. There were authors, artists, and so forth. The “Interpretation Of Dreams,” the book on ” Wit,” and other writings, had already shown that the principles of psychoanalysis cannot remain limited to the medical field, but are capable of application to various other mental sciences.
In 1907 the situation suddenly altered and quite contrary to all expectations; it became evident that psychoanalysis had unobtrusively awakened some interest and gained some friends, that there were even some scientific workers who were prepared to admit their allegiance. A communication from Bleuler had already acquainted me with the fact that my works were studied and applied in Burghölzli.[4] In January,1907, the first man attached to the Zürich Clinic, Dr. Eitingon, visited me at Vienna. Other visitors soon followed, thus causing a lively exchange of ideas. Finally, by invitation of C. G. Jung, then still an assistant physician at Burghölzli, the first meeting took place at Salzburg, in the spring of 1908, where the friends of psychoanalysis from Vienna, Zürich, and other places met together. The result of this first psychoanalytic congress, was the founding of a periodical, which began to appear in 1909, under the name of “Jahrbuch für Psychoanalytische und Psychopathologische [p. 19] Forschungen,” published by Bleuler and Freud, and edited by Jung. An intimate comradeship in the work done at Vienna and Zürich found its expression in this publication.
I have repeatedly and gratefully acknowledged the efforts of the Zürich Psychiatric School in the spreading of psychoanalysis, especially those of Bleuler and Jung, and I do not hesitate to do the same today, even under such changed circumstances. It was certainly not the partisanship of the Zürich School which at that time first directed the attention of the scientific world to the subject of psychoanalysis. This latency period had just come to an end, and psychoanalysis everywhere became the object of constantly increasing interest. But whilst in all the other places this manifestation of interest resulted first in nothing but a violent and emphatic repudiation of the subject, in Zürich, on the contrary, the main feeling of the situation was that of agreement. In no other place was so compact a little gathering of adherents to be found, nowhere also was it possible to place a public clinic at the service of psychoanalytic investigation, or to find a clinical teacher who regarded the principles of psychoanalysis as an integral part of the teaching of psychiatry. The Zürich doctors became, as it were, the nucleus of the little band which was fighting for the recognition of psychoanalysis. Only in Zürich was there a possible opportunity to learn the new art and to apply it in practice. Most of my present-day followers and co-workers came to me via Zürich, even those who might have found, geographically speaking, a shorter road to Vienna than to Switzerland. Vienna lies in an eccentric position from western Europe, which houses the great centers of our culture. For many years it has been much affected by weighty prejudices. The representatives of the most prominent nations stream into Switzerland, which is so mentally active, and an infective lesion in this place was sure to become very important for the dissemination of the “psychic epidemic,” as Hoche of Freiburg called it.
According to the testimony of a colleague who was an eyewitness of the developments at Burghölzli, it may be asserted that psychoanalysis awakened an interest there very early. Already in Jung’s [p.
20
] work on occult phenomena, published in 1902, there was an allusion to dream-interpretation. Ever since 1903 or 1904 according to my informer, psychoanalysis came into prominence. After the establishment of personal relations between Vienna and Zürich, a society was also founded in Burghölzli in 1907 which discussed the problems of psychoanalysis at regular meetings. In the bond that united the Vienna and Zürich schools, the Swiss were by no means the merely recipient part. They had themselves already performed respectable scientific work, the results of which were of much use to psychoanalysis. The association-experiment, started by the Wundt School, had been interpreted by them in the psychoanalytic sense and had proved itself of unexpected usefulness. Thus it had become possible to get rapid experimental confirmation of psychoanalytic facts, and to demonstrate experimentally to beginners certain relationships which the analyst could only have talked about otherwise. The first bridge leading from experimental psychology to psychoanalysis had thus been constructed.
In psychoanalytic treatment, however, the association-experiment enables one to make only a preliminary, qualitative analysis of the case, it offers no essential contribution to the technique, and is really not indispensable in the work of analysis. Of more importance, however, was another discovery of the Zürich School, or rather, of its two leaders, Bleuler and Jung. The former pointed out that a great many purely psychiatric cases can be explained by the same psychoanalytic process as those used in dreams and in the neuroses (Freudsche Mechanismen). Jung employed with success the analytic method of interpretation in the strangest and most obscure phenomena of dementia præcox, the origin of which appeared quite clear when correlated with the life and interests of the patient. From that time on it became impossible for the psychiatrists to ignore psychoanalysis. Bleuler’s great work on Schizophrenie [sic] (1911), in which the psychoanalytic points of view are placed on an equal footing with the clinical-systematic ones, brought this success to completion.
I must not omit to point out a divergence which was then already [p. 21] distinctly noticeable in the working tendencies of the two schools. Already in 1897 I had published the analysis of a case of schizophrenia, which showed, however, paranoid trends, so that its solution could not have anticipated the impression of Jung’s analyses. But to me the important element had not been the interpretation of the symptoms, but rather the psychic mechanisms of the disease, and above all, the agreement of this mechanism with the one already known in hysteria. No light had been thrown at that time on the difference between these two maladies. I was then already working toward a theory of the libido in the neuroses which was to explain all neurotic as well as psychotic appearances on the basis of abnormal drifts of the libido. The Swiss investigators lacked this point of view. So far as I know Bleuler, even today, adheres to an organic causation for the forms of Dementia Præcox, and Jung, whose book on this malady appeared in 1907, upheld the toxic theory of the same at the Congress at Salzburg in 1908, which though not excluding it, goes far beyond the libido theory. On this same point he came to grief later (1912), in that he now used too much of the stuff which previously he refused to employ at all.
A third contribution from the Swiss School, which is to be ascribed probably entirely to Jung, I do not value as highly as do others who are not in as close contact with it. I speak of the theory of the complexes, which grew out of the “Diagnostische Assoziationsstudien” (1906-1910). It itself has neither resulted in a psychological theory nor has it added an unconstrained insertion to the context of the psychoanalytic principles. On the other hand, the word “complex” has gained for itself the right of citizenship in psychoanalysis, as being a convenient and often an indispensable term for descriptive summaries of psychologic facts. None other among the names and designations, newly coined as a result of psychoanalytic needs, has attained such widespread popularity; but no other term has been so misapplied to the detriment of clear thinking. In psychoanalytic diction one often spoke of the “return of the complex” when “the return of the repression” was intended to be conveyed, or one became accustomed to say “I have a complex [p. 22] against him” when more correctly he should have said “a resistance.”
In the years after 1907, which followed the union of the schools of Vienna and Zürich, psychoanalysis received that extraordinary impetus in which it still finds itself today. This is positively attested by the spread of psychoanalytic literature and the increase in the number of doctors who desire to practice or learn it, also by the mass of attacks upon it by congresses and learned societies. It has wandered into the most distant countries, it everywhere shocked psychiatrists, and has gained the attention of the cultured laity and workers in other scientific fields. Havelock Ellis, who has followed its development with sympathy without ever calling himself its adherent, wrote, in 1911, in a paper for the Australasian Medical Congress: “Freud’s psychoanalysis is now championed and carried out not only in Austria and in Switzerland, but in the United States, in England, India, Canada, and, I doubt not, in Australasia.”[5] A doctor from Chile (probably a German) appeared at the International Congress in Buenos Ayres[sic], in 1910, and spoke on behalf of the existence of infantile sexuality and praised the results of psychoanalytic therapy in obsessions.”[6] An English neurologist in Central India informed me through a distinguished colleague who came to Europe, that the cases of Mohammedan Indians on whom he had practiced analysis showed no other etiology of their neuroses than our European patients.
The introduction of psychoanalysis into North America took place under particularly glorious auspices. In the autumn of 1909, Jung and myself were invited by President Stanley Hall, of Clark University, to take part in the celebration of the twentieth anniversary of the opening of Clark University, by giving some lectures in German. We found, to our great astonishment, that the unprejudiced men of that small but respected pedagogic-philosophical university knew all the psychoanalytic writings and had honored them [p. 23] in their lectures to their students. Thus even in prudish America one could, at least in academic circles, discuss freely and treat scientifically all those things that are regarded as offensive in life. The five lectures that I improvised at Worcester then appeared in English in the American Journal of Psychology; later on they were printed in German under the title, “Über Psychoanalyse.” Jung lectured on diagnostic association studies and on “conflicts in the psychic life of the child.” We were rewarded for it with the honorary degree of LL.D. During this week of celebration at Worcester, psychoanalysis was represented by five persons. Besides Jung and myself there were Ferenczi, who had joined me as travelling-companion, Ernest Jones, then of Toronto University (Canada), now in London, and A. A. Brill, who was already practising psychoanalysis in New York.
The most noteworthy personal relationship which resulted at Worcester, was that established with James J. Putnam, teacher of neuropathology at Harvard University. For years he had expressed a disparaging opinion of psychoanalysis, but now he befriended it and recommended it to his countrymen and his colleagues in numerous lectures, rich in content and fine of form. The respect which he enjoys in America, owing to his character, his high moral standard and his keen love for truth, was very helpful to the cause of psychoanalysis and protected it against the denunciations to which it might otherwise have early succumbed. Yielding too much to the great ethical and philosophic bent of his nature Putnam later required of psychoanalysis what, to me, seems an impossible demand. He wished that it should be pressed into the service of a certain moral philosophical conception of the universe; but Putnam has remained the chief prop of the psychoanalytic movement in his native land.
For the diffusion of this movement Brill and Jones deserve the greatest credit. With a self-denying industry they constantly brought under the notice of their countrymen, through their works, the easily observable fundamental principles of psychoanalysis of everyday life, of the dream and of the neuroses. Brill has strengthened these influences by his medical activities and his translations of [p. 24] my writings: Jones, by illuminating lectures and clever discussions at the American Congresses.[7] The lack of a rooted scientific tradition and the lesser rigidity of official authority have been of decided advantage to the impetus given to psychoanalysis in America by Stanley Hall. It was characteristic there from the beginning that professors, heads of insane asylums, as well as independent practitioners, all showed themselves equally interested in psychoanalysis. But just for this very reason it is clear that the fight for psychoanalysis must be fought to a decisive end, where the greater resistance has been met with, namely, in the countries of the old cultural centers.
Of the European countries, France has so far shown herself the least receptive towards psychoanalysis, although creditable writings by the Zürich physician, A. Maeder, have opened up for the French reader an easy path to its principles. The first indications of interest came from provincial France. Moricheau-Beauchant (Poitiers) was the first Frenchman who openly accepted psychoanalysis. Régis and Hesnard (Bordeaux) have lately tried (1913) to overcome the prejudices of their countrymen by an exhaustive and senseful presentation of the subject, which takes exception only to symbolism. In Paris itself there still appears to reign the conviction (given such oratorical expression at London Congress 1913 by Janet) that every thing good in psychoanalysis only repeats, with slight modifications, the views of Janet — everything else in psychoanalysis being bad. Janet himself had to stand at this Congress a number of corrections from Ernest Jones, who was able to reproach him for his lack of knowledge of the subject. We cannot, however, forget the credit due Janet for his works on the psychology of the neuroses, although we must repudiate his claims.
Italy, after many promising starts, ceased to take further interest. Owing to personal connections psychoanalysis gained an early hearing in Holland: Van Emden, Van Ophuijsen, Van Renterghem [p. 25] (“Freud en zijn school”) and the two doctors Stärke are busy in Holland particularly on the theoretical side.[8] The interest in psychoanalysis in scientific circles in England developed very slowly, but the indications are that just here, favored by the English liking for the practical and their passionate championship of justice, a flourishing future awaits psychoanalysis.
In Sweden, P. Bjerre, successor to Wetterstand, has, at least temporarily, given up hypnotic suggestion in favor of analytic treatment. A. Vogt (Christiania) honored psychoanalysis already in 1907 in his “Psykiatriens gruntraek,” so that the first text-book on psychiatry that took any notice of psychoanalysis was written in Norwegian. In Russia, psychoanalysis is very generally known and widespread; almost all my writings as well as those of other advocates of analysis are translated into Russian. But a deeper grasp of the analytic teaching has not yet shown itself in Russia. The contributions written by Russian physicians and psychiatrists are not at present noteworthy. Only Odessa possesses a trained psychoanalyst in the person of M. Wulff. The introduction of psychoanalysis into the science and literature of Poland is due chiefly to the endeavors of L. Jekels. Hungary, geographically so near to Austria, scientifically so foreign to it, has given to psychoanalysis only one co-worker, S. Ferenczi, but such an one as is worth a whole society.
The standing of psychoanalysis in Germany can be described in no other way than to state that it is the cynosure of all scientific discussion, and evokes from physicians as well as from the laity, opinions of decided rejection, which, so far, have not come to an end, but which, on the contrary, are constantly renewed and strengthened. No official seat of learning has, so far, admitted psychoanalysis. Successful practitioners who apply it are few. Only a few institutions, such as that of Binswanger’s in Kreuzlingen (on Swiss soil) and Marcinowski’s in Holstein, have opened their doors to [p. 26] psychoanalysis. In the critical city of Berlin, we have K. Abraham, one of the most prominent representatives of psychoanalysis. He was formerly an assistant of Bleuler. One might wonder that this state of things has thus continued for a number of years without any change, if it was not known that the above account merely describes the superficial appearances. One must not overestimate the significance of the rejection of psychoanalysis by the official representatives of science, the heads of institutions, as well as their young following. It is easy to understand why the opponents loudly raise their voices whilst the followers, being intimidated, keep silent. Many of the latter, whose first contributions to analysis raised high expectations, later withdrew from the movement under the pressure of circumstances. But the movement itself strides ahead quietly. It is always gaining new supporters among psychiatrists and the laity. It constantly increases the number of readers of psychoanalytic literature and thus forces the opponents to a more violent attempt at defense. In the course of these years I have read, perhaps a dozen times, in the reports of the transactions of certain congresses and of meetings of scientific societies, or in reviews of certain publications, that psychoanalysis was now dead, that it was finally overcome and settled. The answer to all this would have to read like the telegram from Mark Twain to the newspaper that falsely announced his death: “The report of my death is grossly exaggerated.” After each of these death-notices, psychoanalysis has gained new followers and co-workers and has created for itself new organs. Surely to be reported dead is an advance over being treated with dead silence!
Hand in hand with its territorial expansion just described psychoanalysis became enlarged with regard to its contents through its encroaching upon fields of knowledge outside of the study of the neuroses and psychiatry. I will not treat in detail the development of this part of our branch of science since this was excellently done by Rank and Sachs (in Löwenfeld’s “Grenzfragen”)[9] which presents [p. 27] exhaustively just these achievements in the work of analysis. Besides, here everything is in inchoate form, hardly worked out, mostly only preliminary and sometimes only in the stage of an intention. Every honest thinker will find herein no grounds for reproach. There is a tremendous amount of problems for a small number of workers whose chief activity lies elsewhere, who are obliged to attack the special problems of the new science with only amateurish preparation. These workers hailing from the psychoanalytic field make no secret of their dilettantism, they only desire to be guides and temporary occupants of the places of those specialists to whom they recommend the analytic technique and principles until the latter are ready to take up this work themselves. That the results aimed at are, even now, not at all insignificant, is due partly to the fruitfulness of the psychoanalytic method, and partly to the circumstance that already there are a few investigators, who, without being physicians, have made the application of psychoanalysis to the mental sciences their lifework.
Most of these psychoanalytic applications can be traced, as is easily understood, to the impetus given by my early analytic works. The analytic examinations of nervous patients and neurotic manifestations of normal persons drove me to the assumption of psychological relationships which, most certainly, could not be limited only to that field. Thus analysis presented us not only with the explanation of pathological occurrences, but also showed us their connection with normal psychic life and uncovered undreamed-of relations between psychiatry and a variety of other sciences dealing with activities of mind. Thus certain typical dreams furnished the understanding of many myths and fairy tales. Riklin and Abraham followed this hint and began those investigations about myths which have found their completion in the works of Rank on Mythology, works which do full justice to all the requirements of the specialist. The prosecution of dream-symbology led to the very heart of the problems of mythology, folk-lore (Jones, Storfer) and of religious abstraction. At one of the psychoanalytic congresses the audience was deeply impressed when a student of Jung pointed out the similarity [p. 28] of the phantasy-formation of schizophrenics with the cosmogonies of primitive times and peoples. In a later elaboration, no longer free from objection yet very interesting, Jung made use of mythological material in an attempt to harmonize the neurotic with religious and mythological phantasies.
Another path led from the investigation of dreams to the analysis of poetic creations, and finally to the analysis of authors and artists themselves. Very soon it was discovered that the dreams invented by writers stand in the same relation to analysis as do genuine dreams.[10] The conception of the unconscious psychic activity enabled us to get the first glimpse into the nature of the poetic creativeness. The valuation of the emotional feelings which we were forced to recognize while studying the neuroses enabled us to recognize the sources of artistic productions and brought up the problem as to how the artist reacts to those stimuli and with what means he disguises his reactions.[11] Most psychoanalysts with wide interests have furnished contributions from their works for the treatment of these problems, which are among the most attractive in the application of psychoanalysis. Naturally here also opposition was not lacking from those who are not acquainted with analysis, and expressed itself with the same lack of understanding and passionate rejection as on the native soil of psychoanalysis. For it was to be expected as a matter of course, that everywhere psychoanalysis penetrates, it would have to go through the same struggle with the natives. However, these attempted invasions have not yet stirred up interest in all fields which will, in the future, be open to them. Among the strictly scientific applications of analysis to literature the deep work of Rank on the theme of incest easily ranks first. Its content is certain to evoke the greatest unpopularity.
Philological and historical works on the basis of psychoanalysis are few, at present. I myself dared to venture to make the first attempt [p. 29] into the problems of the psychology of religion in 1910, when I compared religious ceremonials with neurotic ceremonials. In his work on the “piety of the Count of Zinzendorf,” as well as in other contributions, the Rev. Dr. Pfister, of Zürich, has succeeded in tracing back religious zealotism to perverse eroticism. In the recent works of the Zürich School one is more likely to find that religion becomes injected into the analysis rather than rationally explained by it.
In my four essays on “Totem and Taboo”[12] I made the attempt to discuss the problems of race psychology by means of analysis. This should lead us directly to the origins of the most important institutions of our civilization, such as state regulations, morality, religion, as well as to the origins of the interdiction of incest and of conscience. To what extent the relations thus obtained will be proof to criticism cannot be determined today.
My book on Wit[
l3
] furnished the first examples of the application of analytic thinking to esthetic themes. Everything else is still waiting for workers, who can expect a rich harvest in this very field. We are lacking here in workers from these respective specialties and in order to attract such, Hans Sachs founded in 1912, the journal Imago, edited by himself and Rank. Hitschmann and v. Winterstein made a beginning with the psychoanalytic elucidation of philosophical systems and personalities. The continuation and deeper treatment of the same is much to be desired.
The revolutionary findings of psychoanalysis concerning the psychic life of the child, the part played therein by sexual impulses (v. Hug-Helmuth) and the fate of such participation of sexuality which becomes useless for the purpose of propagation, naturally drew attention to pedagogics, and instigated the effort to push the analytical viewpoint into the foreground of this sphere. Recognition is due to the Rev. Pfister for having begun this application of analysis with honest enthusiasm, and for having brought it to the [p. 30] notice of ministers and educators.[14] He succeeded in winning over a number of Swiss pedagogues as sympathizers in this work. It is said that some preferred to remain circumspectly in the background. A portion of the Vienna analysts seem to have landed in their retreat from psychoanalysis on a sort of medical pedagogy. (Adler and Furtmüller, “Heilen and Bilden,” 1913·)
I have attempted in these incomplete suggestions to indicate the, as yet, hardly visible wealth of associations which have sprung up between medical psychoanalysis and other fields of science. There is material for the work of a whole generation of investigators and I doubt not that this work will be done when once the resistance to psychoanalysis as such has been overcome.[15]
To write the history of the resistances, I consider, at present, both fruitless and inopportune. It would not be very glorious for the scientific men of our day. But I will add at once that it has never occurred to me to rail against the opponents of psychoanalysis merely because they were opponents, not counting a few unworthy individuals, fortune hunters and plunderers such as in time of war are always found on both sides. For I knew how to account for the behavior of these opponents and had besides discovered that psychoanalysis brings to light the worst in every man. But I decided not to answer my opponents and, so far as I had influence, to keep others from polemics. The value of public or literary discussions seemed to me very doubtful under the particular conditions in which the fight over psychoanalysis took place. The value of majorities at congresses or society meetings was certainly doubtful, and my confidence in the honesty and distinction of my opponents was always slight. Observation shows that only very few persons are capable of remaining polite, not to speak of objective, in any scientific dispute, and the impression gained from a scientific quarrel was always a horror to me. Perhaps this attitude of mine has been misunderstood, [p. 31] perhaps I have been considered as good-natured or so intimidated that it was supposed no further consideration need be shown me.
This is a mistake. I can revile and rave as well as any other, but I am not able to render into literary form the expressions of the underlying affects and therefore I prefer to abstain entirely. Perhaps in many respects it might have been better had I permitted free vent to my own passions and to those about me. We have all heard the interesting attempt at an explanation of the origin of psychoanalysis from its Viennese milieu. Janet did not scorn to make use of it as late as 1913, although, no doubt, he is proud of being a Parisian. This apereçu says that psychoanalysis, especially the assertion that the neuroses can be traced back to disturbances in the sexual life, could only have originated in a city like Vienna, in an atmosphere of sensuality and immorality not to be found in other cities, and that it thus represents only a reflection, the theoretical projection as it were, of these particular Viennese conditions. Well, I certainly am no local patriot, but this theory has always seemed to be especially nonsensical, so nonsensical that sometimes I was inclined to assume that the reproaching of the Vienna spirit was only a euphemistic substitution for another one which one did not care to bring up publicly. If the assumptions had been of the opposite kind, we might be inclined to listen. But even if we assume that there might be a city whose inhabitants have imposed upon themselves special sexual restrictions and at the same time show a peculiar tendency to severe neurotic maladies, then such a town might well furnish the soil on which some observer might get the idea of connecting these two facts and of deducting the one from the other. But neither assumption fits Vienna. The Viennese are neither more abstemious nor yet more nervous than dwellers in any other metropolis. Sex matters are a little freer, prudishness is less than in the cities of western and northern Europe that are so proud of their chastity. Our supposed observer would, more likely, be led astray by the particular conditions prevailing in Vienna than be enlightened as to the cause of the neuroses. [p. 32]
But Vienna has done everything possible to deny her share in the origin of psychoanalysis. Nowhere else is the inimical indifference of the learned and cultured circles so clearly evident to the psychoanalyst.
Perhaps I am somewhat to blame for this by my policy of avoiding widespread publicity. If I had caused psychoanalysis to occupy the medical societies of Vienna with noisy sessions, with an unloading of all passions, wherein all reproaches and invectives carried on the tongue or in the mind would have been expressed, then perhaps the ban against psychoanalysis might, by now, have been removed and its standing no longer might have been that of a stranger in its native city. As it is, the poet may be right when he makes Wallenstein say:
“Yet this the Viennese will not forgive me,
That I did them out of a spectacle.”
The task to which I am unequal, namely, that of reproaching the opponents “suaviter in modo” for their injustice and arbitrariness, was taken up by Bleuler in 1911 and carried out in most honorable fashion in his work, “Freud’s Psychoanalysis: a Defense and a Criticism.” It would be so entirely natural for me to praise this work, critical in two directions, that I hasten to tell what there is in it I object to. This work appears to me to be still very partisan, too lenient to the mistakes of our opponents, and altogether too severe to the shortcomings of our followers. This characterization of it may explain why the opinion of a psychiatrist of such high standing, of such indubitable ability and independence, has not had greater influence on his colleagues. The author of “Affectivity” (1906) must not be surprised if the influence of a work is not determined by the value of its argument but by the tone of its affect. Another part of this influence — the one on the followers of psychoanalysis — Bleuler himself destroyed later on by bringing into prominence in 1913, in his “Criticism of the Freudian School,” the obverse side of his attitude to psychoanalysis. Therein he takes away so much from the structure of the psychoanalytic principles that our opponents may well be satisfied with the assistance of this defender. [p. 33] It was not new arguments or better observations that served Bleuler as a guidance for these verdicts, but only the reference to own knowledge, the inadequacy of which the author no longer admits as in his earlier writings. Here an almost irreparable loss seemed to threaten psychoanalysis. However, in his last utterance (“Die Kritiken der Schizophrenie,” 1914) on the occasion of the attacks made upon him owing to his introduction of psychoanalysis into his book on “Schizophrenie,” Bleuler rises to what he himself terms a “haughty presumption:” ” But now I will assume a haughty presumption, I consider that the many psychologies to date have contributed mighty little to the explanation of the connection between psychogenetic symptoms and diseases, but that the deeper psychology (tiefen psychologie) furnishes us a part of the psychology still to be created, which the physician needs in order to understand his patients and to heal them rationally; and I even believe that in my ‘Schizophrenie’ I have taken a very small step towards this.” The first two assertions are surely correct, the latter may be an error.
Since by the “deeper psychology” psychoanalysis alone is to be understood, we may, for the present, remain satisfied with this admission. [p. 34]
III
“Cut it short,
On doomsday ‘twon’t be worth a farthing!”
Goethe.
Two years after the first congress the second private congress of psychoanalysts took place at Nuremberg, March, 1910.· During the interval, whilst I was still under the impression of the favorable reception in America, the growing hostility in Germany and the unexpected support through the acquisition of the Zürich School, I had conceived a project which I was able to carry out, at this second congress, with the help of my friend S. Ferenczi. I had in mind to organize the psychoanalytic movement, to transfer its center to Zürich, and place it under a head who would take care of its future. As this found much opposition among the adherents of psychoanalysis, I will explain my motives more fully. Thus I hope to justify myself, even if it turns out that my action was not a very wise one.
I judged that the association with Vienna was no recommendation, but rather an obstacle for the new movement. A place like Zürich, in the heart of Europe, where an academic teacher had opened his institution to psychoanalysis, seemed to me much more promising. Moreover, I assumed that my own person was a second obstacle. The estimate put upon my personality was utterly confused by the favor or dislike from different factions. I was either compared to Darwin and Kepler or reviled as a paralytic. I, therefore, desired to push into the background not only the city whence psychoanalysis emanated, but also my own personality. Furthermore, I was no longer young, I saw a long road before me and I felt oppressed by the idea that it had fallen to my lot to become a leader in my advanced age. Yet I felt that there must be a leader. I knew only too well what mistakes lay in wait for him who would undertake the practice of psychoanalysis, and hoped that many of these might be avoided if we had an authority who was prepared to [p. 35] guide and admonish. Such authority naturally devolved upon me in view of the indisputable advantage of fifteen years’ experience. It was now my desire to transfer this authority to a younger man who would, quite naturally, take my place on my death. I felt that this person could be only C. G. Jung, for Bleuler was of my own age. In favor of Jung was his conspicuous talents, the contributions he had already made to analysis, his independent position, and the impression of energy which his personality always made. He also seemed prepared to enter into friendly relations with me, and to give up, for my sake, certain race-prejudices which he had so far permitted himself to indulge. I had no notion then that in spite of the advantages enumerated, this was a very unfortunate choice; that it concerned a person who, incapable of tolerating the authority of another, was still less fitted to be himself an authority, one whose energy was devoted to the unscrupulous pursuit of his own interests.
The formation of an official organization I considered necessary because I feared the abuses to which psychoanalysis would be subjected, once it should achieve popularity. I felt that there should be a place that could give the dictum: “With all this nonsense, analysis has nothing to do; this is not psychoanalysis.” It was decided that at the meeting of the local groups which together formed the international organization, instruction should be given how psychoanalysis should be practised, that physicians should be trained there and that the local society should, in a way, stand sponsor for them. It also appeared to me desirable that the adherents of psychoanalysis should meet for friendly intercourse and mutual support, inasmuch as official science had pronounced its great ban and boycott against physicians and institutions practising psychoanalysis. This and nothing else I wished to attain by the founding of the “International Psychoanalytic Association.” Perhaps it was more than could possibly be attained. Just as my opponents learned that it was not possible to stem the new movement, so I had to learn, by experience, that it would not permit itself to be led along the particular path which I had laid out for it. The motion made by [p. 36] Ferenczi at Nuremberg was seconded. Jung was elected president, and Riklin was chosen as secretary. It was also decided to publish a corresponding journal through which the central association was “to foster and further the science of psychoanalysis as founded by Freud both as pure psychology, as well as in its application to medicine and the mental sciences, and to promote assistance among the members in all their efforts to acquire and to spread psychoanalytic knowledge.” The members of the Vienna group alone firmly opposed the projects with a passionate excitement. Adler expressed his fear that “a censorship and limitation of scientific freedom” was intended. The Viennese finally gave in, after having gained their point that Zürich should not be raised to the center of the association, but that the center should be the home city of the president, who was to be elected for two years.
At this congress three local groups were constituted: one in Berlin under the chairmanship of Abraham, one in Zürich, whose chairman became the president of the central association, and one in Vienna, the chairmanship of which I relinquished to Adler. A fourth group, in Budapest, could not be formed until later. On account of illness Bleuler had been absent from the congress. Later be evinced considerable hesitation about entering the association and although he let himself be persuaded to do so by my personal representations, he resigned a short time afterwards owing to disagreements at Zürich. This severed the connection between the Zürich group and the Burghölzli institution.
Another result of the Nuremberg Congress was the founding of the Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse, which caused a reconciliation between Adler and Stekel. It had originally been intended as an opposing tendency and was to win back for Vienna the hegemony threatened by the election of Jung. But when the two founders of the journal, under pressure of the difficulty of finding a publisher, assured me of their friendly intentions and as guarantee of their attitude gave me the right to veto, I accepted the editorship and worked vigorously for this new organ, the first number of which appeared in September, 1910. [p. 37]
I will not continue the history of the Psychoanalytic Congress. The third one took place at Weimar, September, 1911, and even surpassed the previous ones in spirit and scientific interest. J. J. Putnam, who was present at this meeting, later expressed in America his satisfaction and his respect for the “mental attitude” of those present and quoted words which I was supposed to have used in reference to the latter: “They have learned to endure a bit of truth.” As a matter of fact any one who has attended scientific congresses must have received a lasting impression in favor of the Psychoanalytic Association. I myself had presided over two former congresses. I thought it best to give every lecturer ample time for his paper and left the discussions of these lectures to take place later as a sort of private exchange of ideas. Jung, who presided over the Weimar meeting, reëstablished the discussions after each lecture, which had not, however, proved disturbing at that time.
Two years later, in September, 1913, quite another picture was presented by the congress at Munich which is still vividly recalled by those who were present. It was presided over by Jung in an unamiable and incorrect fashion: the lecturers were limited as to time, and the discussion dwarfed the lectures. Through a malicious mood of chance the evil genius of Hoche had taken up his residence in the same house in which the analysts held their meetings. Hoche could easily have convinced himself that his characterization of these psychoanalysts, as a sect, blindly and meekly following their leader, was true ad absurdum. The fatiguing and unedifying proceedings ended in the reëlection of Jung as president of the International Psychoanalytic Association, which fact Jung accepted, although two fifths of those present refused him their support. We took leave from one another without feeling the need to meet again!
About the time of this third Congress the condition of the International Psychoanalytic Association was as follows: The local groups at Vienna, Berlin, and Zurich had constituted themselves already at the congress at Nuremberg in 1910. In May, 1911, a group, under the chairmanship of Dr. L. Seif, was added at Munich. In the same year the first American local group was formed under the chairmanship [p. 38] of A. A. Brill under the name of “The New York Psychoanalytic Society.” At the Weimar Congress, the founding of a second American group was authorized. This came into existence during the next year as “The American Psychoanalytic Association.” It included members from Canada and all America; Putnam was elected president, and Ernest Jones was made secretary. Just before the congress at Münich in 1913, a local group was founded at Budapest under the leadership of S. Ferenczi. Soon afterwards Jones, who settled in London, founded the first English group. The number of members of the eight groups then in existence could not, of course, furnish any standard for the computation of the non-organized students and adherents of psychoanalysis.
The development of the periodical literature of psychoanalysis is also worthy of a brief mention. The first periodical publications serving the interests of analysis were the Schriften zur angewandten Seelenkunden which have appeared irregularly since 1907 and have reached the fifteenth volume.[
15a
] They published writings by Freud, Riklin, Jung, Abraham, Rank, Sadger, Pfister, M. Graf, Jones, Storfer and Hug-Hellmuth. The founding of the Imago, to be mentioned later, has somewhat lowered the value of this form of publication. After the meeting at Salzburg, 1908 the Jahrbuch für psychoanalytische und psychopathologische Forschungen was founded, which appeared under Jung’s editorship for five years, and it has now reappeared under new editorship and under the slightly changed title of Jahrbuch der Psychoanalyse. It no longer wishes to be as in former years, merely an archive for collecting works of psychoanalytic merit, but it wishes to justify its editorial task by taking due notice of all occurrences and all endeavors in the field of psychoanalysis. As mentioned before Das Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse started by Adler and Stekel after the founding of the “International Association” (Nuremberg, 1910) went through in a short time a very varied career. Already in the tenth issue of the first volume there was an announcement that in view of scientific difference of opinion with [p. 39]the editors, Dr. Adler had decided voluntarily to withdraw his collaboration. This placed the entire editorship in the hands of Dr. Stekel (summer of 1911). At the Weimar congress the Zentralblatt was raised to the official organ of the “International Association” and by raising the annual dues it was made accessible to all members. Beginning with the third number of the second year (winter 1912) Stekel alone became responsible for the contents of the journal. His behavior, which is difficult to explain in public, forced me to sever all my connections with this journal and to give psychoanalysis in all haste a new organ, the International Journal for Medical Psychoanalysis (Internationale Zeitschrift für Ärztliche Psychoanalyse). With the help of almost all my collaborators and the new publisher, H. Heller, the first number of this new journal was able to appear in January, 19q3, to take the place of the Zentralblatt as the official organ of the “International Psychoanalytic Association.”
Meanwhile Dr. Hanns Sachs and Dr. Otto Rank founded early in 1912 a new journal, Imago (published by Heller), whose only aim is the application of psychoanalysis to mental sciences. Imago has now reached the middle of its third year, and enjoys the increasing interest of readers who are not medically interested in psychoanalysis.
Apart from these four periodical publications (Schriften z. Angew. Seelenkunde, Jahrbuch, Intern. Zeitschrift, and Imago) other German and foreign journals have contributed works that can claim a place in psychoanalytic literature. The Journal of Abnormal Psychology, published by Morton Prince, as a rule, contains many good analytical contributions. In the winter of 1913 Dr. White and Dr. Jelliffe started a journal exclusively devoted to psychoanalysis, THE PSYCHOANALYTIC REVIEW, which takes into account the fact that most physicians in America interested in psychoanalysis do not master the German language.
I am now obliged to speak of two secessions which have taken place among the followers of psychoanalysis. The first of these took place in the interval between the founding of the association [p. 40] in 1910 and the congress at Weimar, 1911, the second took place after this, and came to light in Münich in 1913· The disappointment which they caused me might have been avoided if more attention had been paid to the mechanisms of those who undergo analytical treatment. I was well aware that any one might take flight on first approach to the unlovely truths of analysis; I myself had always asserted that any one’s understanding may be suspended by one’s own repressions (through the resistances which sustain them) so that in his relation to psychoanalysis he cannot get beyond a certain point. But I had not expected that any one who had mastered analysis to a certain depth could renounce this understanding and lose it. And yet daily experience with patients had shown that the total rejection of all knowledge gained through analysis may be brought about by any deeper stratum of particularly strong resistance. Even if we succeed through laborious work in causing such a patient to grasp parts of analytic knowledge and handle these as his own possessions, it may well happen that under the domination of the next resistance he will throw to the winds all he has learned and will defend himself as in his first days of treatment. I had to learn that this can happen among psychoanalysts just as among patients during treatment.
It is no enviable task to write the history of these two secessions, partly because I am not impelled to it by strong personal motives — I had not expected gratitude nor am I to any active degree revengeful — and partly because I know that I hereby lay myself open to the invectives of opponents manifesting but little consideration, and at the same time I regale the enemies of psychoanalysis with the long wished-for spectacle of seeing the psychoanalysts tearing each other to pieces. I had to exercise much control to keep myself from fighting with the opponents of psychoanalysis, and now I feel constrained to take up the fight with former followers or such as still wish to be called so. I have no choice; to keep silent would be comfortable or cowardly, but it would hurt the subject more than the frank uncovering of the existing evils. Any one who has followed the growth of scientific movements will know that quite similar disturbances [p. 41] and dissensions took place in all of them. It may be that elsewhere they are more carefully concealed. However, psychoanalysis, which denies many conventional ideals, is also more honest in these things.
Another very palpable inconvenience lies in the fact that I cannot altogether avoid going into an analytic elucidation. Analysis is not, however, suitable for polemical use; it always presupposes the consent of the one analyzed and the situation of a superior and subordinate. Therefore he who wishes to use analysis with polemic intent must offer no objection if the person so analyzed will, in his turn, use analysis against him, and if the discussion merges into a state in which the awakening of a conviction in an impartial third party is entirely excluded. I shall, therefore, make here the smallest possible use of analysis, thereby limiting my indiscretion and aggression against my opponents, and I will also add that I base no scientific criticism on this means. I have nothing to do with the possible substance of truths in the theories to be rejected nor am I seeking to refute the same. This task may be left to other able workers in the field of psychoanalysis, and some of it has already been done. I only desire to show that these theories deny the basic principles of analysis — I will show in what points — and for this reason should not be known under this name. I shall, therefore, use analysis only to make clear how these deviations from analysis could take place among analysts. At the parting places I am, of course, obliged to defend the just rights of psychoanalysis with purely critical remarks.
Psychoanalysis has found as its first task the explanation of the neuroses; it has taken the two facts of resistance and transference as starting points, and by bearing in mind the third fact of amnesia in the theories of repression, it has given justification to the sexual motive forces of the neuroses and of the unconscious. Psychoanalysis has never claimed to give a perfect theory of the human psychic life, but has only demanded that its discoveries should be used for the completion and correction of knowledge we have gained elsewhere. But Alfred Adler’s theory goes far beyond this goal. It pretends to explain with one stroke the behavior and character [p. 42] of men as well as their neurotic and psychotic maladies. As a matter of fact, Adler’s theory is more adequate to any other field than to that of the neuroses, which he still puts in the first place because of the history of its origin. I had the opportunity of studying Dr. Adler many years and have never denied him the testimonial of having a superior mind, especially endowed speculatively. As proof of the “persecution” which he claims to have suffered at my hands, I can only say that after the formation of the Association I handed over to him the leadership of the Vienna group. It was only after urgent requests from all the members of the society that I could be prevailed upon to resume the presidency at the scientific proceedings. When I had recognized Dr. Adler’s slight talent for the estimation of the unconscious material, I expected that he would know how to discover the connections between psychoanalysis and psychology and the biological bases of the impulses, a discovery to which he was entitled, in a certain sense, through his valuable studies about the inferiority of organs. He really did bring out some thing, but his work makes the impression as if — to speak in his own jargon — it were intended to prove that psychoanalysis was wrong in everything and that the significance of the sexual impelling forces could only be due to gullibility about the assertions of neurotics. Of the personal motive of his work I may also speak publicly, since he himself revealed it in the presence of a small circle of members of the Vienna group. “Do you believe,” he remarked, “that it is such a great pleasure for me to stand in your shadow my whole life?” To be sure I see nothing objectionable in the fact that a younger man should frankly admit an ambition which one might, in any case, suspect as one of the incentives of his work. But even under the domination of such a motive a man should know how to avoid being “unfair” as designated by the English with their fine social tact. We Germans have only a much coarser word at our disposal to convey this idea. How little Adler has succeeded in not being unfair is shown by the great number of mean outbursts of anger which distort his writings, and by the feeling of an ungovernable mania for priority which pervades [p. 43] his work. At the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society we once heard him claim for himself the priority for the viewpoints of the “unity of the neuroses” and the “dynamic conception” of the same. This was a great surprise for me as I had always believed that I had represented these two principles before I had ever known Adler.[
15b
]
This striving of Adler for a place in the sun has brought about, however, one result, which must be considered beneficial to psychoanalysis. When I was obliged to bring about Adler’s resignation from the editorial staff of the Zentralblatt, after the appearance of his irreconcilable scientific antagonisms, Adler also left the Vienna group and founded a new society to which he first gave the tasteful name “Society for Free Psychoanalysis.” But the outside public, unacquainted with analysis, is evidently as little skilled in recognizing the difference between the views of two psychoanalysts, as are Europeans in recognizing the tints between two Chinese faces. The “free” psychoanalysis remained in the shadow of the “official” and “orthodox” one, and was treated only as an appendage of the latter. Then Adler took the step for which we are thankful. He severed all connection with psychoanalysis and named his teachings “The Individual Psychology.” There is much space on God’s earth, and any one who can is surely justified in tumbling about upon it uninhibited; but it is not desirable to continue living under one roof when people no longer understand one another and no longer get on together. Adler’s “Individual Psychology ” is now one of the many psychological movements opposed to psychoanalysis, and its further development lies outside our interests.
Adler’s theory was, from the very beginning, a “system,” which psychoanalysis was careful not to become. It is also an excellent example of a “secondary elaboration” as seen, for example, in the process which the waking thought produces in dream material.[16]
In this case instead of dream material there is the material newly [p. 44] acquired from the viewpoint of the ego and brought under the familiar categories of the same. It is then translated, changed, and as thoroughly misunderstood as happens in the case of dream-formation. Adler’s theory is thus characterized less by what it asserts than by what it denies. It consequently consists of three elements of quite dissimilar value; first, good contributions to the psychology of the ego, which are superfluous but admissible; secondly, translations of analytical facts into the new jargon, and, thirdly, distortions and perversions of these facts when they do not fit into the ego presuppositions. The elements of the first kind have never been ignored by psychoanalysis, although it owed no special attention to them. Psychoanalysis had a greater interest in showing that all ego strivings are mixed with libidinous components. Adler’s theory emphasizes the counterpart to it; namely, that all libidinous feeling contains an admixture of egotism. This would have been a palpable gain if Adler had not made use of this assertion to deny, every time, the libidinous feelings in favor of the impelling ego components. His theory thus does exactly what all patients do, and what our conscious thinking always does, it rationalizes, as Jones would say, in order to conceal the unconscious motives. Adler is so consistent in this, that he considers the object of evincing domination over the woman, to be on the top, as the mainspring of the sexual act. I do not know if he has upheld this monstrous idea in his writings.
Psychoanalysis early recognized that every neurotic symptom owes the possibility of its existence to some compromise. It must, therefore, also put to some good account the demands of the ego which manages the repression, it must offer it some advantages by finding for it some useful employment, otherwise it would suffer the same fate as the originally defended impulses. The term “morbid gain” expresses this state of affairs. One might even have been justified in differentiating the primary gain for the ego which must have been active at the origin, from a “secondary” gain which appears in connection with other intentions of the ego, when the symptom is about to assert itself. It has also long been known to analysis that the withdrawal of this morbid gain, or the cessation of the same [p. 45] in consequence of some real change, is one of the mechanisms in the cure of the symptom. On these relationships which can be verified and understood without difficulty, Adler’s theory puts the greatest emphasis. It entirely overlooks the fact that innumerable times the ego makes a virtue out of necessity in submitting to the most undesired symptom forced upon it, because of the use it can make of it, e.g., when the ego accepts anxiety as a means of security. Here the ego plays the absurd part of the Pierot in the circus, who, through his gestures, wishes to convey to the spectators the impression that all changes in the menage are taking place at his command. But only the youngest among the spectators believe him.
For the second part of Adler’s theory psychoanalysis must stand security as for its own possessions. For it is nothing but psychoanalytic knowledge which the author had from all the sources opened to him during ten years of our joint work, but which he later marked as his own after changing the nomenclature. For instance, I myself consider “security” a better word than “protective measure,” which I used; but cannot find in it any new meaning. Similarly one will find in Adler’s statements a great many long-known features if one will replace the expressions “feigned” (fingiert) fictive and fiction, by the original words “to fancy” and “phantasy.” This identity would be emphasized by psychoanalysis, even if the author had not for many years participated in our common work.
The third part of Adler’s theory, which consists in giving new interpretations to, and in distorting the disagreeable facts of psychoanalysis, contains that which definitely severs the actual “Individual Psychology” from psychoanalysis. As is known the principle of Adler’s system states that it is the object of the self-assertion of the individual, his “will to power” in the form of the “masculine protest,” to manifest itself domineeringly in the conduct of life, in character formation and in the neurosis. This “masculine protest,” the Adlerism motor, is nothing else, however, than the repression set free from its psychological mechanism, and what is more, it is sexualized and thus hardly in keeping with the vaunted expulsion of sexuality [p 46] from its place in the psychic life. The “masculine protest” certainly exists, but in constituting it as the motor of the psychic life, observation has only played the part of the springboard which one leaves in order to uplift one’s self. Let us consider one of the most fundamental situations of the infantile desire; namely, the observation of the sexual act between adults by the child. When the life-history of such persons is later subjected to analysis by a physician, it is found that at this moment the minor spectator was seized by two feelings; one, in the case of a boy, to put himself in the place of the active man, and the other, the opposing feeling, to identify himself with the suffering woman. Both strivings conjointly exhaust the pleasure that might have resulted from this situation. Only the first feeling can come under the head of the “masculine protest” if this idea is to retain any meaning at all. The second feeling, whose fate Adler either ignores or does not know, is really the one which assumes greater significance in the later neurosis. Adler has placed himself so entirely into the jealous confinement of the ego, that he only accounts for such emotional feelings as are agreeable to the ego and furthered by it; but the case of the neurosis, which opposes these strivings, lies beyond his horizon.
Adler’s most serious deviations from the reality of observation and his deepest confusion of ideas have arisen in his attempt to correlate the basic principle of his theory with the psychic life of the child, an attempt which has become inevitable in psychoanalysis. The biological, social, and physiological meaning of “masculine” and ” feminine” have here become mixed into a hopeless composition. It is quite impossible, and it can easily be disproved by observation, that the masculine or feminine child builds its plan of life on any original undervaluation of the feminine sex; nor is it conceivable that a child can take as the guiding line the wish: “I will be a real man.” In the beginning no child has even an inkling of the significance of the difference in sex, more likely it starts with the assumption that both sexes possess the same (male) genital. It does not begin its sexual investigation with the problem of sex differentiation and is far from entertaining the social undervaluation [p. 47] of the woman. There are women in whose neurosis the wish to be a man never played any part. So far as the “masculine protest” is concerned, it can easily be traced back to a disturbance of the original narcissism caused by the threat of castration; that is, to the first hindrance of sexual activity. All dispute as to the psychogenesis of the neuroses must ultimately be decided in the sphere of the childhood neuroses. The careful analysis of a neurosis of the early years of childhood puts an end to all mistakes in regard to the etiology of the neuroses, and all doubts as to the part played by the sexual impulses. That is why Adler in his criticism of Jung’s “Conflicts of the Child’s Mind” was obliged to resort to the imputation that the material of the case surely must have followed a uniform new tendency ” from the father.”[17]
I will not linger any longer over the biological side of Adler’s theory, and will not examine whether the palpable inferiority of organs or the subjective feeling of the same (one often cannot tell which) can possibly be the basis of Adler’s system. Only permit me to remark that this would make the neurosis a by-product of the general stunting, while observation teaches that an excessively large number of hideous, misshapen, crippled, and wretched creatures have failed to react to their deficiencies by developing a neurosis. Nor will I consider the interesting information that the sense of inferiority goes back to infantile feelings. It shows us in what disguise the doctrine of infantilism, so much emphasized in psychoanalysis, returns in Adler’s Individual Psychology. On the other hand, I am obliged to emphasize how all psychological acquisitions of psychoanalysis have been disregarded by Adler. In his book “The Nervous Character,” the unconscious still appears as a psychological peculiarity, but without any relation to his system. Later, he declared, quite logically, that it was a matter of indifference to him whether any conception be conscious or unconscious. For the principle of repressions, Adler never evinced any understanding. While reviewing a lecture before the Vienna Society in 1911, he [p. 48] said: “On the strength of a case I wish to point out that the patient had never repressed his libido, against which he continually tried to secure himself.”[18] Soon thereafter at a discussion in Vienna Adler said: “If you ask whence comes the repression, you are told: from culture. But if you ask whence comes culture, the reply is: from the repression. So you see it is only a question of a play on words.” A small fragment of the sagacity used by Adler to defend his “nervous character” might have sufficed to show him the way out of this pettifogging argument. There is nothing mysterious about it, except that culture depends upon the acts of repression of former generations, and that each new generation is required to retain this culture by carrying out the same repressions. I have heard of a child that considered itself fooled and began to cry, because to the question: “Where do eggs come from?” it received the answer, “Eggs come from hens,” and to the further question: “Where do the hens come from?” the information was “From the eggs,” and yet this was not a play upon words. The child had been told what was true.
Just as deplorable and devoid of substance is all that Adler has said about the dream — that shibboleth of psychoanalysis. At first he considered the dream as a turning from the masculine to the feminine line, which simply means translating the theory of wish-fulfillment in dreams into the language of the “masculine protest.” Later he found that the essence of the dream lies in the fact that it enables man to realize unconsciously what is denied him consciously. Adler should also be credited with the priority of confounding the dream with the latent dream-thoughts, on the cognition of which rests his idea of “prospective tendency.” Maeder followed him in this, later on. In doing so he readily overlooks the fact that every interpretation of the dream which really tells nothing comprehensible in its manifest appearance rests upon the same dream-interpretation, whose assumptions and conclusions he is disputing. Concerning resistance Adler asserts that it serves to strengthen the patient against the physician. This is certainly correct. It means as much [p. 49] as saying that it serves the resistance. But whence this resistance originates, and how it happens that its phenomena serve the patient’s interest, these questions, as if of no interest for the ego, are not further discussed by Adler. The detailed mechanisms of symptoms and phenomena, the motivation of the variety of diseases and morbid manifestations, find no consideration at all with Adler, since everything is equally subservient to the “masculine protest,” to the self-assertion, and to the exaltation of the personality. The system is finished, at the expense of an extraordinary labor of new interpretation, yet it has not contributed a single new observation. I believe that I have succeeded in showing that his system has nothing whatever in common with psychoanalysis.
The picture which one derives from Adler’s system is founded entirely upon the impulse of aggression. It has no place at all for love. One might wonder that such a cheerless aspect of life should have received any notice whatever; but we must not forget that humanity, oppressed by its sexual needs, is prepared to accept anything, if only the “overcoming of sexuality” is held out as bait.
The secession of Adler’s faction was finished before the Congress at Weimar which took place in 1911, while the one of the Swiss School began after this date. Strangely enough, the first indications of it were found in some remarks by Riklin in popular articles printed in Swiss literature, from which the general public learned, even before Riklin’s closest colleagues, that psychoanalysis had succeeded in overcoming some regretable mistakes which discredited it. In 1912 Jung boasted, in a letter to me from America, that his modifications of psychoanalysis had overcome the resistances to it in many persons, who hitherto wanted to know nothing about it. I replied that this was nothing to boast about, that the more he sacrificed of the hard-won truths of psychoanalysis, the less resistances he would encounter. This modification for the introduction of which the Swiss are so proud, again was nothing more or less than the theoretical suppression of the sexual factor. I admit that from the very beginning I have regarded this “progress ” as a too-far-reaching adaptation to the demands of actuality. [p. 50]
These two retrogressive movements, tending away from psychoanalysis, which I will now compare, also resemble each other in the fact that they are seeking to obtain a favorable opinion by means of certain lofty points of view, as sub specie æternitatis. In the case of Adler, this rôle is played by the relativity of all knowledge, and by the rights of the personality to construe artificially any piece of knowledge to suit the individual; while Jung insists on the cultural historical rights of youth to throw off any fetters that tyrannical old age with ossified views would forge for it. These arguments require some repudiation. The relativity of all our knowledge is a consideration which maybe used as an argument against any other science besides psychoanalysis. This idea originates from well-known reactionary streams of the present day inimical to science, and wishes to give the appearance of a superiority to which we are not entitled. Not one of us can guess what may be the ultimate judgment of mankind about our theoretical efforts. There are examples to show that what was rejected by the next three generations was corrected by the fourth and its recognition thus brought about. There is nothing else for the individual to do than to defend, with all his strength, his conviction based on experience after he has carefully listened to his own criticisms and has given some attention to the criticisms of his opponents. Let him be content to conduct his affair honestly and not assume the office of judge, which is reserved for a remote future. To accentuate personal arbitrariness in scientific matters is bad; it evidently wishes to deny to psychoanalysis the value of a science, which, to be sure, Adler has already depreciated by the aforementioned remark. Any one who highly regards scientific thinking will rather seek for means and methods by which to restrict, if possible, the factor of personal and artificial arbitrariness wherever it still plays too large a part. Besides one must remember that all agitation in defending is out of place. Adler does not take these arguments seriously. They are only for use against his opponents, but they respect his own theories. They have not prevented Adler’s adherents from celebrating him as the Messiah, for whose appearance waiting humanity had been prepared [p. 51] by so many forerunners. The Messiah is surely no longer anything relative.
Jung’s argument ad captandam benevolentiam rests on the all-too-optimistic assumption that the progress of humanity, of civilization, and of knowledge has always continued in an unbroken line, as if there had never been any epigones, reactions, and restorations after every revolution, as if there had never been races who, because of a retrogression, had to renounce the gain of former generations. The approach to the standpoint of the masses, the giving up of an innovation that has proved unpopular, all these make it altogether unlikely that Jung’s correction of psychoanalysis could lay claim to being a liberating act of youth. Finally it is no: the years of the doer that decide it, but the character of the deed.
Of the two movements we have here considered, that headed by Adler is undoubtedly the more important. Though radically false, it is, nevertheless, characterized by consistency and coherence and it is still founded on the theory of the impulse. On the other hand, Jung’s modification has lessened the connection between the phenomena and the impulses: besides, as its critics (Abraham, Ferenczi, Jones) have already pointed out, it is so unintelligible, muddled, and confused, that it is not easy to take any attitude towards it. Wherever one touches it, one must be prepared to be told that one has misunderstood it, and it is impossible to know how one can arrive at a correct understanding of it. It represents itself in a peculiarly vacillating manner, since at one time it calls itself “a quite tame deviation, not worthy of the row which has arisen about it” (Jung), yet, at another time, it calls itself a new salvation with which a new epoch shall begin for psychoanalysis, in fact, a new aspect of the universe for everything else.
When one thinks of the disagreements between the individual private and public expressions of Jung’s utterances one is obliged to ask to what extent this is due to his own lack of clearness and lack of sincerity. Yet, it must be admitted that the representatives of the new theory find themselves in a difficult position. They are now disputing things which they themselves formerly defended and what [p. 52] is more, this dispute is not based on new observations which might have taught them something fresh, but rather on a different interpretation which causes them to see things in a different light from that in which they saw them before. It is for this reason that they will not give up their connection with psychoanalysis as the representatives of which they first became known in the world. They prefer to proclaim that psychoanalysis has changed. At the Congress of Münich I was obliged to clear up this confusion and did so by declaring that I could not recognize the innovation of the Swiss School as a legitimate continuation and further development of the Psychoanalysis which had originated with me. Outside critics (like Furtmüller) had already recognized this state of affairs and Abraham says, quite rightly, that Jung is in full retreat away from psychoanalysis. I am naturally entirely willing to admit that any one has the right to think and to write what he wishes, but he has not the right to make it out to be something different from what it really is.
Just as Adler’s researches brought something new into psychoanalysis, a piece of the ego-psychology, and paid only too dearly for this gift by repudiating all the fundamental analytic principles, in the same way Jung and his adherents have based their fight against psychoanalysis upon a new contribution to the same. They have traced in detail (what Pfister did before them) how the material of the sexual ideas originating in the family complex and in the incestuous object selection can be used to represent the highest ethical and religious interests of mankind, that is, they have explained a remarkable case of sublimation of the erotic impelling forces and the transformation of the same into strivings that can no longer be called erotic. All this harmonized very well with the assumptions of psychoanalysis, and would have agreed very well with the conception that in the dream and in the neurosis one sees the regressive elucidations of these and all other sublimations. But the world would have exclaimed that ethics and religion had been sexualized. I cannot help assuming “finally” that the investigators found themselves quite unequal to the storm they had to face. [p. 53] Perhaps the storm began to rage in their own bosoms. The previous theological history of so many of the Swiss workers is as important in their attitude to psychoanalysis as is the socialistic record of Adler for the development of his “psychology.” One is reminded of Mark Twain’s famous story about the fate of his watch and to the speculative remark with which he closed it: “And he used to wonder what became of all the unsuccessful tinkers, and gunsmiths, and shoemakers, and blacksmiths; but nobody could ever tell him.”
I will encroach upon the realm of parables and will assume that in a certain society there lived a parvenu who boasted of descent from a very noble family not locally known. But it so happened that it was proved to him that his parents were living somewhere in the neighborhood and were very simple people, indeed. Only one way out remained to him and he seized upon it. He could no longer deny his parents, but he asserted that they were very aristocratic by origin but much come down in the world, and secured for them at some obliging office a document showing their descent. It seems to me that the Swiss workers had been obliged to act in a similar manner. If ethics and religion could not be sexualized, but must be regarded as something “higher” from the very beginning, and as their origin from the family and Oedipus complexes seemed undeniable, then there was only one way out; namely, that these complexes themselves, from the beginning, could not have the significance which they appeared to express, but must have that higher “anagogic” sense (to use Silberer’s nomenclature) with which they adapt themselves for proper use in the abstract streams of thought of ethics and religious mysticism.
I am quite prepared to be told once more that I have misunderstood the contents and object of the theory of the New-Zürich School, but here wish to protest against being held responsible for those contradictions to my theories that have arisen as a result of the publications of this school The burden of responsibility rests on them, not on me. In no other way can I make comprehensible to myself the ensemble of Jung’s innovations or grasp them in their associations. All the changes which Jung has perpetrated upon [p. 54] psychoanalysis originated in the intention of setting aside all that is objectionable in the family complexes, in order that these objectionable features may not be found again in religion and ethics. The sexual libido was replaced by an abstract idea, of which it may be said that it remained equally mysterious and incomprehensible alike to fools and to the wise. The Oedipus-complex, we are told, has only a “symbolical” sense, the mother therein representing the unattainable which must be renounced in the interests of cultural development. The father who is killed in the Oedipus myth represents the “inner” father from w hose influence we must free ourselves in order to become independent. No doubt other portions of the material of sexual conceptions will, in time, receive similarly new interpretations. In place of the conflict between erotic strivings adverse to the ego and the self-assertion, we are given the conflict between the “life-task” and the “psychic-laziness.” The neurotic guilty conscience corresponds with the reproach of not having put to good account one’s life-task. Thus a new religio-ethical system was founded which, exactly like Adler’s, was obliged to give new interpretations, to distort or set aside the actual results of analysis. As a matter of fact they have caught a few cultural higher notes from the symphony of the world’s by-gones, but once again have failed to hear the powerful melody of the impulses.
In order to hold this system together it was necessary to draw away entirely from the observations and technique of psychoanalysis. Now and then the enthusiasm for the higher cause even permits a total disregard for scientific logic, as for instance, when Jung maintains that the Oedipus complex is not “specific” enough for the etiology of the neuroses, and ascribed this specificity to laziness, that is, to the most universal quality of animate and inanimate bodies! Moreover, it is to be remarked that the “Oedipus complex” only represents a capacity on which the psychic forces of the individual measure themselves, and is not in itself a force, like the “psychic laziness.” The study of the individual man has shown and always will show that the sexual complexes are alive in him in their original sense. That is why the study of the individual was [p. 55] pushed back by Jung and replaced by the judgment of the essential facts from the study of the races. As the study of the early childhood of every man exposed one to the danger of striking against the original and undisguised meaning of these misinterpreted complexes, it was, therefore, thought best to make it a rule to tarry as little as possible at this past and to place the greatest emphasis on the return to the conflict. Here, moreover, the essential things are not at all the incidental and personal, but rather the general, that is to say, the “non-fulfilment of the life-task.” Nevertheless, we know that the actual conflict of the neurotic becomes comprehensible and solvable only if it can be traced back into the patient’s past history, only by following along the way that his libido took when his malady began.
How the New Zürich therapy has shaped itself under such tendencies I can convey by means of reports of a patient who was himself obliged to experience it.
“Not the slightest effort was made to consider the past or the transferences. Whenever I thought that the latter were touched, they were explained as a mere symbol of the libido. The moral instructions were very beautiful and I followed them faithfully, but I did not advance one step. This was more distressing to me than to the physician, but how could I help it? — Instead of freeing me analytically, each session made new and tremendous demands on me, on the fulfilment of which the overcoming of the neurosis was supposed to depend. Some of these demands were: inner concentration by means of introversion, religious meditation, living together with my wife in loving devotion, etc. It was almost beyond my power, since it really amounted to a radical transformation of the whole spiritual man. I left the analysis as a poor sinner with the strongest feelings of contrition and the very best resolutions, but at the same time with the deepest discouragement. All that this physician recommended any pastor would have advised, but where was I to get the strength?”
It is true that the patient had also heard that an analysis of the past and of the transference should precede the process. He, however, was told that he had enough of it. But as it had not helped [p. 56] him, it seems to me that it is just to conclude that the patient had not had enough of this first sort of analysis. Not in any case has the superimposed treatment which no longer has the slightest claim to call itself psychoanalysis, helped. It is a matter of wonder that the men of Zürich had need to make the long detour via Vienna to reach Bern, so close to them, where Dubois cures neuroses by ethical encouragement in the most indulgent fashion.[19]
The utter disagreement of this new movement with psychoanalysis naturally shows itself also in its attitude towards repression, which is hardly mentioned any more in the writings of Jung; in the utter misconstruction of the dream which Adler, ignoring the dream-psychology, confuses with the latent dream-thoughts, and also in the lack of understanding of the unconscious. In fact this disagreement can be seen in all the essential points of psychoanalysis. When Jung tells us that the incest-complex is only “symbolic,” that it has “no real existence,” that the savage feels no desire towards the old hag but prefers a young and pretty woman, then one is tempted to assume in order to dispose of apparent contradiction that “symbolic” and “no real existence” only signify what is designated as “existing unconsciously.”
If one maintains that the dream is something different from the latent dream-thoughts, which it elaborates, one will not wonder that the patients dream of those things with which their mind has been filled during the treatment, whether it be the “life-task” or being “above” or “below.” Certainly the dreams of those analyzed are guidable in a similar manner as dreams can be influenced by the application of experimental stimuli. One may determine a part of the material that occurs in the dream, but this changes nothing in the nature and mechanism of the dream. Nor do I believe that the so-called “biographical” dream occurs outside of the analysis. On [p. 57] the other hand, if we analyze dreams that occurred before the treatment began, or if attention is paid to what the dreamer adds to the stimuli supplied to him during the treatment, or if we avoid giving him any such task, then we can convince ourselves how far the dream is from offering tentative solutions of the life-task. For the dream is only another form of thinking; the understanding of this form can never be gained from the content of its thoughts, only the consideration of the dream-work will lead to it.
The effective refutation of Jung’s misconceptions of psychoanalysis and his deviations from it is not difficult. Any analysis carried out in accordance with the rules, especially any analysis of a child, strengthens the convictions on which the theory of psychoanalysis rests, and repudiates the new interpretations of Adler’s and Jung’s systems. Jung himself, before he became enlightened, carried out such an analysis of a child and published it.[20] It remains to be seen if he will undertake a new interpretation of this case with the help of another “uniform new tendency of the facts,” to give Adler’s expression used in this connection.
The opinion that the sexual representation of “higher” ideas in the dream and in the neurosis is nothing but an archaic manner of expression, is naturally irreconcilable with the fact that these sexual complexes prove to be in the neurosis the carriers of those quantities of libido which have been withdrawn from the real life. If it were only a question of sexual jargon, nothing could thereby be altered in the economy of the libido itself. Jung himself admits this in his “Darstellung der psychoanalytischen Theorie,” and formulates, as a therapeutic task, that the libido investing the complexes should be withdrawn from them. But this can never be accomplished by rejecting the complexes and forcing them towards sublimation, but only by the most exhaustive occupation with them, and by making them fully conscious. The first bit of reality with which the patient has to deal is his malady itself. Any effort to spare him this task points to an incapacity of the physician to help [p. 58] him in overcoming his resistances, or to a fear on the part of the physician as to the results of this work.
I would like to say in conclusion that Jung, by his “modifications” has furnished psychoanalysis with a counterpart to the famous knife of Lichtenberg He has changed the hilt, has inserted into it a new blade, and because the same trademark is engraved on it he requires of us that we regard the instrument as the former one.
On the contrary, I believe I have shown that the new theory which desires to substitute psychoanalysis signifies an abandonment of analysis and a secession from it. Some may be inclined to fear that this defection may be more unfortunate for the fate of psychoanalysis than any other because it emanates from persons who once played so great a part in the psychoanalytic movement and did so much to further it. I do not share this apprehension.
Men are strong so long as they represent a strong idea. They become powerless when they oppose it. Psychoanalysis will be able to bear this loss and will gain new adherents for those lost.
I can only conclude with the wish that the fates may prepare easy ascension for those who found their sojourn in the underworld of psychoanalysis uncomfortable. May it be vouchsafed to the others to bring to a happy conclusion their works in the deep.
Footnotes
[1] “On Psychoanalysis.” Five lectures given on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of Clark University, Worcester, Mass., dedicated to Stanley Hall. Second edition, 1912. Published simultaneously in English in the American Journal of Psychology, March, 1910; translated into Dutch, Hungarian, Polish and Russian.
[2] Breuer and Freud, ” Studien über Hysterie,” p. 15, Deuticke, 1895.
[3] Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse, 1911, Vol. I, p. 69.
[4] The Clinic of Psychiatry, Zürich.
[5] Havelock Ellis, ” The Doctrines of the Freudian School.”
[6] G. Greve, ” Sobre Psicologia y Psicoterapia de ciertos Estados angustiosos.” See Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse, Vol. I, p. 594·
[7] The collected publications of these two authors have appeared in book form: Brill, “Psychoanalysis, its Theories and Practical Applications,” 1912, 2d edition, 1914, Saunders, Philadelphia, and E. Jones’s “Papers on Psychoanalysis,” 1913, Wood and Company, New York.
[8] The first official recognition that psychoanalysis and dream interpretation received was extended to them by the Psychiatrist Jelgersma, rector of the University of Leyden, in his rectorship address February 1, 1914.
[9]An English translation has just appeared in the Nervous and Mental Disease Monograph Series, No. 23.
[10] Cf. “Der Wahn und die Träume” in W. Jensen’s “Gradiva.”
[11] Rank, “Der Künstler,” analyses of poets by Sadger, Reik, and others, my little monograph on a Kindheitserinnerung des Leonardo da Vinci; also Abraham’s “Analyses von Segantini.”
[12] A translation is in preparation.
[13] Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious, translated by A. A. Brill, Moffat, Yard & Co., New York.
[14] “Die Psychoanalytische Methode,” 1913, Vol. I of the Pedagogium, Meumann and Messner. English Translation by Dr. C. R. Payne. Moffat, Yard & Co., N. Y.
[15] Cf. my two essays in Scientia, Vol. XIV, 1913, ” Das Interesse an der Psychoanalyse.”
[15a] Dreams and Myths, Wish-fulfillment and Fairy Tales, Myth of the Birth of the Hero, in this series are translated in the Monograph Series.
[15b] Adler’s Inferiority of Organs, translated by Jelliffe, appears as Monograph 24. His, “Nervous Character,” translated by Glueck and Lind, published by Moffat, Yard & Co., N.Y.
[16] Cf. The Interpretation of Dreams, p. 389, translated by A. A. Brill, The Macmillan Co., New York, and Alien, London.
[17] Zentalbl., Vol. I, p. 122. See “Analytical Psychology,” Moffat, Yard & Co., N. Y.
[18] Korrespondenzbl., No. 5, Zurich, April, 1911.
[19] I know the objections which stand in the way of using a patient’s statements, and I, therefore, expressly state that my informant is as worthy of credence as he is capable of judging this matter. He gave me this information without my request, and I make use of his communication without asking his consent, because I cannot admit that any psychoanalytical technique should lay claim to the protection of discretion.
[20] Experiences Concerning the Psychic Life of the Child, translated by A. A. Brill, American Journal of Psychology, April, 1910.