Psychology of the Unconscious A Study of the...

60. The choice of words and comparisons is always significant. A psychology of travels and the unconscious forces co-operating with them is yet to be written.

61. This mental disturbance had until recently the very unfortunate designation, Dementia Praecox, given by Kraepelin. It is extremely unfortunate that this malady should have been discovered by the psychiatrists, for its apparently bad prognosis is due to this circumstance. Dementia praecox is synonymous with therapeutic hopelessness. How would hysteria appear if judged from the standpoint of psychiatry! The psychiatrist naturally sees in the institutions only the worst cases of dementia praecox, and as a consequence of his therapeutic helplessness he must be a pessimist. How deplorable would tuberculosis appear if the physician of an asylum for the incurable described the nosology of this disease! Just as little as the chronic cases of hysteria, which gradually degenerate in insane asylums, are characteristic of real hysteria, just so little are the cases of dementia praecox in asylums characteristic of those early forms so frequent in general practice, and which Janet has described under the name of Psychasthenia. These cases fall under Bleuler’s description of Schizophrenia, a name which connotes a psychological fact, and might easily be compared with similar facts in hysteria. The term which I use in my private work for these conditions is Introversion Neurosis, by which, in my opinion, the most important characteristic of the condition is given, namely, the predominance of introversion over transference, which latter is the characteristic feature of hysteria.

In my “Psychology of Dementia Praecox” I have not made any study of the relationship of the Psychasthenia of Janet. Subsequent experience with Dementia Praecox, and particularly the study of Psychasthenia in Paris, have demonstrated to me the essential relationship of Janet’s group with the Introversion Neuroses (the Schizophrenia of Bleuler).

62. Compare the similar views in my article, “Über die Psychologie der Dementia praecox,” Halle 1907; and “Inhalt der Psychose,” Deuticke, Wien 1908. Also Abraham: “Die psychosexuellen Differenzen der Hysterie und der Dementia praecox,” Zentralblatt für Nervenheilkunde und Psychiatrie, 1908. This author, in support of Freud, defines the chief characteristic of dementia praecox as Autoerotism, which as I have asserted is only one of the results of Introversion.

63. Freud, to whom I am indebted for an essential part of this view, also speaks of “Heilungsversuch,” the attempt toward cure, the search for health.

64. Miss Miller’s publication gives no hint of any knowledge of psychoanalysis.

65. Here I purposely give preference to the term “Imago” rather than to the expression “Complex,” in order, by the choice of terminology, to invest this psychological condition, which I include under “Imago,” with living independence in the psychical hierarchy, that is to say, with that autonomy which, from a large experience, I have claimed as the essential peculiarity of the emotional complex. (Compare “The Psychology of Dementia Praecox.”) My critics, Isserlin especially, have seen in this view a return to medieval psychology, and they have, therefore, rejected it utterly. This “return” took place on my part consciously and intentionally because the phantastic, projected psychology of ancient and modern superstition, especially demonology, furnishes exhaustive evidence for this point of view. Particularly interesting insight and confirmation is given us by the insane Schreber in an autobiography (“Denkwürdigkeiten eines Nervenkranken,” Mutze, Leipzig), where he has given complete expression to the doctrine of autonomy.

“Imago” has a significance similar on the one hand to the psychologically conceived creation in Spitteler’s novel “Imago,” and upon the other hand to the ancient religious conception of “imagines et lares.”

66. Compare my article, “Die Bedeutung des Vaters für das Schicksal des Einzelnen.”

67. As is well known, Anaxagoras developed the conception that the living primal power (Urpotenz) of νοῦς (mind) imparts movement, as if by a blast of wind, to the dead primal power (Urpotenz) of matter. There is naturally no mention of sound. This νοῦς, which is very similar to the later conception of Philo, the λόγος σπερματικός of the Gnostics and the Pauline πνεῦμα (spirit) as well as to the πνεῦμα of the contemporary Christian theologians, has rather the old mythological significance of the fructifying breath of the winds, which impregnated the mares of Lusitania, and the Egyptian vultures. The animation of Adam and the impregnation of the Mother of God by the πνεῦμα are produced in a similar manner. The infantile incest phantasy of one of my patients reads: “the father covered her face with his hands and blew into her open mouth.”

68. Haydn’s “Creation” might be meant.

69. See Job xvi: 1–11.

70. I recall the case of a young insane girl who continually imagined that her innocence was suspected, from which thought she would not allow herself to be dissuaded. Gradually there developed out of her defensive attitude a correspondingly energetic positive erotomania.

71. Compare the preceding footnote with the text of Miss Miller’s.

72. The case is published in “Zur Psychologie und Pathologie sogenannter okkulter Phänomene.” Mutze, Leipzig 1902.

73. Compare Freud’s “Analyse der Phobie eines fünfjährigen Knaben,” Jahrbuch, Vol. I, 1st half; also Jung: “Konflikte der kindlichen Seele,” Jahrbuch, II, Vol. I.

74. Others do not make use of this step, but are directly carried away by Eros.

75. The heaven above, the heaven below, the sky above, the sky below, all things above, all things below, decline and rise.

76. “La sagesse et la destinée.”

77. This time I shall hardly be spared the reproach of mysticism. But perhaps the facts should be further considered; doubtless the unconscious contains material which does not rise to the threshold of consciousness. The analysis dissolves these combinations into their historical determinants, for it is one of the essential tasks of analysis to render impotent by dissolution the content of the complexes competing with the proper conduct of life. Psychoanalysis works backwards like the science of history. Just as the largest part of the past is so far removed that it is not reached by history, so too the greater part of the unconscious determinants is unreachable. History, however, knows nothing of two kinds of things, that which is hidden in the past and that which is hidden in the future. Both perhaps might be attained with a certain probability; the first as a postulate, the second as an historical prognosis. In so far as to-morrow is already contained in to-day, and all the threads of the future are in place, so a more profound knowledge of the past might render possible a more or less far-reaching and certain knowledge of the future. Let us transfer this reasoning, as Kant has already done, to psychology. Then necessarily we must come to the same result. Just as traces of memory long since fallen below the threshold of consciousness are accessible in the unconscious, so too there are certain very fine subliminal combinations of the future, which are of the greatest significance for future happenings in so far as the future is conditioned by our own psychology.

But just so little as the science of history concerns itself with the combinations for the future, which is the function of politics, so little, also, are the psychological combinations for the future the object of analysis; they would be much more the object of an infinitely refined psychological synthesis, which attempts to follow the natural current of the libido. This we cannot do, but possibly this might happen in the unconscious, and it appears as if from time to time, in certain cases, significant fragments of this process come to light, at least in dreams. From this comes the prophetic significance of the dream long claimed by superstition.

The aversion of the scientific man of to-day to this type of thinking, hardly to be called phantastic, is merely an overcompensation to the very ancient and all too great inclination of mankind to believe in prophesies and superstitions.

78. Dreams seem to remain spontaneously in the memory just so long as they give a correct résumé of the psychologic situation of the individual.

79. How paltry are the intrinsic ensemble and the detail of the erotic experience, is shown by this frequently varied love song which I quote in its epirotic form:

Epirotic Love Song

(Zeitschrift des Vereines für Volkskunde, XII, p. 159.)

O Maiden, when we kissed, then it was night; who saw us?

A night Star saw us, and the moon,

And it leaned downward to the sea, and gave it the tidings,

Then the Sea told the rudder, the rudder told the sailor,

The sailor put it into song, then the neighbor heard it,

Then the priest heard it and told my mother,

From her the father heard it, he got in a burning anger,

They quarrelled with me and commanded me and they have forbidden me

Ever to go to the door, ever to go to the window.

And yet I will go to the window as if to my flowers,

And never will I rest till my beloved is mine.

80. Job xli: 13 (Leviathan).

“21. His breath kindleth coals, and a flame goeth out of his mouth.

“22. In his neck remaineth strength, and sorrow is turned into joy before him.