Class riiEiJ Book._-i- Gopyrigta^^.. >^^-b. COPmiGHT DEPOSia^ / MECHANISMS OF CHARACTER FORMATION THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., Limited LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. TORONTO MECHANISMS OF CHAEACTEE FOEMATION AN INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOANALYSIS BY WILLIAM A. WHITE, M.D. *'That statement only is fit to be made public which you have come at in at- tempting to satisfy your own curiosity." R. W. Emerson, Spiritual Laws Nm fork THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1916 All rights reserved •T:? (T^.rlQ Copyright, 1916. bt the macmillan company Set up and electrotyped. Published, October, 1916. GCT 26)916 ?)Cl.A445B4i PREFACE Psychology seems always to have been in danger of gravitating, on the one hand, in the direction of meta- physical abstractions and, on the other hand, in the direction of a refined physiology. The carefully conducted laboratory researches under wholly arti- ficial conditions, have, as a rule attracted little gen- eral interest and therefore had few practical re- sults. Certainly the field of mental medicine has benefited practically not at all as a result of all the years of laboratory psychology. A man seems to have been considered by the psychologist as an object of experiment and rarely as a human being in a social environment. True, the behaviorists may change all this but in the meantime a new psy- chology has come into existence, borne of the suffer- ings and the heart aches of the mentally ill — ^the psychology which is called psychoanalysis and, no matter what the remote history of events preceding its birth, properly also bears the name of its real creator. Prof. Sigmund Freud of Vienna — Freudian. / This is a psychology which had its origin in trying I to help sick people, in trying to alleviate their suf- 1 ferings and from the very first dealt with men and women in the raw, as they really were. This is the psychology I propose to give in outline in this book and which might well be called Humanistic not only PEEFACE in the accepted Protagorean meaning of that term but also because it deals with human beings, their hopes and fears, their aspirations and despairs, their good and their evil qualities as every one, but especially the priest and the physician knows them. It is a psychology which has opened the door to the understanding of man and as such I believe is the psychology which will prove of the greatest prag- matic advantage. It is some such scheme as I have outlined in this work which I think should be taught in the medical schools. Later it will find, I am sure, a much wider usefulness. Surely, however, the physician should know something of the principles which govern the operations of the most important of all the endowments of man. He should have some guides to help him to a real understanding of his patients and to point added ways to help them in their difficulties. A properly understood mental symptom may easily be the most important means of dealing with a given situation. The physician, therefore, of all men, should try to see deeper than the spoken word, he should be able to see what is hidden beneath. Such knowledge is often of ines- timable value. This volume on The Mechanisms of Character Formation, merely tries to lay down the broad principles which underlie human behaviour and which are necessary to comprehend before one can have a real appreciation of mental facts and their true meanings. W. A. TF. CONTENTS CHAPTEB PAGE Preface v I Introduction 1 II The Genetic Approach to the Problem op Consciousness 14 III The Fore- Conscious and the Unconscious . 35 IV The Conflict 62 Y Symbolism 76 YI Dream Mechanisms 117 YII The Family Komance 145 YIII The "Will to Power 177 The All-Powerfulness of Thought IX The Will to Power (cont.) 195 Partial Libido Strivings X Extroversion and Introversion .... 217 XI Organ Inferiority . 245 XII The Eesolution of the Conflict .... 270 XIII Summary and Synthesis .317 Index 337 MECHANISMS OF CHARACTER FORMATION CHAPTEE I INTRODUCTION It has been said that to write the history of hys- teria would be to write the history of medicine. The same might equally well be said of psy- chopathology, for mental disease is always with us and always has been and in the form of hysteria is peculiarly calculated to attract atten- tion. For the purposes of this work such an extensive historical programme is unnecessary. Present day positions are, for the most part, out- growths of comparatively recent tendencies, so a rapid study of these tendencies will place us in a position to take up the various problems as they now present themselves. Until the present generation mental disease had been looked upon from a most superficial and shallow standpoint — it had been, and is still to a large ex- tent, in the descriptive stage of development. De- scription and classification have been the moving forjes back of its study. In fact, it is only a few years since the most frequent question asked of a psychiatrist, or hospital superintendent, was *^What 2 CHARACTER FORMATION classification do yon nseT' and writers of books for a hundred years have laid great weight npon the question of classification. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, in France particularly, a Linnean type of classification and naming was used following down each psychosis to its genus and species, a method that has sent its reverberations through the years until its force finally spent itself in such residuals as we see in Krafft-Ebing and Ziehen. In these days of description and classification the patient's symptoms were carefully observed. If he talked in broken sentences that had no obvious mean- ing to the listener, why then he was incoherent and incoherence was put down as one of his symptoms to be later woven into the description of the psychosis which was then duly classified and finally named. The naming of a psychosis had become a matter of importance all out of proportion to issues which we now look upon as vital. In an old manuscript ^ of about 370 b. c. a conver- sation is recorded between Morosophus, an Ele- atic philosopher and Protagoras, of Abdera. Pro- tagoras has just been describing the colour blindness of Xanthias, the son of Glaucus, and telling how he saw colours ditferently from others. Morosophus answers by saying: *'But surely Xanthias was diseased, and his judgments about colour are of no more importance than those of a madman. '^ To which Protagoras replies: **You do not get rid of iThe Papyri of Philonous. INTRODUCTION 3 the difference by calling it madness and disease. And how would you define the essential nature of madness and disease?'' The same criticism may be made of the purely de- scriptive method. We do not get rid of the symp- tom by calling it incoherence and then after all — What is the essential nature of incoherence? The giving of the observed facts a name has not added to our understanding of them. The botanist can describe a flower, count the petals, sepals, and sta- mens and describe their size, shape and colour but it took a poet to flood these empty statistics ^ with light by showing that they are all modifications of one of the fundamental plant structures — the leaf. The present generation has witnessed a like change in viewpoint in the domain of psychopathology. It is no longer sufficient to record a symptom and de- scribe it in minute detail. It has not been satisfac- torily dealt with until an attempt at least has been made to answer the question, What does it mean! Present day psychopathology insists that all psychic facts of observation have meaning. This is its great contribution to the field of mental medicine. This change of the psychopathological viewpoint from the descriptive to the interpretative had its beginnings in the study of the neuroses and psycho- neuroses and in its early days was associated with the study and use of hypnotism as a therapeutic agent. The subject of hypnotism or rather mes- merism was dramatically exploited by Mesmer in 2 Goethe in his "Metamorphosis of Plants." 4 CHARACTER FORMATION the eighteenth century. How sincere Mesmer was in his belief as to the therapeutic value of this method is perhaps open to question, but his methods, as we look back upon them now, certainly smack of the methods of the charlatan. It was not until 1841 that the work of Braid of Manchester established the theory of suggestion upon a scientific basis. It is to him too that we owe the name *^ hypnotism." He discarded the idea of a magnetic fluid, believed that the hypnotic state was the result of a purely physio- logical condition of the nervous system and that the sleep was due to the fatigue of the eyelids and the concentration of attention. The study of hypnotic phenomena was pursued by the Medical School of Nancy under Lie- bault and at the Salpetriere by Charcot. Charcot did not begin his investigations until 1878. In the meantime Liebault had published his work on '* sleep and analogous states considered especially from the point of view of the action of the moral on the physical" (1866) and his work followed by that of Bernheim, Beaunis, and Liegeois served to reanimate the interest in hypnotism. The Nancy school did a great service to the cause by getting rid of the oc- cult and the mysterious such as the phenomena de- scribed by Luys which were produced in patients by approaching them with a magnet or with drugs or poisons in sealed tubes. All such matters were in- vestigated and very simply explained from a psycho- logical standpoint and the whole matter reduced to a common sense basis for further scientific work. INTRODUCTION 5 In the meantime various studies were appearing of marked types of memory loss, amnesia, for whole sections of the patient's life. MacNish had pub- lished in his ^'Philosophy of Sleep'' (1830) his case of Madame X , Azam in 1858 had begun his study of the classical case of Felida, Dufay had published his case of somnambulism of Mile. E. L. (1876), Bourru and Burot published their studies of the successive personalities of Louis V (1888), who was studied by many authors besides from 1882 to 1889. The common characteristic of all of these cases was that the patients suffered from *' attacks" or, as they have been called '^ secondary states," dur- ing which their whole conduct and manner was quite different from usual. These secondary states are of varying lengths of duration but when the, patient emerges from them there is no memory for what has happened during them. Thus we have the picture of these secondary states alternating with the or- dinary state of the individual and replacing it for varying periods giving rise to the phenomena of double personality, or if there is more than one variety of secondary states, to the phenomena of multiple personality. This phenomenon of multiple personality was ex- plained upon the presumption that certain constel- lations of ideas and affects, certain portions of the personality, were capable of breaking away, becom- ing dissociated from the main body and leading a quasi-independent existence, perhaps finally at- 6 CHARACTER FORMATION tracting enough material to themselves and becom- ing sufficiently highly organised to constitute a more or less distinct personality capable of independent existence as such. Thus arose the hypothesis of dissociation. Inasmuch as, during the usual condition of the patient, all of the occurrences of the secondary state were forgotten, there was complete amnesia for these states, the patients coming out of them with absolutely no knowledge of what ha.d been going on during them, and despite the fact that while they were in the ascendant the patients may have appeared perfectly natural and conducted themselves in a rea- sonable and natural way, some hypothesis had to be formulated to account for the existence of these con- stellations of ideas of the secondary states when the normal personality resumed its sway. The hypoth- esis of the subconscious answered these require- ments by positing a region outside of consciousness, beneath the conscious threshold, in which that por- tion of the personality was resident which came to the surface during the secondary states. This hy- pothesis also accounted for the amnesia for these states. Other cases of double and multiple personalities and various types of dissociated states were pub- lished after this, especially by Flournoy, and in this country by Sidis, Prince, White and others, while in France the noteworthy work of Alfred Binet ap- peared (1891) which was later translated (1896) under the title * 'Alterations of Personality" and INTRODUCTION 7 the many writings of Pierre Janet, notable among which are ''The Mental State of Hystericals ' ' (Eng- lish translation 1901), ''The Major Symptoms of Hysteria'' (Harvard Lectures 1907) and ^'Les Nevroses'' (1909). All of this work on hypnotism and the neuroses tended to culminate in Janet's formulations of the nature of the neuroses, especially hysteria, and in theories of the nature of hypnosis, which latter tended to include the neuroses. Janet says of hys- teria^ that it is "a form of mental depression char- acterised by a retraction of the field of personal consciousness and by a tendency to the dissociation and the emancipation of systems of ideas which by their synthesis constitute the personality." The retraction of the field of consciousness and the dis- sociation of systems of ideas are the important ele- ments in this definition, and from what has already been said we know what is meant. Naturally the dissociation of a portion of the personality will nar- row the field of consciousness. In addition to his work on hysteria Janet endeav- oured to separate ^ another group of symptoms, in- cluding the obsessions, impulsions, doubts, tics, agi- tations, phobias, delirium of contact, anguishes, neu- rasthenias, and the feelings of strangeness and de- personalisation often described under the name of cerebro-cardiac neuropathy or disease of Krishaber, under the term of psychasthenia. This group of symptoms he attributed to a lowering of the psycho- 3 "Les N6vroses." * Loc. cit. 8 CHARACTER FORMATION logical tension and a loss of the function of the real. His definition of psychasthenia runs: ^^Psychas- thenia is a form of mental depression characterised by the lowering of the psychological tension, by the diminution of the functions which permit action on reality and perception of the real, by the substitu- tion of inferior and exaggerated operations under the form of doubts, agitations, anguish, and by ob- sessing ideas which express the preceding troubles and which present themselves the same characters.'' The lowering of the psychological tension and the defect in the function of the real permit types of reaction to assume control in accordance with what he terms the hierarchy of psychological phe- nomena. The fundamental symptom of psychasthenia is this lowering of psychological tension. If we can think of psychic energy in mechanical terms and conceive of it as flowing along the fibre tracts like steam in a pipe, then we may believe that this force has to be maintained at a certain tension in order that the perceptions from the outside world may be appreciated at their true value. If attention is lowered the perceptions are not acute. This lack of acuteness gives origin to feelings on the part of the patient of incompleteness and insufficiency. Now this state of affairs involves a certain deficiency in the perception of reality which requires a certain concentration, in other words, a high psychological tension. The lowering of psychological tension, feelings of incompleteness, and deficiency in the INTRODUCTION 9 ^^ function of the real'' constitutes the fundamental feature of all this class of phenomena. To use another illustration. It is assumed that the perception of reality requires a high psycholog- ical tension. It is as if the normal response to reality were represented by the explosion of one hundred grains of gunpowder and the psychasthenic response were represented by, say seventy grains. In other words, unless the tension is high, the po- tential up to a certain point, the resulting explo- sion is an inadequate reaction, gives but a faint idea of what it really should be. The psychasthenic symptoms are based upon this inadequate perception of reality. The hazy view of the world resulting from the lowered psycholog- ical tension results in hazy, inaccurate ways of thinking, while lack of efficient perception makes the world of reality seem strange, unknowable, and at times of stress it seems to the psychasthenic that this vast external world of reality would close in upon him and crush him. It is the strange, the not-understood, the mysterious of which we are afraid and so are accounted for the states of fear and anguish. The lowered psychological tension gives rise to various symptoms in proportion to the degree of lowering. If the mental functions are erected into a hierarchy, in accordance with Janet's scheme, the accurate estimation of reality stands first, revery and imagination come lower down, and muscular movements last. As the tension is lowered reac- 10 CHARACTER FORMATION tions will tend to follow in the order of this psycho- logical hierarchy. In these definitions of Janet is seen a distinct ad- vance upon the simple descriptive method and a decided attempt at analysis of symptoms and the formulation of interpretations. Janet concludes that the hypnotic state is of the same nature as hysterical somnambulism. In other words to be suggestible is to be hysterical and only hysterics can be hypnotised. Sidis lays great stress upon the process of dissociation, the principle of dynamogenesis and automatic activity of the disso- ciated systems, the cure by reassociation and the fundamental nature of what he calls the hypnoidal state. The hypnoidal state he believes is the primi- tive rest state of animals and in the higher animals has by differentiation developed into sleep. Under certain conditions hypnosis may develop instead of sleep. The hypnoidal state therefore occupies an intermediate position between waking and sleep on the one hand and waking and hypnosis on the other. Sollier believed hysteria to be sleep, localised or gen- eralised, temporary or permanent of the cerebral centres. We shall have occasion later to note the significance of these hypotheses which correlate hyp- nosis and the neurosis with sleep. Contemporaneous with these latter events, how- ever, Janet himself had seen the relation between dissociation and actual experiences and also had noted that the conduct of the patient in the second- ary states pointed to a psychological content related INTRODUCTION 11 to these experiences. These same facts had also been more or less clearly recognised in other quar- ters, by Prince, Sidis, White and others. On the other hand in the field of the psychoses proper matters had been progressing, but along somewhat different lines. Perhaps the most notable effort to break away from the simplistic descriptive level was that of Wernicke in his ^^Grundriss der Psychiatric.'^ In general he endeavoured to do two things, to get at more accurately the content of the psychosis and also to formulate some principles as to the localisation of the disease process based upon the general principles worked out in the aphasias. Kraepelin struck out in a somewhat different di- rection and considered the psychoses from the life history point of view and divided them in accord- ance with their course and outcome into benign or recoverable and deterioration groups. In various other directions we see efforts at explanation, of which the best known are the efforts of the patholo- gists in their studies of the changes in the micro- scopic structure of the brain cells, and the chemists in their studies of metabolism, the changes in the various bodily fluids, etc. Kleist tried to correlate the motor disturbances of the psychoses with the anatomical facts, Bolton^ in his recent book, has endeavoured to explain the clinical pictures by a minute study of the cortex, while in such works as that of Gierlich and Friedmann^ we begin to see 5 Nervous and Mental Disease, Monograph Series, No. 2. 12 CHARACTER FORMATION decided traces of an attempt to read meaning into tlae psychological symptoms as such much after the manner of Janet, Sidis, and White. All this growth and development were necessary preconditions for future progress. In 1895 Breuer and Freud published their ^ ^ Studien iiber Hys- teric " ^ in which they indicated that the hysterical amnesias were for painful events and the amnesia was a defence against the pain that would result if they were recalled. Following this publication Breuer dropped out of the work but Freud kept on publishing and inaugurated what is now called the Freudian movement in mental medicine. Up to the appearance of Freud the various hypoth- eses had been pretty well worked out. Even the dissociation hypothesis of Janet, Prince, and Sidis had given about all it could to the interpretation of abnormal mental states. It seemed to have log- ically gotten to the end of its tether. Freud, for the first time, formulated an hypothesis which consid- ered that each psychic event had a history and which has led to the same recognition of the value of the past of the psyche which has been for so long ac- corded to the past of the body in the sciences of em- bryology and comparative anatomy. This past does not have only a temporal significance but, as in the sciences of embryology and comparative anatomy, a much greater significance expressed in terms of developmental progress. To understand, there- 6 Largely translated in Kervous and Mental Disease, Monograph Series, No. 4, INTRODUCTION 13 fore, the meaning of a given psycMc event means that the problem of its meaning must, quite as in the case of the body, be approached from the genetic point of view. CHAPTER II THE GENETIC APPROACH TO THE PROBLEM OF CONSCIOUSNESS In the growth and development of science there necessarily has to be passed through a stage which is devoted to the observation and collection of facts before general laws can be formulated which are calculated .to explain these facts, before meaning can be read into them. The observation and col- lection of facts belongs to the descriptive stage of development, while the explanation of their mean- ings belongs to the interpretative stage. Plants and animals in large numbers had necessarily first to be described and classified before such a far reach- ing generalisation, for example, as Darwin's, to account for the origin of species, could be formu- lated. Such far reaching interpretative formulations will be found, upon examination, to presuppose a de- terministic attitude of mind that proceeds upon the assumption that none of the phenomena in question are sufficiently accounted for on the theory that they are accidental or fortuitous in origin, but that, on the contrary, they have only been made possible by what has gone before, namely by an efficient cause. This deterministic attitude, which sees in 14 THE GENETIC APPROACH 15 every phenomenon only the outgrowth of that which preceded only, has to be elaborated in order to re- alise that a complete explanation would involve a complete uncovering of the past. In other words any phenomenon can only be understood as the cul- mination of a series of events and is only what it is because they were what they were. The meaning of any particular fact is therefore only to be gath- ered when we have learned its history ; we can only understand it when we have come to know its past which made it possible. This is the genetic ap- proach which considers phenomena as end results to be understood only by understanding their past out of which they grew and of which they are an expression. In the sphere of the psyche it is but natural that a definite deterministic and genetic method should be long delayed as we are not only dealing with phenomena which are so complex as to be too long a way from concretely expressed laws for us to see any possibilities of explanation but, too, we have been dominated for generations by the theory that psychic events, many of them at least, are brought about ^^at wilP' in some mysterious way which precludes the necessity of even attempting to bring them under the operation of natural laws. A reaction from this crude conception of mental phenomena, from this hit and miss type of explana- tion which explains mental facts by the most ob- vious superficial causes and relegates many of them to the category of accidental or chance occurrences. 16 CHARACTER FORMATION has come about in recent years as the result of a clearer understanding of the reasons of certain types of mental reactions, with a result that the theory of determinism has definitely taken its place in the field of psychology, — a place that it has long occupied in the biological sciences. The difference between this method of chance explanation and the method of determinism, which demands that for every phenomenon there must be an efficient cause, can perhaps be best illustrated by certain biological experiments. I will call attention to two small aquatic Crustacea ^ of the same genus, but for a long time considered of separate species. The Artemia salina, which was only found in water containing from 4 to 8 per cent, of salt, and the Artemia Mil- hausenii, which was only found in water containing at least 25 per cent, of salt. The differences in these supposedly different species consisted in the main in the differences in the size and shape of the tail lobes and number of hairs borne by these lobes. It has been definitely shown by experiment that these two species could at will be transformed one into the other by varying the percentage of salt in the water, and this transformation was so accurately dependent upon the percentage of salt that with a given percentage of salt it was possible to predict with perfect certainty a definite length of tail with a definite number of hairs borne upon its lobes. 1 Marshall: "Biological Lectures and Addresses." II. The In- fluence of environment on the Structure and Habits of Animals. Macmillan & Co., New York, 1894. THE GENETIC APPROACH 17 In other words, what appeared to be an entirely fortuitous characteristic of these two species was in some way accurately dependent upon the percent- age of salt in the water which they inhabited. A perhaps somewhat more instructive example is the example of heliotropism in certain animals and plants. It has been known for a long time that animals and plants were in some way attracted or repelled from sources of light. The old biologists were content with saying that they liked or did not like light. Such an explanation, it goes without saying, was superficial and unsatisfying. Accurate experimentation has proven precisely the conditions under which these phenomena manifest themselves, and has shown also the inadequacy of this type of explanation. Loeb demonstrated that what actually took place was that the plant or animal in question moved, not necessarily toward the lightness or darkness, and was therefore positively or negatively heliotropic, but moved in the direction of the rays of light even though at times this took a positively heliotropic animal into a relatively less lighted area. He ex- perimented^ with the caterpillar of the Porthesia chrysorrhoea by placing two test tubes in the direc- tion of the rays of light entering from a window. In the rear test tube he placed the caterpillars. A second test tube between this and the window he cov- 2 Loeb: "Studies in General Physiology." I. The Heliotropism of Animals and its identity with the Heliotropism of Plants. Uni- versity of Chicago Press, 1905. 18 CHARACTER FORMATION ered with black paper, with the exception of a nar- row strip running lengthwise with the tube. The caterpillars moved from the brightly lighted unpro- tected test tube into the darker test tube, and al- though they are positively heliotropic they moved from a lighter to a darker area, but in common with all such motions, however, they moved in the di- rection of the light rays. We see in these tropisms very definite reactions of organisms to specific influences in the environ- ment, and we are tempted to see certain analogies in the realm of mental action and to conclude that mental action is always definitely determined, and if perchance the reasons for any special mental re- action are not apparent it is because, unlike the example of the caterpillar just given, the conditions which bring it about are highly complex and are the resultant of many impulses acting in various and often in opposite directions. The movement of the caterpillar from the light into the darkness one is tempted to compare with the movement of a man, who, in the summer time, will cross a brightly lighted street to get on the shady side. The fortuitous and apparently accidental occur- rence of certain mental phenomena in the psychoses has been constantly assumed, and it is only recently that we are getting away from this viewpoint to the deterministic one as I have already illustrated. The same thing happened in biology with regard to this class of phenomena also. I refer to the phe- nomena of heteromorphosis such as the older biol- THE GENETIC APPEOACH 19 ogists had observed. For example,^ tlie occasional regeneration of a tail in the place where the head ought to be in certain lower animals. This, like the phenomena just mentioned, however, has all been reduced to definite reactions under the influence of specific stimuli, and can be carried out at will in the laboratory. If a certain species of hydroid, for example, be suspended horizontally in the water so that the branches are directed downward the polyps on these branches disappear and the branches grad- ually transform themselves into roots. Being placed, in other words, in the environment natural to roots they develop into roots,, and so one organ can literally be transformed into another by chang- ing the environmental conditions. Even the realm of morphology which deals oniy with forms has been invaded and each form is now believed to be a ** diagram of forces,"^ a sort of final compromise among all the different forces within and without which tend to alter its form. Plateau^ showed that the minute sticky drops on a spider's web, their form and size, their distance apart and the presence of tiny intermediate drops were in their every detail explicable by the law of surface tension and that the spider had absolutely nothing to do with these results. And thus does science deal with matters that have sLoeb: loc. cit. XXXI, On the Transformation and Eegeneration of Organs. 4 Thompson, D'Arcy Wentworth, Magnalia Naturae ; or the Greater Problems of Biology. Science, Oct. 6, 1911, 5 Cited by Thompson, loc. cit. 20 CHARACTER FORMATION been considered accidental, inexplicable, fortuitous, chance occurrences. That there will always remain a great unknown with which the philosopher may deal, does not alter the necessities of the scientific method which must proceed from the known to the unknown according to the principle laid down by Kant that we should exhaust every means to find ex- planation in the light of those properties of matter and forms of energy with which we are already ac- quainted. If we will consider for a moment the pathway along which biological phenomena have finally found a culmination in man I think we may admit, for purposes of description, that the earliest types of reactions which living beings show were largely physical, that is, such reactions for example as de- pend upon the amount of moisture in the environ- ment, upon the temperature, upon expansion and contraction, and the like, that, however, very early, and perhaps from the first they assume in addition a chemical or a physico-chemical character; the problems of nutrition, of metabolism, are found in the unicellular organisms and are confessedly of a chemical and a physico-chemical nature. The nerv- ous system comes into existence relatively low down in the animal scale, and when we find it we find a very simple series of ganglia and nervous cords, which, in their earliest beginnings, have largely to do with problems of nutrition directly or indirectly. Probably these earliest forms of nervous systems are more nearly comparable with what we call in THE GENETIC APPROACH 21 the human being the sympathetic, or the vegetative nervous system. It is only relatively late in ani- mal development that we find the central nervous system, and last of all that we find evidences of anything to which we can properly give the name of psyche. From this evolutional point of view we may con- sider, for descriptive purposes only, the various functions as we see them exhibited in man. The physical reactions are such as are involved in the maintenance of the erect posture, the relation of the various curves in the spinal column, the adapta- tion of the joint surfaces to one another, and numer- ous other things : the chemical and physico-chemical reactions are still largely taken up with matters of growth, of nutrition, and of metabolism; the cen- tral nervous system functions occupy a still higher place and serve for bringing about larger co-ordina- tions between the various parts of the body; while the psyche manifests itself in all mental functions at a level hardly approached even by any of the lower animals. If we will take the broadest concept of the rela- tion of the individual to his environment and of the functions of these various levels, if I may so call them, we will see at once that the individual is al- ways endeavouring — ^to use a teleological term — to bring about an adjustment between himself and his surroundings, and that in order to do this is always in a position where it is advantageous to be able to concentrate all efforts in a given direction and 22 CHARACTER FORMATION make everything subservient to that particular end. The first function is the function of adjustment or adaptation. The second function is the function of integration, and at each level we find the functions of the organism subserving both of these ends. As we proceed from the physical through the various nervous levels to the psychological level we find that each series of functions, as they increase in com- plexity, also serve to more thoroughly and more efficiently integrate the individual and therefore make it possible for him to bring all of his energies together and concentrate them upon a specific goal. At the same time this function of integration is the very necessary pre-condition to efficiency of adjust- ment to the environment. Let me illustrate. If I were to specify the type of instrument which man uses at the various levels to bring about these two ends, namely adjustment and integration, I should specify first, at the physical level, the lever. This is exemplified by the type of action between muscles and bones which serves the purpose of in- tegrating man's frame-work so that he may direct his exertions toward any particular end he wishes and thereby effect to that extent an adjustment with his surroundings. At the next level, the physico- chemical, the hormone is the type of instrument which is used to effect these two purposes. The chemical regulation of metabolism is a means whereby the body is related to itself in its different parts so that it grows and develops as a whole, each portion receiving and utilising only its proper THE GENETIC APPROACH 23 amount and character of nutriment to serve the spe- cific purpose of the development of that part in so far as it may be useful to the whole organism. In- tegration is thus served, the organism as a whole is raised by this integration to a higher level of effi- ciency and thereby adjustment with the environ- ment to a greater nicety is rendered possible. This hormone regulation which is effected through the medium of the endocrinous glands is already in the higher animals under the control, very largely at least, of the vegetative nervous system, and so even at this level we are dealing with nervous control. At the next level, the level of the central nervous system, the reflex is the type of instrument which is used. The reflex is brought about by contact be- tween the individual and the environment. It may be simple, it may be compound, it may be condi- tioned or unconditioned, but it is by building up series of intricately interrelated reflexes that the organism comes to respond accurately to certain aspects of its environment. It is needless to illus- trate further how this process of compounding of reflexes serves both the purposes of integration and of adjustment. Still higher and further advanced in the course of evolution the type of instrument which is brought into play to effect these two pur- poses is the idea. The idea not only integrates by keeping before the individual the goal which he is endeavouring to reach and thereby serving to bring all his forces to bear to that specific end, but it also reflects the environment much more accurately than 24 CHARACTER FORMATION can the stimulus which brings about the reflex and thereby leads to a much finer adjustment. And last of all we have arrived at that region which Mr. Spencer called the region of super-organic evolution^ the region of social psychology in which conduct gets its values from the approval or the disapproval of the community of which the individual forms a part. The type of instrument which is used at this level to effect the double purpose of integration and ad- justment is the social custom. Customs serve to integrate society rather than the individual per- haps by binding all its units together to a common end, but in so doing they serve also to effect a more efficient adjustment of the individual to the requirements of the community. It will thus be seen that in the process of evolu- tion there is an orderly progression from the lowest to the highest types of reaction until they culminate in the reactions at the psychological level, and these latter take on social values. While the individual may properly be considered as a biological unit, still the brief summary which I have given of the evolution of his various types of reaction shows a constant interplay between the individual and his environment which precludes the possibility of considering the individual as apart from the environment, and this impossibility is es- pecially to be borne in mind when the individual is considered as a social unit and his reactions are considered from the standpoint of the social level. All this is preliminary and necessary to the under- THE GENETIC APPROACH 25 standing of the place that the psychological type of reaction occupies in the general scheme of the indi- vidual's development and it is also necessary to the understanding of how by a process of evolution the type of reaction which the individual manifests gets its values reflected from the social community. Conduct is the basis upon which the community judges the individual. The individual may think as he pleases and the community has no interest in his thoughts, but he must act along fairly well de- fined lines if he expects to be left undisturbed. Con- duct, therefore, has a social value and its social value is based upon its worth to the community, that is, its social efficiency. The main emphasis of this argument should be placed upon the fact that socially efficient conduct is an end result, depending, not simply upon psycho- logical integrity but back of that upon integrity at all reacting levels. Each level is dependent upon the one beneath, its historical antecedent. Conduct is the end result of the whole complex of mechan- isms and resulting compromises and its efficiency is a function of their integrity. For purposes of illustrating this process of inte- gration and adaptation let us take the example of the person who is learning to play the piano and see what happens. On the sheet of music there are a mass of signs that stand for notes of different pitch and duration, combinations of such signs in- dicating chords, other signs indicating pauses, and various directions as to rapidity or slowness, ex- 26 CHARACTER FORMATION pression, loudness, repetition of certain portions, etc. The piano keyboard is composed of black and white keys arranged in certain definite relations to each other. The notes on the sheet of music each refer to a certain one of these keys and no other and in order to know exactly to which it refers the player must be able to ^*read music.'' All this mass of impressions presented to the learner are just so many separate perceptions, jumbled together, without arrangement and with- out meaning. As the days pass by, however, there begins to emerge from this mass a perception of relationship among its several parts, it begins to become comprehensible, it takes on meaning. The relation between the printed notes and the piano keys becomes definite, the keys are struck and sounds that are pleasant are produced if the correct rela- tionship has been maintained in the striking, sounds of an unpleasant quality if a mistake has been made. The mass of perceptions are beginning to arrange themselves in an orderly way. They are being con- stellated. Now this process continues and the orderly ar- rangement of mental states as related to these out- side conditions becomes more and more extensive and more and more perfect. There is taking place an adjustment of the individual to the environment, a building up of a certain relationship between the outside conditions — the sheet of music and the piano keyboard — and the individual, and this relationship becomes progressively more and more exact and THE GENETIC APPROACH 27 more and more efficient. As the adjustment becomes more perfect disharmonies with their resulting pain- ful mental states are less frequent — the harmony and efficiency of the adjustment is improved with practice. It will be helpful at this point to point out briefly some of the differences in the state of consciousness of the beginner on the piano and of the finished product, the accomplished performer. At first while learning, each movement is painfully conscious, the fingers have to be watched, each note separately observed, and the required movements are slowly and awkwardly executed. When profi- ciency has been acquired the same results are ac- complished far better, with much less effort, and with so little attention that an occasional glance over the shoulder and even entering into the con- versation of those about does not seem to interfere. At first a note has to be carefully looked at in order to recognise it, then the signature, the tempo, the various directions, and its relation to other notes in the other clef have all to be separately observed before it can be finally sought out on the piano and struck in its proper time and place. Later all these things are appreciated at a glance and the repro- duction is instantaneous. In this way hundreds of notes in all sorts of relations and combinations may be struck in a single minute as the eye skims rap- idly across the page of music, and the translation from the printed signs to the appropriate sounds is relatively immediate. 28 CHARACTER FORMATION It will be seen that a relationship has been estab- lished with outside conditions that is very definite, the adaptation of the individual to the environment is highly efficient and takes place in a way so nearly absolutely fixed that it is practically predictable. There has been established by a slow process of growth a complex of mechanisms, mechanisms that are automatic or quasi-automatic in character so that whenever the appropriate stimulus is applied the whole machinery goes off in a perfectly well de- fined way in all its various parts. This is the adaptive side of the process of learning. In addition to the phenomena described there is another series of phenomena that equally deserves notice. The beginner in endeavouring to correlate his muscular movements to correspond with the mu- sical score is, we say, very awkward. He not only makes many mistakes, his movements are not ac- curately adjusted to the specific ends, but he makes many unnecessary movements. His whole body is more or less involved in the effort. He twists and turns in his seat, bends forward to look more keenly at the notes, screws his head to one side and per- haps sticks out his tongue or makes strained grim- aces as he attempts difficult adjustments with his fingers that require him to strike several notes at once, using both hands at the same time. These are the result of the diffuse discharges of energy that we see in all learning processes and especially in the natural development of the child and are the expression, on the neurological side, of the opening THE GENETIC APPROACH 29 up of new channels, tlie preliminary phenomena to the selection of a final common pathway along which the nervous energy gets its most efficient outlet. The eye and the hand have, so to speak, to learn to operate harmoniously together and to do this must open up new paths of association. "When the process of learning has been completed the various parts of the body involved have come to act har- moniously together for the accomplishment of the common end with the elimination of all unnecessary movements. This is the process of integration. In this description it will be recognised that we are describing a sort of activity that reminds us of the reflex. The reflex, however, is still more rigidly defined in its possibilities, its response is, to all in- tents and purposes, absolutely the same always, whenever a stimulus is applied. Then, too, it is no longer under the control of the individual but oc- curs whether or no. The piano playing activities on the other hand are always under the control of the subject. He may play or not, as he sees fit, and he may vary the production from the written direction to suit his own whim. The various ac- tivities of his fingers in seeking the notes are, how- ever, not changed in either instance, they go on in their accustomed way in both cases. This type of activity is called automatic, though it will be seen from the description that it is really a complex product containing, it is true, many au- tomatic components, but containing also many that have not reached that degree of definiteness of re- 30 CHARACTER FORMATION sponse — activities that are still in the proving ground of automatisms. One of the changes then that has been undergone in the process of learning is a change toward an automatic character of the reaction. With continu- ous practice the activities become more and more automatic. Another change, which it is important for us to note, is a change in the degree of awareness that ac- companies these activities. The change toward greater automatism implies this change. From a condition of very acute awareness of every minute adjustment in the beginning there is reached a con- ! dition of almost absent awareness when a high grade of efficiency has been reached. At least those \ portions of the adjustment that have become truly ! automatisms have become activities of the unaware region of consciousness. To put the matter a little differently, when the same or similar conditions in the environment are repeatedly presented to the organism so that it is called upon to react in a similar or almost identical / way each time, there tends to be organised a mechan- ' ism of reaction which becomes more and more auto- matic and is accompanied by a state of mind of less and less awareness. Or to put the obverse. Con- sciousness, or at least clear conscious awareness, ap- pears only upon attempts at adjustment to condi- tions that are unusual, at ^^ moments of conflict, '^ on those occasions the like of which have not previously occurred in the experience of the individual and in THE GENETIC APPROACH 31 relation to which, therefore, there has been no pos- sibility of organising reactive mechanisms. To pnt it again in a little different form. Clear conscious- ness does not accompany reaction to stimuli when the issue in conduct can only occur in a single di- rection, when there are no alternatives. Conscious- ness is an expression, as it were, of conflict. It arises in response to stimuli under conditions that make it possible to react by a choice of a line of con- duct in any one of many directions. This state of affairs calls to mind an analogy. Consciousness arises only under conditions of con- flict, conditions of great complexity, of increased resistance as compared with the facile reaction along the definite lines of a reflex arc. When in the path of an electric current, a complex network of wiring is introduced that raises the resistance to the pas- sage of the current, we find that accompanying its passage there goes along a marked rise of tempera- ture. As heat goes along with increase in resist- ance in an electric circuit so consciousness goes along with increase in resistance in a mental circuit. Herrick^ has said ^^the various degrees or grades of consciousness are expressions of successively higher forms of the co-ordination of forces." We must think then of full, clear consciousness as only accompanying those mental states of adjust- ment to new and unusual conditions : conditions per- 6 C. L. Herrick: The Metaphysics of a Naturalist cited by Pro- fessor Mary Whiton Calkins in General Standpoints: Mind and Body. The Psychological Bulletin, January 15, 1911. 32 CHARACTER FORMATION mitting of various reactions and involving there- fore selective judgment, critique, choice — in short, reason; and in proportion to the frequency of the repetition of the same adjustment the mental state accompanying such repetition tends to sink out of the field of clear consciousness. If we will con- sider the infinitude of adjustments the individual has to make to his environment we will see that this is a conservative process. As soon as a given ad- justment is well formed it is pushed aside and the field of clear consciousness left free for new prob- lems. The same sort of process is responsible for phe- nomena in the race consciousness. The word ^^chan- delier'' originally was applied to a holder for a candle. The application continued for a long time, was frequently repeated, and was organised, there- fore, into a stably reacting mechanism. The change in the source of light to gas failed absolutely to change the reaction and it is only lately, now that gas has long since been replaced by electricity that we occasionally hear the word * ^ electrolier. ' ' Stated in this way the method of reaction will be seen to have a biological significance and not merely an individual or even a human importance. All of these considerations go to demonstrate that the field of full consciousness and rational self-con- trol is a very limited one, but that on the contrary the great majority of our mental states, our desires, inclinations, and actions are conditioned by mechan- isms of which we are more or less unaware. It is THE GENETIC APPROACH 33 worth while in passing to call attention to the prin- ciple that in proportion as the control of conduct is outside of the region of clear consciousness it is apt to go astray under conditions even slightly dif- ferent from those that were associated with the formation of the reaction — acting in accordance with the established mechanism even though con- ditions have changed, as with the example of the word ^* chandelier" just cited. The final result of this way of thinking of con- sciousness is that we find ourselves considering it in terms of energy, we are thinking of it as dynamic rather than as static, we are no longer justified in speaking of mind as if it were a something resident somewhere, in the brain for example. We have had to face the same situation in the matter of so-called ^^ disease entities" and ^* disease processes" which are only somewhat more subtle forms of expression for the concrete devils of the middle ages that were responsible for sickness by taking up a residence in the patient's body. Just as in the middle ages the disease was thought of as the devil which invaded the patient's body so diseases now are thought of as entities which come out of the nowhere, settle down upon the patient and make him ill by setting up a disease process. Now we have learned that what we call disease is the series of phenomena which come into existence when the body finds itself in conflict with some tendency which makes for its disintegration or destruction and as a matter of fact the so-called symptoms are evidences of the self- 34 CHARACTER FORMATION conserving activities called forth by the conflict. So we must learn to think of consciousness, not as a concrete thing in some way different from but united with the body, but as that series of phenom- ena which come into existence at certain levels of the processes of integration and, adjustment. CHAPTER III THE FORE-CONSCIOUS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS The unconscious as a paii; of consciousness may- be a misnomer. Unconscious ideas may involve a contradiction in terms ; ^ and yet the term uncon- scious is fully justifiable if we only start out by un- derstanding that it is a concept only and we do not try to think of it as occupying, so to speak, any particular spatial relationship in consciousness, such, for example, as is implied by the term sub- conscious. The unconscious is an hypothesis and as such it has a right to exist only if it explains the facts. We are familiar with the discontinuity of con- sciousness. I may say, for instance, in addressing a number of persons, that I know of something that they all know, but that at that particular moment not one of them know that they know it and that they will at once recognise the truth of my state- ment the moment I tell them what it is. The mul- tiplication table! Of course they knew it, but a 1 "Such notions as 'solid solutions,' 'liquid crystals,' invisible 'light,' divisible 'atoms,' 'unconscious' mental life, seem mere fool- ishness until we realise that the work of science is not to avoid verbal contradiction, but to frame conceptions by which we can control the facts." (F. C. S. Schiller, "Studies in Humanism.") 35 36 CHARACTER FORMATION moment before nothing was further from their sev- eral minds. Where was it though? Where did it come from at the moment my words brought it flashing into their consciousness? Where are our ideas during dreamless sleep? During anaesthesia? During periods of unconsciousness from fainting? No phenomenon of mental life is more striking than these temporary periods when mental life seems actually to cease to exist. Consciousness lapses for a period, during a faint, for example, and then makes its appearance again without having seemed to change in the least as a result. Such experiences emphasise the discontinuity of consciousness and demonstrate that continuity of consciousness is not a requisite of mental integrity. Then there are certain conditions, a good example is the state of mind during the carrying out of a post-hypnotic suggestion, in which, for the time being, certain ideas that were previously not present to consciousness become suddenly active. The subject carries out the suggestion without any knowledge of the rea- sons therefor. In the hypnotic state, however, the suggestions of the operator are clearly in mind. Here there is no lapse of consciousness but two distinct states in one of which ideas are absent that are present in the other, a condition seen much more elaborately carried out in states of multiple per- sonality with the development of ^^ secondary states" already referred to in Chapter I. Such conditions as these have given rise to such terms as ^dissocia- tion,'' ** splitting, ' ' *' sub-conscious ' ' — purely de- THE UNCONSCIOUS 37 scriptive terms for expressing the phenomena as ob- served. A great many of our ideas, which, for one reason or another, are out of mind for the time being can nevertheless be brought into consciousness, so to speak, at call. Like the multiplication table they are always ready at hand when needed. This group of ideas have the characteristic that they are all of the same value for consciousness. One group might as well be conscious as the other and whether this or that group is conscious depends upon their in- tensity, the focus of attention, etc. This is the state of affairs in the ^'secondary states'' which always lie relatively near the surface, that is, can with comparative ease be made conscious. Those ideas which are out of the focus of attention, but which are capable of voluntary recall are said to be fore- conscious J or in the fore-consciousness. It is, how- ever, as we shall see, very different with the uncon- scious for here we cease to be upon purely descrip- tive ground. The term unconscious then is no longer a purely descriptive term, but it is a term applied to an hypothesis ^ pure and simple. The unconscious is reserved to explain, not to describe, a different class of phenomena. If we observe a man violently shak- 2 Bernard Hart: The Conception of the Subconscious. Jour, of 15. Psych., Feb.-March, 1910. Sigmund Freud: Einige Bemerkungen tiber den Begriff des Un- bewussten in der Psychoanalyse. Int. Zeit. f. Arztliche Psycho- analyse, Jahr. I, Heft 2. 38 CHARACTER FORMATION ing his head in the midst of an animated discussion of which we can not hear the words we are justi- fied in assuming that the meaning of the head shake is a negation — an assumption that may or may not be borne out by the facts of a subsequent inquiry. Such an assumption is an hypothesis which must stand or fall, like the hypothesis of the unconscious, solely upon the evidence — the possibility of resum- ing the facts under it. If upon inquiry we learn that the head shake really did mean a negation, if the subject is able to tell us that, then our assump- tion is proved to be correct. If, however, we ob- serve a person with a certain habit, a habit of hand- washing, we have a right to guess in the same way at its meaning. Upon inquiry, however, if we find that that person can give absolutely no reason for the action, or a reason that is manifestly inadequate, we have to withhold our judgment as to its mean- ing. Now if we subject this person to psychoanaly- sis and find that no matter from what angle we ap- proach this action we invariably find that we can only reach an adequate explanation of it upon the assumption that by the hand-washing is symbolised a purification from sin, then we have a right to as- sume that there exists in the mind of that person a feeling of sin connected with the hands from which he tries to rid himself by the washing. This as- sumption of a feeling of sin connected with the hands, which tends to find expression in the con- duct of the individual, a psychological constellation to which the term complex is applied, is valid, al- THE UNCONSCIOUS 39 thougli there is no proof of the actual existence in the mind at the time of the washing of any such motivating ideas, because by such an assumption, and only by such an assumption, can the conduct be adequately explained and so understood. The unconscious therefore means nothing as to location, nothing as to the character of relation to the conscious except that it implies that the ideas are neither conscious nor fore-conscious. It is only an attempt to explain psychological facts in psycho- logical terms. The patient's conduct is explainable on the assumption that such a complex exists, not otherwise. We come thus to the important conclusion that mental life, the mind, is not equivalent and co-equal with consciousness. That, as a matter of fact, the motivating causes of conduct often lie outside of consciousness and, as we shall see, that conscious- ness is not the greater but only the lesser expression of the psyche. Consciousness only includes that of which we are aware , while outside of this somewhat restricted region there lies, as we have seen, a much wilder area in which lie the deeper motives for con- duct and which not only operates to control conduct, but also dictates what may and what may not be- come conscious. Stanley HalP has very forcibly put the matter by using the illustration of the ice- berg. Only one-tenth- of the iceberg is visible above water; nine-tenths is beneath the surface. It may 3 Some Aspects of the Early Sense of Self, Am. Jour. Psychology, Vol. IX, No. 3. 40 CHARACTER FORMATION appear in a given instance that the iceberg is being carried along by the prevailing winds and surface currents, but if we keep our eyes open we will sooner or later see a berg going in the face of the wind and so apparently putting at naught all the laws of aerodynamics. We can understand this only when we come to realise that much the greater portion of the berg is beneath the surface and that it is moving in response to invisible forces addressed against this submerged portion. We can only come to an understanding of this state of affairs when we understand the meaning and the placement of consciousness in organic evolution. Consciousness, as we have seen in Chapter II, only arises as a result of the processes of integration and adaptation which occur at the psychological level. This process of adjustment is not only a passive one, so to speak, but also an active one in that the individual reaches out, as it were, and tries to mould his environment to suit his desires. Consciousness only arises late in the course of evolution and only in connection with adjustments that are relatively complex. If I am walking along a country road-way leading through the woods as far as the eye can reach, I may permit myself to indulge in deep thought quite oblivious of my imme- diate surroundings while I go on walking in a purely automatic way. Such an arrangement works very well until some new element is introduced into the situation, some new adjustment is demanded. Sup- pose now that I come to a point where the road sepa- THE UNCONSCIOUS 41 rates into two roads going in quite different direc- tions. I at once find that a state of mental ab- straction does not meet the requirements, I must rouse myself to full consciousness and choose which road I am to follow. Consciousness arises when new adjustments are demanded, at points of conflict, moments requiring choice. Activities can only sink out of the field of awareness by becoming automatic, but automatic ac- tivities are, by the same token, fixed, — not fluid, not adjustable to changing conditions. Therefore when they no longer serve under given conditions, when a new adjustment is required, the whole matter has to be dragged up into the field of awareness, made conscious, in order that an effective reaction may result.* Thus far, however, we have only been dealing, in 4 "Consciousness is the light that plays around the zone of pos- sible actions or potential activity which surrounds the action really performed by the living being. It signifies hesitation or choice. Where many equally possible actions are indicated without there being any real action (as in a deliberation that has not come to an end), consciousness is intense. When the action performed is the only action possible (as in activity of the somnambulistic or more generally automatic kind), consciousness is reduced to noth- ing." (Bergson: "Creative Evolution," p. 144.) "Throughout the whole extent of the animal kingdom, we have said, consciousness seems proportionate to the living being's power of choice. It lights up the zone of potentialities that surround the act. It fills the interval between what is done and what might be done. Looked at from without, w^e may regard it as a simple aid to action, a light that action kindles, a momentary spark fly- ing up from the friction of real action against possible actions." {Ibid., p. 179.) 42 CHARACTER FORMATION the examples given, with, the exception of the hand- washing example, with ideas that might as well have been conscious. They were unconscious only in the sense that they were not conscious, i.e., they were out of the focus of attention. They might as well have been conscious, and so were what is known as fore- conscious ideas. The term unconscious is used in a different sense : an interpretive rather than a de- scriptive sense, and applies to states of mind that are not only not-conscious, but instead of being readily accessible to consciousness are, as we shall see later, actively kept out of consciousness by the utilisation of a considerable amount of energy. This is the process known technically as repression and involves the concept of conflict.^ Conflict is the very root and source of life. With- out conflict we could never have risen further in our nervous organisation than a series of reflex arcs even if we could have lived at all. The great crea- tive energy, call it what we will, the libido as it has been called, or horme as Jung now prefers to call it, the poussee vitale, or elan vital of Mr. Bergson, is ever striving to free itself from its limitations, to go onward and upward, to create, and in order to do this it must overcome resistances, tear loose from drag backs, emancipate itself from the inertia of lower callings. The energy which succeeds is sublimated, refined, spiritualised. Out of the con- flict, if the battle is won, come new adjustments on 5 The concepts of repression and conflict will be dealt with in the next chapter. THE ' UNCONSCIOUS 43 a higher plane ; if the battle is lost there comes fail- ure — the sinking to a lower plane of activity. The conflict, however, does not cease. Each new vantage won becomes but the battleground for new prob- lems, and like the conflict that Bergson describes, force always trying to free itself from its material prison, so the libido is ever trying to break away from its limitations. At this point we already begin to see somewhat of the meaning of the unconscious, the most valuable concept of recent times in the field of mental medi- cine and for which we are indebted to Freud. It is that portion of the psyche which has been built up and organised in the process of development and upon which reality plays in the form of new and hitherto unreacted to situations, and in the friction resulting strikes forth the spark of con- sciousness. The advance in civilisation has been associated with, if not in large measure dependent upon the accumulation of man in larger groups. The primi- tive man, living only in very small groups, could do very much as he pleased. His activities rarely crossed the interests of others, and so he was per- sonally free to follow absolutely the bent of his in- clinations. In response, however, to his *^herd in- stinct"^ he tended always to come into closer and closer association with his fellows and to form larger and larger alliances. When larger groups 6 Trotter: Herd Instinct and its Bearings on the Psychology of Civilised Man, Soc. Rev., 1908. 44 CHARACTEB FORMATION were formed then it became correspondingly less possible for him to do always just what he wished without consideration, because what he wished might run counter to the wishes of some one else in the community. The larger the group, the more complex its organisation, the more numerous the points at which the several component units touched each other, the more frequent became these hin- drances to free individual activity. Difficulties of adjustment arose frequently, desire must needs constantly be curbed, activities have more and more frequently to be inhibited altogether, to be modified as a result of some compromise, or finally satisfac- tion has to be indefinitely postponed. Men, for ex- ample, wish for money. The simplest way to get it would be to just take it. The demands of a civil- ised community, however, require that he should first go through that complicated process of earn- ing it before he is entitled to possess it. This most men do, although but a limited acquaintance with human problems is sufficient to demonstrate how frequently the unconscious desire to travel the shorter path comes to expression in the ** sharp practice'' of many business men. We begin to see what is meant by the statements that the uncon- scious can only wish in the sense that as reality tends to force new adjustments the already formed adjustments by offering an obstacle to this change can be said to thus express a wish or in other words a tendency, which in this case is a contrary tend- ency to that of reality. We can also understand THE UNCONSCIOUS 45 what is meant by the statement that civilisation in- volves the postponement of the satisfaction of de- sire into an ever-receding futureJ These are general statements: let us be a little more specific. Man has always tried to bring about what he desired. Primitive man's trials were sim- ple and ineffectual. He used the methods of magic. No matter how ineffectual they were, however, no matter how simple and childlike, nevertheless we see in these methods the germs of our present day science. Primitive man did the best he could, his means were crude, but he kept on trying — he was on the right path. The Polynesians had a crude compass-form in- strument ^ which they used as a device for obtaining favourable winds during canoe voyages. It had several holes bored in it which opened in various directions. They obtained a favourable wind by stopping up all the holes that opened in the direc- tions of unfavourable winds and only leaving open the hole which opened in the right direction for the favourable wind to blow through. Then by pro- nouncing the proper incantations the trick was done. We can not fail to see, however, in this device, crude as it was, a beginning attempt at the classifica- tion of natural phenomena — in this case the winds. The very making of such an instrument implied cer- 7 Ultimately heaven. 8 Gill: "Myths and Songs from the South Pacific"; cited by Josiah Royce: Primitive Ways of Thinking with Special Refer- ence to Negation and Classification, The Open Court, Oct., 1913. 46 CHAKACTER FORMATION tain observations and classification of winds with a grouping into favourable and unfavourable. Such an attempt at the control of natural phe- nomena, involving to begin with their classification, is seen on a large and relatively more comprehen- sive scale in the social phenomenon of totemism. The tribe is divided into a certain number of totem clans and each of these clans includes certain nat- ural objects — the so-called sub-totems. By some of the Australian tribes this division of natural ob- jects among the several clans is so extended as to include all nature. Thus in the Mount Gambler tribe in South Australia^ the fish hawk clan in- cludes smoke, honeysuckle, trees, etc.; the pelican clan includes dogs, blackwood trees, fires, frost, etc. ; the crow clan includes rain, thunder, lightning, win- ter, hail, clouds, etc.; and so on for other clans. Each clan has parcelled out to it, so to speak, a cer- tain portion of nature which it is its duty to look after ^^ and control for the benefit of the tribe, of course by the methods of magic. The same thing is seen in the use of split totems. Among the Ba- hima, a tribe of herdsmen in Africa, such split or part totems refer to their cattle.^^ Thus we find such totems as cow's tongue, cow's entrails, the small stomach of cattle, the leg of an ox, a sheep's head, the hearts and kidneys of animals, an unborn 9 J. G. Frazer: "Totemism and Exogamy, A Treatise on Certain Early Forms of Superstition and Society," Vol. I, p. 79. 10 Frazer: "Totemism and Exogamy," Vol. I, p. 135. 11 Frazer: "Totemism and Exogamy," Vol. II, p. 536. THE UNCONSCIOUS 47 calf, a cow with a black stripe, a cow with a white back, speckled cattle, grey cattle, hornless cattle, humped cattle, a cow born feet first, cows that have drunk salt water, and cows that have been to the bull. Very early, therefore, man begins to classify nat- ural phenomena in his own crude, simple way. This classification comes about contemporaneously with his attempts to control them, to get from nature what he wants. It is a long, painful series of trials and errors before a method is evolved that fits into the requirements of actuality. For example — the members of a Kangaroo ^^ clan endeavor to cause the multiplication of kangaroos by opening their veins and allowing their blood to flow over the edge of a rock and so drive from it the spirits of the kangaroos supposed to be con- tained in it and thus ensure the multiplication of this animal. The head man of the Grass-seed clan ^^ of the Kaitish tribe in Central Australia in his en- deavor to increase the amount of grass seed, among other things, takes a quantity of grass seed in his mouth and blows it about in all directions. The first of these practices will never get anywhere. Kangaroos can never be multiplied in that way. The second, however, offers possibilities. The Kaitish tribe are densely ignorant. They do not i2Frazer: "Totemism and* Exogamy," Vol. I, p. 107, and Vol. IV, p. 20. 13 Frazer : "Totemism and Exogamy," Vol. I, pp. 214-218, and Vol. IV, p. 20. 48 CHARACTER FORMATION even know that a seed planted in the ground will sprout and grow. Is it not possible that their magic rites for the increase of grass seed might not, as a result of the sprouting of grass wherever the head- man had blown the seed, gradually lead to a recog- nition of this simple fact from which the earliest be- ginnings of agriculture could have their origin! Is it not possible that the method of trial and error generation after generation might result in the dis- carding of the rites of the kangaroo men and the preservation of those of the grass-seed men? The devious ways by which such methods often lead to practical results is well illustrated by cer- tain practices of the Maori. ^^ They have a food, the kumara, which is regarded as the food in times of peace as the fern-root is regarded as the food in times of war. As the kumara is sacred to peace when an enemy is about to attack them they place kumara on the road that the enemy must pass along. They chant certain incantations and leave it there with the result that when the enemy reaches the spot where it is they becom'e panic stricken and flee. As a consequence of this custom war parties take pains to avoid the beaten paths of travel and take round-about and out of the way courses to reach their enemy : a method of procedure justifiable on quite other grounds than the influence of the ku- mara. Is it not probable that the net result of such 14 White: "Ancient History of the Maori." Cited by Joyce, loc. cit. THE UNCONSCIOUS 49 practices would be to bring the real results of the round-about route into consciousness and cause it to be adopted rationally or at least to cause an atrophy and gradual giving up of the old practices with the retention of the useful ones to which they had led? It is remarkable, in fact it is nothing less than astounding, to see to what accurate results such blind methods have led. This is excellently well shown in the matter of exogamy. In general it may be said that the earliest clearly formulated exogam- ous tribal organisation consisted in a separation of the clans of a tribe into two exogamous groups or phratries.^^ Further developments came by suc- cessive dichotomies resulting respectively to four- class and eight-class systems. This splitting up of the tribe into exogamous classes was for the express purpose of preventing incest, each successive split- ting serving this end more perfectly by removing still further the possibilities of the marriage of near kin. This system, devised by savages so ignorant that they did not even know the part the male plays in the reproductive process, is nevertheless justified by our present day scientific standards. For ex- ample, the two-class system is especially designed to prevent the marriage of brothers and sisters, while the four-class system, a later development, is especially designed to prevent the marriage of par- is Frazer: "Totemism and Exogamy," Vol. IV, p. 116 sqq. 50 CHARACTER FORMATION ents and children.^® This is precisely the reverse of what we should have expected a priori. We would have expected the union of parents and chil- dren to have been provided against first because that is most abhorrent to us. If we will stop and con- sider, however, we will see that the savages ' solution of the problem was better. If we reduce the indi- vidual, for purposes of consideration, to terms of germ plasm we will see that brother and sister both come from the same germ plasm stock, while parent and child come from stock that is not identical. The child is only one quarter germ plasm stock of either parent, while the one quarter from the other parent was stock that the parent in question found suitable to mate with in the production of the child. Union between brother and sister is therefore more potent for any harm that may fol- low too close inbreeding than union of parent and child. These illustrations are sufficient I think to show how progress has had to follow the course of trial and error. How it has had therefore to be a slow and painful process of overcoming the drag back of an inherent inertia, sometimes succeeding, some- times being led into sterile byways. This drag back, this inertia, call it what you will, indolence, super- stition, ignorance, custom or what not, is in its va- rious nuances but a manifestation of the unconscious, the unconscious that can only wish. Eeality is al- ls The way in which this is accomplished would require a lengthy explanation to elucidate, which would be out of place here. THE UNCONSCIOUS 51 ways knocking at the door, always demanding recog- nition but always being met by a tendency to fixa- tion which prevents progress. The conflict between the demands of reality for a more accurate adjust- ment is always being met by the drag back of a desire that prefers lack of exertion, the sense of protection and finality that comes by remaining in the region of the known rather than continuous ef- fort and constant projection into the great world of the unknown. I am tempted at this point to draw an analogy on the somatic side between reactions at the thalamic and at the cortical levels. It might be said that thalamic reactions are es- sentially emotional as contrasted to cortical reac- tions which are essentially intellectual. This how- ever is a harking back to the old faculty psychology. There are no such things as emotions; there is no entity to which we can apply the term intellect. The human being is an organism, a biological unit, reacting to certain situations and many of these reactions are expressed at the psychological level. A mental state so resulting is a whole which may present several aspects: a feeling aspect, an intel- lectual aspect, or what not. But these several as- pects are not things any more than the face of a crystal is a thing. The face of a crystal is a plane surface and therefore, has only length and breadth but no thickness. It is but an aspect and not a thing in itself. As the crystal may be turned about and viewed from any side, so a mental state may be 52 CHAEACTER FORMATION viewed from its intellectual or its emotional aspect. The characteristics of emotions are more especially that they represent, at the psychological level, bod- ily states resulting by a contact of the organism with problems of integration. They represent the end results of the several tendencies of the different parts of the body in what has been termed the cce- nesthesis, which is the psychic feeling tone mediated by the afferent currents from the receptors located in the several organs, the proprieceptors of Sher- rington. Intellectual states, on the contrary, are more removed from the immediate states of the body and deal with relations. Mental states on their in- tellectual side are essentially relational in character, deal with the problem of adjustment, and are mediated by the information of the nature of the environment delivered to the psyche, so to speak, by the organs of special sense, the distance recep- tors, or again to use a term of Sherrington's, the exteroceptors. The contrast is well shown by the results of a study of sensory disturbances at the thalamic and the cortical levels. ^^ To stimulation by extremes of heat and cold a thalamic patient ^^ responds by '^Oh, something has caught me"; *^ something is forcing its way through me, it has got hold of me, it is pinch- 17 Henry Head and Gordon Holmes: Sensory Disturbances from Cerebral Lesions, Brain, 1911. 18 By "thalamic patient" is meant a patient in whom a lesion has cut off the thalamus from cortical control by destroying the cortico-thalamic paths but which, has left the essential organ of the thalamus intact. THE UNCONSCIOUS 53 ing me." Another patient responds to a touch by '^I feel you touch me, but I can't tell where it is; the touch oozes all through my hand.'' A weight resting on the hand may not be recognised, but at the moment it is placed there or at the moment it is taken away the patient appreciates that ^* some- thing has happened." The characteristic responses to sensory stimuli when the cortex is involved are quite different. Usually the patient says that the stimulus is *4ess plain." The relational element in sensation is what is most disturbed, however, in cortical lesions and so the patient has ^*no idea" of shape, form, or relative size and weight of the test-object. This is especially shown with the Graham-Brown sesthe- siometer. Points are projected, in this instrument, from a smooth surface until the patient appreciates roughness when it is passed over the skin. With cortical lesions the threshold for roughness, deter- mined in this way, is the same in both hands. On the affected side, nevertheless, the patient is quite unable to correlate his sensations in appreciating texture. Cotton, silk, and stamped velvet cannot be differentiated. Just as the cortex is a better, a more exact tool for cutting into the facts of reality, so the intel- lectual attack upon reality is more effective than the plain, uncontrolled feelings. Just, however, as the greatest efficiency is obtained in the brain when the cortico-thalamic fibres, which are the avenue for the cortical control of the activity of the thalamus, 54 CHARACTER FORMATION are intact, so in the mind the best results come by the feelings, which are ever wishing, being subordi- nated to an intelligence that examines, compares, re- lates.i^ The content of the fore-conscious is also uncon- scious if we use that term solely in its etymological sense. The multiplication table which every one knows but does not know that he knows until his attention is focused on that knowledge was uncon- scious, that is not-conscious, and furthermore we cannot say how such knowledge exists in our minds when it is not illuminated by attention. The only adequate reason we have for saying that it exists in the form of ideas is that we always find it in that form when we come to consciously think of it. The assumption that this possibility of knowledge exists in the form of ideas is only an hypothesis. The difference between the fore-conscious and the unconscious is therefore, from this point of view, only that the material of the fore-conscious is ac- cessible, it is relatively easy to bring it to conscious- ness, there are no material resistances to its be- coming conscious, and furthermore it is relatively 19 We might carry the correlation with the physical still further particularly on the emotional side of consciousness by way of the sympathetic and autonomic nervous systems and the internal se- cretions, while the whole matter from the point of view of the neuroses is more generally covered by Adler in his "Minder- wertigkeit der Organe," and "Ueber den Nervosen Charakter." Ad- ler believes that the picture of the neurosis grows out of an effort to make good certain inherent deficiencies, the results of actual or- ganic defects, and that the effort produces an over-compensation which is at the basis of the morbid phenomena. THE UNCONSCIOUS 55 accessible to the individual himself. The uncon- scious, on the other hand, is inaccessible alike to the patient and to others and any attempt to get at its content is met by more or less strong resistances. When we find the unconscious material, we are no more able to say, than in the case of the fore-con- scious, that it has been existing in the form of ideas. We only know by the method of interpretation. Certain conduct can only reach its explanation by assuming that such and such material — ideas — ac- count for it. A still more radical difference between the fore- conscious and unconscious than that of accessibility is the difference in the character of the ideas that make their way finally into consciousness from these two regions. The ideas of the fore-conscious when they become conscious are perfectly familiar. The multiplication table is the same old multiplication table we have always known. The ideas, however, that emerge from the region of the unconscious are not recognised. They not infrequently come with a distinct feeling of strangeness — of not-at-homeness. They have distinctly the character of invaders, of being in a strange, uncongenial environment. Their meaning, their value is not given. If analysed they will be found to have meanings altogether different from what they appear to have. Under a fear a wish will be found hidden, the idea of a ruler will be found to hide the image of the father, right and left may mean right and wrong, etc. In other words they are highly symbolic. 56 CHARACTER FORMATION The understanding of the reason for this sym- bolism (see chap. V) is at the basis of the under- standing of the nature of the unconscious. The conflict which we have described is a conflict between desire and reality — between the pleasure motive (Lustprinzip) and the reality motive (Eealitats- prinzip) of conduct.^^ Now the pleasure motive is essentially, as we have seen, emotional as opposed to the intellectual nature of the reality of motive, and while matters intellectual are capable of relatively clear formulation both in words and in thought, matters emotional are not. We have not, even yet, evolved a language of the emotions which enables us to define them in terms of unequivocal meaning. We can feel, but we cannot put our feelings into words. And so when these feelings, which are the reverberations of past experiences, come to attempt to find expression in clear consciousness they must needs do so symbolically ^^ for clear consciousness implies a situation intellectually controlled. In the conflict between the pleasure and the re- ality principles which I have given instances of in primitive man, and which is repeated in the devel- opment of the individual, it will be evident that man is a feeling being before he is a thinking being. The intellect as we know it, is man's latest and most per- fect instrument which he has developed for cutting 20 Freud, S. : Formulierungen ueber die zwei Principien des psychisclien Gescheliens. Jahrbuch fur psychoanaJyt. u. psychopath. Forschungen, III. 21 The question of repression is purposely omitted here. THE UNCONSCIOUS 57 into the mysteries of nature. How mnch more ac- curate its information is can be seen by the example of the answers given by the thalamic patient, already quoted. The conflicts in the past then have been conflicts in which this vague feeling content of con- sciousness predominated. In fact it can never be too strongly insisted upon that the so-called recol- lections that psychoanalysis brings out of early in- fancy may not be recollections in the true sense of that term at all. The formulation which the patient gives them is probably much more definite and clear cut than was the experience itself. The experiences of the child and of primitive man are overwhelm- ingly affective in character, they are trends only which probably are not expressed clearly in con- sciousness at all and when analysis draws the pa- tient back to these situations the clearness with which they are expressed on the ideational side may very probably be in part an artefact, at least to the extent to which the emotional experiences of the un- conscious are expressed in the language of the con- scious. Not that the facts as testified to were not experienced but the feeling experiences of the child are translated into the conceptual symbolism of the adult consciousness. How vague these reverberations may be and how impossible of formulation we occasionally experience when we revisit the place in which we spent our childhood days. For a moment, but for a moment only, we may get, as we stand in some familiar spot a vague, fleeting feeling as if we felt as we used to 58 CHARACTER FORMATION feel when years ago as a child. But the feeling is gone almost as soon as felt and if it returns it is only to go again as quickly. The difficulty of getting things back as they were is not alone due to their inaccessibility or to their essentially affective character, but to a still further qualitative difference which is fundamental. Any particular act, at any particular moment of life, is an end result : It is made possible in the particular form it takes because of all that has gone before. Bergson ^^ very well states it when he says : ** What are we, in fact, what is our character , if not the con- densation of the history that we have lived from our birth — nay, even before our birth, since we bring with us prenatal dispositions? Doubtless we think with only a small part of our past, but it is with our entire past, including the original bent of our soul, that we desire, will and act." Our past con- flicts, therefore, with their affective reverberations can never be recalled or relived; they have gone to form the very fibre of our being as w^e noiv are ; they have been lived past and lived through. The fore-conscious, while it might as well be conscious, might also as w^ell be present. The unconscious is our historical past. The fore-conscious is only that part of conscious- ness which for the time being is out of the focus of attention. It is a part of the present of conscious- ness, that is, the matter now being dealt with. As soon as this material of the now of consciousness is 22/6tU, p. 5. THE UNCONSCIOUS 59 put into the past by being used as material in our growth, as soon as it takes its place in the path of our development by affording a resting place for further superstructures, then it enters into our his- torical past and as it recedes in the path of progress it partakes more and more of the nature of the un- conscious. The unconscious then is like the tail of a kite. While it drags down and holds back it nevertheless steadies its flight and at once prevents it from dash- ing itself to pieces by a sudden dart downwards and makes it possible for it to reach greater heights. This quality of the unconscious which makes it impossible that it should ever be exactly recalled, ever be relived as it was before, because the person in which it exists is a different person because of the part which that very unconscious has taken in his development; this quality again makes it neces- sary that w^hen it seeks expression in consciousness that that expression should be symbolic. The vague feeling trends have to be translated into the lan- guage of the individual as he then exists. The unconscious, then, as our historical past, is the path by which we have come. It represents re- sistances overcome, dangers avoided. This path though is a psychological path, it represents events at the psychological level and not at the neurological level, as some have claimed. The essential thing in the development of the personality is to forge ahead on the *^ straight and narrow path," slowly perhaps, but surely, consistently, constructively. 60 CHAHACTER FORMATION At each point along the path we are in danger of be- ing side-tracked or of tarrying too long. We may be side-tracked by an unfortunate environment, if our energies flag we are threatened with fixation. Both of these dangers may be passed, but in later life, if for any reason introversion and regression take place, these old ways may become re-animated and determine the special way in which the introver- sion shall manifest itself in the symptoms. This concept enables us to see how often it is not possible to get a complete explanation of conduct from any amount of analysis of the individual. Many reactions, especially in praecox, are so primi- tive in type that we must seek their explanation, not in the individual consciousness, but in the race con- sciousness, and that by the comparative method. Just as many customs, for example religious cere- monials, must be explained by a study of the de- velopment of the customs through the ages and the comparison with them of similar customs of other peoples, so many of the reactions of the mentally diseased can only reach their full explanation when we have studied the mind in its stages of develop- ment in the race and see the analogies with savage and infantile ways of thinking. ^^The route we pursue in time is strewn with the remains of all that we began to be, of all that we might have become." ^^ There is, as we might expect, a large borderland between conduct wholly determined by conscious mo- 23Bergson: Ibid., p. 100. THE UNCONSCIOUS 61 tives and conduct controlled by unconscious motives. This is the region which has been so splendidly studied by Freud in his ^'Psychopathology of Everyday Life.''^^ In this region conduct is de- fective. The slips of the tongue, mistakes, forget- tings, erroneously carried out actions and the thou- sand and one little defects in our daily conduct show us a region from which the Lustprinzip has not quite relinquished its hold and in which the Eealitats- prinzip has not yet become quite fully efficient. The actual determination to act seems to set aglow these other possible actions and occasionally one glows brightly enough to lead the action along its path. It is as if in our living we were surrounded by a haze of possibilities and that this or that might be- come an actuality by a very little change in the con- ditions. Action controlled by the unconscious may be of little importance, as a slip of the tongue, or may lead to severe crippling of the individual by the development of a neurosis or a psychosis. Such conduct, which, because of its symbolic character is quite as strange and incapable of being understood by the patient as by an onlooker, may be looked at from the teleological standpoint as a defence reac- tion against a recognition of motives that would be painful or as the persistence of modes of reaction — vestigial mechanisms — which have been discarded — repressed — in the course of development. 24 Trans, by Brill. The Macmillan Co., New York, 1914. CHAPTER lY THE CONFLICT Change of any sort implies the concept of motion. This is true not only of inorganic masses but equally of biological processes such as growth, development, evolution. Motion implies overcoming resistance and this in turn implies the concepts of action and reac- tion. Action and reaction are equal and in opposite directions. From this law is deducible ambivalency, the conflict, and repression. Motion meets resist- ance in the opposite direction (ambivalency), the conjunction of two forces striving in opposite direc- tions (the conflict), one succeeds in dominating the other (repression). These terms then are seen to be only new words to express old concepts, only the old concepts are being applied to a different order of experiences, higher we will call them if the application works (the pragmatic test). Those at all familiar with psychoanalytic concepts will know that the opposing forces of the conflict are, in psychological terms, the conscious and the unconscious. The relationship of conscious and unconscious is the relationship of actual situations to the historical past of the psyche. The psyche like the body has 62 THE CONFLICT 63 its embryology and its comparative anatomy, and just as the reflex is a bit of experience woven into the structure of the organism so are psychological experiences, which are frequently repeated in the his- tory of the race, preserved in the unconscious. It is again the relation of the stimulus to the body stimu- lated. The stimulus is any change in surrounding conditions: the body stimulated, represented at the psychological level by the unconscious, is that whole complex of organised reactions which represents the psychological history of the organism and which as it meets the stimulus brings all of its tendencies to bear in the present moment, which no sooner lived is itself added to the past to become a new vantage ground upon which the future may build. From still another point of view the stimulus is reality knocking at the door for recognition. The endless flux of outside changes each demands an an- swering change of like degree within. This balanced progress of adjustment makes up the moving equi- librium which constitutes the flow of life itself. Con- flict is at the very root and source of life, it is the very stuff out of which life is made, and the neces- sary pre-condition of progress. If conflict is so necessary it then becomes of su- preme importance to inquire what happens as a re- sult of conflict; How does the conflict resolve itself? In approaching this question we can get some help by the use of analogies taken from the physical world — we will then be able to see how the laws that gov- ern such analogous situations may be differently ex- 64 CHARACTER FORMATION pressed aud made applicable in the realm of the psyche. The broadest expression of the action of the law that I have intimated exists, is known as the theorem of Le Chatelier ^ which stated briefly is to the effect that **a system tends to change so as to minimise an external disturbance. ' ' A series of examples will make this clear. If an electric current is passed through a solution there is a tendency to the formation of a counter current which thus reduces the electrical stress. Suspended particles in a liquid are caused, by a dif- ference in potential, to move in the direction that reduces the electrical stress. Photo-sensitive sub- stances tend to change in a way to eliminate the strain caused by the light. When the wind blows against a tree the boughs bend so as to spill it. Ani- mals in a cold climate develop thick coats of fur so as to prevent the radiation of heat. Desert plants are very hairy. By this means the circulation of air and consequently the rate of evaporation is impeded. The submerged leaves of aquatic plants do not de- velop the supporting framework of the aerial leaves. An irritant in the eye is washed out by a flow of tears, in the gastro-enteric tract by vomiting and purging. A serious shortage of men to do a certain 1 Bancroft, W. D.: A Universal Law: In this, Professor Ban- croft's presidential address to the American Chemical Society, he gives many illustrations of Le Chatelier's theorem. I have drawn freely from these illustrations and beg to acknowledge my indebted- THE CONFLICT 65 kind of work causes a rise in wages and a flow of men to that point to fill the position thus lessening the ten- sion of the industrial situation. Plants and trees that have been seriously injured often flower, thus showing a tendency to limit the destructive effects of the injury. Innumerable examples might be given of this law — ^let us see some of its more immediate applications to man and especially at the psychological level. Hunger brings about those activities necessary for the procurement of food and the consequent ap- peasement of the craving. The same may be said of sex hunger. Kempf ^ formulates the law in this way: **A motive, no matter at what conscious, sub- conscious, or unconscious level of the personality it may be active, after its genesis, tends to express it- self by forcing into consciousness sensations of ex- ogenous origin or sensory images of endogenous origin which have the function of generating coun- ter, neutralising reactions.'' The desire for money prompts those activities which lead to its acquisition and so brings about a state of affairs that leads to satisfaction by supply- ing the stimuli for generating neutralising reactions, thus relieving the stress in the system. Fear prompts to run away and get into an environment that will give the feeling of safety. Anger prompts the killing or injuring of an enemy. On a higher 2 Kempf, E. J.: Some Studies in the Psychopathology of Acute Dissociation of the Personality. Tlie Psychoanalytic Review, Vol. II, No. 4, Oct., 1915. 66 CHARACTER FORMATION level are all those highly sublimated forms of con- duct which express the creative energy in artistic, literary, and scientific productions. It is important to realise, at this point, that the activities of the organism that are brought about to neutralise desires may effect an adequate and ef- ficient relation with reality or they may not. The person who desires money and proceeds to establish himself in business and earn it has brought about an efficient relating of himself to his environment, but the person who wants money and does nothing about it but indulge in day dreams of what he would do if he had it is decidedly inefficient in his relation to his conflict. Both, however, have dealt with the conflict by bringing about conditions that tend to neutralise the desire, tend to reduce the disturbance in the system brought about by the unsatisfied desire, one has reacted effectively, the other has reacted in a pathological way. In one case there was an effi- cient reaction to the demands of reality, in the other there was the building up of a world of phantasy. If conflict, of which I have already given many il- lustrations in various realms of activity even out- side of the field of biology, is so universal we should be able to find evidences of it in the form of struc- tures and institutions which have received their forms as a result of its influences. The essential nature of a conflict is the existence of two opposing forces. As already indicated this is expressed in the psychic sphere by the demands of reality upon the accumulated experiences of the THE CONFLICT 67 individual represented in the unconscious. It is further exemplified in the psyche by the principle of ambivalency and ambitendency which has been set forth by Bleuler.^ As he puts it, ambivalency * 'gives to the same idea two contrary feeling tones and invests the same thought simultaneously with both a positive and a negative character," while am- bitendency ' ' sets free with every tendency a counter tendency. ' ' This means that in the psyche the idea which lies closest to another idea is its opposite, as for example the idea that lies closest to long is short: to hot is cold: to white is black: to thick is thin: to fat is lean: to good is bad, etc., etc. The same principle is involved also in actions. Bleuler uses these prin- ciples to explain the phenomena of negativism and calls attention to the character of reactions not only among the mentally diseased in which the opposite tendency is carried out, as for example, the frequent type of reaction by closing the eyes tightly when an attempt is made to examine the pupils or closing the lips tightly when asked to put out the tongue, but also to the obstinacy so frequently observed in chil- dren and in many other types. This contrary tendency is engrafted in the very nature of things and is perhaps most prominently in evidence in the structure and functions of the body in the antagonism between the autonomic and sym- pathetic nervous systems. Eppinger and Hess in 3 The Theory of Schizophrenic Negativism. Nerv. and Ment. Dis. Monograph Series, No. 11. 68 CHARACTER FORMATION a recent monograpli^ have expressed it by saying '* every visceral organ is supplied by sympathetic fibres, which work antagonistically to the autonomic. '^ Hence it may be stated that the normal progress of functioning of visceral organs is a well regulated interaction between two contrary acting forces/' The viscera are not in a state of flaccid inactivity until called upon to respond to some stimulus, but in a state of balanced contrary innervation which makes response more prompt and easy in either di- rection. Like the muscles of an athlete they are in a state of tension — tonus — capable of responding on the instant to demands of either offence or defence. It would be natural to suppose that so fundamental a distinction would find its expression in forms of speech, in language. Bain says,^ ^^The essential relativity of all knowledge, thought or consciousness cannot but show itself in language. If everything that we can know is viewed as a transition from something else, every experience must have two sides ; and every name must have a double meaning, or else for every meaning there must be two names." Abel studied early forms of words ^ and found this principle illustrated. Many of the old words are combinations of opposites such as altjung ( = old- young), fernnah ( — far-near), ausserinnen ( = out- in), bindentrennen ( = bind-separate) which came 4 Vagotonia. Nerv. and Ment. Dis. Monograph Series, No. 20. c "Logic." 6 Karl Abel : Ueber der Gegensinn der Urworte. Ref erat by Freud in Jahrhuch f. Psychanalytische u. Psychopath. Forschungen, 1910. THE CONFLICT 69 to mean respectively young, near, in, to bind up. It is,'ToFexample, as if in the case of the word altjung ( = old-young) the question at issue was the age and it was only in a later stage of development that sepa- rate terms old and young could develop as repre- senting the opposite extremes of age. The same may be said of the other words. Abel mentions a number of English words of the same sort, such as without, which is a combination of mit (with), and ohne (without). Mit he says origi- nally meant with (mit) and also without (ohne). Bleuler ^ mentions this same tendency in children who use the same expressions for both positive and negative ideas as tii tu for Tiire zu (door to) for both open and close the door and zuletzt (last) for zuerst (first). This principle is involved in some of the oldest of human documents. It is exemplified in the Yih system of the Chinese as set forth in the Yih King, one of the most ancient of human documents.^ '^He who understands the yih is supposed to possess the key to the riddle of the universe. **The yih is capable of representing all combina- tions of existence. The elements of the yih, yang the positive principle and yin the negative principle, stand for the elements of being. Yang means ^bright' and yin, ^dark.' Yang is the principle of heaven ; yin, the principle of the earth. Yang is the 7 Log. cit. 8 Paul Carus, "Chinese Thought," Open Court Pub. Co., Chicago, 1907. 70 CHAEACTER FORMATION sun, yin is the moon. Yang, is masculine and active ; yin is feminine and passive. The former is motion ; the latter is rest. Yang is strong, rigid, lord-like; yin is mild, pliable, submissive, wife-like. The strug- gle between, and the different mixture of, these two elementary contrasts, condition all the differences that prevail, the state of the elements, the nature of things, and also the character of the various person- alities as well as the destinies of human beings." We probably have a similar system in the Urim and Thummim of the Hebrews.^ There might be mentioned as additional illustra- tions, which are none the less important because obvious, the contraries good-bad, heaven-hell, angel- devil, white-black, right-wrong. Such oppositions stand at the very foundations of morality and re- ligion. Thus the way of the conflict is a universal way in which force manifests itself. Action and reaction (the conflict) are equal and in opposite directions (ambivalency). This concept would imply a state of rest but in the living being the conflict is the ex- pression of the moving equilibrium established be- tween the individual and its environment. The liv- ing being starts in the world as a single cell capable of varying degrees of development depending upon the living form it represents in embryo. This cell is, so to speak, a nucleus of tendencies introduced into a world of matter and energy and as soon as 9 Paul Carus, "The Oracle of Yahveh," Open Court Pub. Co., Chicago, 1911. THE CONFLICT 71 these tendencies begin to manifest themselves, as soon as they begin to burgeon forth and seek to de- velop they inevitably come in conflict with the world about. These tendencies, representing in their final activities the set of the organism, come in conflict with the world about. At the psychological level the conflict is represented by the two terms, the uncon- scious and the conscious, that is, by what these two terms represent, the unconscious representing the in- herent and acquired tendencies, the conscious repre- senting the moment when they come into active touch with reality in an effort to effect an adjustment. Looked at from another angle the conflict is be- tween the pleasure-pain principle or motive and the reality principle or motive. The pleasure-pain mo- tive is the unconscious, the tendencies of the organ- ism as they exist at the moment of active contact with reality and which offer a resistance to the re- adjustment demanded by reality. This resistance expressed in psychological terms is a desire or wish — a wish not to be overcome by the necessity, being forced upon it by reality, of re-adjustment. The conflict never results in a draw, on the con- trary, first one of the opposing forces gains the as- cendant, the other is for the time being worsted (re- pression), then the other is successful, and so this process goes on about a central point, like the needle of a tangent galvanometer, constantly in motion swinging first to one side then to the other of the zero mark on the scale, but never coming to rest — a moving equilibrium. 72 CHARACTER FORMATION In the course of life one or the other tendency may dominate at any particular time — the balance may be on one or the other side of the ledger, in favour of life or of death. For those who live the balance is, on the whole, in favour of life although there may be numerous swings of the needle to the op- posite side, while for those who die, in spite of occa- sional balances in their favour, the general average is against them. The needle, too, may swing far or just barely past the zero mark — the individual may be abundantly well and highly efficient, or on the contrary, just able to keep the balance slightly in his favour. Negativism is an example at the psychological level of the condition of affairs when the balance stands against the individual. The slight attacks of ob- stinacy of the child are usual and so considered quite within the limits of the normal,^^ the nega- tivism of the schizophrenic has quite passed those bounds and is to be considered as pathological. In suicide we see the complete negation of life itself — the balance is overwhelmingly against the individual. In all of these conditions, while the negativism is in the ascendant the other factor of the conflict is re- pressed. Many other examples come easily to us. The man who robs his friend, and the student who has a task to do but deliberately neglects it to go fishing, have both temporarily repressed their better instincts. 10 In my opinion "normal" can have no other meaning than "usual." The two terms are interchangeable. THE CONFLICT 73 The course of conduct in both instances, however, might have been different if the repression had been of the opposite factor in the conflict. In that case the one man would have remained honest and the other would have performed his task. THE LIBIDO In all these examples of conflict it is evident that we have been using terms for forms of energy. Con- flict is the tool which energy uses to pry itself loose from old moorings and gain expression at a higher level. It is the expression of energy in the throes of creation — creative energy — libido.^^ To illus- trate: The hungry man is in conflict with his de- sire for food. The tendency, as we have seen, is to bring about actions which will lead to sensations that will neutralise the cravings. When this has been done, the hunger satisfied, then the man is free from conflict at that level, the libido is free to trans- fer the field of battle to a higher level; he can now use his energies in writing a poem, performing a surgical operation, organising a social campaign. Conflict has not been done away with as such, it has only been raised to a higher level, and this is a move- ment in the direction both of integration and adjust- ment as already illustrated (Chapter II), We may say that the libido is always striving to attain higher levels of adjustment. Such an expres- 11 1 am conscious of the objections to this term but it seems to be too well grounded in use to discard. Then, too, the important thing is the concept and not the name. 74 CHAKACTER FORMATION sion is both teleological and anthropomorphic and as such open to all sorts of objections. We have come to believe, however, that the different stages of evolution represent a progress upward and that we also are on the upward path. Although such expressions may be objected to it is perhaps well to consider Schopenhauer's words, in this connection, when he says: ^^The foundation on which all our knowledge and science rests is the inexplicable. To this all explanations lead, be the intermediate stages few or many; as in ocean soundings, the lead must always touch the bottom at last in deep seas and shallow alike.'' If the conflict is decided with the balance in favour of the individual a feeling of pleasure, satisfaction, success results ; if on the other side the result is pain, suffering, dissatisfaction. The hungry man who eats is gratified, if he is unable to obtain food he is in distress. When the conflict wavers, when there is no unqualified success of either antagonist, the state of mind is one of doubt, indecision and uncer- tainty, first one solution seeming the better and then the opposite replacing it. Strong antipathic feel- ings such as hate and disgust are efforts at prying the energy free from lower levels so that the plane of conflict may be carried higher. The man who expresses abhorrence for a certain act is much nearer the possibility of such an act himself than is he who can view it undisturbed and with a judicial attitude of mind, he therefore must summon all his reserves to escape it. THE CONFLICT 75 The transfer of the conflict from a lower to a higher plane may or may not mean any real gain ac- cording to our philosophy. There certainly has been no putting aside of the possibility of suffering pain or permanent addition to the capacity for pleasure. Every increase in the sensitiveness to pain means a corresponding increase in the capacity for pleasure, every increase in the capacity for pleasure means a corresponding capacity for suffering. Development of the capacity for pleasure or for pain, for con- structiveness or for destructiveness, for good or for bad, and all the other pairs of contraries, must needs go together. Increase in the strength of one of the pair implies a corresponding and equal increase in the strength of the other. Development proceeds, to use an expression of Benett's ^^ by the parallel growth of opposite tendencies. He says *^ there are at least no positive grounds for an expectation that in the future, any more than in the past, either term in the algedonic equation will gain permanently on the other." Perhaps the best that can be done is as a result of a realisation that the only hope of ful- filment comes by getting into the stream of becom- ing and submitting to the demands for activity it makes upon us. 12 W. Benett: "The Ethical Aspects of Evolution Regarded as the Parallel Growth of Opposite Tendencies." Oxford, 1908. CHAPTEE V SYMBOLISM "Facts are only stopping-places on the way to new ideas." — Dion Clayton Calthrop. "Real definitions are a standing difficulty for all who have to deal with them, whether as logicians or as scientists, and it is no wonder that dialectical philosophers fight very shy of them, prefer to manipulate their verbal imitations, and count themselves happy if they can get an analysis of the acquired meaning of a word to pass muster instead of a troublesome investigation of the behaviour of a thing." — F. C. S. Schiller: "Studies in Humanism." Symbolism is commonly thought of as a form of artistic expression — as belonging in the domains of religion, art, and poetry. The most casual examina- tion of expressions in current use will, however, show that it is by no means exceptional.^ The oak sug- gests sturdiness, ruggedness and strength of char- acter and has limbs, trunk and a heart. And so we speak of persons of rugged character, dependability and strength of purpose as having hearts of oak. The foliage of spring symbolises inexperience (ver- dancy), that of fall, age (the sear and yellow leaf). The stone is hard, flint a very hard stone is often used to symbolise a character trait — ^heart of flint. 1 These illustrations are taken, for the most part, from the chap- ter "Symbolism in Sanity and Insanity" in Burr's "Handbook of Psychology and Mental Disease." 76 SYMBOLISM 77 The river and the cave have a month, the volcano vomits lava, and the earth clothes itself in green. There are the lap, the bosom, and the womb of na- ture, the bowels of the earth. The ship has a nose, the cliff a face, the hill a brow: a church, a proces- sion, a lake, have each a head. There are the neck of land, the jaws of an instrument, a chest of tools, the lip of scorn, the finger of destiny. Pitchers have ears, the sea arms, the waves a voice, the mountain a foot, the comet a head and tail, the potato eyes. Plumbers use male and female fittings, nipples and elbows. Sympathy has breadth, affection depth, folly height. Sarcasm is pointed, duty calls, happi- ness reigns. Dispositions are sweet or sour, a bad joke leaves a bitter taste, one scents trouble. A law is interpreted in a way to emasculate it, its virility is lost. A question is burning, issues are living or dead. A colour is lively, gay, sombre, cold or warm, a temperament mercurial, a fact dry. An idea is brilliant, a thought striking, wit scorching, and rep- artee sparkling. Language is indeed a * ^fossil poetry. ' ' These illustrations are sufficiently numerous and varied to show that symbolism is by no means un- usual and exceptional but that it is both a common and a necessary mode of expression, in fact we shall see that, using the term in its broadest sense, it is universal. For what after all is a word but the symbol of an idea and an idea but the symbol of a thing. In order that the meaning of symbolism may be 78 CHARACTER FORMATION understood, in the broad sense in wMch it is here used, it is essential to keep in mind the nature of the relation between the process of thinking and the forms which are used in expressing that process. The process is one of continuous unremitting change — the forms of expression are the results of efforts to catch the process in the very act of becoming, they are snap shots which try to fix the process in forms that can be read. The distinction between process and forms of expression is the distinction between dynamic and static. Concepts and the words used to express them, like a marine painting of the storm- tossed, wind-driven waves, lack the essential element of the process, motion. Forms of thought and lan- guage must fix, clot, coagulate the process in the very act of expression. Words, forms of expression, con- cepts are but rigid forms which are never fully equal to accurate expression. The ever changing, ever growing process which gives them birth is always straining at the limitations they impose and even though it may not change their outward form it con- stantly forces them to assume new meanings. This constant pressure upon the form by the ever swelling process contained within it produces a re- sult which is a compromise between the tendency to stability, conservatism of the form, and the constant tendency to change, the fluidity of the meaning. It is perhaps best shown in the varying changes of both form and meaning of words.^ For example : 2 Language has been called by Jean Paul "a dictionary of faded metaphors." SYMBOLISM 79 * ' The Holy Ghost is symbolised in Christianity by a Dove, and the Hebrew for dove is jonaJi. The jon of Jonah reappears in the English and French pigeon^ a word resolving into pi ja on, the ^Father of the Everlasting One.' The Celtic names for a pigeon are duhe, ^the brilliant orb,' and Mom, i.e., aJc el om, * Great Lord the Sun. ' At the Baptism of Christ the Heavens are said to have opened and a Dove or Pigeon to have descended to the words, *This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.' Pi or pa, the Father, is the root of pity, peace, patience, and of the names Paul, Paulus, etc. The two syllables of Paul coalesce frequently into Pol, whence Pol- lock, PoLsoM, Polly, Poldi, etc., and innumerable place-names, such as Poldhu, or Baldhu, Polton and BoLTOiN-, Polpekro, and Belpur. Pol was a title of Baldur, the Apollo of Scandinavia, and Baldur seemingly once meant the ^enduring Ball' or the ' enduring Baal. ' The Eastern Ball may be equated with the Druidic Beal, which, according to Celtic antiquaries, means ^the life of everything' or ^the source of all beings.' Pais, i.e., the * essence of the Father,' is the Greek for son, and paour,. again the 'light of the Father,' is Celtic for son. Pa ur, the Father of Light, is the origin of power, which in French is puissance, the light or essence of Pa. The Celtic for spirit is poell, and poele is the French for stove; German, stuhe. Even to-day in Japan the domestic cooking-furnace is considered as a deity. Patriarch must originally have been pater-arch, and meant Great Father. The patron saint of Ireland 80 CHARACTER FORMATION is presumably a corrupted form of Paterick, the Great Father, and the shamrock or clover leaf may be regarded as the threefold symbol of ac lover, the Great Lover. ' ' ^ We find the same thing with respect to concepts ; although the same form of word has continued to be used to express them the idea back of the word has continuously changed. Take for example the word ^* mercury." The alchemists believed mercury to be contained in all metals, it was the metallic principle, and to its presence were attributed such properties as fusibility, malleability and lustre.^ We still use the word mercury, but what a multi- tude of changes in meaning has it been used to ex- press since the days of alchemy ! If we consider a complex concept such as modesty we find that not only has the meaning changed con- stantly but that the expression means different things to different peoples. From the almost or quite complete nakedness of certain savages to the complicated clothing of our present-day civilisation the change has been great indeed, while it is only necessary to mention that the Bakairi of Central Brazil although they have no sense of shame at nakedness are ashamed to eat in public.^ We can see this operation actually going on under 3 Harold Bayley: "The Lost Language of Symbolism — An Inquiry into the Origin of Certain Letters, Words, Names, Fairy-Tales, Folklore and Mythologies." 2 Vols. T. B. Lippincott Company. 1913. 4H. Stanley Eedgrove: "Alchemy: Ancient and Modern." sHavelock Ellis: "Studies in the Psychology of Sex." Vol. II, SYMBOLISM 81 onr very eyes in our courts of law, wMch are ever occupied with trying to fit actual living things into rigid, dead forms, to crowd human beings into the prescribed limits of set words and phrases: a task as impossible as that of the Danaides. Schroeder has interestingly shown the changes which legal in- terpretation has rung upon the concepts ** obscene" and ^^ freedom of the press." ^ These illustrations suffice to show that symbolism, still using the term in the broadest sense, is universal because grounded in the very necessities of the forms of expression themselves. The next inquiry is nat- urally into the various ways in which symbolism comes to expression — the principles which govern it, the laws which control its manifestations. The fundamental principle of symbolism is that anything may symbolise anything else and in a given instance the only way to find out the meaning of a symbol is to make inquiry of the subject expressing it. The psychologist cannot tell off hand what a given symbol may mean in a particular instance. It may mean one thing at one time and another thing at another time, it may mean one thing to one person and another thing to another person; it may or it may not have the usual significance. The next important principle is self evident. The The Evolution of Modesty. F. A. Davis Company, Philadelphia, 1909. 6 Theodore Schroeder: "'Obscene' Literature and Constitutional Law. A Forensic Defense of Freedom of the Press." New York, 1911. 82 CHARACTER FORMATION symbol must be chosen from the mental content. When one, so to speak, is looking about for an ap- propriate symbol he is limited in his choice to the content of his own mind. Perhaps no one who reads these pages would symbolise his thoughts in Sanskrit because probably they do not know that language. English symbols would be most frequently, although perhaps not exclusively used. Not only may a given symbol mean one thing one time and another thing another time, but the same symbol may be used by different persons in quite dif- ferent ways. If several persons will look at a ra- diator, for example, they will probably treat that radiator differently in their thoughts, depending on their previous experiences. One may be reminded of the rise of temperature in a fever, another may think of the steam and the steam call up an ocean voyage on a steamship with all the complex asso- ciations of that voyage, another may think of the warmth of friendship, another of efiSciency, as ex- pressing the work of the radiator, while still another may be reminded by the corrugations of the corru- gated paper about a book recently received from the publishers, its contents, etc. The possibilities are endless. And finally the manifestness of the symbolism is in direct proportion to the poverty of the appercep- tive mass and the consequent concreteness of expres- sion. Darwin records the instance "^ of a child, who, seeing a duck on the water, called it *^ quack." 7 Cited by Beaurian : Ueber das Symbol und die psychisehen SYMBOLISM 83 From this on lie called all flying things **qnack," birds, insects, especially honse flies and also fluids, water and wine. Finally when a son was shown him he called this also * ^ quack. ' ' * * Quack ' ' thus came to mean such different things as flies, wine, and coins. The word *^ quack" was used originally to express the duck on the water, so it comes to be applied to all flying things and to all liquids. When the word is extended to include coins it is not because of a con- ceptual generalisation, but as the result of an asso- ciative transference due to the figure of the eagle on the coin which is already known as *^ quack.'' Be- cause the field of perception of the child's conscious- ness is very narrow, all of the characteristics of an object are not fully apperceived so that single char- acteristics, partial perceptions, are possible and ap- pear in the perceptual complex while other charac- teristics are excluded. Thus the thinking tends to relative concreteness. This concrete way of thinking is further illus- trated^ by using a new name to express a certain characteristic of an object. Thus the Arab needs not less than 500 names for lion to express his differ- ent qualities, 200 names for snake, and 5,744 for camel. Similarly the Australian has one name for a dog's tail, another for a cow's tail, and still another for a sheep's tail," but no name for tail in general. * ^ All trees but no forest. ' ' Bedingungen fiir sein Entstelien beim Kinde. Int. Zeitschr. f. Arzt- liche Psychoan., Vol, I, p. 431. 8 Cited by Beaurain, op. cit. 84 CHARACTER FORMATION The logical function, the power of abstraction needs a long time for its development. The abstrac- tion of characters from objects is a difficult process and so adjectives are late in making their appearance in speech. In the language of the Tasmanians there are no adjectives,^ only substitutions by means of concrete ideas. They say ^^like a stone'' instead of using the adjective ^^hard," ^^like a foot" means ^^long," **like a ball" or *4ike the moon" means round. As primitive man or the child develops and the apperceptive mass is constantly increased, as ^^ quack" for example progressively fails to express all flying things, liquids, and coins because the mind has come to group these things upon the basis of similarities and differences to which the ^* quack" of the duck no longer applies, the forms of expression will either change or acquire new meanings, and if the latter the original reason for the expression will gradually slip out of consciousness, because it no longer corresponds to the way of thinking — it is no longer useful. We have already illustrated this process in the changes in form and meaning of words. It is well seen also in the gradual abridgement of ceremonials. Mr. Spencer ^^ traces obeisances as originating as signs of submission to a conqueror and developing along divergent lines until they acquire political and ecclesiastical significance. The earliest 9 Cited by Beaurain, op. cit. 10 Herbert Spencer: "Synthetic Philosophy." Principles of Soci- ology. Vol. II, Chap. VI, Obeisances. SYMBOLISM 85 form was a full length prostration implying complete submission because complete defencelessness. This became successively abridged to kneeling with the head on the ground, kneeling on both knees. By successive abridgements there follow descent on one knee, then simply a bending of the knees, and lastly a simple nod of the head. This latter, a simple nod of the head, with a slight bending of the upper part of the body, persists in the Episcopal Church to-day when the name of Christ is mentioned. The following is an excellent example in the realm of magic. ^ ^ Even in its own development, however, magic contains some conditions of its own decline. Custom, whilst it maintains a practice, dispenses with its meaning, and slurs or corrupts the expres- sion of it. Professor Westermarck has shown how in Morocco the full rite to avert the evil-eye is to thrust forward the hand with the fingers outspread, and to say — ^Five in your eye.' But as this is too insulting for common use, you may instead casually mention the number ^ve ; or if even that is too plain, you may bring in the word Thursday, which happens to be the fifth day of the week. It is obvious that in this process there is great risk of forgetting the original meaning of the spell ; and when this happens we have complete retrogradation ; in which condition are the current superstitions about ^thirteen,' ^Fri- day,' * spilling the salt,' 'walking under the ladder,' for hardly a soul knows what they mean." ^^ 11 Carveth Read : The Psychology of Magic. British Jour. Psych. Vol. VII, No. 2, September, 1914. 86 CHARACTER FORMATION The persistence of old forms, the original uses of which have disappeared, is well seen in the evolution of the implements of primitive man. Many of the stone implements were fastened into handles by divers methods of lashing which tended to become fixed in more or less symmetrical patterns. As the stone spear points were replaced by bronze and dur- ing the evolution of the palstave, or socketed bronze celt from the flat bronze celt, the method of fastening also changed. But the old style of binding had ef- fected such firm associations that it was engraved as a pattern on the socket of the bronze head.^^ Haddon ^^ very well sums up the changes that take place in the life-history of pictorial symbols as fol- lows: *^ First, it is simply a representation of an object or a phenomenon, that is, a pictograph. Thus the zigzag was the mark or sign of lightning. * ^ Secondly, * the sign of the concrete grew to be the symbol of the abstract. The zigzag of lightning, for example, became the emblem of power, as in the thunder-bolts grasped by Jupiter; or it stood alone for the supreme God; and thus the sign developed into the ideograph. ' ^^ '* Thirdly, retrogression set in when new religions and new ideas had sapped the vitality of the old con- 12 Alfred 0. Haddon: "Evolution in Art: As illustrated by the Life-Histories of Designs." Con. Sci. Se., New York, Chas. Scrib- ner's Sons, 1910. 13 Op. cif. 14 H. Colley March: "The Fylfot and the Futhorc Tir," Trans. Lancashire and Cheshire Ant. Soc, 1886. Cited by Haddon, op. cit. SYMBOLISM 87 ceptions, and the ideograph came to have no more than a mystical meaning. A religious or sacred savour, so to speak, still clung about it, but it was not a living force within it ; the difference is as great as between the dried petals of a rose and the bloom- ing flower itself. *The zigzag, for instance, was no longer used as a symbol of the deity, but was applied auspiciously, or as we should say, for luck. ' ^^ *^The last stage is reached when a sign ceases to have even a mystical or auspicious significance, and is applied to an object as a merely ornamental device." SYMBOLISM AND THE UNCONSCIOUS I have already set forth in a former chapter ^^ the distinction between the fore-conscious and the un- conscious. As I have there stated, the fore-con- scious, while it might as well be conscious, might also as well be present. The unconscious is our historical past. Ideas of the fore-conscious when they do come into consciousness do so without resistance and are fully recognised at their true value. For example, if to- day is Tuesday, that fact until reinforced was too weak to come into consciousness, but when it does come makes no disturbance and is fully understood. It is the same with the symbolism. The symbols of the fore-conscious can be relatively easily read even when their meaning, from their statement simply, 15 H. Colley March, op. cit. 16 Chap. III. 88 CHAKACTER FORMATION is not at once evident. A patient dreamed that she was in a boat upon a river going with the stream and went on to explain that the river was the great life-giving force — it was the river of life. Such ideas are ideas that might as well be conscious. Another subject dreamed of the death of an old lady living next door. The ojd lady was a surrogate for the dreamer's mother, who for many years had suffered from a psychosis. Here the symbolism com- pletely disguises the underlying idea from the dreamer. A great deal of energy is expended in bringing about this disguise and the idea, as a re- sult, is successfully kept out of consciousness. The dreamer had no idea what the dream meant and no amount of questioning could possibly have elicited any explanation. The type of symbolism, therefore, is different for those ideas that might as well be con- scious and those ideas, or rather trends, that are unconscious. The distinction here is the same as between the fore-conscious and the unconscious, but we will see that another element has entered. In the dream of being in a boat on the river of life the ideas come readily into consciousness, there are no resistances to be overcome, there is no force operating to prevent them from being realised. In the dream of the death of the old lady, however, it is quite different. This dream indicates a wish for the death of the mother. Here is an idea against which all the forces that have been developed by civilisation and culture rebel. Great energy is expended to prevent this idea from SYMBOLISM 89 becoming conscious, and so the symbolism distorts and disguises it so completely that it was not recog- nised by the dreamer who, as a matter of fact told it laughingly and without the slightest suspicion of its real meaning. The disguise here is intended to con- ceal the idea from the subject and it is only by psy- choanalytic methods that we can reach an under- standing of its meaning, a meaning which was at once suggested by the fact that the dreamer's mother had been mentally invalided for years. This fact, coupled with what we know of the infantile attitude towards the parents, makes the meaning at once clear. The unconscious in its anti-social and unconven- tional tendencies can only express itself in conscious- ness under the form of a symbolism, which at the same time effectually disguises the real meaning. It is, again, infantile in origin and represents the pleasure-pain motive for conduct as against the reality motive that comes to play a part of ever in- creasing importance as we grow older, and, as a race, more civilised. The interplay of these two motives and the resulting compromise is the source of the symbolism and all such symbolism seems to be without meaning, or to have a meaning other than its real one, to the subject. Conscious thinking is a function which has as its object to cut into the facts of reality — to adapt the individual to his environment by such a knowledge of reality as will enable him to effectively orient himself towards the real. We all wish for certain 90 CHARACTER FORMATION things. Primitive man and the child proceed, much more directly to the goal of their wishes than we do. If we want money, for example, the simplest way to get it is to take it. We have learned, however, that the existence of society demands that we can only take it in certain ways — as a reward for labour. If we attempt to get it otherwise we run counter to so- ciety, which proceeds to punish us accordingly, and so we learn to adapt ourselves to the necessities of the situation. The unconscious — the primitive and infantile mental rests — knows no such restraints, it would go direct to the goal, but by so doing would offend mortally that within us which has been built up by civilisation. Its demands may thus be anti- social and offensive to our conscious personality and then it can only play its part upon the stage under sufficient disguise not to be recognised. This dis- guise is the symbolism — a symbolism unrecognisable to the subject and so a means of defence, protecting him from a realisation that would be painful. The content of the unconscious, being essentially affective in nature — trends, tendencies, feelings, — can only receive expression in consciousness, which is preponderantly conceptual and ideational in con- tent, by a species of translation whereby the feeling qualities are expressed concretely. As the content of the unconscious is also composed of ways of think- ing and feeling which have been discarded, left be- hind in the development of the personality, such translated expressions are not understood by con- sciousness when they do appear. The unconscious SYMBOLISM 91 is relatively infantile and as the infantile is not use- ful to assist in adult adaptations, but is in fact a hindrance, its outcrop is not understood and if its suggestions are followed they lead to disaster. This repression of our past is a purely pragmatic affair to assist us in making new adaptations.^"^ It is for the purpose, as Mr. Benjamin Kidd would say, of ** projected efficiency '^ by the elimination of what would interfere with future adaptations.^^ This symbolism of the unconscious is the only symbolism in which the psychoanalyst is primarily interested and Ferenczi ^^ would restrict the use of the word symbol altogether to those symbols as get in consciousness a logically confused and ungrounded affect, which affective over-emphasis is due to an un- conscious identification with something else to which that affect really belongs. For him not all likenesses are symbols but only those that have one member of the equation repressed in the unconscious. The disguise is the greater the farther the indi- 17 "The cerebral mechanism is arranged just so as to drive back into the unconscious almost the whole of this past, and to admit beyond the threshold only that which can cast light on the present situation or further the action now being prepared — in short, only that which can give useful work." (Bergson: "Creative Evolu- tion.") "We trail behind us, unawares, the whole of our past; but our memory pours into the present only the odd recollection or two that in some way completes our present situation." (Bergson, op. cit.) 18 Cited by T. W. Mitchell : Role of Repression in Forgetting. British Jour. Psych., Vol. VII, No. 2, September, 1914. 19 S. Ferenczi : Zur Ontogenese der Symbole. Int. Zeit. f. Aerztliche Psychoan., Vol. I, p. 436. 92 CHARACTER FORMATION vidual has advanced on the path of cultural develop- ment, the greater and the deeper the mass of ma- terial that overlies the simple primitive instincts. The difficulty of interpreting the symbolism, which expresses the naive wishes of the unconscious, in- creases proportionately to the distance which sepa- rates the conscious from th^ unconscious way of thinking.^^ The unconscious, while in a sense strictly logical, is nevertheless quite uncritical. The finer relational distinctions belong only to the higher type of con- scious thinking. So in the unconscious, the simplest analogies stand easily for identities. Here we see then that reasoning, as we know it, does not enter at all, but just a play of crude analogies which are dramatised into an expression of wish-fulfilment. We are, therefore, quite prepared to find mother, wife, daughter used interchangeably in the symbol- ism of the unconscious, the one easily taking the place of and being interchangeable with the other. This is well shown in a case reported by MacCurdy.^^ Here the patient identified the child with the mother 20 Of course the distinction between conscious and unconscious must not be thought of as definite and clear cut. Clear cut dis- tinctions do not occur in nature. The growth of a conscious, re- lational way of thinking has been slow — a gradual development from a way of thinking that was affective; and so there must naturally exist intermediate forms in which the two ways of think- ing exist in varying proportions. 21 John T. MacCurdy: The Productions in a Manic-Like State Illustrating Freudian Mechanisms. N. Y. State Hospitals Bulletin, Aug., 1913. SYMBOLISM 93 and later represented the mother as the offspring of the child. In his phantasies he first married his mother, then himself, and finally his mother again as his own daughter. He changed into a woman, gave birth to a child and then was himself that child. His father is his wife 's husband, etc. All these changes, which so outrage our developed way of looking at things, can be understood when we realise that their motivating force is the unconscious and that the unconscious way of thinking is rela- tively infantile and affective. The child has not come to a comparative, relational way of thinking of the people who surround it. Its libido, its love goes out at first indifferently to the several people it comes in contact with, becoming finally more closely associated with those who stand in the closest rela- tions to it, who are more frequently and for a longer time present, and who serve it best by helping bring its wishes to gratification. When, in addition, we also bear in mind the energic concept of libido, when we realise that it is energy which becomes fixed now upon this now upon that person or thing as the field of interest moves here and there, we can realise how the love that goes in- differently to the mother, the father, the sister, may with equal indifference be symbolised by the one as by the other. This explanation also gives the key to many other of the very naive analogies which are sufficient for purposes of identification. Among the Saxons of 94 CHARACTER FORMATION Transylvania^^ when a woman is in labor all the knots of her garments are untied and all locks on doors or boxes are unlocked in the belief that by so doing her delivery will be facilitated. Here the libido, let us for the moment call it the interest, is centred upon the ease of delivery which will, of course, be facilitated by removing obstructions. Therefore everything is opened, obstructions are re- moved, knots are untied, labor will therefore be easy. Accept the analogy, remember that the sym- bols are symbols of that particular portion of the libido of the individual concerned with the desire to remove obstructions, and the conclusions are rigidly logical. The comparing of an obstruction in a string by a knot and an obstruction in the birth passage belongs to a higher type of thinking and so cannot enter here. We must not therefore criticise the results by this higher standard. The reasoning is understandable, may we not even say correct, so long as we remain at the lower level. This facile substitution of one person or thing for another with which it has but the faintest resem- blance shows us the mind operating free from Intel- lectual critique, stripped of all comparative and re- lational ways of thinking, guided along by feeling qualities. Are not its results quite as logical, quite as understandable, as long as we remain at the feel- ing level! In fact has it not a special validity of its own quite apart from the criteria of intelligence? 22 J. G. Frazer: "The Golden Bough" (3d ed.), Part II. Taboo and the Perils of the Soul, p. 294. SYMBOLISM 95 By means of our feelings do we not more nearly suc- ceed in ^^ attaching ourselves to the inner becoming of things," 2^ rather than *^ place ourselves outside them." Is there not here a distinction between in- tuition and intellect? such as Bergson makes when he says,^* ^^Intelligence remains the luminous nucleus around which instinct, even enlarged and purified into intuition, forms only a vague nebulosity. ' ' A reaction-time psychology which endeavours to reach an understanding of mental processes solely from such surface indications as the time interval between the reception of a stimulus and a given form of response is based upon a simplistic conception of the human mind. **In reality, the past is preserved by itself, automatically. In its entirety, probably, it follows us at every instant ; all that we have felt, thought and willed from our earliest infancy is there, leaning over the present which is about to join it, pressing against the portals of consciousness that would fain leave it outside. . . . Doubtless we think with only a small part of our past, but it is with our entire past, including the original bent of our soul, that we desire, will and act. Our past, then, as a whole, is made manifest to us in its impulse; it is felt in the form of tendency, although a small part of it only is known in the form of idea." ^^ Any particular act is an end product. It is pos- sible only because of all that has gone before. No 23 Bergson : "Creative Evolution." 24 lUd. 85 Bergson, loc. cit. 96 CHARACTER FORMATION thought, no word, no gesture but is an expression of the whole individual — never of just that limited por- tion which is present as conscious idea. Our conduct is therefore highly symbolic as expressive of that much larger portion of us, the unconscious, which exists as tendency, feeling. Keeping in mind the energic conception of the libido we can understand then that a symbol is an expression of ourselves. The particular person or thing is used as a symbol because it represents our way of thinking and feeling about the fact it stands for. It stands, therefore, for ourselves or so much of ourselves as is represented in our feeling attitude toward the thing symbolised. The patient who, in a dream, symbolises the sexual by a wild animal has not only made a symbol for sexuality, but has also expressed in that symbol an element of his own sex- uality which is recognised as wild. The use of objects and things in the environment as symbols is a most common manifestation in the psychoses. The ^ ^feeling of influence" in prsecox and the * delusion of persecution" in paranoid states are good examples. In both instances the patient symbolises certain elements of his own psyche which he recognises as *'bad" or destructive, by persons or forces outside of himself and then feels their evil influence as coming from those sources. In this way, among other things, he escapes responsibility for his bad thoughts and evil actions. But if he escapes re- sponsibility he does so at the cost of the definition of his personality. SYMBOLISM 97 In the course of development man has become pro- gressively more individual. From herding together like animals in groups where one person was the same as another, when human life had little value, and when the individual felt himself constantly bound by all sorts of mysterious ties to the natural objects about him, he has developed to a position of sharply defined individuality, in a group where the individual counts for vastly more, and far from feel- ing that he is mysteriously tied to the forces of na- ture he actually has dominated those forces. The praBCox who feels all sorts of mysterious in- fluences all about him, who hears voices in the walls or in the trees, who feels electric shocks pass through him from mysterious sources, is more like primitive man in that his individuality is less clearly defined, less clearly differentiated. His personality, by this process of introversion of the libido, becomes vastly greater in extent, but at the expense of clear defini- tion, for it merges in a misty haze of indistinctness into all surrounding nature. This is the psychologi- cal state and equivalent of animism. SEXUALITY OF SYMBOLISM One of the most widespread criticisms of the whole psychoanalytic movement has been that it gave an undue importance to the sexual and read sexuality into the meaning of everything. The importance of the sexual, I think, is coming to be generally recog- nised, but the reason why such a large number of the 98 CHARACTER FORMATION symbolisms should have a sexual meaning I do not think has been adequately dealt with. I have already pointed out ^^ that our unconscious represents our infantile and primitive moorings. We, so to speak, drag it behind us like a huge and heavy tail which is always weighing us down and making ascent difficult and only to be accomplished at the expenditure of great energy — ^work. But like the tail of a kite it serves to steady our flight and while it prevents rapid ascent it also keeps our move- ments from suddenly going off at tangents — it directs and guides. Without the tail the kite would shoot wildly first in this direction, then in that, with rapid changes of direction at sharp angles. With the tail the kite soars in gentle curves and while it may dip from time to time the general direction is maintained, the end result is the attainment of a higher alti- tude. The libido, when for any reason it is dammed up, when it no longer flows freely in self expression, tends to flow backward, to retrace the path along which it has come. Now it is the sexual which is the oldest avenue of libido expression, its path is more deeply channelled than any other, for it has to be kept open for race preservation. The libido finds its way out by this path more easily than by any other when its forward progress is blocked. Subli- mation only occurs at the expense of great energy and when the paths of sublimation are closed or blocked the libido reanimates its old familiar ways, 26 Chap. III. SYMBOLISM 99 flows in tlie old channels that had been largely or altogether abandoned. This phenomenon is precisely what we see in the neuroses. The neurotics are essentially moral per- sons, their conflicts are moral conflicts, but they often come to us, nevertheless, and we can see now why, complaining of and distressed by the grossly sexual character of their thoughts. Their libido has been unable to find its way out at higher levels of self- expression and drops back to lower levels. It is in- structive to note the concretely sexual character of a patient's dreams at the beginning of an analysis and then see how this characteristic slowly fades out as the analysis progresses. The symbolism of the dream becomes progressively more spiritualised and at the same time its meaning begins to be ap- parent to the patient, the repressions have been de- stroyed, the drag back of the unconscious is less in evidence, the dream takes place at a higher level, it is nearer to consciousness and therefore to conscious acceptance. With this conception we can understand too the bi- sexuality of sexual symbols. If the whole is given in all its parts, if the original manifestations of the creative energy, the libido, contain all the possibili- ties for its future ramifications in various and divers forms of sublimation, then we have only to go back far enough to see that it is not the male or the female element alone that constitutes the problem, but it is the problem of sexuality that occupies the patient and produces the symbolism. The classical symbol 100 CHARACTER FORMATION of the male, the phallus as represented by the ser- pent, we have only to analyse deeper to find in many cases at least, I do not say all, has also a certain significance for the female. This principle holds equally whether we accept the sexual as the funda- mental way of libido expression or whether we pre- fer to see the fundamental in Nietzsche's *^will to power" as adapted by Adler. From the time of birth on the libido is drafted first in this direction, then in that to serve the purposes of development. In certain directions, particularly the higher intellectual, it becomes highly sublimated so that it bears little evidence of its origin. A cer- tain portion, however, must remain attached to dis- tinctly sexual ends for the purpose of reproduction. In addition to the libido which is used for these purposes every one has a certain store of reserve energy which should be available for constructive work. It is the function of psychoanalysis to see to it that this energy is not tied down, fixed at low levels, that it is free to be used in constructive living. At the beginning of analysis this energy is found fixed at lower levels which, for the reasons already given, results in preoccupation with sexual matters. As the analysis proceeds its attachments to the sex- ual are loosed, it is made available for sublimation in higher ends, it becomes spiritualised. In fact, if we will look deeply into the meanings of the most concretely sexual symbolisms of our neu- rotic patients we will be able to read in them the efforts of the patients to escape their bondage to the SYMBOLISM 101 sexual. To accuse psyclioanalysis, therefore, of dealing too mucli with the sexual is obviously an un-^ informed criticism. It is not the fault of the analyst that the facts of development are as they are, while as a matter of fact the object of psychoanalysis is to free the energy from its crippling sexual moorings. Emerson 2"^ ** described our friends as those 'who make us do what we can.' We count on our friends to comfort us with pleasant things; to ad- minister a pleasant anodyne to us when life lays its burdens on us. He summoned them to awaken us out of sleep, to scourge us if necessary on the road to nobility.'' INTEKPRETATION" OF SYMBOLS We have thus come to see that man develops from a being that only feels to one that tries to use rea- son in all his mental operations. Symbols, that is, expressions or objects that stand for something else may do so only because of some analogy which they have to that which they stand for. The more patent the analogy the less we are apt to see the symbolic and conversely the wider the difference the more ready we are to acknowledge symbolism. When both terms are fully conscious all we see is a like- ness, analogy, metaphor, parable or what not. When one term is repressed and unconscious then the meaning is no longer evident, it is expressed symbolically. 27 Hamilton W. Mabie: Emerson's Journals. Outlook, Feb. 21, 1914. 102 CHARACTER FORMATION Whether or not, then, we see the symbolism of a given expression, for example, depends upon the closeness of analogy between the sign and the thing signified. The closer the analogy the less the sym- bolism and the less evident the analogy the more pronounced the symbolism. Symbolism, therefore, has to do with, must be considered in connection with, so-called reasoning by analogy. Reasoning by analogy is generally put down as be- ing bad reasoning. Without entering at length into a discussion of this point I venture the assertion that it not only is not bad reasoning but it is the basis of all reasoning. Jolm Fiske well says,^^ ^^A thing is said to be explained when it is classified with other things with which we are already acquainted. That is the only kind of explanation of which the highest science is capable." Reasoning by analogy reaches its perfection in mathematics. When, for ex- ample, the calculation of the astronomer as to the ex- act location of a planet at a given time turns out to be true it is because the calculation and the fact have attained to a degree of likeness which we term identity.29 28 "Myths and Myth-Makers." 29 "It is through the operation of certain laws of ideal associa- tion that all human thinking, that of the highest as well as that of the lowest minds, is conducted: the discovery of the law of gravita- tion, as well as the invention of such a superstition as the Hand of Glory, is at bottom but a case of association of ideas. The differ- ence between the scientific and the mythologic inference consists solely in the number of checks which in the former case combine to prevent any other than the true conclusion from being framed into a proposition to which the mind assents. Countless accumulated SYMBOLISM 103 The progress of mental development, conditioned by the conflict between the pleasure-pain and the re- ality motives, is progressively from an aifective to an intellectual control of conduct. In primitive man and the child, whose conduct is wholly atfectively controlled, the vaguest analogies serve as identities which are subjected in the course of development to ever increasingly rigid controls out of which finally arise the concepts of cause and effect based upon experimental verification. The nearer we approach an intellectually con- trolled situation the more individual is the material with which we must deal, while the further we are experiences have taught the modern that there are many associa- tions of ideas which do not correspond to any actual connection of cause and effect in the world of phenomena; and he has learned accordingly to apply to his newly framed notions the rigid test of verification. Besides which the same accumulation of experiences has built up an organised structure of ideal associations into which only the less extravagant newly framed notions have any chance of fitting. The primitive man, or the modern savage who is to some extent his counterpart, must reason without the aid of these multifarious checks. That immense mass of associations which an- swer to what are called physical laws, and which in the mind of the civilised modern have become almost organic, have not been formed in the mind of the savage; nor has he learned the necessity of experimentally testing any of his newly framed notions, save per- haps a few of the commonest. Consequently there is nothing but superficial analogy to guide the course of his thought hither or thither, and the conclusions at which he arrives will be determined by associations of ideas occurring apparently at haphazard. Hence the quaint or grotesque fancies with which European and barbaric folk-lore is filled, in the framing of which the myth-maker was but reasoning according to the best methods at his command." — John Fiske: "Myths and Myth-Makers." 104 CHARACTER FORMATION from an intellectually controlled situation and cor- respondingly the nearer to a completely affectively controlled one, the more the material with which we deal tends to be the common possession of humanity. A patient dreams of something happening near the corner of a house. On the corner of this house the water and waste pipes are^ arranged in a cer- tain way that identifies the house as his country residence. This mental content, namely, the knowl- edge of the peculiar arrangement of the water and waste pipes on a particular house is his indi- vidual possession. But when we see demented pa- tients of all nationalities all over the world, of both sexes, of all social grades, dabbling in their urine and feces, soiling themselves with it, bathing them- selves in it and rubbing it on their bodies, even drink- ing and eating it, not to say developing more distinct ceremonials,^^ we must acknowledge that we are dealing with conduct which is motivated by factors which are a very long way from being individual. The very wide distribution of such conduct, under certain conditions of mental disease, would alone in- dicate that it was controlled by factors that at least very closely approached being racial if they were not actually so. In the matter of interpreting symbols we are con- trolled by the same principles. To see in baptism a ceremonial bath in holy water as a purification 30 See in this connection S. E. Jelliffe and Zenia X : Compul- sion Neurosis and Pi'imitive Culture. The Psychoanalytic Review^ Vol. I, No. 4, October, 1914. SYMBOLISM 105 from sin for which a state of mind of repentance and remorse is a necessary precondition is a valid interpretation so far as it goes, but it does not dip below the conscious level. This may be said of a whole host of interpretations such as the plan of the Gothic Cathedral as the form of the cross, the tri- forium gallery with its reduplication of three as the Trinity, the Dove as the Holy Spirit, the spiritual union with God in taking the eucharist, etc. These are all superficial interpretations. If we should go a little further, however, we would find an interpretation not quite so evident, but yet a considerable ways from having one term in the unconscious. For example Durandus ^^ thus gives the significance of the cement used in building a church. **The cement, without which there can be no stabil- ity of the walls, is made of lime, sand, and water. The lime is fervent charity, which joineth to itself the sand, that is, undertakings for the temporal wel- fare of our brethren: because true charity taketli care of the widow and the aged, and the infant, and the infirm : and they who have it study to work with their hands, that they may possess wherewith to benefit them. Now the lime and the sand are bound together in the wall by an admixture of water. But water is an emblem of the Spirit. And as without cement the stones cannot cohere, so neither can man be built up in the heavenly Jerusalem without char- 31 William Durandus: "The Symbolism of Churches and Church Ornaments." London, Gibbings & Company, 1906. 106 CHARACTER FORMATION ity, which the Holy Ghost worketh in them. All the stones are polished and squared — that is, holy and pure, and are built by the hands of the Great Work- man into an abiding place in the Church: whereof some are borne, and bear nothing, as the w^eaker members: some are both borne and bear, as those of moderate strength : and some bear, and are borne of none save Christ, the corner-stone, as they that are perfect. All are bound together by one spirit of charity, as though fastened with cement; and those living stones are knit together in the bond of peace. Christ was our wall in His conversation: and our outer wall in His Passion.'' This is an example of anagogic interpretation. And finally : A patient dreams that she is delayed in going to say good-bye to her father by a young man whom she meets on the way. Analysis shows that this young man stood in her mind for the orig- inal affective state that bound her in her affections to her father and therefore symbolises an incest phantasy which in its broader meanings means that her way of thinking, as symbolised by the young man, was a way of thinking which fixed her to her infan- tile moorings to the family and served to keep her a child and from going on in her development to adulthood. This is (very briefly, of course) a psy- choanalytic interpretation where one term of the symbolism, the fixation on the father, is in the un- conscious. When we deal with the symbolism of the uncon- scious we are dealing with a matter that is never in- SYMBOLISM 107 dividual and in the proportion that we sound the ul- timate depths of the unconscious do we approach a symbolism which is universal in its meaning. The more nearly a symbolism has universal mean- ing the more right we have to interpret it without appeal to the individual while the further we get from the depths of the unconscious, the nearer we approach the surface, the more individualistic do the meanings become and the more necessary it is to ap- peal to the subject for their meaning. In actual work, however, this appeal to the indi- vidual is practically always necessary because, no matter how profound and universal the meaning may be, it is always clothed in the individual's personal experiences. This, of course, must be so. The in- dividual is limited in the forms of his expression by the actual, available material in his own psyche. This material, however, can only be understood when we appreciate that its source is the individual's historical past — the unconscious — and when we at the same time appreciate that this historical past is made up not only of the past of the individual but the past of the phylum. In other words, the mind has its embryology and its comparative anatomy; its ontogenesis and its phylogenesis; just like the body, and just like the body, too, many of its disor- ders can only be understood in the light of its history. The patient who patted her father on the cheek and called herself his mother and him **her little David'' was thinking in a wholly infantile way, while the patient who says, *^I am both male and female 108 CHARACTER FORMATION in sex, with one mind and body controlling both, I have to be one to be the father and creator of the various races and elements of the human organisa- tion," is expressing ideas that hark back to ways of thinking that are older than the individual — he is expressing archaic delusions. This latter patient, in this utterance, reminds one of ^ the Arddha Nari in- carnation of Brahma who in the act of creation be- came both male and female. ^^The Supreme Spirit in the act of creation became, by Voga, two-fold, the right side was male, the left was Prakriti. She is of one form with Brahma. She is Maya, eternal and imperishable, such as the Spirit, such is the inherent energy (The Sacti), as the faculty of burning is in- herent in fire.'' — Brahma Vaivartta Puranu, Pro- fessor Wilson.^2 THE PHYLOGENETIC MEAInTIN-G AND THE ENEKGIC VALUE OF THE SYMBOL Ferenczi's use of the term symbol to apply to like- nesses that have one member of the equation re- pressed in the unconscious is purely pragmatic and for psychoanalytic purposes only. The whole sub- ject of symbolism and the meaning of symbols would be very greatly and artificially contracted by such a viewpoint. To see the real breadth and sound the real depths of the subject it is important that we should not be content to remain moored to the thera- peutic problem of the neuroses. As soon as we get 32 Thomas Inman : "Ancient Pagan and Modern Christian Sym- bolism." New York, T. W. Bouton, 1884. SYMBOLISM 109 away from this standpoint we see at once that every word, every idea may properly be considered as sym- bolic, — the idea symbolises in mental imagery the thing in the outside world and the word symbolises^ the idea. From this point of view all of our think- ing takes place by the use of symbols and then it follows, from the very principles of development, that in the last analysis they must all have their roots in the unconscious. Animal reactions, more particularly those of man, may be conveniently considered as occurring at three levels, with the usual understanding that here as elsewhere there are no hard and fast boundaries. The first or phylogenetically the oldest is the physico- chemical level. Broadly speaking this is the level of such functions as circulation, growth, digestion. It is the level of the endocrinous glands and the sympathetic and autonomic nervous systems and is well represented by the chemical regulators of metab- olism. The next level is the sensori-motor level in- tegrated by the peripheral nerves, spinal cord and brain stem. It is the level of the reflex. The third level is the psychic. At this level we are no longer dealing with questions of leverage, hydrodynamics or temperature, with acids, bases, or hormones, nor yet with simple or compound reflexes or nerve cells, nerve fibres or synapses. Here we are dealing with symbols and symbols only and so this level may aptly be further qualified as the symbolic level. Is there anything that these levels possess in com- mon? and what has been the advantage in proceeding 110 CHARACTER FORMATION from one to tlie other in the course of develop- ment ! The long bone which, as a lever, is moved by a muscle transmits energy from one place to another in the form of motion and changes the direction of that motion. In the process much of the energy, in the last analysis- all of it, is transformed into heat, chemical energy, etc. The chemical regulators of metabolism carry energy from one place to another which is transformed in the various resulting chem- ical reactions. The sensori-motor nervous system, the reflex arc, is a transmitter of motion which it also transforms: for example one effect of illumination of the retina is contraction of the pupil. At the symbolic level a symbol, such as patriotism, is ca- pable of transmitting and transforming an enormous amount of energy into very numerous and complex avenues of conduct of individuals and nations. That the organism is a transmitter and trans- former of energy, will be fairly evident so long as we limit consideration to the physico-chemical and sensori-motor levels, but when we come to apply this same principle to the psychic, or as I have already designated it, the symbolic level, it is not so evident because we are not in the habit of thinking in such terms. Its application here will therefore bear further illustration. Let us take as an example the national flag. That the flag is a symbol needs no argument. It stands for, represents, symbolises, the nation. That is al- most all that can be said for it in general, but further SYMBOLISM 111 than that it stands in each individual's thinking for what the nation means to him. The idea of the na- tion, itself a symbol, means one thing to one person, another thing to another person. To one it means protection, to another community of interests, to still another a certain geographical area ; to one it stands for a military unit, to another it means right, honour, loyalty, etc. Every individual gives his own par- ticular touch to the concept nation, and so for him the flag has that special meaning. And yet with all this infinite diversity the flag is able to unite all that is held in common, all these various ideas and feel- ings meet on a common basis which is nucleated in the national emblem and at large gatherings of peo- ple one can see how they are swayed by it, how in one common sea of feeling they all react in practically the same way, with the same feelings, the same emo- tions, the same sounds as they sing a national an- them. There is no need to dilate upon the obvious and more than mention the immense amount of en- ergy which may thus be liberated; the particular point of emphasis, however, is that in some way this enormous energy is bound up in the symbol. The symbol is a transmitter and transmuter of energy at this level just as the reflex arc, the ion, or the lever are at lower levels. So much for the answer to the question as to whether the three reaction levels possess anything in common. They all then present reactions which are different ways of transmitting and transmuting energy. Now, why has the symbol been found of 112 CHARACTER FOEMATION special advantage in the course of development? To facilitate the argument this question may be an- swered at once. It is because of the wide latitude of usefulness the symbol has both as a carrier and transmuter of energy, and also because it can be used as a vehicle to transmit energy from a lower to a higher level. To illustrate: First as to the wide latitude of usefulness of the symbol. Consider the symbol money for example. Money represents accumulated energy. Work of whatever character, unintelligent physical labour or highly intellectual, is reduced to the common stand- ard of money value and so the energy which an indi- vidual has to give in the form of work he, so to speak, turns into the energy symbol money and this symbol can be exchanged for any one of innumer- able kinds of energy carriers — for bread and meat, for machinery for manufacturing purposes, for books of learning, for maintaining a home, in short for an infinity of things which have as their func- tion the maintenance and preservation of the indi- vidual and the increase and extension of his power and influence. Money as a symbol of energy which could be ex- changed in trade has existed from the earliest times. The energy has been concretely represented by all sorts of things from the crude forms of primitive man, the shells, beads, and wampum to the highly elaborated gold and silver coins and bills of the pres- ent day. The underlying principle, the common meaning, the unconscious origin has always been the SYMBOLISM 113 same. It would be hard to imagine a more adjust- able, usable, practically available energy transmit- ter and one at once so sensitive to all the circum- stances in the midst of which it exists. Witness the fluctuations of foreign exchange in response to ru- mours affecting the possible solvency of a nation. Money, however, is not the only symbol that has these qualities of easy availability — an energy trans- mitter coupled with great sensitiveness of reaction. In fact if we will examine any symbol we will find it to have much the same properties, such symbols for example as birth and death, good and bad, society, culture, education, character, etc. The symbol God, for example, has stood for concepts all the way from the crudest anthropomorphism to the most abstruse and abstract present-day conceptions of a first cause or the absolute. This same symbol has been able to follow along with the development of man's religious consciousness ever remaining deli- cately attuned to his stage of development and serv- ing to express him in his reactions. Herein we see the most important function, the greatest value of the symbol. It is not only a transmitter of energy but it is capable of transmitting energy from a lower to a higher level. In the evolution of the concept God the same symbol has been continuously employed but the energy has been employed at progressively higher and higher levels. The symbol has been capable of this wide field of usefulness in this pe- culiarly valuable way. To add an illustration in the field of therapeusis. The patient that Dr. Kempf 114 CHARACTER FORMATION recently reported.^^ This woman had what the pure Freudians would call an incest complex. In other words she had been forced back upon and in herself by her circumstances which did not permit of ade- quate outlet for self-expression. Shut off from find- ing expression in the outside world she was driven back upon herself — introversion — to ever lower in- stinctive levels in her effort at finding satisfaction, pleasure. Finally, in the delirium of her psychosis, she found an outlet in bringing again upon the stage her infantile satisfactions in her relation to and love for her father. The symbol ^^father" carried over the energy of her libido and permitted her to find expression. The important thing therapeutically is that this same symbol was effective as a carrier of energy to higher levels which resulted in her recov- ery. The energy bound up in the symbol ^^ father'' was carried over to the concept * * Heavenly Father ' ' and she thus was able to emerge from a condition of infantile helplessness to one of social utility by developing a distinctly religious type of reaction — by sublimation. In the lower forms of life and at the phylogeneti- cally older reacting levels of the human organism the reactions are relatively more fixed, they occur within much narrower limits of variation, they are more predictable and less adjustable and variable. The physical are the most rigid, some of them even being so constant as to be reducible to mathematical formu- lae; the chemical though less rigidly restricted still 33 The Psychoanalytic Review, Vol. II, No. IV, Oct., 1915. SYMBOLISM 115 show relatively little capacity for adjustment and variation; this continues true but to less extent of the reactions of the sensori-motor level. The living organism in its evolution is ever striv- ing to gain dominion over its environment and in this struggle for dominance organisms are developed which become increasingly adaptable and adjustable to the constantly changing conditions of that environ- ment. In the course of this evolution chemical rad- icals, hormones, reflexes, and a host of other physical, chemical, and nervous agents have been utilised as transmitters and transmuters of energy and have each in turn been superseded. Though some have been more adjustable than others they have all lacked a capacity for variability which made indefinite ad- vance in the control of the environment possible. The symbol has finally been developed as the energy carrier because it possesses these properties. The symbol only comes under consideration at conscious levels, at levels of reaction which are so complex, which present so many possibilities that physical, chemical or reflex nervous reactions, be- cause of their relatively stereotyped character, are no longer available. Consciousness is an expression of reactions which at least appear to be indeterminate and at these levels the idea, as symbol, takes the place of the hormone or the reflex at lower levels as the carrier of energy. The idea is therefore a sym- bolic reaction at the conscious level at which the symbol is the energy distributor. The conception of the psyche as energy with a > 116 CHARACTER FORMATION history, not only individual but racial, serves to re- late it more easily with the body, especially in these later years, when the ultimate particles of matter are being thought of as points of stress in the ether. Our psychological concepts are therefore only sym- bols for various stations in the process of energy distribution and we can see kow such a dynamic psychology may serve to finally solve that pseudo- problem, the relation of mind and body, by break- ing down the artificial barrier between them. CHAPTER VI DREAM MECHANISMS Up to this point we have dealt with the broad general questions which have been necessary in order to define the placement of the psyche in the evolu- tional scheme and outline in a general way its depend- ence upon and development from pre-psychic types of reaction. In other words we have dealt with the nature of the material that goes into the types of reaction which we call psychological. The next step in the logical unfoldment of the scheme of presenta- tion will be the formulation of the various mechan- isms which are utilised at the psychic or symbolic level in dealing with the two-fold problem of in- tegration and adjustment. This aspect of the prob- lem can be most satisfactorily approached by a study of the mechanisms of dreams in which we see the various psychological types of reaction peculiarly emphasised because of the exaggerated activity of the unconscious terms which tend during sleep to come to a relatively extreme form of activity and to elude the ordinary corrections of intellectual critique. Of course, dreams, we know, have pretty gen- erally been regarded as of no importance, as foolish jumbles, as grotesque though perhaps interesting, and often as depending upon conditions just preced- 117 118 CHARACTER FORMATION ing or during sleep. This latter has been about as far as the attempt to explain has usually gone. For example, a person dreams he is in the Arctic regions because he has kicked the bed clothes off and is cold. The simple question why he should dream of being in the Arctic regions rather than at home in the winter or in a cold storage plani or a thousand other cold places shows at once the inadequacy of such an explanation. To put the whole matter very simply: the ma- terial of which the dream is composed must neces- sarily be made up of the content of the dreamer's psyche and there must be some sufficient reason why it is put together in one particular way rather than in another. To fail to accept these propositions is the equivalent of acknowledging that the dream may be wholly fortuitous which again is tantamount to denying the possibility of a scientific psychology. Dreams are psychic events, and like all other psychic events they are end products which can only reach their complete explanation by knowing all that has gone before. If we take up their study in this spirit, that they are phenomena — natural phenomena — and therefore are proper objects for scientific investiga- tion rather than just nonsense to be dismissed with- out even examining their credentials we shall soon see that they are filled with meanings, often of the most important character for an understanding of the individual and his problems. We think in one of two different ways : first by the method with which we are all familiar and to which DREAM MECHANISMS 119 the term thinking is almost exclusively applied. In this method of thinking there is clear consciousness in the sense that the person is definitely oriented to- ward reality and the thinking is carried on with the exercise of careful critique and under the control of the processes which we term intellectual. Such clear conscious intelligent thinking has its motivating incentives in reality. There is another kind of thinking, however, which is very different from that just described. It is the thinking which takes place without conscious direc- tion or critique, the thinking in which ideas follow one another without selection, coming and going without apparent reason, and corresponding, not at all, with any relation between the individual and reality. This is the kind of thinking that takes place during dreaming, either during the dream of sleep, or during day dreaming, at times of mental abstraction and so-called wool gathering, and the thoughts which come at such times we no longer call thoughts, but phantasies. What is the significance of this thinking by phan- tasy formation? To understand this we must turn back for the moment to what has been said of the pain-pleasure and the reality motives for conduct, the conflict, and the nature of the unconscious and the conscious and realise that mental life is the re- sult of an effort to bring the individual into more effectual adaptation with his environment and that if we will glance for a moment over the life of the individual from the period of the first few weeks, 120 CHARACTER FORMATION when the principal motive in life is nutritional, to the time of adulthood with all its conflicts and social demands, we will realise that in the process of adjust- ment which has necessarily taken place in the inter- val there has of necessity had to be put aside, more and more, as the demands from the outside increased, the immediate satisfaction of the demands which clamour for recognition from within. And so the process of adaptation has of necessity to have been one of compromise, compromise between the pleasure motive which would demand the immediate satisfac- tion of all bodily cravings and the reality motive which puts off fulfilment into an ever receding fu- ture of the demands of the present and insistent world of reality. The world of phantasy, therefore, the world of dreams, is dominated not by the reality motive, but by the pleasure motive, in other words the uncon- scious, that can only wish. It is for this reason that phantasy formations, whether they occur in the sleep- ing or in the waking state and whether they be termed dreams or visions or what not, are funda- mentally wish-fulfilling.^ 1 The term wish is used here in a very broad sense. If I put out my hand to move a chair my hand meets with resistance. This resistance might, by analogy, be termed the wish of the chair not to be moved. The unconscious represents our moorings to the past and effort to go forward is met by its resistance which has first to be overcome. It represents infantile ways of satisfaction which the individual would fain hang on to, is loth to give up. This is the aspect of the unconscious which is referred to when it is said that the unconscious can only wish. DREAM MECHANISMS 121 We therefore see at the outset conflict at the very- root of dreams and realising the nature of this con- flict we should not be surprised when we find an in- dividual unable to measure up to the demands of the real world, sinking back into his own world, the world of phantasy, the world where things come true as he would wish them, escaping from the de- mands of real life, and taking flight into this region either in his dreams, or, as we shall see later, perhaps in a psychosis.^ The whole question of the meaning of reality and of phantasy particularly as related to dreaming is especially well brought out in the Papyri of Phi- lonous.^ The dialogue is between Protagoras and Morosophus and proceeds as follows : P. ... As to your other question, did you ever meet Xanthias, the son of Glaucus? M. Yes, but he seemed to me a very ordinary man and quite unfit to aid in such inquiries. P. To me he seemed most wonderful, and a great proof of the truth I have maintained. For the wretch was actually unable to distinguish red from green, the colour of grass from that of blood ! You may imagine how he dressed, and how his taste was derided. But it was his eye and not his taste, that was in fault. I questioned him closely and am sure 2 "Aristotle says somewhere : '\^'Tien we are awake we have a common world, when we dream each one has his own!' I think this last should be turned about and we should say: When, among men, one has his o^vn world, then it is to be presumed that he dreams." Kant. 3 Previously referred to in Chap. I. 122 CHARACTER FORMATION he could not help it. He simply saw colours dif- ferently. How and why I was not able to make out. But it was from his case and others like it, but less startling, that I learnt that truth and reality are to each man what appears to him. For the differences, I am sure, exist, even though they are not noticed unless they are very great and inconvenient. M. But surely Xanthias was diseased, and his judgments about colours are of no more importance than those of a madman. P. You do not get rid of the difference by calling it madness and disease. And how would you define the essential nature of madness and disease? M. I am sure I do not know. You should ask Asclepius. P. Ah, he is one of those gods I have never been able to meet! Let me hazard, rather, a conjecture that madness and disease are merely two ways of showing inability to keep up that common world in which we both are and are not, and from which we seem to drop out wholly when we die. M. A strange conjecture truly for a strange case ! Would you apply it also to disease? For in that case the difficulty seems to be rather in conforming oneself to things than to one's fellow-men. P. To both, rather. Does not a fever drive one madly out of the common world into a world of empty dreams? And is not the diseased body part of the common world? M. Perhaps, but such conjectures do not interest DREAM MECHANISMS 123 me. Will you not rather give an account of your own disease or madness, that of thinking that the common world can be compounded out of a multi- tude of individual worlds? P. Willingly. Conceive then first of all a varied multitude, each of whom perceived things in a fashion peculiar to himself. M. You bid me conceive a world of madmen ! P. It does not matter what you call them, nor that our world was never in so grievous a condition. I only want you to see that such madmen would in no wise be able to agree or act together, and that •each would live shut up in himself, unintelligible to the others and with no comprehension of them. M. Of course. P. Would you admit also that such a life would be one of the extremest weakness? M. So weak as to be impossible ! P. Perhaps. And now suppose that by the in- terposition of some god, or as the saying is, ^*by a divine chance," some of these strange beings were to be endowed with the ability to agree and act to- gether in some partial ways, say in respect to the red and the sweet, and the loud and the pleasant. Would this not be a great advantage? And would they not be enabled to join together and to form a community in virtue of the communion they had achieved? And would they not be stronger by far than those who did not ** perceive the same"? And so would they not profit in proportion as they could 124 CHAEACTER FORMATION ** perceive the same"? and would not a world of ** common'' perception and thought thus gradually grow up ? M. Only if they really did perceive the same : to ^* agree in action'' and to ^^ perceive the same" are not the same, and when you have reached the former you have not proved the latter. ^ P. As much as I need to. For by ** perceiving the same ' ' I mean only perceiving in such a way that we can act together. Thus if we are told that a red light means ^^ danger" and a green light ** assist- ance," then if we both flee from the red and wel- come the green, we are said to *^ perceive the same." But whether what I perceive as red is in any other sense *Hhe same" as what you perceive as red, it is foolish even to inquire. For I cannot carry my **red" into your soul nor you yours into mine, and so we cannot compare them, nor see how far they are alike or not. And even if I could, my comparing of my *'red" with yours would not be the same as your comparing them. Moreover, if we imagined, what to me indeed is absurd but to you should be possible, namely, that when I perceive *^red" I feel as you do when you perceive ** green" and that your feeling when you perceive **red" is the same as mine when I perceive ** green," there would be no way of show- ing that we did not perceive alike. For we should always agree in distinguishing *^red" and ^^ green." The '^sameness," therefore, is not the cause of the common action, but its effect. Or rather it is an- DREAM MECHANISMS 125 other way, less exact, but shorter, of asserting it. And so there arises the opinion that we all perceive alike, and that if any one does not, he is mad. Now this is true as opinion, being as it is convenient and salutary, and enough for ordinary life. But for the purposes of science we must be more precise, and regard ^^ perception of the same" not as a starting point, but as a goal, which in some matters we have almost, and for some purposes we have quite reached. •In short, we always at bottom reason from the ^ ' com- mon'' action to the ** common'' perception, and not conversely. Hence, too, when we wish to speak ex- actly, we must infer that no two ever quite *^ per- ceive the same," because their actions never quite agree. Moreover, this makes clear why we agree about some things and judge the same, and not about others, but judge differently. We agree about the things it is necessary to agree about in order to live at all; we vary concerning the things which are not needed for bare life, even though they may conduce to a life that is beautiful and good. But it is only when we do not act at all that we are able to live our own private life apart, and to differ utterly from all others. M. And what, pray, is this strange life in which we do not act ? P. Do you not remember the saying of Heracli- tus, *^For the waking there is one common world, but of those asleep each one turns aside to his own privacy"? And do you suppose that if we acted on A 126 CHARACTER FORMATION our dreams, we could with impunity do what we dream? Is it not merely because we lie still, and do not stir, that we can indulge our fancies 1 This dialogue sets forth an excellent point of view for differentiating the world of reality from the world of phantasy. It makes the differentiation on the basis of the criterion of actron. Ellis has said,^ ** Dreams are real while they last; can we say more of life?" It may be said that the world of dreams is a real world but it is not a world of reality. The distinction is fundamental. Eeality calls forth ac- tion by the organism as a whole. It is analogous to the distinction that Sherrington^ draws as between the sense of taste and the sense of smell. Taste is an interoceptive sense which calls forth visceral re- sponses while smell, to the extent that it is an ex- teroceptive sense calls forth acts of locomotion for the purpose of relating the body to the source of the odour, moving the body towards or away from that source. It will be advantageous at this point to describe the dream mechanisms in the main as laid down by the epoch making work of Freud, ^*Die Tram- deutung."^ These interpretations have been elab- orated and worked over to a considerable extent but remain, in the main, as he formulated them. 4 Cited by P. G. Stiles: "The Nervous System and Its Conserva- tion." W. B. Saunders Company, Philadelphia, 1914. 5 Cited by C. J. Herrick : "An Introduction to Neurology, W. B. Saunders Company, Philadelphia, 1915. 6 Eng. trans, by A. A. Brill: "The Interpretation of Dreams," The Macmillan Company, New York, 1913. DREAM MECHANISMS 127 The dream always, nearly, uses as the material through which it expresses its meaning the experi- ences of the last waking state and it is largely be- cause of this fact that so many psychologists have insisted and still insist that the dream is the result of sensory experiences and can be modified by sen- sory stimuli more or less at will, as for example, the man who kicks the bed clothes otf at night and dreams of being in the Arctic regions. This is an example of the familiar fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc. The reason why the dream uses the material of the last waking state is perfectly plain. Something in the previous waking period by asso- ciational relationship has touched an important com- plex in the individual, stirred it into activity, which activity is expressed in the phantasy formation of the dream of that night. The process may be com- pared to the vibration of the A string on the piano. If one holds a vibrating A tuning fork over the harp it is the A string and only the A string which vi- brates, not the G nor the C, but only the A vibrates in harmony with the tuning fork. So when some event in the previous waking experience, so to speak, vibrates in harmony with some fact of great im- portance buried beneath the threshold of conscious- ness then that mental fact is stirred into activity, and that is why when it forms phantasies it uses the material which brought it into being. One of my patients had a dream that took him back to his youth and to a setting in which important matters, emo- tionally, took place in his child life. In the dream 128 CHARACTER FORMATION he saw a grey fox, that was one of the central visuali- sations of the dream drama, but in his childhood days, although he had seen many foxes, he had never seen a grey fox. He had however seen red foxes. How does the fox of the dream come to be grey? He had been to the zoological park on the dream day and there seen grey foxes. Now is it not easy to see why? Because the fox stirred up an important as- sociation of emotional significance in his youth it started him to dream and although he had never seen other than a red fox in his youth the dream fox was grey because it was a grey fox the day before that had started the associations that stirred up the material out of which his dream was formed. The first thing that impresses us about the dream, when we come to examine its content, is its appar- ent triviality. If the dream as a matter of fact does deal with important matters in the life of the indi- vidual then the expressions it makes use of must be highly symbolic, i.e., must stand for some meaning other than their apparent meaning. This is true. The dream is symbolic in the sense of Ferenczi, namely, its origin is the unconscious. This we will understand when we realise that the dream is an excursion into the world of phantasy, the world of unreality, the world where the pleasure motive dom- inates. Now the pleasure motive as we have seen is opposed to the reality motive. Therefore if it is to come upon the stage and play its part it can only do so under the penalty of wearing a more or less com- plete disguise. The function of the dream is, in part DREAM MECHANISMS 129 at least, to conserve sleep. And so the play of the pleasure motive must be sufficiently disguised so as not to awaken the dreamer. The pleasure motive, it will be seen, has been repressed as the reality mo- tive has come to the foreground, and therefore it is the repressed expressions of the pleasure motive that come forward to expression in the dream. In other words the dream is wish-fulfilling, as we have seen, and it also contains, as a rule, the expression of some mental fact which in the waking life has been repressed. For example: A gentleman told me that he awoke with a consciousness of having been dreaming, but he could not remember any of the dream. He only had a conviction that he had either used or heard used during the dream the word ^* diathesis." Now he said he had never heard the word ^^ diathesis,'' in fact so far as he knew there was no such word, so he felt that he must be mistaken and that the word was probably ^^dieresis." He immediately got up and went to the dictionary to see whether there was such a word as *^ diathesis.'' I asked him what he found the word *^ diathesis" to mean and he said ^'a tendency to disease." I asked him what ^'dieresis" meant and he said that ^^diere- sis" was the mark that one made in writing indi- cating that something had been left out. Of course this is not the true meaning, but the significant thing is that it was the meaning to him. In the light of a little additional information the meaning of the dream became clear. The dreamer had been ill. The illness pointed pretty directly to the kidney as 130 CHARACTER FORMATION the offending organ and he had been afraid that he had a tendency to kidney disease. This fear he had repressed, had refused to look it squarely in the face and to regulate his life accordingly, but had pre- ferred to act as if no such tendency existed, thereby endeavouring to delude himself into the belief that no such tendency in fact did exist. The dream shows the true state of affairs, shows his fear of kidney disease, the repression of this fear, and the wish that his ^^ diathesis," so to speak, might be eliminated, left out, which is the meaning that ^^dieresis'^ had for him. And so again in a simple dream fragment like this we get instantly, directly, and in a few mo- ments right at the heart of the question. We find out exactly the thing that is worrying him, worrying him so much in fact that to one who knew him it was perfectly apparent that something had gone wrong. It will be seen in this dream that the symbolism serves a very definite purpose, namely it clothes the dream in a language which is illogical to the dreamer. It therefore conserves sleep and permits the wish- fulfilling play to go on under such a disguise that the sleeper is not disturbed. The superficial aspect of the dream as the dreamer himself sees it and as he relates it is the manifest content of the dream. While the deeper meaning that lies behind the mani- fest content and which comes out when one is able to read the language of the dream is the latent con- tent and contains the true meaning of the dream. The change of the latent content into the material DEEAM MECHANISMS 131 of the manifest content is accompanied with a great deal of distortion, and the symbolisms in the above example serve the purpose of this distortion of the latent content so that it is not recognised by the dreamer in the manifest content. Another important mechanism of distortion is dis- placement. This mechanism results in displacing the emotion from the place where it belongs to some other element of the dream and thus serving to dis- guise the true meaning. A patient, for example, dreamt that she was pushed by a man off the edge of a precipice at the base of which was a mass of writhing serpents. In relating this dream the im- pression was derived that she had been very much frightened, but on analysis quite the contrary de- veloped. There had been no special feeling of fear at all. The falling from the precipice into the mass of serpents was symbolic of a moral fall and should have created a great amount of emotion, but no such emotion existed in the dream, and therefore the dream is distorted to that extent and the possibility of its true meaning being known by the dreamer is greatly interfered with. The telling of the dream, however, which led to the impression that great fear had as a matter of fact been experienced was the result of another mechanism, namely the mechanism of secondary elaboration. After the dreamer awoke and remembered the dream, the dream naturally ap- peared senseless unless the emotion of fear or horror were attached to the experience, and therefore the waking consciousness in order to make the whole 132 CHARACTER FORMATION thing appear logical attached the appropriate emo- tion where it belonged, giving meaning to what was otherwise without meaning. In describing the above mechanisms of dream formation it has been seen how the latent content is disguised before it is permitted to appear in the manifest content. This disguiseas brought about by what Freud terms the endopsycMc censor of con- sciousness. The censor permits only certain expres- sions to get into the dream. The thoughts of the patient can appear only under certain restrictions and under certain disguises. The distortion, the displacement, the symbolisation serve the purposes of this disguise. It must not be thought, however, that it is simply necessary to read the symbols of the dream in order to understand fully the latent content. The dream is a tremendous condensation of a vast amount of material, and all of the elements as they appear in the manifest content of the dream are determined from many sources — they are over determined. For example, an individual may appear in the dream who is entirely unknown to the dreamer, a person who does not look like any one he has ever seen be- fore. An analysis of the dream, however, may show that if the characteristics of this person are sepa- rately considered each of them belongs to a person known to the dreamer and that the dream person therefore is a sort of composite of these several char- acters which are united in this way to serve the pur- DREAM MECHANISMS 133 poses of the dream. An example will illustrate some of these mechanisms. The patient dreamt that she was in a place of amusement, something like a circus, where there were crowds of people. She met many strange people, among others, a young lady to whom she took quite a fancy, and who invited her to stop in her home on the way back from the fair. She met there this young lady^s mother, and they were very pleasant and nice to her, so that she in turn invited the young lady to a party at her house. She seemed to be liv- ing in her present home. She also invited a man to the party at the same time, a man with red hair and blue eyes. Some time elapsed, and then she called on this girl, by invitation, for the afternoon. During this intervening time the girl had married and had a baby, and remodelled her home inside and out, and put in all modern conveniences. She took her through and showed her everything. They had a pleasant time, and she again invited the young lady to her home and told her to bring the baby along, and she also invited the red-haired man, who also had married in the meantime and had a child. He did not let her know, however, that he had married, as it would be a surprise. She and he were both surprised. The children were about the same age, and everybody had a good time at the party. In the course of the analysis of this dream it ap- pears that she had forgotten to tell all of it. The portion forgotten was that there was another man in 134 CHARACTER FORMATION the dream, a dark-haired man, but she didn't seem to pay any attention to him. He seemed to have his back toward her. As far as she conld tell, he looked like two men that she had liked. We have here an example of condensation and identification. The yonng lady that the dreamer met at the place of entertainment, and whom she became friendly with, really represented herself in the dream. Let me give the reasons why, and some of these reasons are based npon things which I had learned in the analysis previous to the dream. She had, a few years previously, had a love affair with a young man with red hair and blue eyes, and he had asked her to marry him. She had refused, however, because she thought her duties at home required her to help care for her mother and sup- port the household while her brother was going through college. She had been introduced to this young man by another gentleman, and when this other gentleman found that matters were getting serious between the two, he had, unknown to her, a conversation with the red-haired man in which he advised him not to marry the patient, as he did not think they were suited to each other. Sometime after her refusal, the man who introduced them called her up on the telephone one evening and told her that the red-haired man was being married that night. This was, as may be imagined, a consider- able emotional experience. The dark man who stood with his back to her in the dream was the man who had introduced them, and this illustrates the point DEEAM MECHANISMS 135 that Freud makes that the little addendum to the dream which had been forgotten in the original ac- count, usually contains the key to the situation. The young woman with the baby in the dream, who repre- sents, I say, the patient, is very completely disguised, so that the identification is not discernible. The patient herself was a woman with dark eyes and black hair. The young lady of the dream was a decided blonde. In addition to this, the dream girl was slender, while the patient is decidedly the op- posite (simple distortion by opposites). The dream girl was not accompanied by her husband, and he did not appear to enter at any point in the dream, either by reference or supposition or otherwise. In- cidentally too, the red-haired man was not accom- panied by his wife, and his wife appeared also to be as absent in fact as the husband of the girl. The girl also wore a tailor-made suit of a brown colour. The patient had had a tailor-made suit herself, but not of that colour, but she had had another dress that was of the same colour but was not tailor-made, and this dress which was the colour that the dream girl wore was the dress that she had worn upon the eventful night when she had had the disagreeable sexual experience which resulted in her psychosis. The patient also says that the dream girl acted as she might have acted, and had in the dream what she really wanted. Further complications are that the dream girl looked like the sister of the red-haired man, who was a woman who wanted to marry but did not want children or to keep house, while the 136 CHARACTER FORMATION sister of the dark-haired man who introduced them had a light-haired baby boy. She experienced the feeling also that she was worried in the dream be- cause both of these people had babies and she did not, nor did she have any sweetheart, nor in fact did she have anything. The censor of consciousness made the disguise so complete tliat the patient could not recognise it and was therefore not disturbed by it. Further reasons for believing that this was an identification are, in the first place, the patient de- scribes herself in the dream as being present at the party but nobody paid any attention to her, nobody spoke to her, and the events of the party went on with apparently no one having anything to do with her — she was merely an onlooker. In other words, the dream had put her in the position where she could view herself and her acts. Then the dream girl had no husband, and the dream man had no wife. The two babies in the dream now have to be ac- counted for, and further emphasize the process of identification which is a phenomenon of the broader process of condensation, and still another process, that of decomposition. She had really been in love with this man and had regretted that she did not marry him. She therefore had the natural woman's wish of wanting his baby. The baby of the red- haired man in the dream had red hair and blue eyes. It is consequently evident that it is his baby, but how about the other baby of apparently the same age? The dark man who introduced the two had a sister who had a light-haired baby boy. Now this DREAM MECHANISMS 137 boy tlie patient had been very fond of. It is there- fore quite evident that the two babies represented a decomposition product. The red-haired baby is the wish baby of the man with whom she was in love, the light-haired baby is the real baby for whom the patient had an affection. The patient, therefore, wished for the baby of the man she loved, for whom she might have the love and aifection that she had learned to have for the real baby that had been in her experience. The dream therefore expresses a wish for marriage to the man loved and a desire for his baby. Another very important type of dream to under- stand because of its very great importance to the dreamer is illustrated by the following example : A young man dreamt that he stood before a coffin in which his grandfather lay dead and as he stood there his grandfather's body moved and he turned his head to one side and appeared to be uneasy. I asked the dreamer what his grandfather meant to him and his reply was that his grandfather was his ideal man. So the meaning of the dream is plain. It meant for the dreamer that his ideal was dead, but that it did not rest easy in death. In other words, though dead it stirs and would live again. The dreamer instantly recognised the truth of this inter- pretation. He is a brilliantly endowed, active, keen- minded young man, cursed with enough money so that he does not have to put his nose to the grind- stone and do the daily task. He therefore leads a dilettante existence in which he finds no true, ade- 138 CHARACTER FORMATION quate expression. His ideal is really dead, but in its death he is very unhappy. Here we see not only the meaning of the dream, but the tremendous im- portant teleologieal significance of it. The dream says to the dreamer, ''If you would be happy be up and doing, lead a life of usefulness, a life of accom- plishment, and only in such a life can you find fulfil- ment. ' ' Another example to show how the real vital worry of the individual may be read in the symbolism of the dream. The following is the dream, or perhaps a waking vision, for the individual claims that she was at least half awake, if not quite awake when it appeared. The percipient is a lady who some months ago while staying in Paris saw the follow- ing vision upon awaking one morning. From her bed where she lay she could look into the next room and see the piano. Standing behind the piano, therefore only with face and shoulders visible she saw a woman. This woman was very pale, with dark hair, and had a brown hat on. That was all there was of the vision. The woman did not look like any one she knew, and she had absolutely no conception that this vision had any meaning other than that probably the drapery was arranged in a certain way so that it easily fell into form and made the vision, as we know it often does. But that can- not of course be an explanation. There must be some reason why it took just exactly that particular form. So my first question was, '*What woman do you know who has a pale face?" Instantly she DREAM MECHANISMS 139 mentioned the name of a young lady, an\i I said, ^^How about the brown hatf and she said, ''I al- ways think of her in brown because that is most be- coming to her. ' ' I said then, ^ ' What does this young woman mean to you?" Her reply was that she al- ways thought of her wonderful power of mind. She thought of her as under head control, too much perhaps for her own good. Now the meaning of the vision is clear. The vision is that of a woman who symbolises for her one who is under head contr(^ as opposed to heart control, and therefore she sees only the head of the woman in the vision. The thing that was in her mind therefore is symbolised in this way. Why? The percipient is a widow whose children have reached adulthood and there- fore no longer require very much care on her part. She had only just sufficient means to take care of herself and absolutely no outlet for her activities or affections. She is temporarily stranded, so to speak, like a piece of driftwood on the shore. She would have an interest in life and the dream shows that her aspirations are reaching out for a head in- terest now that all those for whom she has affection have been settled in life. The dream deals with the problem of her aspirations, her reachings out to- ward higher things in life, her efforts at spiritual sublimation. We begin to get here into a still deeper meaning of the dream. We touch here upon its teleological significance. Here not only is the dream wish-ful- filling, but it gives us an idea of just what kind of 140 CHARACTER FORMATION thing it is that will put matters right. It points the way in which that individual must go in order to find fulfilment, and it therefore becomes of tremen- dous value in offering hints, in fact definite direc- tions for the regulation of the life of the patient. This teleological character of the dream and some other points of interest and importance are well illus- trated by the dream of a patient who thought herself standing in front of a convent. Through a closed window, she saw a priest, her brother, putting on his surplice to go to hear confessions. The closed win- dow prevented them from talking. She started to go inside to hear him better but did not succeed in reaching him. She awoke very much depressed. Many years before the patient had been guilty of an indiscretion which was the occasion of her psy- chosis, a periodical depression. Although she had fully confessed she had always felt that she ought to confess to her brother. The brother died, how- ever, without her having accomplished her task in this respect. The dream shows all this and indi- cates very clearly, by the closed window, the obstacle, her brother's death, that stands in the way of re- solving her conflict. Maeder^ believes that the dream work itself en- deavours to accomplish the resolution of the con- flict and that the emotional state of the dreamer on awaking signifies whether it has or has not been successful. He says: ^^In the dream there is at 7 Maeder, A. E. : The Dream Problem. Nervous and Mental Dis- ease, Monograph Series, No. 22. DREAM MECHANISMS 141 work a preparatory arranging function which be- longs to the work of adjustment. ' ' In this case the fact that the dreamer awoke very much depressed is clearly indicative that the dream work had not been able to bring the conflict to a satisfactory ter- mination. Do dreams come true? is a question frequently asked. The answer is really quite simple. The dream itself represents a wish-fulfilment and if the wish is sufficiently strong to force the individual to try to bring it to pass it is perfectly easy to see that the dream may come true, that therefore the dream may have a prelusory function which may often be quite clearly defined. A patient, a surgeon, has a dream which clearly indicates his jealousy of a more successful confrere. In other words he en- vies him, wishes he had his push and efficiency. To the extent that he keeps progressing in his ability as a surgeon the dream will come true. The prelusory character of the dream is, however, often not so clear as this. The woman, whose case was just cited, wished to confess to her brother. But her brother was dead. How can such a wish as that be brought to pass! She succeeded by sym- bolising the physician as her brother and confessing to him. This is a solution of the conflict by resym- bolization in the sense of Bertschinger.^ The process here is not quite so plain but it is plain how the dream expressed both the wish and the failure to 8 Bertschinger, H. : Processes of Recovery in Schizophrenics. The Psychoanalytic Review, Vol. III. No. 2, April, 1915. 142 CHARACTER FORMATION bring it to pass. It is probable that in sucb ex- pressions as this we have hints of the very greatest therapeutic value. To summarise : we have come to see that the dream is a wish-fulfilling dramatisation. Although words and sentences and speech occur in dreams they are for the most part visual in content. We have further seen that the dream takes its immediate origin from the events of the previous waking state and uses these events to clothe the dream thoughts. These thoughts which constitute the latent content of the dream are disguised in the process of appearing in the manifest content, principally by the mechanisms of distortion and displacement, and finally by the secondary elaboration of the waking consciousness. These thoughts appear as a result of these distort- ing mechanisms as a rule in a highly symbolic form, and it is necessary to learn to read the symbols in order to understand the dream. As a result of this distortion the dream thoughts as they appear in the manifest content have a surface value quite dif- ferent from their real value, so that the real dream thoughts undergo in the dream a ^ ' transvaluation of values." The emotions, however, remain the same, but are displaced in the manifest content of the dream. So we find experiences that should be emotional without emotion, and inconsequential hap- penings emotionally ladened. This latter circum- stance has led to the generalisation that the affect is the only truth of the dream. The reason for the distortion and disguising of the dream thoughts be- DREAM MECHANISMS 143 fore they appear in the manifest content is that they refer to desires or wishes of the individual which have been repressed as being inacceptable to the waking consciousness. One of the functions of the dream is to conserve sleep. Therefore the endo- psychic censor of consciousness insists upon the dis- guise of these repressed desires, otherwise by their surprising or perhaps horrifying non-conformity with the percipient's waking consciousness they would cause him to awake. There are a few dreams which show the sleep-conserving wish-fulfilling mechanisms with regard to matters that are not re- pressed and therefore not distorted, more particu- larly such dreams as the so-called * ^ convenience dreams," a dream for example in which a person who is thirsty at night dreams of drinking quanti- ties of water, thereby slaking his thirst and con- tinuing to sleep. In addition to the above characteristics of the dream, Freud, by a series of exquisite analyses, has sought to demonstrate that the dream can arise only on the basis of infantile repressed material, in other words that the wishes that are in or near to con- sciousness must touch at some point and harmonise with the repressed, long-forgotten infantile desires, and that it is only when this situation arises that a dream occurs and that the dream represents the ful- filment of hotJi wishes. It will be seen from the above, therefore, that the dream shows what is really going on in the person- ality, that through it it is possible to attain to the 144 CHARACTER FORMATION real thougMs of the individual, and that if it is pos- sible to analyse the dream, not only will an immense amount of material be uncovered which would be largely hidden otherwise, but that it is possible to penetrate to the very depths of the personality, even into the realm of the unconscious, the long since forgotten, the infantile. In the neuroses, the psy- choneuroses, and the psychoses this sort of informa- tion is of the utmost importance and is the only way in which one can get at an understanding of the symptoms which on the surface appear so illogi- cal and unmeaning. The analysis of dreams, there- fore, becomes a matter of vital importance in dealing with mental disorders. CHAPTER VII THE FAMILY ROMANCE In the preceding chapters the more important mechanisms of distortion have been discussed that result in a transvaluation of values of the psychic content and many illustrations have been given by dreams and in the chapter on symbolism to show how these transvalued values come to symbolic ex- pression. Of prime importance is the understanding of this play of forces as they touch the relations of the developing child to the members of the family who immediately surround it during the first years of its life. As Fiske ^ long ago pointed out, one of the char- acteristics of an advanced civilisation is the pro- longation of the period of infancy, the period of helplessness of the child. This tends to keep the parents together for longer and longer periods which tend more and more to permanency for when the older children grow up there are still younger ones needing this protection. Then when the parent dies the family unit is kept intact by the taking over of the responsibilities for its maintenance by the oldest, 1 Fiske, John : "Outlines of Cosmic Pliilosopliy," Houghton, MiflSin and Company, Boston and New York, 1894. 145 146 CHARACTER FORMATION bravest or most sagacious male. Thus grows up a group that is bound together by internal bonds of affection and interest that are stronger than the ties that ally it to other groups with whom, however, it may combine for mutual protection. These bonds not only become stronger during successive epochs, but, enduring from birth to death they acquire a traditional value, passing on from generation to generation and so building up a body of customs (mores) which make certain demands in the way of ** setting up permanent reciprocal necessities of behaviour among the members of the group ; in this way the ultimate test of right and wrong action came to be the welfare of the community, instead of the welfare of the individual. ' ' Fiske further states a most important corollary of this process by adding ^ ^ the long process of social evolution, thus inaugurated, has all along reacted upon individual evolution, by increasing the power of mental repre- sentation, and nourishing sympathy at the expense of egoism.'' This gradual development of the family unit is of the utmost importance for the impressions that are stamped upon the child mind during his period of infancy as a member of the family group are pregnant with the possibilities for his future suc- cess or failure, they are at the foundation of his later expressed traits of character. Every force is equally powerful for good or bad, energy which may be used for building up may, in the same degree, be used for tearing down, and so THE FAMILY ROMANCE 147 the knitting together of the members of the family that has had so much to do with the possibilities of social progress may, by fostering dependency, through excessive solicitude or prolongation of over- sight into adulthood, destroy that capacity for indi- vidual initiative upon which progress likewise depends. In the life history of every individual who grows to adulthood there comes a time when he must emancipate himself from the thraldom of the home. He must break away from his infantile moorings, go forth into the world of reality and win there a place for himself. By this I do not mean a mere circum- stantial leaving of the home, but an actual growing away from it in feeling so that there remains no crippling attachment to interfere with personal free- dom of expression. He must leave it in his feelings, he must put aside his childhood, put aside his infan- tile attachments and conquer his own world. While this is necessary for the fullest development it is extremely painful and many persons never accom- plish it at all. They are the future neurotics. The previous chapters have prefaced the way for an understanding of how the protection of the home may be retained in later life by a symbolisation of the persons or things in the environment to repre- sent features of that home protection. For example, a young man will pick out a woman to marry who stands symbolically for his mother, or commonly a young woman will marry a man who represents symbolically her father. In this way a hold is re- 148 CHARACTER FORMATION tained on the protection of the parents, but at the expense of continuing infantilism. In order that the effects of the family situation on the child may be more clearly seen, and the way those effects are woven into the character understood, it will be well at this point to consider w^hat has been termed the ^ ^family neurotic romance." The adjec- tive neurotic has come over from the therapeusis of the neuroses. One of the facts that was earliest appreciated in the psychoanalytic treatment of neu- rotics was that the neurosis represented an infantile attachment to the family situation. It is, I think, nevertheless best left out. We all go through the same process of development. Whether we become neurotics or not is not dependent upon the elements in that process but how we are able to deal with those elements. So the family romance, as I would prefer to call it, is the story of us all, in our rela- tions to the parents or their surrogates, and of our devices to develop away from our infantile attach- ments to true adulthood. Certain mental mechan- isms have to be developed to suppress— repress — the attachments to the family group in so far as they are crippling and interfere with that measure of individual development and efficiency which en- able one to break loose from its protection and the feeling of security which it offers, and go forward into the world of reality, self-reliant and capable and form a new group in which the same problems, the same conflicts will find similar expressions over again but with the added possibility that the end result THE FAMILY KOMANCE 149 may be advanced, just a little, to a higher plane of cultural development. The prolongation of the period of dependence upon the parents is at once the cause and the effect of the greater demands of life upon the individual who must therefore take longer in preparing to meet these demands. This very means, however, becomes dangerous by prolonging the feeling of security which becomes ever more difficult to cut loose from as time goes on. Individual development and '^herd instinct" stand ever opposed to each other, the former prompted by that spirit of adventure which would reach out for new experiences in the world of reality, the latter, the repository of those uncon- scious trends upon which the integrity of the group depends. As at the physiological level the problem of the metabolism of carbohydrates has to be met by the development of certain glands and their secretions, so at the psychological level the problem of emanci- pation from the home has to be met by the develop- ment of certain symbols and psychological mechan- isms. The further ramifications of this process of emancipation can best be appreciated by a consider- ation of the so-called (Edipus and Electra Complexes, CEdipus was the son of Laius, King of Thebes and of Jocasta. Laius had been informed by the oracle that he would perish at the hands of his son. Jo- casta was accordingly ordered by Laius to destroy her son as soon as he was born but she had not the courage to obey this command but instead gave it 150 CHAKACTER FORMATION to one of her domestics with orders to expose him. The servant bored the child's feet and hung him by the heels, with a twig, from a tree on Mount Cithseron where he was found by one of the shep- herds of Polybus, King of Corinth. The shepherd carried him home where Peribcea the wife of Poly- bus, being herself without children, brought him up as her own child. The boy grew up to be very accomplished and the envy of his companions, one of whom told him he was illegitimate. Peribcea responded to his questions by telling him his doubts were ill-founded but he was not satisfied and went to consult the oracle at Delphi. He was told not to return home for if he did he would be the murderer of his father and the husband of his mother. As the home of Polybus was the only home he knew he resolved not to return to Corinth so set out towards Phocis. On the road he met Laius who haughtily demanded the right of way. CEdipus refused and after a short dispute a contest ensued in which Laius was killed. Of course CEdipus did not know whom he had killed and so continued his journey being at- tracted towards Thebes by the fame of the Sphynx. This monster was laying waste the country and de- voured all who failed to answer correctly the enig- mas he proposed. As the successful solution of the riddle proposed would result in the death of the Sphynx, Creon, who had become King on the death of Laius, promised his crown and Jocasta to who- ever would succeed. CEdipus succeeded. The Sphynx dashed his head against a rock and perished. THE FAMILY ROMANCE 151 and CEdipus succeeded to the throne of Thebes, and married Jocasta by whom he had two sons and two daughters. Some years after a plague visited the Theban territories and the oracle declared that it would cease only when the murderer of King Laius had been banished from Boeotia. (Edipus resolved to institute the most careful inquiries. He was suc- cessful and was proved to be the murderer of his father. This discovery was soon followed by the added realisation that he had committed incest with his mother. In his great grief he put out his eyes as unworthy to see the light and banished himself from Thebes. The oracle had been fulfilled. He was led by his daughter Antigone towards Attica and came near Colonus where there was a fire sacred to the Furies. He remembered that he had been doomed by the oracle to die in such a place and to become the source of prosperity to the country in which his bones were buried. He sent for Theseus, king of the country, told him when he arrived of what had been ordained and walked to the spot where he was to expire. The earth opened and (Edipus dis- appeared. This is the story of (Edipus. The story of Electra runs as follows : Clytemnestra was the wife of Aga- memnon, king of Argos. "When Agamemnon went to the Trojan war Clytemnestra contracted an in- trigue with ^gysthus, whom he had left to take care of his domestic affairs, and publicly lived with him. Agamemnon heard of this and returned to take his revenge. Clytemnestra and ^gysthus, however, 152 CHARACTER FORMATION succeeded in surprising him and murdered both him and Cassandra whom he had brought with him from Troy. Orestes, his son, would have shared his father's fate but for his sister Electra who suc- ceeded in removing him to a place of safety. Sub- sequently she incited her brother, Orestes, to avenge her father's death by assassinating his mother Clytemnestra. These two stories show, the CEdipus story, certain elements in the relation between mother and son, the Electra story, certain elements in the relation of father and daughter, which it is important to dilate somewhat upon. In the first place, the mere statement that a story that deals with the murder of a father by the son and then the incest of that son with the mother, or a story that deals with a daughter who caused the murder of her own mother because that mother had robbed her of her father, should contain elements that were worth while considering for the purpose of throwing light upon the relations between parents and children will be received with horror by the average person unacquainted with psychoanalytic literature. In order to become properly oriented towards the fundamental nature of the attachment of the child to the several members of the family it is necessary to bear in mind two principles that are controlling. In the first place this attachment is a growth which has its beginnings as soon as the child is born, its ground plan is laid down in the first years of de- THE FAMILY ROMANCE 153 velopment, its driving force comes from the great region of the unconscious. The way in which the child first learns to love those about him is the pro- totype for all future loves, the paradigm into which they must fit. And secondly : the great creative force, the libido, in the last analysis, has only two problems — the problem of self-preservation and the problem of the perpetuation of the race. The libido devoted to the solution of the first of these problems is the nutri- tive libido, that devoted to the latter is the sexual libido. All love has as its fundamental object race perpetuation and is therefore sexual, it matters not how far removed its particular manifestation may seem to be from actual concrete sexual expression. We must, therefore, be prepared to find, and it has been so found, that the attachment of the child to those about is fundamentally a sex attachment, a fact which is at once brought out by the fact that, in general, the child is more strongly attached to the parent of the opposite sex. Herein lies the basis of the problem of incest, a problem that has vexed all peoples throughout time and has been the occa- sion of some of the most important and powerful of social institutions. Incest has always been practised to some extent. But while to-day the mere thought of such relations fills us with horror there is much evidence that it was not always so. In fact, under certain circum- stances at least, incest was not only permitted, but was the accepted mode of procedure. In those tribes 154 CHARACTER FORMATION in whicli descent was along the female line a man was king only in virtue of the fact that he was hus- band of the queen. When the queen died he would automatically have ceased to reign unless he married the heir to the throne, who in such a case was his own daughter, and that is exactly what he did. Public feeling must indeed have been very differently oriented towards incest in those days when kings set such an example, but we must not forget that among the primitive people who live among us, the idiots, imbeciles, and feeble-minded, incest is often freely practised. That the problem of incest has always interested mankind, however, is shown by the fact that among the most primitive peoples known there already exist certain marriage taboos which when studied are easily shown to be directed against incest. In fact the whole complex social institution of totemism has as one of its main ends the solution of the incest problem. To put it in a few words, totemism divides the tribes into separate phratries, and marriages are strictly prohibited between members of the same phratry. We have already indicated, briefly (Chapter III), how the development of the tote- mistic scheme by the successive splitting of the tribe into smaller and smaller groups had the result of more and more effectually preventing the marriage of near kin. It is both interesting and instructive to learn that the incest taboos arose, in some instances at least, among people who had not yet discovered the rela- THE FAMILY KOMANCE 155 tion between impregnation and sexual intercourse. Its roots in the child similarly antedate any such knowledge. We have seen how the infant, confronted by the insistent demands of reality, longs to return to its previous state of protection as it existed in the ma- ternal body. In other words how it seeks to with- draw from reality, to escape its demands. Now our horror of incest is our conscious expression of our desire to do that very sort of thing. The thesis of this chapter is that in the life his- tory of every individual who grows to adulthood there comes a time when he must emancipate himself from the thraldom of the home. He must break away from his infantile moorings, and go forth into the world of reality and win there a place for him- self. This is not to be understood to mean that he must simply physically leave the home, that is not at all necessary, but he must leave it in his feelings, he must put aside his childhood, put aside his infan- tile attachments and conquer his own world. While this is necessary it is extremely painful, and many persons never accomplish it. They are the future neurotics. Incest, then, from this broad standpoint is really the attraction to the home that keeps us infantile, it represents the anchor that must be weighed if we are ever to fulfil the best that is in us. Incest, however, as it appears to us in our everyday think- ing is clothed in the garments of adult sexuality and excites loathing, horror, disgust. Why? Because 156 CHARACTER FORMATION the path of escape from reality is broad and easy to find, it is the path downwards and backwards by which the individual tries to retain the protection of the parents and the home, and so something of his old safety. It is a path open to all of us, and because it is so easy to take we must defend our- selves from it with the stronge^st of emotions. The horror we feel for incest in this sense does not mean that we are so far removed from its possibility, it rather means that we sense it as a real present danger, and are obliged to bring up all our reserves to beat it back. Herein lies the pragmatic value of the antipathic emotions. That a clearer idea may be had of the exact sym- bols and mechanisms that are used to effect this emancipation I will take up the several specific rela- tionships seriatim. And first : The Relations of Children to Parents. — I can do no better in outlining this problem than to quote Eank's^ summary of the family romance in his masterly analysis of the myth of the birth of the hero. *^The detachment of the growing individual from the authority of the parents is one of the most neces- sary, but also one of the most painful achievements of evolution. It is absolutely necessary for this detachment to take place, and it may be assumed that all normal grown individuals have accomplished it to a certain extent. Social progress is essentially 2 Rank, O. : The Myth of the Birth of the Hero. Nervous and Mental Disease, Monograph Series, No. 18. THE FAMILY ROMANCE 157 based upon this opposition between the two genera- tions. On the other hand, there exists a class of neurotics whose condition indicates that they have failed to solve this very problem. For the young child, the parents are in the first place the sole au- thority, and the source of all faith. To resemble them, i.e., the progenitor of the same sex; to grow up like father and mother, this is the most intense and portentous wish of the child's early years. Progres- sive intellectual development naturally brings it about that the child gradually becomes acquainted with the category to which the parents belong. Other parents become known to the child, who compares these with his own, and thereby becomes justified in doubting the incomparability and uniqueness with which he had invested them. Trifling occurrences in the life of the child, which induce a mood of dis- satisfaction, lead up to a criticism of the parents, and the gathering conviction that other parents are preferable in certain ways, is utilised for this atti- tude of the child toward the parents. From the psy- chology of the neuroses, we have learned that very intense emotions of sexual rivalry are also involved in this connection. The causative factor evidently is the feeling of being neglected. Opportunities arise only too frequently when the child is neglected, or at least feels himself neglected, when he misses the entire love of the parents, or at least regrets having to share the same with the other children of the family. The feeling that one's own inclinations are not entirely reciprocated seeks its relief in the idea 158 CHARACTER FORMATION — often consciously remembered from very early years — of being a stepchild, or an adopted child. Many persons who have not become neurotics, very frequently remember occasions of this kind, when the hostile behaviour of parents was interpreted and reciprocated by them in this fashion, usually under the influence of story books. The influence of sex is already evident, in so far as the boy shows a far greater tendency to harbour hostile feeling against his father than his mother, with a much stronger inclination to emancipate himself from the father than from the mother. The imaginative faculty of girls is possibly much less active in this respect. These consciously remembered psychic emotions of the years of childhood supply the factor which per- mits the interpretation of the myth. What is not often consciously remembered, but can almost invari- ably be demonstrated through psychoanalysis, is the next stage in the development of this incipient alienation from the parents, which may be desig- nated by the term Family Romance of Neurotics. The essence of neurosis, and of all higher mental qualifications, comprises a special activity of the imagination which is primarily manifested in the play of the child, and which from about the period preceding puberty takes hold of the theme of the family relations. A characteristic example of this special imaginative faculty is represented by the familiar day dreams,^ which are continued until long 3 Compare Freud, "Hysterical Fancies, and Their Relations to Bisexuality," for references to the literature on this subject. This THE FAMILY ROMANCE 159 after puberty. Accurate observation of these day dreams shows that they serve for fulfilment of wishes, for the righting of life, and that they have two essential objects, one erotic, the other of an ambitious nature (usually with the erotic factor concealed therein.) About the time in question the child's imagination is engaged upon the task of get- ting rid of the parents, who are now despised and are as a rule to be supplanted by others of a higher social rank. The child utilises an accidental coin- cidence of actual happenings (meetings with the lord of the manor, or the proprietor of the estate, in the country; with the reigning prince, in the city; in the United States with some great statesman, mil- lionaire). Accidental occurrences of this kind arouse the child's envy, and this finds its expression in fancy fabrics which replace the two parents by others of a higher rank. The technical elaboration of these two imaginings, which, of course, by this time have become conscious, depends upon the child's adroitness, and also upon the material at his disposal. It likewise enters into consideration, if these fancies are elaborated with more or less claim to plausibility. This stage is reached at a time when the child is still lacking all knowledge of the sexual conditions of descent. With the added knowledge of the manifold sexual relations of father and mother; with the child's realisation of the fact that contribution is contained in the second series of the Collection of Short Articles on the Neurosis Doctrine, Vienna and Leipsig, 1909, tr. in Nerv. and Ment. Dis., Monog. Se., No. 4. 160 CHARACTER FORMATION the father is always uncertain, whereas the mother is very certain — the family romance undergoes a peculiar restriction; it is satisfied with ennobling the father, while the descent from the mother is no longer questioned, but accepted as an unalterable fact. The second (or sexual) stage of the family romance is moreover supported by another motive, which did not exist in the first or asexual stage. Knowledge of sexual matters gives rise to the tend- ency of picturing erotic situations and relations, impelled by the pleasurable emotion of placing the mother, or the subject of the greatest sexual curios- ity, in the situation of secret unfaithfulness and clandestine love affairs. In this way the primary or asexual fantasies are raised to the standard of the improved later understanding. ^ ^ The motive of revenge and retaliation which was originally in the front, is again evident. These neu- rotic children are mostly those who were punished by the parents, to break them of bad sexual habits, and they take their revenge upon their parents by their imaginings. The younger children of a family are particularly inclined to deprive their predeces- sors of their advantage by fables of this kind (ex- actly as in the intrigues of history). Frequently they do not hesitate in crediting the mother with as many love affairs as there are rivals. An interest- ing variation of this family romance restores the legitimacy of the plotting hero himself, while the other children are disposed of in this way as illegiti- mate. The family romance may be governed be- THE FAMILY ROMANCE 161 sides by a special interest, all sorts of inclinations being met by its adaptability and variegated char- acter. The little romancer gets rid in this fashion, for example, of the kinship of a sister, who may have attracted him sexually. ^ * Those who turn aside with horror from this cor- ruption of the child mind, or perhaps actually con- test the possibility of such matters, should note that all these apparently hostile imaginings have not such a very bad significance after all, and that the original affection of the child for his parents is still pre- served under their thin disguise. The faithlessness and ingratitude on the part of the child are only apparent, for on investigating in detail the most common of these romantic fancies, namely the sub- stitution of both parents, or of the father alone, by more exalted personages — the discovery will be made that these new and high-born parents are invested throughout with the qualities which are derived from real memories of the true lowly parents, so that the child does not actually remove his father but exalts him. The entire endeavour to replace the real father hy a more distinguished one is merely the expression of the child's longing for the vanished happy time, when his father still appeared to he the strongest and greatest man, and the mother seemed the dearest and most beautiful woman. *'The child turns away from the father, as he now knows him, to the father in whom he believed in his earlier years, his imagination being in truth only the expression of regret for this happy time having 162 CHARACTER FORMATION passed away. Thus the over-valuation of the ear- liest years of childhood again claims its own in these fancies.* An interesting contribution to this sub- ject is furnished by the study of dreams. Dream- interpretation teaches that even in later years, in the dreams of the emperor or the empress, these princely persons stand for the ^father and mother. Thus the infantile over-valuation of the parents is still preserved in the dream of the normal adult. ' ' The symbols and mechanisms used are then seen to be symbols and mechanisms utilised to go onward and upward in the process of development in a direc- tion that takes the individual further and further away from the protection of the family group and more and more towards the goal of individual self- sufficiency. The process is but an exemplification of the unfolding of the creative energy which ever drives on in the path of development to the com- pletest self-realisation and fulfilment. In order to understand the symbols and mechan- isms, however, we must not make the mistake of interpreting them in the terms of the adult con- sciousness but must constantly bear in mind their origin in the infantile unconscious. Thus in dreams of the death of the parent of the same sex it is wrong to assume at once that the child, the dreamer, desires the actual death of the parent as we under- 4 For the idealising of the parents by the children, compare Maeder's comments (Jahr. f. Psychoanalyse, p. 152, and Central- hlatt f. Psychoanalyse, I, p. 51), on Varendonk's essay, Les ideals d' enfant, Tome VII, 1908. THE FAMILY ROMANCE 163 stand death. Death to the child has always been a mere going away. The real meaning of death is not understood until relatively late in development. Thus one child, cited by Freud,^ a boy of ten, fol- lowing the death of his father said: ^'I understand that father is dead, but I cannot see why he does not come home to supper. '^ This is a typical in- stance and shows that the dream of the death of a parent is to be understood as meaning, not actual death, but the elimination of that influence of the parent which is biologically hampering to personal development. A very little experience in the analysis of the inner thinking of persons will disclose manifold ways in which the attachment to the parent comes to expres- sion. Men and women constantly pick out for their partners in life those who represent symbolically their mother or their father. In other words the mate is a mother or father image which means, of course, that they need not bear any close resemblance to the eyes of an outsider but they do resemble the mother or father image that was built during the infancy of the child when the father was the greatest and most powerful of men and the mother was the most lovable and beautiful woman. It is very frequent among neurotics to find that an early unfortunate love affair was with such a person. It is of great interest to read in the report of the Chicago Vice Commission^ that of 103 girls 5 "The Interpretation of Dreams." 164 CHARACTER FORMATION (prostitutes) examined the history was that the first sexual irregularity of 51 was with their own father. One must necessarily wonder how much of this was really true and how much was the result of a wish-fulfilling phantasy of individuals essentially infantile in development. Certainly false accusa- tions, and we know only too well, false convictions, especially for sexual crimes, have grown only too frequently, out of the phantasies of neurotic girls. The extent to which such extravagances can go is well shown from the records of the trials of witches, and the like are matters of history. One of the most common ways in which the love for the parent of the opposite sex is exhibited in later life is by identification with the parent of the same sex. In phantasy the girl secures the love of the father by identifying herself with her mother and the boy secures the love of the mother by identi- fying himself with the father. It is remarkable, when one inquires into it, how frequently we see an individual repeating the history of the parent of the same sex, going through a similar course of develop- ment, developing the same illnesses, exhibiting the same weaknesses. This is all generally explained by heredity but heredity is still only a word, an hypothesis, and while perhaps it has much truth to its credit, still this other way of looking at the facts gives the values that always come from a new point of view and serves to explain many of the more subtle nuances in a much more satisfactory way. A recent patient of mine, for example, had had THE FAMILY ROMANCE 165 her first and unfortunate sex experience with a man who was clearly the father image. In addition to this she became depressed and apprehensive about the same period in life as did her mother, following the death of her husband, which again followed the lead of the mother whose depression came after the death of her husband. The mother died in an asy- lum and the patient had for years been afraid that she would lose her mind and suffer a like fate. The love for the father image and the identification with the mother are here both clearly in evidence. It is in such mechanisms as these that we see the explana- tion of the fact that neurotics tend to marry near relatives, a fact analysed by Abraham.*^ The ambivalent type of reaction is quite as fre- quently in evidence. Here it is not so much a ques- tion of the love of the parent of the opposite sex as it is hate of the parent of the same sex. More frequently, however, the hate is displayed towards the father rather than the mother, because it is he, who, during the infancy of the individual, has rep- resented, in the family situation, the final source of all authority. This ambivalent hate is shown in extreme form in the paranoiac who resists all authority to such an extent that he is quite unable to live in the world as it is and finds it necessary to build up an arti- 7 Abraham, Karl: Die Stellung der Verwandtenehe 4n der Psy- chologie der Neurosen. Jalirb> f. Psychoanalytische u. Psycliopatli. Forschungen. Abstract in the Psychoanalytic Review, Vol. III. No. I, January, 1916. 166 CHARACTER FORMATION ficial delusional world in which he overcomes the authority of the father in the completest possible way by supplanting him, taking his place, and there- by himself becoming the source of all authority. Thus develop, side by side, the characteristic traits of the paranoiac — the delusions of persecution and th6 delusions of grandeur. It^is such mechanisms as are at the bottom of extreme types of anarchists and finally the regicides. These people from being simply resistant to authority are actively engaged in trying to tear it down, to destroy it, even to the extent of assassinating those in whom authority is temporarily vested. A still different method of dealing with the hate and desire for death of the rival (father for in- stance), is to completely disguise these feelings by expressions of great solicitude for his health and safety. Thus the real feelings and wishes are covered over by their opposites — tenderness and solicitude. The mother-in-law — The age-old conflict between son-in-law and mother-in-law^ is founded on this same motive. The path to the love object proceeds from the love of the parent, in this case the mother, and when finally brought to an apparently success- ful issue, with the mother image sufficiently re- pressed, is suddenly again stirred to activity by the mother-in-law, who, because of her resemblance to the wife plus her greater age, calls up again the 8 Freud: "Totem und Tabu." An abstract of Freud's views in Brill: "Psyclianalysis/' W. B. Saunders Company, 1912. THE FAMILY ROMANCE 167 mother image in a concrete form which had been un- recognised in the wife. Relations of brothers and sisters^The jealousy of chil- dren of the same family among themselves is pro- verbial as is also the jealousy of an only child when a new baby arrives in the household. This jealousy is expressed by very young children in a perfectly frank manner. For example little Hans^ said simply, ^'I don't want a little sister. '* The basis of this jealousy is, of course, that the newcomer takes away some of the love of the mother that before had been possessed without a rival. The extent to which children feel and express their jealousy and hate towards rivals is well shown in the case cited by Hall ^^ of the perfectly normal little girl who was found dancing on the grave of her nearest friend and singing exultantly, ^^I am so glad she is dead and I am alive." We know too of the very frequent crimes of violence and murders committed by children. They can only be under- stood when we take into account these mechanisms and realise the unconscious and infantile way of thinking and do not try to judge them according to adult standards. The child is phylogenetically in the savage stage of development and his standards belong to that period of human evolution. 9 Freud: Analyse der Phobic eines fiinfjahrigen Knaben. Jahrb. f. psychoan, u. psychopath, Forschungen, Vol. I. Abstract in the Psychoanalytic Review, Vol. Ill, No. I, Jan., 1916. 10 Hall, G. Stanley: "Adolescence," Vol. I. D. Appleton & Co., 1904. 168 CHARACTER FORMATION The loves and hates, jealousies and conflicts be- tween brothers and sisters are but expressions of this attachment to the parents once removed. The sister is the incarnation of the mother image, the brother the incarnation of the father image — symbols used by the libido in its unremitting efforts to loose itself for flights of ever increasing freedom. The Grandparents.il — Here we have another, though somewhat more complicated variant of the parent image. By transferring the incestuous long- ings to the grandparents the real nature of the attachment is somewhat disguised and also some- what weakened. The grandfather is the strong rival of the father, the great man to whom the father has to bow sub- mission, a meaning preserved in the word itself, grandfather, Grossvater, grandpere. The conflict with the father is therefore transferred to the grand- father, and later the child, as already shown, over- comes his antagonist by identifying himself with him. He thus becomes the grandfather, or, in other words, the father of his father, and then still further to carry this unconscious feeling-logic to its ultimate ends, his own father. This is the so-called ' ^ reversed parentage" phantasy. If the grandfather is weak and old then his death is often the first death experience of the child. In 11 Jones, Ernest : "Die Bedeiitung des Grossvaters f iir des Schick- sal des Einzelnen." Abraham, Karl: "Einige Bemerkungen liber die E,olle der Grosseltern in der Psychologie der Neurosen." Ferenczi. S. : "Zum Thema 'Grossvaterkomplex.' " Internat. Zeitsch. f. Arztliche Psychoan. Vol. I, No. 3, July, 1914. THE FAMILY ROMANCE 169 this case it leaves the grandmother free for the father and the child can then possess, undisputed, the love of the mother. Similar mechanisms apply to the girl child. Similar mechanisms explain the relation to various parent surrogates — nurses, servants, aunts and uncles, etc. Thus we see how the libido is ever striving to creative ends. Love, first directed towards the parents, becomes the paradigm for all future loves. The parent image is the form in which love is first cast and as the child develops the ever increasing necessity for the completest self-expression, for ful- filment, is expressed by ringing the changes upon the parent image as it is successively transferred to one object after another in the line of development. This process is, however, not a simple one. The very casting of the love in any form makes for that fixity which is an obstacle to the change that develop- ment demands, so conflict again becomes the agent wherein the play of forces is ever making for eman- cipation and self-mastery. Such mechanisms show us how a patient in his delirium may become his own father and then his own child. (See Chapter V.) Such expressions of delirium have heretofore been meaningless and are now unless we are prepared to explain them upon the basis of such mechanisms as are here outlined, or similar ones. We see in these mechanisms too, how it is that parents do literally live again in their children. 170 CHARACTER FORMATION The father sees again in his daughter his wife, and back of the wife his mother. The mother, in like manner, sees in her son a reincarnation of her hus- band and through him again her father. And finally, it should not be lost sight of, that the fact that the parent or parents died when the child was very young, or before it ^vas born does not by any means preclude the formation of a parent image. As has already been emphasised the parent image is a creation largely of phantasy and need have little attachment to a real parent. In fact, as has been seen, the image is frequently attached to a surrogate for the parent with whom the child has been brought up. Now, the fact that the father is dead only permits phantasy a fuller play. The parent image now becomes a true ideal which can be clothed in the attribute of any wish whatever with- out being hampered by the interference of trouble- some facts. This is why great men, as they gradu- ally recede in the past of history, progressively acquire more and more the attributes of godhood. I wonder if Napoleon should rise from his grave to- day, if he would not be the most surprised of men to read some of the things that have been written about him? Man always exalts the past and especially his own past. SOME COKRELATIONS One of the confirmations which the Freudian psychologists have insisted upon for their hypotheses is that the same mechanisms that are at the bottom THE FAMILY ROMANCE 171 of the infantile way of thinking, which dominate the psychoses, and also normal life, and which appear in dreams, are also to be found over again in folk- lore, and the myths and legends which every people have. Just as dreams are phantasies which have their roots in the infancy of the individual so myths are phantasies which have their roots in the child- hood of the race. The family romance is found carried out in all its details in the myths surrounding the origin of na- tional heroes like Eomulus, Hercules, Moses, Sieg- fried, Lohengrin. These heroes serve to give a concrete, projected expression of a whole people who reproduce in the hero their own unconscious. The hero, as Kank ^^ g^yg << should always be inter- preted merely as a collective ego.'' The hero exalts his father and so exalts himself, and thus overcomes the father by replacing him. This is the mechanism at the basis of delusions of grandeur and of per- secution and the symbols and mechanisms are the same again as those used in the family romance that does not end in failure — disease. So does the indi- vidual satisfy his demands for power and so does the race exalt itself by being descended from a hero. ** Myths are, therefore, created by adults, by means of retrograde childhood phantasies, the hero being credited with the myth-maker's personal infantile history. " ^^ As Abraham ^^ well puts it : * ^ The race, 12 "The Mytli of the Birth of the Hero," loc. cit. 13 Rank, loc. cit. 14 Abraham, Karl : Dreams and Myths, Nerv. and Ment. Dis. Monograph Se., No. 15. 172 CHARACTER FORMATION in prehistoric times, makes its wishes into structures of phantasy, which as myths reach over into the his- torical ages. In the same way the individual in his 'prehistoric period' makes structures of phantasy out of his wishes which persist as dreams in the * his- torical period. ' So is the myth a retained fragment from the infantile psychic life^ of the race and the dream is the myth of the individual. ' ' ^^ The incest motive meets us at every turn in my- thology and folk-lore from the revolt of the Titans and the overcoming by Cronus of his father Uranus whom he supplanted on the throne, to the modern drama. Uranus cursed his son and prophesied that a day would come when he too would be supplanted by his children and so would suffer a just punish- ment. In the original version the sexual nature of the rivalry between father and son is made plain by the fact that Cronus emasculates his father Uranus. Phantasies of overcoming the father by castration are very common as for example the case cited by Jelliffe,^^ of the patient who had sausages, waffles and maple syrup every morning for breakfast. In fairy tales the wish motive is very potent. Wonderful things are always coming to pass with- out any effort or if any effort is required the hero is endowed with some magical power that assures his 15 For a discussion of the way these phantasies became attached to natural objects and developed the nature myths see Otto Rank and Hanns Sachs: The Significance of Psychoanalysis for the Mental Sciences, Nerv. and Ment. Dis. Monog. Se. No. 23. 16 Technique of Psychoanalysis, The Psychoanalytic Review, Vol. II, No. 4, October, 1915. THE FAMILY ROMANCE 173 success. Then, too, the wish of the people for power is easily seen in the frequency with which peasants, even simple-minded persons, attain to high and mighty positions and great wealth. In the fairy-tale all the impediments are swept aside whether they be social position, mental inefficiency, or physical de- formity.^^ In addition to these motives we see the sexual motive appearing with great frequency, par- ticularly in the variants of the family romance. Tales setting forth the sex motive in concrete form are such tales as *^Oda and the Serpenf (Bech- stein's Collection) and **The Frog King" (Grimm No. 1). The family romance is expressed in many tales and in many ways. Examples are ^^The Father Perse- cutes His Own Daughter" (Rittershaus Collection), in which it is perfectly plainly stated that the prince, who had previously killed his parent and his sister to secure the kingdom, later desires to possess his own daughter, and the story goes on to tell her ad- ventures in escaping him. The same motive recurs in ^^The Beautiful Sesselja" (Rittershaus collec- tion). In ^'The Twelve Brothers" (Grimm No. 27) the father has prepared twelve caskets for his twelve sons whom he would murder if the thirteenth child was a girl. All the various changes are rung on the sexual rivalry of the different members of the family and the simple, naive way in which murder is used to get 17 See Rieklin, Franz : Wish-fulfilment and Symbolism in Fairy Tales, Nerv. and Ment. Dis. Monograph Se., No. 21. 174 CHARACTER FORMATION rid of a hated rival stamps the kind of thinking, from which such tales originate, as infantile. In literature and drama the main motive meets us again and again. ^^ Aside from OEdipus Tyrannus already cited, perhaps the most notable piece of literature dealing with the (Edipus complex is the tragedy of Hamlet.^^ Of more recent examples Ibsen furnishes a number of instances.^'' For instance, in John Gabriel Borkman — the twin sisters Mrs. Borkman and Ella Kentheim contest for the love of Erhart, Mrs. Borkman 's son. Mes. Borkman (Threateningly.) You want to come between us? Between mother and son ? You? Ella Rentheim I want to free liim from your power — your will — your despotism. Mrs. Borkman (Triumphantly.) You are too late! You had him in your nets all those years — until he was fifteen. But now I have won him Mgain, you see! Ella Rentheim Then I will win him back from you ! (Hoarsely, half whisper- ing.) We two have fought a life-and-death battle before, Gunhild — for a man's soul ! 18 Rank, Otto : "Das Inzest — ^Motiv in Dichtung und Sage." Leip- zig 11. Wien Franz Deuticke, 1912. 19 Jones, Ernest: The CEdipus Complex as an Explanation of Hamlet's Mystery: A Study in Motive. Am. Jour. Psychol. Jan., 1910. 20 Cited by Rank: "Das Inzest-Motiv." THE FAMILY ROMANCE 175 Mrs. Borkman {After reflecting a moment, firmly.) Erhart himself shall choose between us. Ella Rentheim (Looking doubtfully and hesitatingly at her.) He choose? Dare you risk that, Gunhild? Mrs. Borkman (With a hard laugh.) Dare I? Let my boy choose between his mother and you ? Yes, indeed, I dare ! Later Ella finds that Borkman discarded her for selfish motives, for his own personal business inter- ests, and says to him: Ella Rentheim . . . From the day when your image began to dwindle in my mind, I have lived my life as though under an eclipse. During all these years it has grown harder and harder for me — and at last utterly impossible — to love any living' creature. Human beings, animals, plants : I shrink from all — from all but one — What one? Erhart, of course. Erhart? Borkman 3lla Rentheim Borkman Ella Rentheim Erhart — ^your son Borkman. Such illustrations of the family romance in its multitudinous forms of expression are frequent in literature and serve only to add emphasis to what has 176 CHARACTER FORMATION already been said of the meanings of the symbols and mechanisms which have as their goal the forcing of the individual to the highest expressions of his creative energy. / CHAPTEE VIII THE WILL TO POWER "My idea is that every specific body strives to become master of all space, and to extend its power (its will to power), and to thrust back everything that resists it. But inasmuch as it is continually meeting the same endeavours on the part of other bodies, it con- cludes by coming to terms with those (by ^combining' with those) which are sufficiently related to it — and thus they conspire together for power. And the process continues." — ^Nietzsche : "The Will to Power." "The will to power is the primitive motive force out of which all other motives have been derived." — Nietzsche: Ihid, THE ALL-POWEEFULNESS OF THOUGHT Ferenczi has given us a most suggestive and valu- able description ^ of the conflict between the pleasure- pain and reality motives during the early period of the child's life. In the mother 's body the child is in a state of un- conditioned omnipotence. Everything is done for it — it does not have to take food or even to breathe. The mental state of desire can hardly be said to exist at all for no need is even permitted to come into existence and therefore does not have to be satisfied. 1 Ferenczi, S. : Entwieklungsstufen des Wirklichkeitssinnes Int. Zeitsch. f. Aerztliehe Psychoan. Vol. I, No. 2. Abstracted in the Psychoanalytic Review, Vol. I, No. 2 (Feb., 1914). 177 178 CHARACTER FORMATION The child not only does not have to eat or breathe, it is also unnecessary to move, it lies doubled up, sus- pended in a comfortably warm fluid to which light does not even penetrate ^ and therefore have to be reacted to. From this state of comfortable and un- conditioned omnipotence the child is thrust, through no volition or desire of its own, into a hard, cold, uncompromising world of reality. Its first cry on being born is its mightiest protest, an expression of its desire to be back in the uterus, or according to Adler is an expression of its overwhelming sense of inferiority on thus suddenly being confronted by reality without ever before having had to deal with its problems. From the moment of birth, His Majesty the Baby rules. the household, that is, his world, with an ever increasing loss of omnipotence as the demands of reality gradually assert themselves with gradual though increasing success. Ferenczi describes three stages in this conflict be- tween the desire to regain the lost omnipotence and the world of reality. At first the baby gets what it wants by crying for it— this is the period of magic- hallucinatory omnipotence. The first sleep of the baby is essentially a more or less successful repro- duction of its state before birth, removed almost absolutely from the disturbing influences of intrud- ing stimuli from the outside world. And just as we 2 This statement is not quite accurate. The mother's abdominal walls are, often at least (in thin women), translucent and probably the foetus may react to light as it may also, probably, to sound. THE WILL TO POWER 179 have seen that the parent image is the symbol which serves to carry the libido on its love path, serves to represent the forms into which all future loves shall fit, so this situation, freedom from stimuli, serves as the paradigm, the prototype, for the regressive libido seeking omnipotence when cast back upon it- self by the world of reality which it fails to conquer. This may be symbolised by a dark quiet room and a warm soft bed, by the lap of mother Church, the arms of Morpheus (normal or drug induced sleep) or even finally by death with its sombre accompaniments, the casket representing the matrix — the ambivalent op- posite of life and the progressive overcoming of reality. Later as the child becomes more active and expert in the use of its limbs, its instinctive efforts to know the real world are expressed by reaching for and at- tempting to grasp everything in its environment. It may, perchance, drop the toy which has been placed in its hands but nevertheless reaches for it although it may be far removed from its possibility to grasp. The nurse, however, stands ready to span the dis- tance and place the toy again in its hands — to satisfy its wish. This is the period of omnipotence with the help of magic gestures. This period holds the stage for a while but it too becomes progressively insufficient to meet the de- mands of reality for it happens only too often that what the child reaches for it does not find instantly in its hand. Perhaps the nurse does not happen to be by or is indifferent or perhaps the child has 180 CHARACTER FORMATION reached for the moon which even a solicitous nurse cannot supply. With the passing of the period of magic gestures a new set of symbols comes to the fore — the language symbols which are new vehicles for expressing wishes and representing desired objects and so the lost omnipotence is sought anew by magic words — the period of magic thinking and magic words. These various periods are only different ways of trying to get what is wanted by the phantasy route instead of by efficient contact with reality. Thejr are ways of having dreams come true, not by wresting success from nature, but by thinking them true — the method that substitutes for action the all-powerful- ness of thought (AUmacht der Gedanken). The progressive failure of these different devices is contemporaneous with and due to the development of the ego-consciousness of the child under the stimu- lus of reality. Gestures, words, constantly fail by themselves to bring desired results to pass and so reality gains more and more recognition. This distinction between *^self" and *^not self has to be slowly and painstakingly worked out as the result of innumerable experiments. If we were to watch a three months old baby playing on the floor we would notice that it picked up the objects within reach and pretty generally thrust them immediately into its mouth. This is done at first indifferently with such objects as a rubber ball on the one hand or with the baby's foot on the other. Depending upon whether the object is or is not a part of the J^ THE WILL TO POWER 181 baby's body we have here two very diiTerent types of experience. The baby gets two very different results depending upon whether it is the rubber ball or the foot that it sticks in its mouth. When he sticks the ball in his mouth he gets a certain sensation in his mouth. When he sticks his foot in his mouth he also gets a certain sensation in his mouth, but he gets something more — he gets an added sensation in his foot. Without elaborating this illustration further it will be seen that at first we are dealing in the child with a diffuse activity which does not appreciate any distinction between the foot which he sees lying on the floor before him and the rubber ball, and that by such experiences as this he begins the process of dif- ferentiating himself from his environment — of grad- ually building up within his psyche a series of mental images that stand for his own body in distinction from the rest of the world. It is this principle that is at the basis of magic and animism. In Melanesia ^ if a man's friends get pos- session of the arrow with which he was wounded they believe that by keeping it in a damp place or wrapped in cool leaves the inflammation will be trifling or soon disappear from the wound. On the contrary the enemy operates along opposite lines. He and his friends drink hot juices and chew irri- tating leaves for the purpose of inflaming the wound, and keep the bow near the fire to make the wound hot. If they have been able to get possession of 3 Frazer, J. G., "The Golden Bough," (3rd ed.) Pt. I. "The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings." Vol. I, Chap. III. 182 CHARACTER FORMATION the arrow that inflicted the wound they put that, for the same reason, into the fire. As for names, among savages there is no real dis- tinction between the thing or the person and the name.* The savage regards his name as a part of himself. ^^An Australian black is always very unwilling to tell his real name, and there is no doubt that this reluctance is due to the fact that through his name he may be injured by sorcerers. ' ' ^ During an epidemic of smallpox in Mombasa, British East Africa, the natives refrained from mentioning the name of the disease.^ These are examples that are quite on a par with the developmental stages of the infant described by Ferenczi. In fact he correlates ^ the periods of magic gestures and of magic thoughts with the neuroses which employ various physical disabilities (conversions) or ceremonials (compulsive neurosis) in the service of the repression of certain censored complexes. The anthropological data add further evidence. For example: In the island of Timor ^ the people after making long journeys fan themselves with leafy branches and then throw the branches away. Their fatigue is supposed to be transferred to the branches and then by throwing 4Frazer, J. G.: "The Golden Bough," (3rd ed.) Part I. Taboo and the Perils of the Soul. Chap. VI. Tabooed words, 5 Smyth, R. B.: "Aborigines of Victoria," I. 469 note cited by Frazer, loc. cit. 6 Frazer, loc. cit. 7 Ferenczi, loc. cit. 8 Frazer, J. G.: "The Golden Bough," (3rd ed.) Part I. "The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings," Vol. I, Chap. III. THE WILL TO POWER 183 these away they get rid of their fatigue. Other peo- ples, for example in the Babar Archipelago use stones for the same purpose. This custom, with many variations, is widely spread and when used to rid the individual of an evil becomes a rite of puri- fication, which among certain Mohammedans in Africa is seen in its opposite form, as the throwing of marked stones at a holy man, which are after- ward recovered and embraced and so transfer some of his goodness to the devotee. Such practices are akin to the tics and compulsions of neurotics which are, from this point of view, ceremonials of purifica- tion. A hand-washing compulsion may thus be a means of symbolic purification for a moral sin by which an effort is made to separate the sin from the body and cast it away quite as concretely as is the fatigue with the stone or the leafy branches. All the things that we wish for come to pass in that fairy land where ^* candles come alight," a land preserved in the fairy tales of all peoples. All our limitations are shed in this beautiful land and again the all-powerfulness of thought reasserts itself and our wishes come true. And so the praiser of past times — laudator temporis acti — is seeking to avoid the necessity of meeting the present with efficient action by dwelling on the glories of the past, he is seeking to return to that period in which his thoughts were all-powerful, he is striving to recover his lost omnipotence. In the same way we find this land of pleasant dreams represented in dreams by a symbolism that 184: CHARACTER FORMATION can be seen to reproduce the condition in the uterus, and the entering upon a new and radical period ot life being symbolised by birth — re-birth. In the dream of the patient who dreamt that he fell into a great body of water and then after having swum about for a time saw a small opening and then swum into this and found himself in a large cave, the sym- bolic representation of the uterus and the birth pas- sage is fairly clear. In the ceremonials of many peoples, however, there is no longer any room for doubt as to the true meaning. In Greece when a man who was supposedly dead and for whom funeral rites had been performed, returned, he was still treated as dead until he had been born again, which, consisted of being passed through a woman's lap, washed, dressed in swaddling clothes and put to a nurse. In India the ceremonial for the same pur- pose was more elaborate. The first night after his return was spent in a tub filled with fat and water. He sat in the tub without speaking and with doubled- up fists while over him were performed the sacra- ments that were celebrated over a pregnant woman. Next morning he got out of the tub, went through all the sacraments he had formerly partaken of from his youth up and in particular married a wife or espoused his old one over again. In Japan when a marriage is unfruitful the old women of the neigh- bourhood come to the house and go through the cere- mony of delivering the wife of a child represented by a doll. Among the Akikuyu of British East Africa every member of the tribe must go through THE WILL TO POWER 185 the ceremony of being reborn. In the afternoon a goat or sheep is killed for the stomach and intestines. A circular piece of the goat or the sheepskin is passed over one shoulder and under the other arm of the child and the animal's stomach over the other shoulder and under the other arm. The mother, or the woman acting in that capacity and who therefore is regarded as the mother thenceforth, sits on a hide with the child between her knees. The animal's gut is passed about her and brought in front of the child. She groans as if in labour, a woman severs the gut as if it were the navel string, and the child imitates the cry of a new-born infant. Among the natives of German New Guinea ^ the rite of circumcision symbolises a re-birth. The young men are taken to a long hut built to resemble a huge monster with great eyes and emitting terrifying growls from time to time as the lads approach. In this hut they are circumcised and live afterward for some three or four months. After this period of seclusion is over they come forth and are then treated as full-grown men. When we correlate with facts of this sort the well- known curiosity of children to know where babies come from, their inventions of all sorts of explana- tions which the grown-ups try to sidetrack by the stork story, and then realise that one of the most profound and wide spread bases upon which early society was organised — totemism — had its root, in all 9 Frazer, J. G. : "The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead," Vol. I, Lect. XI. 186 CHARACTER FORMATION probability, in a like attempt to explain the phenom- ena of pregnancy and the origin of the child, and when we realise further that in the Christian religion we find a highly sublimated symbolic re-birth play- ing an important part we can begin to see that after all it is not so very strange or grotesque that our patients should dream in this very concrete way of being born again. The all-powerfulness of thought is the principle at the basis of the magic rites of primitive man as it is of the conduct of the baby and is dependent upon that developmental stage through which the mind passes and in which no adequate separation has yet been made between the *^I" and the **not I,'' — the stage of *4ntrojection" of Ferenczi in w^hich the environment enters into and forms a part of the Ego. In the illustration of the Melanesians who treat the arrow instead of the man wounded by it, we see the same principle involved as in the illustration of the baby. The savage believes that there is a sympa- thetic relation between the wound and the instru- ment which inflicted it that we know does not exist. He has not been able adequately and effectively to separate himself from his environment. We see that very same phenomenon in the psy- choses. No symptom is more common in dementia prsecox than that of being influenced by the environ- ment — the delusion of influence. The environment from being something upon which to expend energy, something outside of the ego, something that has to be dealt with, moulded and shaped, reacted to effi- THE WILL TO POWER 187 ciently, suddenly becomes filled with mysterious meanings. A strange feeling of influence comes from all directions, sources that frequently cannot be clearly defined and sources when they are defined that remind us of the world of primitive man. It becomes peopled with myriad forms, voices speak from unseen beings, from animals, and even from trees. There are strange visions, all sorts of magical things happen, electricity, wireless telegraphy, thought reading and bad influences of all sorts abound. The psychosis has plunged the patient to a lower cultural level and he reacts in a way to remind us of the savage rather than of the civilised man. His whole environment has assumed an inti- mate personal relationship, its elements animate and inanimate alike have been personified, he is in a mental stage corresponding to the animistic stage of development of primitive man. There is no longer a clear differentiation between the ego and the envi- ronment. In the neuroses and the psychoneuroses we are all familiar with that quality of the patients that makes us recognise them as infantile. The patient with a well marked complex formation finally gets so that almost everything in life is assimilated in some way to the complex. Hardly anything can happen with- out touching a painful point that arouses the complex to activity and so the environment begins, as it were, to intrude more and more into the patient's person- ality as the malady grows worse. The patient be- comes progressively less able to separate his person- 188 CHARACTER FORMATION ality from the world at large. It is the same sort of thing we see in a certain type of housekeeper who never can rest until everything is just exactly so and whose whole scheme of life is destroyed if a picture on the wall does not hang straight. We also see the infantile characteristics in the con- stant reiteration of their troubles; the emphasis which they place upon certain, often inconsequential occurrences ; the regrets and the prolonged accounts of what might have been *4f" only such and such things had not happened. It is as though by very emphasis things could be changed, as if the mill could really be turned with the water that was past. This reversion to the all-powerfulness of thought, this living in the past are important factors in crip- pling the individual so as to prevent anything like an adequate dealing with reality. They will be seen, too, to represent earlier phases both ontogenetic and phylogenetic. The reaction of the neurotic can only receive a comprehensive understanding through an understanding both of the mind of the child and the mind of primitive man. Mankind passes through these stages of develop- ment — the periods of magic and of all powerful thoughts. The child exhibits these stages and so does primitive man — ^the child of the race. But real- ity is inexorable. In Anhalt,^^ after planting his crops, the sower leaps high in the air and throws 10 Frazer, J. G. : "Tlie Golden Bough," ( 3rd ed. ) Part I. "The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings," Vol. I, Chap. III. THE WILL TO POWER 189 the seed bag high up also, for as high as he throws the seed bag so high he hopes the flax to grow. The men of the emur totem of the Armita tribe, in order to create emurs, which are an important article of their food, let their blood flow upon the ground and then when the ground is dry and caked they paint upon it the sacred design of the emur, especially the parts they like to eat. Primitive man feels greatly the need for rain, so he goes about getting it by the principles of homeopathic,^^ or imitative magic, simulating it by sprinkling water on the ground and otherwise imitating a storm. These are fairly illustrative examples of the magic rites of primitive man. But it must often have hap- pened that no matter how high he jumped or threw the seed bag that the crops were poor or failed, no matter how freely he gave his blood for the creation of animals for food they were not numerous enough to supply his needs, no matter how diligently he practised his rain charms the sky stayed clear and the earth hot and parched. It is the same way with the child. It must hap- pen, sooner or later, that he reaches out his hand and it comes back empty; he cries, for the moon perhaps, and he must go without. In both instances failure repeatedly occurs, and finally the formula which is not the right formula must be put aside and primitive man and the child iiFrazer, J. G.: "The Golden Bough," (3rd ed.) Part I. "The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings," Vol. I, Chap. V. 190 CHARACTER FORMATION alike are forced to acknowledge their metliods as failures.^2 Eepeated disappointments operate as constant spurs to cause a further investigation of and a more intimate contact with reality to the end of an ever more and more efficient adaptation. The tools available to these undeveloped minds are simple and ineffective and so the process is slow and falter- ing and results in a tremendous sacrifice of energy. Yet this is the way the race has grown and it is upon such a foundation of rude beginnings that our pres- ent civilisation rests : it is from such humble origins that the minds of to-day have sprung, and it is only by understanding the various steps in the path of this progress that we can come to an understanding of mental phenomena as we find them now. This tendency to react as though thought was all- powerful is denominated the Gottmensch or the Jeliovah complex and is manifested in either of two ambivalent tendencies — either the tendency to act as if the individual were, as a matter of fact, omnip- otent or omniscient or both or, the exact opposite, to effect an humbleness which really implies such superiority. If the creative energy, the libido, is always striving for greater things, more significant and larger con- quests, more power, then the will to power may be considered as the motive underlying all conduct and therefore by no means abnormal, because a universal 12 Royce, Josiah : "Primitive Ways of Thinking with Special Reference to Negation and Classification." The Open Court, Oct., 1913. THE WILL TO POWER 191 attribute. It is, here, as elsewhere, not the nature of the driving force that calls for the qualification as abnormal but the way in which that force is used and made to subserve possible, practical, pragmatic ends. The degree to which it fails of this form of utilisation is the degree of its abnormality. The primitive signs of the Gottmensch complex are the outward and evident signs of a great and often overbearing egotism that brooks no contradic- tion. A self-sufficiency and self-assertiveness which, in really efficient individuals makes for great accom- plishments but is only too often the expression of an over-compensation for grave defects of character. Such persons express opinions about everything with a concrete finality, they obtrude themselves upon all occasions, and believe themselves capable of occupying any position, no matter how exalted. They freely criticise and as freely tell what they would have done under such and such conditions. Their general carriage and demeanour are prone to be self-assertive to the point of being bombastic and are then, very frequently, upon an evident back- ground of inefficiency and inherent weakness. We are familiar with the delusions of grandeur in the psychoses. The one disease in which they assume a degree of outlandishness and absurdity greater than in any other is paresis where corre- spondingly the real defect, as the result of a destruc- tive disease of the brain, is greatest. This, it seems to me, stamps the delusions of grandeur in paresis as, largely at least, phenomena of over-compensation 192 CHAEACTER FOEMATION for the organic defect produced by the disease. Here delusions tend in two main directions — money power and sexual power. These patients have so much money that they no longer can express the amount in the terms available but have to invent new words for the purpose, while their sexual power is expressed by their hundreds of wives and concubines and thou- sands of children. The ambivalent expression of the Gottmensch complex is expressed by the most extreme humble- ness, diffidence and modesty. Jones cites the case ^^ of a man who said he lived in the last house in the city. The delusions of persecution of the paranoiac imply his great importance — because of the impor- tant persons, societies, kings, the great money powers, the Catholic Church, etc., who are engaged in trying to bring about his ruim The idea of grandeur back of it all is frequently seen in the satis- faction displayed in telling of these persecutions and also in demonstrating how, in spite of all their arts and power, he has been able always to circum- vent their designs. In paresis too, we see the opposite picture of the classical delusions of grandeur but quite as extrava- gant in their way. For example, the paretic believes he has no stomach and has similar absurd and wholly impossible ideas which are well contrasted with the 13 Jones, Ernest: Der Gottmensch-Komplex. Internat. Zeitschr. f. Arztliclie Psychoan. Vol. I, No. 4. Abstracted in the Psycho- analytic Review, Vol. I, No. 4'. THE WILL TO POWER 193 ideas of grandeur by the term micromanic applied to them by Kraepelin.^^ Innumerable minor ways of manifesting this com- plex are seen. In the main they consist of all sorts of devices that serve to set off the individual from his fellows ; to make him different, not like the rest ; to isolate him in a world all his own in which he is supreme. Such devices are peculiar forms of speech and ways of speaking; non-understandable and involved methods of expression in speech or writing; illegible handwriting; the pursuit of knowledge and culture along recondite, obscure, impracticable and little known paths; the affectation of odd manner- isms; ways of dressing that attract notice; and a thousand and one peculiarities as numerous as the individuals using them. Glueck reports ^^ a para- noid patient in this hospital whose detailed care to keep himself from contact, in any way, direct or in- direct, reminds us very strongly of the ideas of sacredness that attach to royal personages and of the taboos that grow up about them.^^ The psychological basis of the Gottmensch com- plex, or at least its fundamental and principal basis, is an identification with the father, God being in this 14 Kraepelin, E. : General Paresis, Nerv. and Ment. Dis. Mono- graph Series ^No. 14. 15 Glueck, B.: The God Man or Jehovah Complex. N. Y. Med. Jour., Sept. 4, 1915. 16 Cf. Frazer, J. G.: "The Golden Bough," (3rd ed.) Part II, Ta- boo and the Perils of the Soul. See especially Chap, I, The Burden of Royalty, and that portion of Chap. IV dealing with the taboos of Chiefs and Kings. 194 CHARACTER FORMATION sense only an enlarged, idealised, and projected father image. The autoerotic and exhibitionistic determiners which Jones emphasises,^^ will be dwelt on in the next chapter in the discussion of partial libido trends. 17 Loc. cit. CHAPTER IX THE WILL TO POWER (Cont.) What you are stands over you the while, and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary, — Emerson, — Social Aims. PAETIAL LIBIDO STRIVINGS The body is composed of cells, the cells are grouped into organs, and the organs correlated and inte- grated to serve the ends of the individual. Similarly society is made up of individuals which are grouped and regrouped into larger and larger subdivisions thereof in a quite analogous way. We are familiar with the clashing interests of different groups of individuals, societies, classes, and in legislative bodies, wards, counties or states. Those who have followed legislative processes know that it is rare indeed when a given bill meets with anything like uni- versal favour. Generally it is opposed from many sides and has to yield first here and then there by accepting amendments which express those oppo- sitions. Finally the bill as passed may have little resemblance to its original form so changed is it as a result of the war which has been waged about it. The result which has been reached is the final result of a series of compromises with the various opposing 195 196 CHAKACTER FORMATION forces. Just so it is with the body or the psyche for that matter. Each organ, in fact each cell would absorb the entire individual so that he would be all liver or all stomach, or all anything else as the case might be if the organ in question succeeded in so dominating the situation that its will to power was no longer hampered, held in check, by the interests, the strivings, the will to power of other organs. This hierarchy of organs and functions and, heretofore described, of reacting levels, finally leads to the hegemony of the psyche in which, so to speak, the final compromises are reached and which, as a result, is able to pick up and sort out the tendencies of all the parts, and so group them as to express the striv- ings, no longer of the parts as such, but of the whole individual. It will be useful to keep this viewpoint of struggle between the parts of the organism in mind. For the present the important thing to note is that these tendencies and counter-tendencies can be separated into two great groups, namely, those which make for the preservation of the individual and those which make for the maintenance and perpetuation of the race — the self -preservative and the race-preservative tendencies respectively. Or to put it in terms of libido, the libido has two main tendencies, the self- preservative or nutritional libido and the race-pre- servative or sexual libido. It will be useful, there- fore, to consider the various strivings of the indi- vidual from the standpoint of which one of these groups they fall into. PARTIAL LIBIDO STRIVINGS 197 Let us take first the sexual libido. As has already been indicated the child has first to be tremendously interested in its own body. This is a necessary pre- condition for the growth of the ego- consciousness, that is for effecting that progress in development which has for its object the separating of the **I'' from the ^'not I.'' This is the period of autoeroti- cism for the interest in so far as it is a love interest, a love of one 's self that is erotic, i.e., of sexual nature. Later on, as this separation of the self from the environment is effected the love of the child begins to go out to those about it and at first to that person or those persons who are most like itself.^ In other words the erotic interest is homosexual and narcis- sistic.^ To the extent that the love object is the parent, brother or sister of the opposite sex the love is incestuous. So that in the course of development from autoeroticism through narcissism, homosex- uality and incest to an object love, that is at once iCf. Freud, S.: Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex, Nerv. and Ment. Dis. Monog. Se. No. 7. 2 Narcissus was a beautiful youth who fell in love with his own image reflected from a pool to which he had bent to slake his thirst. Each time he reached out his arms to grasp the beautiful apparition it vanished. This was repeated over and over again, until finally. Narcissus pined away and died. Olympus compas- sionately changed the corpse into the flower bearing his name which has ever since flourished beside quiet pools. "A lonely flower he spied, A meek and forlorn flower, with naught of pride. Drooping its beauty o'er the watery clearness. To woo its o\^Ti sad image into nearness: Deaf to light Zephyrus it would not move; But still would seem to droop, to pine, to love." — ^Keats. 198 CHARACTER FORMATION heterosexual and not incestuous, certain barriers have had to be erected, the autoerotic barrier and the incest barrier— the latter of which in some of its nuances has been discussed in the discussion of the family romance (Chapter VII). Certain additional and partial tendencies are asso- ciated with this general trend, the more important of which are exhibitionism and its ambivalent opposite, curiosity. Exhibitionism has its roots in the desire of the child to show off its body naked and without shame and therefore gets its pleasure motive from the sense of freedom — ^being without shame which of course represents the social repressions. Hence dreams of nakedness and Paradise represented as a place where clothes are unnecessary. The pompous- ness and self-assertiveness of the Gottmensch com- plex have this root. Curiosity is the opposite; instead of projecting one's own personality into the world, foisting it upon people, one tries to absorb the world in the form of knowledge, to know all things, to become omniscient. Curiosity in young children manifests itself as sexual curiosity and in the form of touching corre- lates itself with another of the fore-pleasures, look- ing, of the sexual act.^ This tendency to touch things is seemingly at the root of those propensities to steal, the so-called kleptomania, in which the tend- encies appear so mysterious because the things taken have no apparent usefulness for the individual. Wealthy women, for example, who steal from depart- 3 Cf. Freud: "Three Contributions." PARTIAL LIBIDO STRIVINGS 199 ment stores things that they could not possibly have use for, or if they did, which they could easily afford to buy. In connection with these partial tendencies, too, the various erogenous zones should be borne in mind. In the child the sexual zone has only the same eroge- nous quality as that shared in by other zones of the body, particularly the mouth and anus. This is due to the fact that during infancy pleasure has been associated with all of these zones indifferently. The pleasures of urination, defecation, and sucking. Pleasure being the moving force back of all conduct it is sought indifferently at first in all of these direc- tions and it is not until a later developmental period that the primacy of the sexual zone is finally estab- lished. The failure to establish the primacy of the sex zone coupled with a delay in development at the homosexual, narcissistic level produces, as one of its results, the various forms of sexual perversions which will not be discussed more in detail in this work. Suffice it to say that the infant has been desig- nated as, sexually, polymorphous perverse, that is, from the standpoint of the early stage of develop- ment, when the instincts are a more or less homo- geneous mass, or have not yet worked out their means and avenues of expression in conformity with adult and efficient standards, the individual contains within himself, not only the possibility of a normal develop- ment but also the possibilities of any one of the various deviations from the normal. One of these deviations, anal eroticism, is exceed- 200 CHARACTER FORMATION ingly interesting and shows the type of mechanism very well, for it has been fairly well worked out. The most notable characteristics of the person who has retained a certain amount of anal eroticism are orderliness, obstinacy, and economy.* With this group the affect of hate may be exceptionally in evidence.^ We can understand these characteristics if we will recall the infantile situation. During this period the establishment of the excretory functions must excite much interest and wonder. It would seem to me difficult to overestimate the -effects that the initiation of these functions must have upon the child. They begin before the child has differentiated himself from the rest of the world, they take place without his volition, and they are accompanied by massive feelings of pleasure. It is not difficult to see in such experiences the roots of urinary and fecal phan- tasies. From the very first the bowel dejecta are treated as dirty. The child learns, as soon as it can learn anything, that fecal matter is considered dirty and the bowel movements in the diaper are fre- quently denominated a **mess." In addition to this attitude the child has held up to it, upon occasions when it has soiled itself, the ideal of cleanliness, neatness, the absence of a *' mess," in short the ideals of neatness and orderliness. It therefore happens, 4 Brill, A. A.: "Psychanalysis," Chap. XI. Anal Eroticism and Character, W. B. Saunders Co., Philadelphia, 1912. 5 Jones, Ernest : Hass und Analerotik in der Zwangsneurose. Int. Zeitsch. f. Xrztliche Psychoan., Vol. I, No. 5. Abstracted in the Psychoanalytic Review, Vol. II, No. 1. PARTIAL LIBIDO STRIVINGS 201 in later life, that the reactions formed against anal eroticism are neatness and orderliness. Inasmuch as the movements of the bowels are pleasurable in a massive way and are among the first pleasures of the infant it naturally resents efforts that are made to rob it of this pleasure. As the time and place of bowel movements are among the first to fall under the ban of social repression this pleasure is, from the first, interfered with by nurse or mother. The child in its effort to retain the pleas- ure thus interfered with develops the character of obstinacy, that is, fights for its own way, strives to retain this particular form of satisfaction in the face of forces that tend to rob it of the pleasure. The economical characteristic is a little more diffi- cult to explain. One of the ways of securing and embracing the pleasure associated with the move- ments of the bowels is by retaining the feces and so increasing the massiveness of the pleasurable results. The anal erotic is, therefore, characteristically con- stipated. This tendency to retain and accumulate is extended and, if well sublimated shows itself in economy, tendencies to collect, for example to make art collections, collections of books, and in many other more or less useful ways. When not so well sublimated the tendency is to penuriousness, avari- ciousness, miserliness, and the collection of useless things. The relation of money to anal erotic is still further determined. It is probably partly determined by the association of the least valuable with the most valu- 202 CHARACTER FORMATION able although we shall see among savages how fecal matter comes to be regarded as of great value. They are probably further associated by the common colour — yellow. The existence of many common ex- pressions such as *^ filthy lucre" shows how general this association really is. I have said that hate was characteristic of the anal erotic. If the description of obstinacy is borne in mind it will be seen how the child, constantly inter- fered with in the enjoyment of its pleasure, not only becomes obstinate but becomes resentful against the person who is thus always interfering. Herein prob- ably is the origin of the hate reaction and inasmuch as the person against whom it is projected is usually the mother, that is, the person most loved, it is seen that the hate reaction is first manifested towards the most loved person. This being the original form of experience it is natural that thereafter hate should easily arise in connection with all later objects of love. The close connection between love and hate has always been recognised. Here is probably also an important root of sadism.^ In those individuals who have failed completely either to sublimate or to form effective reactions against these instinctive tendencies but who live on in their infancy, so to speak, we find a noticeable tendency to carelessness in dress amounting to slovenliness, uncleanliness, general disorderliness, a tendency to go frequently to stool and great irritability when interfered with. 6 The gratification of the sexual feeling by seeing or inflicting pain. PARTIAL LIBIDO STRIVINGS 203 This is a common picture in the asylums and the explanation here given has been worked out by Dr. E. J. Kempf J V A rather similar situation prevails with regard to the urethral (urinary) erotic. I recall a dream of a friend of mine ; he dreamt of Karl Marx' definition of wealth which amounted to saying that wealth was the surplus product of trade. The idea of surplus product went right back, upon analysis, to interest in urinary excretion. Urine of course is also a sur- plus product, also yellow like gold. Masturbation produces another one of these ** pleasures of expulsion" all of which are autoerotic efforts at gaining omnipotence, at being self-sufficient in the sense of not having to go beyond one's own body for satisfactions. People who still react in these infantile ways are very impatient of inter- ference, irritable, restless, '* nervous"; having been accustomed to find the sources of satisfaction within themselves they are unable to brook the delays im- posed by the world of reality. It is significant to note in all these types of reac- tion that the distinction made at the beginning of this chapter, of nutritive and sexual libido, is not at all clear. Urination and defecation belong on the nutritive side of the fence but we find these functions utilised as sources of erotic pleasure. This admix- ture is still further in evidence in the ceremonials of primitive man.^ Here we find feces, for example, 7 Personal commuiiication. sjelliffe, S. E. and Zenia X : Compulsion Neurosis and 204 CHARACTER FORMATION greatly valued. Such values can only be understood by keeping constantly in mind that they are uncon- scious values, that the unconscious is laid down in infancy before the development of critique and that the values have reference to feeling tones and not to intellectually appreciated qualities. To the infant, therefore, anything that comes from the body may easily have the same value be it urine, feces, sweat or blood. This way of thinking is well illustrated in the cus- toms of primitive men. It is well known that the savage believes that any part of his body or even his clothes partakes of himself, his life, so that if a sorcerer gets a bit of his nail-paring, a lock of his hair, or even a shred of his blanket he can by magic make the owner ill. So the Fijians extend this to bits of food left over and even to their excretions which are deposited in secret for fear that a sor- cerer might, through them, gain control over them.^ In Tud or Warrior Island, Torres Straits, men drink the sweat of renowned warriors and eat the scrapings from their finger-nails which had become coated and sodden with human blood. This was done ^^to make strong and like stone; no afraid." ^^ Primitive Culture. The Psychoanalytic Review, Vol. I, No. 4. Brink, Louise: Frazer's "Golden Bough." The Psychoanalytic Review, Vol. Ill, No. 1. 9 Thomson, Basil: "The Fijians," cited by Frazer, J. G.: "The Belief in Immortality," Vol. I. Macmillan & Co., 1913. loHadden, A. C: The Ethnography of the Western Tribes of Torres Straits, cited by Frazer, J. G.: "The Golden Bough" (3rd Ed.), Part V. Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild, Vol. II. PARTIAL LIBIDO STRIVINGS 205 The Papuans believed that the soul resided in the blood.^^ The custom of savages wounding them- selves and mixing their blood and so becoming blood relatives ^- is an elaboration of their way of thinking of blood. The blood, the urine, the feces, the perspiration, anything in fact that had touched the body, particu- larly anything that came from it was possessed of its spiritual essence, was part of it. Their physical separation from the individual did not, however, sever their connection really. They still stood in sympathetic relation with the individual, and because being of him he could be influenced through them. The associational way of thinking which leads to like results is well illustrated in the case of Zenia X ^^ She was afraid that she would offend God if, for example, her tears came between her and God when at prayer. She thought this way about her tears because her tears might have been due to im- pure, unclean thoughts. We see this way of thinking exemplified in the so- called birth and impregnation phantasies which are of such frequent occurrence in dreams and in the symbolism not only of the neuroses and the psychoses but of everyday life. It seems improbable, on the face of it, when a 11 Goudswaard, A. : De Papoewa's van de Geelvinksbaai, cited by Prazer: "Belief in Immortality." 12 Tyler, E. B.: Anthropology, Int. Sci. Se. D. Appleton & Co., New York, 1893. 13 Jellife and Zenia X , loc. cit. 206 CHAEACTER FORMATION movement of the bowels has been put down as a birth phantasy and eating was said to symbolise sexual intercourse. Let us examine the evidence. Early in the life of the child, as in that of man, the origin of life, as represented by the advent of a new human being, is regarded with curiosity and wonder. We can easily understand this, for the more we learn about it the greater does the wonder become. The important point I wish to emphasize, however, is that in neither instance, that of the child or of primitive man, is there any relation known be- tween sexual intercourse, pregnancy, and childbirth. Why this is so with the child we know, the reasons for this ignorance among primitive men are many. I will only mention one, namely, the long time that elapses between impregnation and the first signs of foetal life effectually prevents the relation of cause and effect from being established. Now both children and savages know, in a vague way, that the child for a time resides in the body of the mother. How it gets there ? where it comes from anyway! is the subject of much theorising. The natives of Central Australia ^* think that in a far distant past they call * ^ Alcheringa " their an- cestors, when they died, went into the ground at certain spots which are known by some natural feature such as a stone or tree. At such spots their ancestral spirits are ever waiting a favourable oppor- i^Frazer, J. G.: "Totemism and Exogamy. A Treatise on Cer- tain Early Forms of Superstition and Society." 4 vols., Macmillan and Co., London, 1910, Vol. I, p. 93. PARTIAL LIBIDO STRIVINGS 207 tunity for reincarnation, and if a young girl or woman passes they pounce upon her, enter her, and secure their chance of being born again into the world. In the Arunta and Kaitish ^^ tribes the totem of the child is determined by the place where the mother first *^felt life,'* as the child is supposed to be the re-incarnation of a spirit belonging to the totem occupying this locality. In the Central Aus- tralian tribes ^^ this theory, that the child is a re- born ancestor, a re-incarnation of the dead, is uni- versally held. The Baganda believe ^^ that excep- tionally a woman may be impregnated without com- merce with the other sex, and so when a woman finds herself in this state and the usual explanation is not evident, she may claim that the pregnancy is due to the flower of a banana falling on her back or shoulders while she was at work, and this explana- tion is accepted. In the island of Mota in the Bank's Group,^^ if a woman happens to find, while seated in the bush, an animal or fruit of some sort in her loin- cloth she carefully takes it home, and if an animal, makes a place for it, tends and feeds it. After a while if the animal has disappeared it is because it has entered into the woman. When the child is born it is regarded as being in some way the animal or fruit and may never eat this animal or fruit in its life-time on pain of a serious illness or death. Here 15 Frazer, "Totemism and Exogamy," Vol. I, p. 155. 16 Frazer, "Totemism and Exogamy," Vol. I, p. 191. 17 Frazer, "Totemism and Exogamy," Vol. II, p. 507. 18 Frazer, "Totemism and Exogamy," Vol. II, p. 90. 208 CHARACTER FORMATION we are quite close to the primitive idea of a soul which, as is known, is conceived of as a living being that can leave the body and return to it. We see this analogy more clearly among the Melanesians.^^ A pregnant woman fancies that a cocod-nut or bread fruit has some kind of connection with her child. When the child is born it is the nunu of the cocoa-nut or what not, and as in the previous instance the fruit is taboo for the child. It is instructive to learn that the words atai and tamaniu used on the island of Mota^^ to express this relationship are accepted equivalents for the English word ^^soul.'' And finally we get the extreme of concreteness in the Tlinglit tribe ^^ of Northwest America. When a be- loved person dies the relatives take the nail from the little finger of his right hand and a lock of hair from the right side of his head and put them in the belt of a young girl. The young woman then fasts a prescribed time, and prays just before she breaks her fast that the dead person may be born again from her. These examples show the extremely material and concrete character of the savage concepts still further emphasised by the widely prevalent belief that at the moment of ^'quickening'' some animal has entered the woman's womb.^^ jt jg quite evident to her that something has entered her, and what more i9Frazer, "Totemism and Exogamy," Vol. II, p. 84. 20 Frazer, "Totemism and Exogamy," Vol. II, p. 81. 21 Frazer, "Totemism and Exogamy," Vol. Ill, p. 274. 22 Frazer, "Totemism and Exogamy," Vol. I, p. 157 sqq. PARTIAL LIBIDO STRIVINGS 209 natural than to suppose it to be the spirit of the animal, bird, or plant that she was looking at when she first felt the movements of the child. This belief, coupled with the belief of the Minnetarees ^^ or Hidatas of the Siouan or Dacotan stock, that there is a great cave the Makadistati or *^ House of In- fants'' which contains spirit children waiting to be born, and it is these children who enter women and are born of them, the theme of Maeterlinck's ''Blue Bird," is near enough to the common ideas of chil- dren with which all are familiar, that babies are brought by the stork or the doctor, to need no further comment on that score. In introducing this subject of the theories of im- pregnation I said that it had often been found that eating together was symbolic of sexual intercourse. There is plenty of anthropological verification for that statement. When a man of the Wogait tribe of Northern Australia ^^ kills game or gathers vege- tables while hunting he gives of this food to his wife who is obliged to eat believing that the food will cause her to conceive and bring forth a child, while among the tribes around the Cairns district in North Queensland 2^ the acceptance of food by a woman from a man constitutes a marriage ceremony as well as being the cause of conception. We have seen that when a woman ''quickened" she thought the spirit of the animal or plant that 23 Frazer, "Totemism and Exogamy," Vol. Ill, p. 150. 24 Frazer, "Totemism and Exogamy," Vol. I, p. 576. 25 Frazer, "Totemism and Exogamy," Vol. I, p. 577. 210 CHARACTER FORMATION happened to be near had entered her womb, so we see now that it is quite as possible to attribute the child to food that enters the body by the mouth. Here is an extremely interesting relation between the sexual and the nutritive and is a deadly parallel to the child's belief that it is what its mother has eaten that makes the baby grow in her. If it is the food that makes the child grow in the mother's body it is only a step to the conclusion that the exit of the baby therefrom shall be via the alimen- tary canal. This cloacal theory of birth is one of the commonest formulations of the child mind and is of course at the basis of the birth phantasies I have already mentioned as being associated with movements of the bowels. Have we any corrobora- tive evidence that similar ideas were held during the childhood of the race? The Pennefather blacks of Northeast Australia ^^ believe in a being they call Anjea, who was originally made by Thunder, and who fashions babies of swamp- mud and inserts them in the wombs of women. I need hardly point the analogy of swamp-mud to feces. It is a far cry from this crude concept of savage man to the beautiful Greek myth that tells how Pro- metheus (Forethought) and Epimetheus (After- thought) made man from clay and then how Eros breathed into his nostrils the spirit of life and Mi- nerva endowed him with a soul, but the distance has 26Frazer, "Totemism and Exogamy, Vol. I, p. 536. PARTIAL LIBIDO STRIVINGS 211 been spanned by comparative mythology with the assistance of the psychoanalytic interpretations. The partial libido trends are of importance in proportion to their individual capacities to make themselves felt in the final result — character, con- duct. Each one, like each organ of the body, like each cell even, tends to dominate, to become supreme, to accumulate all power to the exclusion and irre- spective of all others. This is its manifestation of the will to power. Bergson says ^^ of species, **each species of life behaves as if the general movement of life stopped at it instead of passing through it. It thinks only for itself — it lives only for itself. Hence the numberless struggles that we behold in Nature." His statement might equally well apply to any organ, to any cell, in fact to any part what- ever. He says the same thing of the individual,^^ * * each individual retains only a certain impetus from the universal vital impulsion and tends to use this energy in its own interest. In this consists adapta- tion. The species and the individual thus think only of themselves — whence rises a possible conflict with other forms of life." Here is a conception of the conflict between individuals. The universality of conflict has already been discussed (Chapter IV) and we are already familiar with many of its mani- festations at the psychological level. This univer- 27 Cited by Hinkle, B. M. : Jung's Libido Theory and the Berg- sonian Philosophy. New York Med. Jour. May 30, 1914. 28 Cited by Hinkle, loc. cit. 212 CHARACTER FORMATION sality of conflict is important to keep in mind. In this connection it is the basis of the conflicting inter- ests of the partial libido strivings the outcome of which is so important in character formation. Freud ^^ has summed up the situation by laying it down that the permanent distinguishing traits of an individual are due either to unchanged continuations of his original impulses, sublimations of those im- pulses, or to reactions formed against them. The continuation of original impulses are seen in such character traits as gluttony, lust, exhibitionism (pompousness), curiosity, domination (Gottmensch). The reaction formed against these original impulses are seen in such traits as, the whole group of anti- pathetic emotions — ^horror of incest, homosexuality, and all sexual license — excessive tenderness (when it hides an underlying hate), and a whole host of symptom reactions seen in the realms of mental dis- order — the neuroses, psychoneuroses, and psychoses. The enormous results attained by the race by sub- limation can well be illustrated by citing some of the chapter headings from White's ** Warfare of Science with Theology. "^^ For example: **From ^ Signs and Wonders' to Law in the Heavens''; ^^From 'The Prince of the Power of the Air' to Meteorology"; **From Magic to Chemistry and Physics"; **From Miracles to Medicine"; *'From 29 Brill: "Psychanalvsis." 30 White, A. D.: "A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom." 2 Vols. New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1903. PAETIAL LIBIDO STRIVINGS 213 Fetich to Hygiene"; **From * Demoniacal Posses- sion' to Insanity"; *'From Diabolism to Hysteria"; ^'From Babel to Comparative Philology"; *^From the Dead Sea Legends to Comparative Mythology." The path along which mankind has come has been a long one but what one of us but retains some insist- ent fragment of a superstition, perhaps about the unluckiness of thirteen or that because something has happened twice it will happen a third time, which testifies to and links us with our past. Like the dusty traveller we have come a long way on the road, and w^e too are dirty, begrimed and travel stained, the marks of the journey are upon us. To one who has tried to fill in the details of this journey, of which this book is only the briefest out- line, each individual, everything human will come to have a new, a vivid interest. He will begin to see in a thousand and one indescribable details the evidences of the nature of each individual conflict and indica- tions of the happenings along the particular path which he has come. Every little quirk of expression, facial mannerism, restless, nervous and apparently unmotived movement, every slip of the tongue, and posture of the body, every superstition or prejudice, every interest and every opinion will each be an indication fraught with the richest material for illu- minating character. As Freud very well puts it: **He who has eyes to see, and ears to hear, becomes convinced that mortals can hide no secret. Who- ever is silent with the lips, tattles with the finger- tips; betrayal oozes out of every pore." 214 CHARACTER FORMATION The history of culture is shot through with evi- dences of this sort; evidences of the past which are retained by the symbols (see Chapter V). Just one example to illustrate this phase of the problem. A young man consulted me because of failure in his capacity to work, general nervousness and falling off in efficiency. Neurasthenia it would generally be called. He told me, among other things, that some time back, when he had been feeling miserable in the same way, in the earlier period of his trouble, his physician had suggested that he take a rest by tak- ing a trip somewhere. He had chosen the Isthmus and with his wife, he started. No sooner had he left the dock when he was seized with a strong impulse to throw himself over-board and had to go below in his state-room and lock himself in. In the course of our general conversation and in answer to my more or less stereotyped questions about any previous illness he might have had he mis- spoke, saying that he had been given quarter grain doses of quinine. Now, of course, no one ever gives quarter grain doses of quinine but that dose is often given of calomel and calomel is what he had intended to say. Here then was an opening, a weak spot in his line of defence. Quinine must have unusual significance to break through from its repression at such an opportunity. My questions elicited the fol- lowing: that he had been on the Isthmus upon one previous occasion; that he was there over night between boats ; that during that evening he had had PARTIAL LIBIDO STRIVINGS 215 a tender passage with a trained nurse stationed at the hospital ; my recollection does not serve me as to whether he acquired malaria at this time or whether quinine was a symbol for the Isthmus because of the well known presence of malaria there ; upon the occasion of this second trip to the Isthmus the first thing he did when he landed was to inquire whether that nurse was still there. This list of facts serves to explain why he chose the Isthmus as his objective when advised to take a trip, and they also serve to explain why he wanted to jump over-board. He was yielding to an impulse of which he was ashamed. But his past had left its mark, the record had been written and was there to be read by one who knew the language. Here, in this field of partial libido strivings, as elsewhere, where the meanings strike deep in the human soul, the poet has long since preceded the scientist. Hear Petrarch speak from his solitude at Vaucluse : ^'Here at Vaucluse I make war upon my senses, and treat them as my enemies. My eyes, which have drawn me into a thousand difficulties, see no longer either gold or precious stones, or ivory, or purple ; they behold nothing save the water, the firmament, and the rocks. The only female who comes within their sight is a swarthy old woman, dry and parched as the Lybian deserts. My ears are no longer courted by those harmonious instruments and voices which have so often transported my soul ; they hear 216 CHARACTER FORMATION nothing but the lowing of the cattle, the bleating of the sheep, the warbling of the birds, and the murmurs of the river. **I keep silence from noon till night. There is no one to converse with ; for the good people, employed in spreading their nets, or tending their vines and V/ orchards, are no great adepts at conversation. I often content myself with the dry bread of the fisher- man, and even eat it with pleasure. Nay, I almost prefer it to white bread. This old fisherman, who is as hard as iron, earnestly remonstrates against my manner of life; and assures me that I can not long hold out. I am, on the contrary, convinced that it is easier to accustom one 's self to a plain diet than to the luxuries of a feast. I am fond of the fish with which this stream abounds, and I sometimes amuse myself with spreading the nets. As to my dress, there is an entire change ; you would take me for a labourer, or a shepherd." CHAPTER X EXTROVERSION AND INTROVERSION There have been a number of efforts to classify men according to their temperament or their way of orienting tliemselves towards certain problems or aspects of nature. Among the most notable is that of Ostwald ^ who divided learned men and geniuses into two great classes romanticists and classicists. The romanticists are distinguished by their rapid reaction, their extremely prompt production and abundance of ideas and projects ; they are admirable teachers, brilliant, and with a contagious enthusiasm, they attract numerous pupils, found schools and ex- ercise a great personal influence. The classicists, are on the contrary, of slow reaction, they produce with much effort, are poorly fitted for teaching and for direct, personal action, lack enthusiasm, are paralysed by their own critique, live removed and shut up in themselves, have scarcely any pupils but give their life to the achievement of a perfect work which often secures for them a posthumous celebrity. Nietzsche's well known division of men into two camps, the apollonian and the dionysian, is very well 1 Ostwald, W.: "Grosse Manner," Leipzig, 1910, cited by Jung, C. G. : Contribution a I'etude des types psycliologiques. Arch, de Psych. Tome XIII, No. 52, Dec, 1913. 217 218 CHARACTER FORMATION set forth in a few words by Mencken.^ **Epic poetry, sculpture, painting and story-telling are apollonic: they represent, not life itself, but some man's visualised idea of life. But dancing, great deeds and, in some cases, music, are dionysian ; they are part and parcel of life as some actual human being, or collection of human beings, is living it." William James has seen these distinctions and endeavoured to define them according to his lights.^ He sees the same tendency to split men up into two mutually opposed groups in whatever field of human endeavour we look. In manners there are the for- malists and the free-and-easy; in government, the authoritarians and the anarchists; in literature, purists or academicals and realists; in art, classics and romantics; and in philosophy, rationalists and empiricists. In defining this last pair of terms he says, '^ * empiricist' meaning your lover of facts in all their crude variety, * rationalist' meaning your devotee to abstract and eternal principles." James himself prefers to use the terms ^^tender-minded" and ' ' tough-minded. ' ' The qualities which the mem- bers of these two groups show are, according to him : The tender-minded are rationalistic (going by ***principles"), intellectualistic, idealistic, optimis- tic, religious, free-willist, monistic, dogmatical. The tough -minded are empiricists (going by 2 Mencken, H. L,: "The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche." Boston, 1908. 3 James, W.: "Pragmatism," New York, 1912. EXTROVERSION AND INTROVERSION 219 **facts"), sensationalistic, materialistic, pessimistic, irreligious, fatalistic, pluralistic, sceptical. With respect to this whole problem it would seem that there should be some broader general principle under which this body of facts could be grouped. This principle I believe exists in the terms of libido. . In other words the broadest basis upon which men ] can be divided into two camps rests upon the answer \ to this question. Where is the libido going? Without? or Within? Does the individual find his main inter- ests outside himself? Does he attach his libido to objects in the outside world? or does he find his main interests within? in contemplating the world only as he sees it reflected within himself? Is he of the extroverted or introverted type ? Jung defines these two types very simply."* He says : ' ^ The introverted type is characterised by the fact that he applies his horme^ chiefly to himself, i.e., he finds the unconditioned values within himself, but the extroverted type applies his horme to the external world, to the object, the non-ego, i.e., he finds the unconditioned value outside himself. The introverted considers everything under the aspect of the value of his own ego; the extroverted depends upon the value of his object. ' ' From this point of view we see that the romanti- cists of Ostwald are extroverted, his classicists intro- verted : the dionysians of Nietzsche are extroverted, 4 Jung, G. G.: Psychological Understanding. Jour. Alnormal Psych., Feb.-March, 1915. 5 The term Jung suggests as a substitute for libido. 220 CHARACTER FORMATION his apollonians, introverted; the tough-minded of James are extroverted, the tender-minded, intro- verted. EXTKOVEESION To the extent that our interests flow outward and attach themselves to objects and events in the outer world of reahty we are extroverted. In fact things in the outer world do not exist for me unless I prb-^-- ject, so to speak, my libido, my interest upon them. The chair that is opposite me as I write did not exist for me a few moments ago and only began to exist as I was looking about for an example of this mechan- ism and then its existence was only a very limited one. I thought of the chair solely as a useful object for this specific illustration, beyond that the chair had no meaning for me at that time, any other qual- ities that I might think of at some other time as belonging to it, or any other qualities that some one else might think of as belonging to it had no existence for me. For the time being it stood only as a good illustration of what I was writing about — it had no other meaning. To be a little simpler. A moment's thought will show how a chair may mean different things to dif- ferent people or different things at different times to the same person. To a tired person a chair is something to sit in : to a salesman in a furniture store it is something to sell: to a carpenter it represents problems of construction : to a mischievous boy hunt- ing material for a bon-fire it may be something to EXTROVERSION AND INTROVERSION 221 burn; and to the same person at different times it may have first one and then another of these mean- ings. The meaning in each instance depends upon what we contemplate doing with reference to the chair, how we are going to use it, not what it is in itself. Bergson^ puts it in his inimitable way by saying, ^^The more physics advances, the more it effaces the individuality of bodies and even of the particles into which the scientific imagination began by decomposing them; bodies and corpuscles tend to dissolve into a universal interaction. Our percep- tions give us the plan of our eventual action on things much more than that of things themselves. The outlines we find in objects simply mark what we can attain and modify in them. The lines we see traced through matter are just the paths on which we are called to move. Outlines and paths have declared themselves in the measure and proportion that consciousness has prepared for action on unor- ganised matter — that is to say, in the measure and proportion that intelligence has been formed. It is doubtful whether animals built on a different plan — a moUusk or an insect, for instance — cut matter up along the same articulations. It is not indeed neces- sary that they should separate it into bodies at all." We therefore may be said to get from an object jDvily so much as we give to it. The chair again plays no particular part in our interest if we do not give our interest to the chair, project our interest upon it, exteriorise ourselves to that extent, that is to the 6 "Creative Evolution." 222 CHARACTER FORMATION extent that the chair as a symbol can represent us. The chair is a symbol for that portion of ourselves which is represented by our interest in it. To be still more explicit. If I simply look at the chair and see something to sit in then the chair represents only that part of my psyche that is interested in sitting. If now I begin to examine how the chair is made, to examine the mortised joints, the turned rungs, then the chair takes on all this added meaning. And finally if I note its style, recognise it as belonging to a certain French period my interest is immensely broader while if this particular period is correlated with cer- tain artistic standards represented by the furniture and that again with certain social and political con- ditions it can easily be seen how, from the starting point of the chair, I may be led ultimately to a con- sideration of anything within the field of human endeavour. The chair comes therefore to mean more and more as my interest in it grows, it returns to me the interest I took in it in that what it gives is after all only what I originally projected upon it or used it to symbolise. This is the viewpoint of the human- istic movement in philosophy — so-called from the dictum of Protagoras that *'man is the measure of all things." In the Papyri of Philonous, already quoted from, Protagoras is made to say, ^^And so it seems to us that we come into a world already made and incapable of change. But this is not the truth. We *find' a world made for us, because we are the heirs of bygone ages, profiting by their work, and it EXTROVERSION AND INTROVERSION 223 may be suffering for their folly. But we can in part remake it, and reform a world that has slowly formed itself. But of all this how could we get an inkling if we had not begun by perceiving that of all things, Man, each man, is the measure?" This is the principle of the extroversion of the libido. We project ourselves into the world and then rediscover ourselves in these projected symbols. For example: in the effort to secure power by continuing to live, by conquering old age and disease, in this effort to gain personal immortality the physi- cian becomes for the patient the incarnation of this aspect of himself. The physician is that projected portion of himself with which he endeavours to con- quer this specific type of destructive agency, he is the symbol of the patient's effort to transcend the limitations of life.'^ Faith in the physician is then in this sense faith in himself but back of that, faith in his father, who was, in the history of his develop- ment, the original source of all authority. This is not only an example of the extroversion of the libido but it is an illustration of how the symbol is utilised to bring to bear the very strongest con- structive forces, how it is used to give the greatest possible sanction to all efforts aimed at the largest personal development of power and efficiency. Again we see the enormous energic values of the symbol. The discussion of this aspect of libido values might 7 See Jelliffe, S. E.: The Technique of Psychoanalysis. The Psychoanalytic Review, Vol. Ill, No. 1, Jan., 1916. 224 CHARACTER FORMATION be made as broad as the whole range of human insti- tutions. The enormous energic value of the symbol and the pragmatic value of this type of mechanism is perhaps best seen in the example given and in its complement — religion. The Holy Family is symbolic of the family group, as the infant first learned to know it, and in which he found complete satisfaction for his love and com- plete security, his father the greatest and most powerful of men, his mother the sweetest and most beautiful of women. From primitive man up through the ages religion has played its naighty part in urging man along the path of progress, sometimes by love, sometimes by the cruelest scourings, but always on, unremittingly, irresistibly on. For the savage, the gods are men, chiefs perhaps, but still men. From this simplest conception of a god progress begins by, first remov- ing the god further and further in both time and space. He is a former chief about whom wonderful tales are told and he lives ^^over there," across the river or on an island in the sea. The span of time and space become ever greater, the god's origin re- cedes into an ever more remote past and the Heaven in which complete love and security will be the reward for a good life, in which the lost omnipotence will be regained, is put otf into an ever receding future. And finally the qualities of the gods themselves become changed in like manner. From their original concrete human character they become more and EXTROVERSION AND INTROVERSION 225 more ideal, they partake more and more of the qual- ities of the unconscious wish that would clothe the image of God in the garments of the father as he once seemed. As the God recedes in time and space and as his qualities become less concretely human and more ideal they too become more abstract until the human element seems quite to have vanished as for example in Matthew Arnold's expression^ of faith in ^^a power not ourselves that makes for righteousness" which has been referred to as the ^irreducible mini- mum" of religion. And so the great God-father reaches out and takes the hand of weak, helpless man in his infancy and supports him as he learns to walk, keeping always in front of him and encouraging him to keep trying and as from tottering he is able to stand and then to take a step and then another the hand is gradually withdrawn, though at first always near, and always held out to grasp in need until finally man not only stands, and walks, but need no longer watch each step but with shoulders thrown back and head erect he looks up to his Ideal which while he can now only see it in the dim distance is bright and clear and unmistakable. I have spoken all along of extroversion as the pro- jection outward of the libido. I have used the term projection because I thought it preferable in that discussion. A note of warning is needed however, 8 Cited by Stiles, P. G. : "The Nervous System and Its Conserva- tion." W. B. Saunders Co., Phila., 1914. 226 CHARACTER FORMATION because projection has a teclmical meaning in psy- choanalytic usage and applies to the mechanism which is the ambivalent opposite of extroversion as I have just described it. I would have been techni- cally more correct to have used the word transfer, a translation of the German technical term Ueber- tragung, originally used to describe this phenom- enon. And now to the mechanism of projection as that word is technically used. In the projection mechan- ism the libido, the love, the interest goes out to the object but the result is not satisfaction of the crav- ing which the going out represented. The love does not come back, it is frustrated, it finds itself up against a stone wall, there is no response in kind. This is the mechanism in paranoia and paranoid types of reaction for many people react in this way about whom there is no suspicion of mental disease. It is the type of reaction that is not infrequently seen in a subordinate towards his superior. The superior represents the father image from which guidance and love is desired. Inasmuch, however, as this desire for love and guidance can never be satisfied adequately because it is based upon infantile demands the craving continues. That is, the love is given to the object and suffering is the result because it is not reciprocated in kind. This suffering is not correctly interpreted as to its source but felt as if coming from the beloved person and so pain is re- turned for love. This is the feeling basis for the ideas of persecution which such individuals have. EXTROVERSION AND INTROVERSION 227 They feel that they are being injured, plotted against, are the objects of all sorts of subtle intrigues and the like. Such a feeling is often at the basis of a strongly developed tendency to gossip, to listen to what so-and-so has said and perhaps to read some sinister reference into the remarks and then pass them on in return for still more material to either gloat over or tremble about in this all too close to a pathological world.^ This tendency to find outside ourselves the expla- nations and the excuses for our own shortcomings is most admirably expressed by Shakespeare. In King Lear he makes Edmund, the bastard son of Gloster, Edm, This is the excellent foppery of the world ! that, when we are sick in fortune (often the surfeit of our own behaviour), we make guilty of our dis- asters the sun, the moon, and stars; as if we were villains on necessity ; fools by heavenly compulsion ; knaves, thieves, and treachers by spherical predom- inance; drunkards, liars, and adulterers, by an en- forced obedience of planetary influence ; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on. An admir- 9 The hypothesis, first advanced by Freud, that the projection mechanism produces the result of feeling oneself persecuted because the individual is at the homosexual stage of libido development will not be discussed here. The subject is more appropriate for a work on psychopathology. The comment is irresistible, however, that if this is true, and many believe it is, including myself, that the mechanism is for the purpose of driving the individual away from sources of homosexual satisfaction, which can never be construc- tively advantageous to the race, and encouraging him on the path of progress. 228 CHARACTER FORMATION able evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition on the charge of a star ! My father com- pounded with my mother under the dragon's tail; and my nativity was under ursa major: so that it follows, I am rough and lecherous. — ^I should have been that I am, had the maidenliest star in the firma- ment twinkled on my bastardising. INTKOVERSIOlSr Introversion is the opposite of extroversion. In- stead of transferring the libido to an object without the libido is turned within. We can best come to an understanding of what is meant by this, and the meaning of the results that follow if we will revert to the process already briefly referred to (Chapter VIII) of the building up of the concept of *^self," of the ego-consciousness. We have seen that the distinction between the ^^self and the * 'not-self" was slow of growth. In fact it is never fully acquired. Preyer 's ^^ boy as late as nineteen months of age when told to ^^Grive the shoe'' picked it from the floor and handed it to him, but when told to *'Give the foot" tried to pick that up with both hands and hand it to him in the same way that he had the shoe. Thus he failed at this late date to appreciate what belonged to him and what did not. He attempted to hand his foot to his 10 Preyer, W.: "The Mind of the Child," Chap. XIX. The De- velopment of the Feeling of Self, the "I"-Feeling. New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1898. EXTROVERSION AND INTROVERSION 229 father as he had his shoe ; he treated it in the same way, as if it were not a part of himself. Professor Hall ^^ mentions a baby as staring steadily at its hand and the trying to grasp the hand looked at with the same hand. Miss Shinn 's ^^ niece ** tried to flourish her arm and go on sucking her thumb at the same time, and could not imagine what had suddenly snatched the cherished thumb away." At the risk of repeating I will revert to the illustra- tion already used, Chapter VIII, of the creeping in- fant who picks up everything and carries it at once to its mouth. The mouth is a primitive organ of touch of great value. The type of experience which results from putting some indifferent object in its mouth is quite different from that which results from putting a part of its own body in its mouth. In the first in- stance there is a resulting sensation in the mouth only, in the second instance there is an additional sensation, a sensation in that portion of the body which has been so treated. It is by such experiments which focus two or more sensory qualities in one experience that the distinc- tion between self and environment is gradually built up, that the concept of self is slowly integrated. In the above cited experience two qualities of touch sen- sation are integrated, in the same way the sight of the moving hand is integrated with the joint and 11 Hall, G. S. : Some Aspects of the Early Sense of Self. Am. Jour. Psych., Vol. IX, No. 3. 12 Shinn, M. W. : "The Biography of a Baby." Boston and New York, Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1900. 230 CHARACTER FORMATION muscle sensations which bring about the motion, the sensation of touch with the motor sensations which have moved the hand to the touched object, the sen- sations of sound and of sight, touch and taste, motor sensations, and so on indefinitely through an increas- ingly complex series of integrations the ego-concept is laboriously constructed. Despite the great number and varied character of the experiences that make for the construction of the ego-concept there always remain serious gaps, de- fects in the structure. There are certain portions of our bodies that are never adequately included in our conscious concept of ourselves, such portions, for example, as the back of the head, and the region be- tween the shoulder blades. Other portions fail to get into the scheme less obviously. We are familiar with the small boy who carefully polishes the front part of his shoes and leaves the heels untouched and who likewise absolutely neglects the back of his head when brushing his hair. One should read Miss Shinn's description of her niece, who, in bending over backwards accidentally hit the back of her head on the floor and by so doing really discovered, for the first time, this region. The indeterminateness of the relation, individual- environment, is testified to by common customs ; ways of feeling and expressions. A gift from a friend long since dead is cherished because it is felt some- how to contain or to have been a part of the dead person in life, while we go away from a strange city EXTROVERSION AND INTROVERSION 231 carrying with us an impression of it upon our mem- ory. Among primitive peoples this confusion is very much in evidence. Instances have already been cited which illustrate this point. I will add only a few briefly. Among the Betsileo of Madagascar ^^ the nobles of the tribe are attended by men called ramanga whose function it is to eat all the nail-parings and lick up all the spilt blood of their noble masters so that sorcerers may not get possession of them and so, on the principles of contagious magic, work harm to them. Among the Arabs of Moab ^^ a childless woman will borrow the robe of a woman who has borne many children that she may acquire the fruit- fulness of its owner. The primitive man also re- gards his name as a part of himself which he pro- tects with elaborate care from becoming known to his enemies.^^ Cursing an enemy by name becomes, therefore, a potent means of injury, while to mention one's own name freely is a dangerous practice for each time one's name passes the lips, the owner parts with a vital bit of himself. Primitive man may thus be said to be relatively un- differentiated, in his own mind at least, from his en- isFrazer, J. G.: "The Golden Bough," (3rd ed.) Pt. II. Taboo and the Perils of the Soul, Chap. V, Tabooed Things. i^Frazer, J. G.: "The Golden Bough," (3rd ed.) Pt. I. The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, Vol. I, Chap. III. isFrazer, J. G.: "The Golden Bough," (3rd ed.) Pt. 11. Taboo and the Perils of the Soul, Chap. VI, Tabooed words. 232 CHARACTER FORMATION vironment. His personality is diffuse, spread out all over the world of things, has not yet been integrated and at all clearly defined. One of the very best illustrations ^^ of the intimate association and the lack of differentiation between man at the primitive cultural levels and the forces of nature is seen in the way in which they treat their divine kings. The ruler of the tribe, a godman, is at the very centre of the forces of the universe and anything that he does may influence the world for good or for bad as the case may be. He is there- fore hedged in by an enormously complex system of taboos which control his every act. Now it is obvi- ous if he is in such close association with nature, and that the whole welfare of the tribe depends in this intimate way upon him, that he must not be per- mitted to get sick or grow old and feeble, for if he gets sick and grows old and feeble then the forces of nature will fail, the tribe will be in danger of epi- demics, droughts, poor crops, and the like, and so to prevent such dire catastrophe the divine king is killed in the prime of life and in the fulness of his health that his spirit may be passed on unimpaired in strength to his successor. The introverted person is one who, instead of transferring his libido to external objects, receives, so to speak, these objects, or their effects, within him- self and so he views the world from within, he con- siders the world according to the effect it has upon i6Frazer, J. G.: "The Golden Bougli," (3rd ed.) Pt. III. The Dying God, Chap. II. The Killing of the Divine King. EXTKOVERSION AND INTROVERSION 233 him. Taking our viewpoint from the external world, this is brought about by the process of what is called introjection or an entering into the individual of in- fluences from without. This feeling of influence from without, as already suggested (Chapter VIII) is extremely common in the most typical of introversion psychoses, dementia prascox. Thus one patient hears voices talk to him from all sorts of sources. He hears the clock talk- ing; he can hear the creaking wagon wheel, as it goes by, talking; and even people ^s foot-steps and the watch speak to him. He hears the human voice talk- ing through the birds, leaves of the trees, flowers and various inanimate objects. He is disturbed by vi- sions and all sorts of magical things — electricity, wireless telegraphy, thought reading, and bad in- fluences from certain people play about him. His psychosis has plunged him to a lower cultural level, his reactions remind us of the cultural stage of ani- mism. All of these phenomena may be looked at as evi- dences of a lessened capacity for integration of the personality, of separating the self from the not- self. The environment has become strangely blended with these patients ' personality by the process of in- trojection, and as the environment thus introjects it- self into the personality the personality correspond- ingly swells and loses its definiteness. One patient sees a certain mystic significance in the arrangement of the stars about the moon; another has lost the -feeling of personal identity with respect to his own 234 CHARACTER FORMATION body for when asked when he entered the army said, *'It was centuries and centuries ago ; not I but a body just like my remembrance around 1903/' while an- other patient believes his body is changing in size. The sense of mystery is frequently expressed. One patient for a long time has been seeing peculiar objects the nature of which were not clear to him but of the auditory hallucinations he said they were not real voices but simply things which seemed to come into his mind, also he said he heard voices talking inside his head but thought that these were the ex- pressions of his own mind. He still retained a grasp upon reality, although it is evident that his hold had been seriously loosened for his thoughts had be- come audible. This grasp was quite completely lost by the patient who believed that mental telepathy was ** working upon him" and that he was regarded as a spy. He heard many voices saying all conceivable things against him, so that he grew desperate and attempted suicide. Asked to describe the auditory hallucinations, he says he cannot put his impression of them into words, that he did not hear distinct voices, but ^* foreign thoughts came slowly creeping into his brain, thoughts not his own, emanating from the mind of some one at a distance.'' Upon one occasion he thought that a dream was projected upon him by a supervisor through ^^ thought transmis- sion. ' ' The vagueness with which a person may conceive of himself is shown by the patients who have no clear appreciation of who they are, who parade un- EXTKOVERSION AND INTKOVEESION 235 der some one else's name, claim to be some noted person, even a criminal. This type of reaction be- comes mucli more archaic when the identification is with historic personages. The extreme limit of this is found in a patient who practically identifies himself with the universe. Among other things he says he was Adam's father; that he had lived in his present bodily form 35 years, but that he has lived in other bodies 30 millions of years, not continually but periodically ; that he has used 6,000,000 different bodies. He says that he was Moses, that also he was the father of Moses, and that he performed the ten miracles that liberated the people of Egypt. If he extended his left arm into the universe it would go inside heaven, also his left brain lobe. Paradise cor- responds with the right arm and the right brain lobe. The headquarters of these two are in the forearms and in the brain ^^dot." The brain ^^dot" is some- thing like the central office of a building, or it can be compared to a hand holding a bunch of strings to balloons which float above. Hell and Purgatory have corresponding positions in the two lower limbs. Tartarus and Gehenna correspond to the feet. Hades and Oblivion correspond to the knees. He says he is both male and female with one mind and body controlling both. He has to be one to be the father and creator of the various races and elements of the human organisation. The stars in themselves are pieces of his body which have been torn apart by torture and persecution in various ages of past history in the wars between the righteous and the un- 236 CHAEACTER FORMATION righteous. These stars will come down on earth in human form to bear witness for him towards the end of the millennium. And much more of the same sort wherein, among other things, he compares the structure of the solar system to the structure of the human body, and identifies himself with portions of it. It took him 300 millions of years to perfect the first fully developed human form. Again we are reminded of the way in which primi- tive man regarded his tribal king. The king was the individual in whom was concentrated all the great creative energy of their restricted universe. He was looked to to see that the rain fell and watered the crops, that the cattle and the women were fruitful, that the tribe was successful in war. It was because he was a carrier of enormous stores of energy that he must be treated, as Frazer puts it,^^ like a Leyden jar. His foot must not touch the ground and the sun must not shine upon him or he would lose his power. Not only this but such a discharge of energy would be dangerous to those about. Introversion, at least when pathological, tends to bring about a retracing of the stages along which the psyche has come. Of course it is not intended to convey the idea that introversion brings about con- ditions that exactly reproduce stages in ontogenetic or phylogenetic development. The application of the law of recapitulation to the sphere of the psyche is subject to the same sort of qualifications as it is in 17 Frazer, J. G.: "The Golden Bough," (3rd ed.) Pt. VII. Balder the Beautiful, Vol. I, Chap. I. Between Heaven and Earth. EXTROVERSION AND INTROVERSION 237 its application to the body. The law of recapitula- tion holds but with many variations in the way of abridgments and short cuts which distort the out- ward appearances at times very greatly. The view- point, it is believed, is a valuable one, but in its ap- plication the process of thinking should be kept in mind rather than the content of thought. The view maintained here is that in the introversion types of psychoses the patient reverts to ways of thinking that belong to earlier stages of development. Introversion brings about a return to a less clearly defined individuality and a greater range of identifi- cation with the environment. V^ithdrawal from reality is a withdrawal from contact at higher levels but a return to a phylogenetically older and more diffuse form of contact. From the argument thus far it must not be con- cluded that extroversion or introversion, more par- ticularly the latter, is always an undesirable or ab- normal character. If we will turn again to the list of characteristics given by Professor James of the tough-minded and tender-minded types we will appreciate that none of them are wholly undesirable. On the contrary they are all desirable if properly controlled and made to subserve useful ends. It is only when they fail in this that they pass the bounds of normality or desirability. When we see extroversion in a severe hysteria or a maniacal excitement or introversion manifested in a psychoneurosis or a dementia praecox there is no question but that the degree here is abnormal, the 238 CHARACTER FORMATION result decides that issue. But we constantly see peo- ple so extroverted that they are simply confused by the multiplicity of objects and the intricacy of their relations and seem unable to find any path through them. On the other hand we find people of otherwise good mind so introverted that they are severely hampered, in their comfort at least, by superstitions, about thirteen perhaps or starting anything on Fri- day. Extroversion and introversion are only different aspects of life. Whole civilisations partake of the character of one rather than the other. The East- ern civilisation is essentially based upon introver- sion, the Western upon extroversion and while each is incomprehensible to the other, "Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.'' yet each produces something which the other can not. This is equally true of individuals. The extreme examples of these types cannot understand each other. It is not by accident that James has used tough-minded and tender-minded as the terms to de- scribe them. The tough-minded empiricist is espe- cially well equipped to beat his way through new reality situations, to blaze trails on the frontier of progress. The tender-minded rationalist is espe- cially calculated to conserve all that is valuable that the other accomplishes and weave it into enduring bonds of sympathy to cement the herd into effective unity. EXTROVERSION AND INTROVERSION 239 Either one of these tendencies unchecked by the other is liable to run amuck but for the fullest expres- sion of that *^ moving equilibrium'' we call life it would seem that a balanced interplay of both tend- encies were necessary. Whenever a new method is introduced into science one of the inevitable results is a bringing out of all the old material and submitting it to re-examination by the new procedures, a recasting of the old formulae in the new moulds, in short an examination of all of the positions hitherto attained and their revaluation on the basis of the newer concepts. Many of the con- cepts which had always been taken for granted and used uncritically in the process of reasoning must now be submitted to critical scrutiny to see just where they stand in relation to the new order of things and whether their previous use has been altogether war- ranted. Such a concept is that of * individual" as it has been used in the domain of psychology. What con- stitutes an *' individual' ' and what defines and limits the ** individual" has never been formulated because it was so obvious that the questions never were asked, and so the concept * 'individual" has gone the broad and easy way toward static concrete- ness and must needs be rescued, shaken up, rejuve- nated, born again in a more plastic state so that it can be moulded and made to fit, in a useful way, into the new structure that is being raised. 240 CHARACTER FORMATION The necessity for this has arisen as a result of the introduction of the genetic concept into psy- chology. This genetic concept while it has been rec- ognised for a long time by psychologists, as well as by biologists in general, has only lately come to have an actual place in the workaday world of the prac- tical psychologist, more partixjularly the psychia- trist, and so has only recently been in a position to necessitate a revaluation of the concept. Pathologi- cal mental symptoms can not seek their explanation in the history of the development of the mind unless the concept ^4ndividuaP' is given a much different and a much broader meaning than that implied even in the life history of a single person that begins at birth and ends at death. We have already seen that the distinction between the individual and the environment at the psychologi- cal level is at first, both in the history of the individ- ual and of the race, a very vague one, if indeed it can be said to exist at all. We have seen too that this distinction is of gradual growth but that it is never fully effected and under the influence of cer- tain abnormal conditions tends to break down. Let us examine the evidence a little further. Who shall say, for example, at just what point the food that is taken into the gastro-intestinal tract loses its quality as environment and becomes a part of the individual? And similarly, who can answer a parallel question with reference to the oxygen taken into the lungs during inspiration? The real signifi- EXTROVERSION AND INTROVERSION 241 cance of this question is understood when we remem- ber that neither the gastro-intestinal tube nor the air passages are really within the body at all but are invaginations of its surface. Similar questions may be asked about substances given out from the body. Either secretions from the gastro-intestinal tract or gases excreted from the pulmonary air vesicles. Then again the same questions may be asked with respect to the anergic conditions at the surface of the body, especially with reference to conditions of temperature and electrical states which merge into the encompassing environment and constitute a bor- derland territory. The interplay of forces between the individual and the environment is constant and never-ending. The effects of foods, drugs, heat and cold, sun-light, sounds, and other contacts of the environment, par- ticularly at points of lowered threshold to special kinds of stimuli (the sense organs) are, we know, very great. These effects, however, we always think of as exclusively for the purpose of analysing the environment to enable the individual to act upon it more intelligently — more efficiently. Perhaps we have thought altogether too much of the nervous sys- tem as a source of energy and too little of the sources of energy supply other than food and oxygen. With the hundreds of thousands of receptors at the surface of the body is it not possible that here is a real and material source of energy which has been, largely at least, overlooked? I have in mind the 242 CHARACTER FORMATION observation of Fabre ^^ upon the habits of the Black- bellied Tarantula or Narbonne Lycosa (Lycosa nar- bonnensis). The young of this spider live for seven months, without, so far as Fabre could discover, tak- ing any food whatever. Fabre suggests that they are able, perhaps, to directly utilise the sun's rays as a source of energy. Perhaps, after all, our idea that solar energy cannot be used as food by animals until it has been fixed by chlorophyl will have to be modified. We are familiar with the give and take between the individual and his environment at the social level. The influence that a person exercises upon those about him and the influence of his associates upon him. We see this influence radiate in ever widen- ing circles from a public speaker or writer until it often outbursts the span of his individual life, while the germ plasm hands down actual material particles to succeeding generations to stop — Who shall say where 1 We are familiar with this give and take interplay at lower levels. We see the mechanic by repeated blows of the hammer gradually shape a piece of metal to suit his needs and we can understand that the resistance of the metal has called forth this particular form of effort. I think it also useful to consider the individual in the same way at still lower levels. At the level of energy in the form of heat, light, sound waves, 18 Fabre, J. H.: "The Life of the Spider." New York, Dodd, Mead & Co., 1914. EXTROVERSION AND INTROVERSION 243 electricity. The individual then becomes, not a something apart from the environment and there- fore apart from contact with the rest of the universe, but a place where innumerable forces are for the time being concentrated. In that sense the individ- ual is only a transmitter and transmuter of energy while the terms individual and environment are only the two extremes of this relationship. Bergson ^^ states this difficulty admirably. He says : ^ ^ No doubt, it is hard to decide, even in the organised world, what is individual and what is not. The difficulty is great, even in the animal kingdom; with plants it is almost insurmountable. This diffi- culty is, moreover, due to profound causes, on which we shall dwell later. We shall see that individual- ity admits of any number of degrees, and that it is not fully realised anywhere, even in man. But that is no reason for thinking it is not a characteristic property of life. The biologist who proceeds as a geometrician is too ready to take advantage here of our inabihty to give a precise and general definition of individuality. A perfect definition applies only to a completed reality; now, vital properties are never entirely realised, though always on the way to become so; they are not so much states as tenden- cies. And a tendency achieves all that it aims at only if it is not thwarted by another tendency. How, then, could this occur in the domain of life, where, as we shall show, the interaction of antagonistic tenden- cies is always implied! In particular, it may be 19 Bergson, "Creative Evolution." 244 CHARACTER FORMATION said of individuality that, while the tendency to in- dividuate is everywhere present in the organised world, it is everywhere opposed by the tendency towards reproduction. For the individuality to be perfect, it would be necessary that no detached part of the organism could live separately. But then re- production would be impossible. For what is re- production, but the building up of a new organism with a detached fragment of the old? Individual- ity therefore harbours its enemy at home. Its very need of perpetuating itself in time condemns it never to be complete in space. The biologist must take due account of both tendencies in every instance, and it is therefore useless to ask him for a definition of in- dividuality that shall fit all cases and work automat- ically. ' ' CHAPTEE XI ORGAN INFERIORITY It is, of course, not a newly discovered fact that many persons have defective organs, organs that function poorly, that do not bear stresses as they should, and that often exhibit anatomical character- istics which indicate that they are developmentally defective. It is, too, no new fact that the state of the organs influences the mental processes and certain organic diseases have long been thought to be asso- ciated with certain types of mental state. The hope- fulness of pulmonary tuberculosis, the hypochon- driacal depression associated with diseases below the diaphragm are familiar examples while other in- stances, perhaps not so firmly associated, are the anxiety that goes with aortic disease and the dulness associated with mitral deficiency and defective aera- tion of the blood. Perfectly obvious illustrations are the effect of exertion in heart cases with the result- '^ ing dyspnoea, the feeling of impending dissolution in angina pectoris, the delirium in advanced cases of nephritis, and the dementia that is associated with destructive cerebral processes. From such illustrations we might trace the cor- respondences further and further from an obvious relationship between the organic defect and the 245 246 CHARACTER FORMATION mental state. A fairly characteristic type of men- tal disorder is known to be associated with Hunting- ton's chorea, but I am not aware that there has been any serious effort to really explain it. Among the disorders of the ductless glands, the endocrinopa- thies, one at least, exophthalmic goitre, has been ex- haustively studied on the mental side by the surgeons, more particularly in relation to the problem of opera- tion. No adequate explanation of the mental symp- toms has issued as a result, however. Others such as acromegaly and cretinism have known character- istic mental pictures associated but no effort has yet extended beyond trying to describe the symptoms at a wholly superficial level. The list might be ex- tended but when we find a medical officer on the line at Ellis Island picking an emigrant out of line and marking him for examination for hernia from an indefinable something he was able to detect in his facial expression we realise the necessity for some general principles in order that we may be able to find our way among such confusing facts. And finally it remained for Alfred Adler ^ to more particularly take up this problem of inferior organs and attempt to show their end results as displayed in certain character traits. The principle underlying the possibility of an in- ferior organ being the basic reason for a certain char- acter trait lies in the structure of the individual al- ready traced. The various functions of the body are 1 Particularly in his two works "Studie iiber Minderwertigkeit von Organen" and "uber den Nervosen Charakter." OKGAN INFERIORITY 247 integrated and re-integrated at progressively higher, that is, phylogenetieally more recent levels, from the physico-chemical, through the sensory-motor, to the psychic. The psyche is the switch-board where each organ, each function finds its final representation, and this final integration, builded upon the founda- tion composed of lower adjustments, compromises, integrations, can only be what it is because of the underlying material out of which it grows. We should expect to find, therefore, that any organ that materially departs from the usual in its capacity for a quality of function would so modify the integration from that point as to cause a corresponding ex- pression at the psychological level. This is rather a complicated statement, perhaps, but will easily be made clear by an example. Dr. Barker reports ^ a case of a eunuchoid showing signs of hypogenitalism and dyshypophysism. This patient had rudimentary sexual organs, he had never had sexual feeling nor been able to effect inter- course. His general physical make up was sugges- tive of the female sex, namely, scanty hair, excess of breast tissue, broad pelvis. As a result of the crit- icism of his associates of these feminine characteris- tics he said that he had made many efforts to do '^ manly work'' — and, as a matter of fact, always had done hard muscular work. He had been a cow- boy, a sailor, a soldier in the Boer war, and was a boiler-maker at the time he applied for treatment. 2 Barker, L. F. : On Abnormalities of the Endocrine Functions of the Gonads in the Male. Am. Jour. Med. Sci., Jan., 1915. 248 CHARACTER FORMATION This illustrates my point with perfect clearness. A defect at the level of the ductless glands is re- flected in the psyche of the individual by his choice of work — by his conduct. The inferiority, which had the effect of preventing the development of the sex- ual characteristics that properly belonged to his sex — in general, masculinity — had the effect at the psy- chological level of producing conduct calculated to compensate for the lack. This is the work of compensation for an inferior organ as it manifests itself at the psychological level. It is the mechanism which Adler has espe- cially emphasised in his work. It is well summed up by Hall.^ ^^ Every subnormal (minderwertige) organ is more plastic and adaptable than normal organs or func- tions. Under the stimulus and protection of the central nervous system when it has taken the helm they may become not only the more variable in other ways but may even become supernormal. What is more important, they may be compensated by other organs or functions with which they are correlated. Moreover superstructures are built which vicariate for them, supplementing their deficiencies. Thus re- calling, as we saw above, that man is a congeries of many organs in various stages of evolution and de- cline, the nervous system when it comes to power establishes a set of interrelations between those that are essential under the impulse of the will to live. 3 Hall, G. S.: A Synthetic Genetic Study of Fear, Chap. I. Am. Jour. Psychol., Ap., 1914. ORGAN INFERIORITY 249 Leaving some to decline and powerfully stimulating others to unfold and develop, by keeping them suffi- ciently but not too much in exercise, it reinforces both atrophy and hypertrophy. In the effort of the psyche to foster the important organs and functions which it selects for its special care, organic defect may be compensated by excess of nervous activity. Indeed, most compensations are in the psychic though not necessarily in the conscious field. No one is perfect, and hence compensation is necessary for all. It makes for, if indeed it does not make, consciousness itself. Those organs and functions which the psyche cannot directly or indirectly con- trol decay or become stigmata. Where the brain fails to establish a compensatory system we have all the hosts of neuroses and psychoses. The existence of sub- or abnormal organs or functions always brings Janet's sense of incompleteness or insuffi- ciency, and this arouses a countervailing impulsion to be complete and efficient which those to whom na- ture gave lives of balanced harmony do not feel. The ideal goal is always to be a whole man or woman in mind and body, and this may crop out in the child- ish wishes that are sometimes fulfilled in dreams, in the ambition of the boy who aches to be a man, and in general in the desire to overcome all defects and to evolve a full-rounded, mature, powerful and well- balanced personality. To illustrate, each bilateral organ compensates for defect in the other, one sense for another like touch for sight in the blind. Mozart had an imperfectly developed ear; Beethoven had 250 CHARACTER FORMATION otosclerosis; Demosthenes stammered and, as if mythology had recognised this law, many of the ancient gods were defective. Odin had but one eye Tyr, one hand ; Vulcan was lame ; Vidar dumb. So too, the ugly Socrates made himself a beautiful soul A man with a weak digestion becomes a dietetic ex pert in battling with fate. Little men walk straight tall men stoop. Handsome men are superficial. A subnormal eye intensifies the visual psyche. In the effort to control enuresis due to renal insufficiency over-compensation may predispose to even dreams of water. Sex weakness is supplemented by fancies of superpotence. Many diseases have compensating forms with which they alternate or for which they vicariate and the very principle of immunisation is involved. Weak parts and functions draw attention and are invigorated thereby. Fear of an object ex- cites interest in it and this brings the knowledge that casts out fear. Very much of the total energy of all of us and still more of that of neurotics and psy- chotics is spent in developing and using devices of concealment (Deckphenomene) of diseases and de- fects. Thus often the higher protective and defen- sive mechanisms come to do the work of the sub- normal function even better than it would do it. Conversely compensation has its limits and when it breaks down we have anxiety, the most comprehen- sive of all fears and the alpha and omega of psy- chiatry, the degree of which is inversely as the ability to realise the life-wish of self-maximisation. It involves a sense of inferiority, inadequacy and great ORGAN INFERIORITY 251 inner tension. The goal may be the humble one of self-support, normality, merely absence of actual pain, or deformity, but the prospect of failure to attain it brings a distress probably equalled by no other form of suffering and every fear is a special form or degree of it. If the good, strong, healthy, higher components can neither improve nor atone for the bad, weak, low or morbid elements, anxiety, con- scious or unconscious, supervenes, values lose their worth, we tend to take refuge from reality in fancies, and innate momenta are arrested and we suffer we know not what, perhaps fear itself." Let us pursue the matter a little further. Adler, especially in his work on the inferiority of organs,^ takes up in detail the reasons why we may consider an organ inferior. For example, one per- son gets up an inflammation of the kidneys from a certain poison, another person escapes : some people have excessive reactions upon very trivial causes, such as an albuminuria as a result of constipation. All these special susceptibilities can only be ex- plained, he thinks, upon the hypothesis of organ inferiority. The particular interest that the inferior organ has in the matter of character traits depends upon the fact that it receives its representation in the psyche by means of its nervous, ** psychomotor" superstruc- ture. It is in this psychomotor superstructure that 4 Adler, A.: "Studie iiber Minderwertigkeit von Organen," 1907. Eng. tr. "Study of Organ Inferiority and Its Psychical Compensa- tion," Nerv. and Ment. Dis. Monog. Se. No. 24. 252 CHARACTER FORMATION compensation must take place if the individual is to be able to adequately adjust to his organ inferiority. The difficulty with these inferior organs is that they do not stand well the increased duties put upon them by the increasing cultural demands of develop- ment but lag behind and by preference engage in pleasure seeking. This is well seen in the functions of emptying the bladder and rectum. These func- tions, as the child grows older, have to be more and more repressed in compliance with the cultural demands. But some persons never learn to accom- modate themselves at all well to these demands and in any case their repressions break down easily under any degree of unusual stress of requirements. In other words, they have only succeeded with great effort because of this fundamental defect and can only hold themselves poised under favourable con- ditions, but as soon as anything extra is demanded they drop at once to a lower cultural level with re- spect to the function of the particular inferior organ. For example, Adler, speaking of these conditions in terms of heightened reflex manifestations, mentions those persons, who, under any stress stammer, vomit, laugh, cry, scratch themselves, tear their hair, start, blink or have violent attacks of spasmodic sneezing upon seeing a bright light, squint when looking at anything close at hand, etc. As an example of his way of looking at specific cases I will cite his case of Ladislaus F eight years of age. He was injured in August, 1905, by approaching too close to a schoolmate who was ORGAN INFERIORITY 253 brandishing a pen. The pen pierced the outer upper quadrant of the left eye ball. It pierced the con- junctiva and entered the sclera. The wound healed uneventfully. In October of the same year he again presented himself with a coal splinter imbedded in the cornea of the left eye, which had been blown there by a gust of wind. This was extracted and the wound healed. In January, 1906, he suffered an- other wound of the left eye caused, as was the first, by a pen in the hands of a schoolmate. The wound was about one centimetre beneath and inside of the other wound. This also healed leaving an ink stained scar. The history of this case showed: the maternal grandfather suffered from diabetic iritis and w^as for a long time under the care of an ophthalmologist. The mother had a convergent strabismus as did also the patient's younger brother, and both had hyper- metropia and diminished acuteness of vision which could not be accurately measured because of the inattention and defective intelligence of the boy. A maternal uncle was a sufferer from recurrent attacks of an eczematous conjunctivitis and also had a con- vergent strabismus. The patient had normal visual acuteness with slight hypermetropia but showed a lack of conjunctival reflexes in both eyes. These facts are presented to show that the boy suffered an inferiority of the eye which had a strong hereditary basis, manifesting itself particularly in the deficiency of the conjunctival reflexes and the poor protection of the eyes by the boy, which seem 254 CHARACTER FORMATION to be related, in some not wholly explained way, to the deficient reflex action. Adler emphasises the capacity which the psyche has for correcting such faults as this. The inferior organ is the object of a particular interest which seeks to protect it and so the boy, if he could be made aware of this inferiority, could learn by experi- ence to better protect his defective organs. The childish faults such as constipation, vomiting, blinking, squinting, stuttering, sucking the thumb, lack of control of bowels and bladder require control, that is, repression of this functioning as a source of organic sensory pleasure as the child grows older, in response to cultural demands. Thus ^^ limitation of organic sensory . pleasure for the benefit of cul- tural progress becomes the test of organic normal- ity." The inferior organ remains with increased sensitivity to sensory pleasure which is because it cannot follow the safe path of the cultural require- ments. It is, however, the cause of all organic activity while the cultural requirements themselves draw their strength from repressed sensory pleasure. We see here, of course, an expression of the con- flict in terms of organ inferiority. There could be no conflict if all the elements were equal. It is exceedingly interesting to note in this connection a recent paper by Bates ^ on curing errors of refrac- tion without glasses by central fixation. The author 5 Bates, W. H.: The Cure of Defective Eyesight by Treatment Without Glasses or The Radical Cure of Errors of Refraction by Means of Central Fixation. N. Y. Med. Jour., May 8, 1915. ORGAN INFERIORITY 255 concludes, among other things, that: ^^The cause of all errors of refraction is a strain to see. The cure is accomplished by relaxation. Relaxation is se- cured by central fixation. ^ ' To translate this into terms of libido we should say that defective vision was a defective use of eye libido ; and that it was necessary to bring the nature of the defect into consciousness in order that the psyche might attend to it and thereby bring about a more efficient use of the libido. Surely it is a far cry from ophthalmology, approaching an exact science, that is relatively as the medical sciences go, based upon the mathematical measurement of sur- face curvatures to the treatment of the errors of refraction, so to speak, psychotherapeutically. Cannon has demonstrated^ that under the influ- ence of fear or anger a minute portion of adrenalin is thrown into the blood current from the suprarenal glands. The effects of this adrenalin are to con- tract the superficial blood vessels, increase the coagulability of the blood, decrease the fatiguibility of the muscles, dilate the bronchioles, and throw into the circulation a considerable quantity of dextrose. The meaning of these changes becomes clear when the emotions which cause them are correlated with the characteristic conduct belonging to them. Thus fear and anger are correlated with that conduct which we call flight and fight. The animal that has to run or fight for its life 6 Cannon, W. B.: "Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear and Rage." N. Y., D. Appleton & Co., 1915. 256 CHARACTER FORMATION would obviously be tremendously benefited by hav- ing the superficial capillaries contracted, the supply of energy in the blood current being thus deflected to the muscles and central nervous system; the fatiguibility of the muscles lessened; the coagu- lability of the blood increased so that bleeding from wounds that were received might be limited ; muscle food discharged into the blood which could still further help to sustain the animal in its time of stress; and finally, breathing made easier by the dilatation of the bronchioles. In this situation we see a perfectly clear and under- standable relation between certain physiological reactions on the one hand and certain psychological reactions on the other. In the last analysis why should not every physiological reaction have its psychological co-ordinate? In the meantime, how- ever, we see here a picture in which the high light illumines a feature in the foreground of a certain disease. The disease is diabetes mellitus and the common element is glycosuria or hyperglycemia, an increased sugar content of the blood. Why might we not expect to find by an analysis of the psyche a psychological correlation just as meaningful as that found by Cannon? Here are just a few con- siderations which are of interest in connection with this suggestion. It has long been believed that certain cases of diabetes were of nervous origin and the psychic factor has been emphasised in many of them. The connection between such psychic states as influence ORGAN INFERIORITY 257 the elimination of sugar and hyperexcitability of certain portions of the sympathetic system and the action of adrenalin has been recognised and has been discussed by Falta ^ in his recent work, who speaks of a nervous or adrenilinogenic type. It is exceedingly interesting to speculate along these lines as to what form the psychic expression would take but it would seem that it must be the result of a repression of anger or fear, a state brought about as a result of preparing the body for fight or flight, that is for action, and no action takes place. It will be recalled that the adrenals and the liver are included in Crile's kinetic system.^ In turning to Osier's^ ^^ Practice of Medicine," a reading of the section on etiology suggests still further correlations. It is much more common in Europe than in America. Is not this what might be expected! The older civilisation means greater re- pression particularly, too, because of greater con- gestion of the population and so keener competition. For similar reasons it is much less frequent in the coloured race than in the white race. One who is familiar with the coloured race knows that repression is not one of its prominent characteristics. And finally it seems to be generally conceded that it is especially prevalent in the Semitic race. Here cer- 7 Falta, W.: "The Ductless Glandular Diseases." Philadelphia, P. Blackiston's Son & Co., 1915. sCrile, G. W.: "The Origin and Nature of the Emotions." Philadelphia, W. B. Saunders Co., 1915. 9 Osier, W. : "The Principles and Practice of Medicine." 3rd Ed. D. Appleton & Co., New York, 1899. 258 CHARACTER FORMATION tainly no argument is needed to demonstrate the larger factor tliat repression may well play in a race wliich, in Europe particularly, has continuously been the object of prejudice and so suppressed in all manner of ways for centuries. Of course I do not offer these considerations as anything more than suggestions. The clinical pic- ture which we know as diabetes mellitus is probably a very complex one into which many factors may enter. I merely suggest a point of view for one aspect of the problem. When a man loses an arm or leg, or is deprived by accident or disease of a special sense, sight or hearing, it is perfectly obvious that he has to make certain concessions to his defect and effect certain compromises in order to get along at his best. The effect upon the psyche is not always so obvious but it must be evident that it must take place if a little /A thought is given to the matter from this point of view. The general suspicions and paranoid tend- ency of partially deaf persons is well known while in other defects it might be said, in general, that to the extent that the deprivation has caused a change from the previous mode of lif6 it has necessarily also caused a correlative change in the way of V thinking. The thesis here laid down, however, is much more all-embracing. It sees the will to power, as a great creative energy, streaming through the body ; creat- ing and making to grow its several organs each one of which would appropriate as much of the energy ORGAN INFERIORITY 259 as within its power lay and so tend to dominate the other organs. In the well-balanced, and as we say, the normal individual this energy is split up into innumerable tendencies, each tendency represented by some organ or part of an organ, and each accu- rately opposed and restrained by counter-tendencies until finally the resulting organism is the final product of the interplay of all these opposed and balanced tendencies forced into a final pattern which shall best serve the organism as a whole. The purpose and meaning of the organism as a whole, its tendency, nowhere receives expression in the human individual, until the final integration in the psyche. It is my contention that if at any point along this path an inferior organ is unable to do its share of the work then the concessions which have to be made to this defect and the compromises that have to be effected as a result of it must ultimately find their expression at the psychological level. In other words, when an individual suffers from an organic defect, that he is thereby hampered in his conduct along those lines that require the full and complete functioning of that particular organ, and that therefore his whole mental attitude must be twisted to overcome and get around the defect in his organic structure, and in order to bring things to pass which he desires, he has to a certain extent to distort his conduct because of tlie barrier which this defective organ continuously offers. This way of looking at the facts, I think, extremely valuable because it seems to me the common basis 260 CHARACTEK FORMATION on whicli the organicists and tlie functionalists can come together. For example: it was all very well a generation ago when there was no such thing as a histology of the cerebral cortex in the modern sense and when, with the exception of paresis, mental diseases had no cerebral pathology, to take the ground that structure and function had to comport to a parallelistic psychology, that brain physiology and psychology represented two separate scientific disciplines and that each had to keep within its own bounds. But now that has all changed and particu- larly with the development of our knowledge of the vegetative nervous system and the ductless glands and as a result of such work as that of Cannon we see the two erstwhile widely separated disciplines merging one into the other. This new way of looking at the facts is particu- larly important for the evaluation of certain recent results. Bolton ^^ in his work on mental pathology claims that while syphilis is a necessary antecedent to dementia paralytica, still that the patients who suffer from this form of mental disease would, if they had not acquired syphilis, have suffered from some one of the types of chronic neuronic dementia. He bases his assertion largely upon evidence of a high percentage of heredity of mental disease, and of parental and family degeneracy which he has obtained in cases of dementia paralytica, and he also thinks that he has shown the existence of cerebral 10 Bolton, J. S.: "The Brain in Health and Disease." London, 1914. ORGAN INFERIOEITY 261 under-development in certain types of this form of mental disease. The nature of the movement in this direction, the hitching up of organ defects and the nature of patho- logical reaction types, is very well seen in the recent work of Obersteiner ^^ on the Importance of Endog- enous Factors for the Pathogenesis of Nervous Diseases. He has shown the presence of organ de- fects in a number of diseases. For example in tabes (locomotor ataxia) accurate measurements have demonstrated the persistence in the cord of certain infantile characteristics. Organ defects have also been demonstrated in multiple sclerosis, syrin- gomyelia, juvenile paresis, epilepsy, dementia prse- cox, hereditary ataxia, amaurotic idiocy, pseudo- sclerosis, Wilson's disease, and even in brain tumor. It has always been remarked that so few syphilitics develop paresis. Perhaps here is the key to the explanation. In fact Obersteiner thinks that the findings in tabes and juvenile paresis, as well as clinical experience, lead to the suspicion of the exist- ence of a specific constitution for adult paresis which may perhaps be ultimately capable of histological demonstration. One is reminded in this connection of the work of Southard ^^ who described certain anomalies in 11 Obersteiner, H. : Die Bedeutung des Endogenen Factors f iir die Pathogenese der Nervenkrankheiten. 'Neurol. Centralhl., Apr., 1915. Abstracted by Kirby in the State Hospitals Bulletin. August, 1915. 12 Southard, E. E.: A Study of the Dementia Praecox Group in the Light of Certain Cases showing Anomalies or Scleroses in Par- ticular Brain Regions. Am. Jour. Insanity, July, 1910. 262 CHARACTER FORMATION praecox brains whicli miglit easily be interpreted as ageneses — defects of development. This whole problem is receiving emphasis from many directions. Particularly with reference to the connection of syphilis with the neuroses and psy- choses. The evidence on this point has recently been briefly reviewed by Bazeley and Anderson.^^ They conclude that the evidence is increasing for regarding the endogenous psychoses and psychoneu- roses to be the last offshoots of a syphilitic heredity. They cite Mott 's work which shows the tendency that would exist for dementia praecox stock to die out because of its earlier appearance in successive gen- erations but inasmuch as the disease appears to be increasing there must be some extraneous factor at work which he suggests is syphilis. They also cite Freud's statement that in more than one-half of his severe cases of hysteria, compulsion neurosis, etc., he had succeeded in demonstrating that the father had gone through an attack of syphilis before mar- riage and had either suffered from tabes or paresis or there was a general history of syphilis. He added that the children who developed and became neurotic showed absolutely no signs of hereditary syphilis. All this is interesting in connection with the theory of allergie as applied to the interpretation of the nature of syphilitic lesions by Mcintosh and Fildes.^* 13 Bazeley, J. H., and Anderson, H. M.: Mental Features of Congenital Syphilitics. Boston Med. and Surg. Jour., Dec. 23, 1915. 14 Mcintosh, J., and Fildes, P.: A Comparison of the Lesions ORGAN INFERIOEITY 263 The whole theory of immunity might also be con- sidered from this standpoint for constitutional fac- tors need not be altogether morphological but bio- chemical as Obersteiner points out.^^ Instances in point are the various types of reaction to poisons such as alcohol and the existence of personal and family idiosyncrasies for certain foods for example. The special susceptibility of one organ rather than another for some form of noxa, would, from the point of view of Adler, be an expression of its inferiority. From the point of view of physiology the cortex may be considered as a more complex form of nerv- ous arrangement in which still are maintained, how- ever, the fundamental principles of reflex action; namely, incoming stimulus, central rearrangement, and outgoing response. If this is true then con- duct, which has this physical substratum, must be fashioned along the same lines. The only difference between the manifestations of conduct and the spinal reflex being that of complexity. The way in which simple reflexes may be built up in complex relations which have lost their resemblance to the simple pat- tern on which they were constructed has been shown by the Eussian physiologist Pawlow in what he has called conditioned reflexes. Pawlow 's experiments were carried out on the function of the secretion of saliva in dogs. Here is of Syphilis and "Parasyphilis," together with evidence in favour of the identity of these two conditions. Brain, Sept., 1914. 15 Loc. cit. 264 CHAKACTER FORMATION the type of experiment. When a dog is shown food there is immediately a marked secretion of saliva. Now the situation was somewhat complicated by associating another stimulus with the showing of the food, for example, the ringing of a bell so that each time food was shown the bell was rung and the secretion of saliva followed. ^ This presentation of these associated stimuli was continued for some- time, and then it was found that the ringing of the bell alone, without the presentation of the food at all, was sufficient to evoke the secretion. This is what he called a conditioned reflex. From this experi- ment it is seen how various elements can be combined into a system by the mere fact of having been asso- ciated together and how the results of such a system may be activity which, on the one hand might appear to have no cause at all, as if the secretion was noted but the relation of the sound of the bell was not understood, or on the other hand conduct appears which seems entirely voluntary and intelligent, as for example the going to dinner when the bell rings. If the principle of the conditioned reflex is pursued it is evident that as the situation becomes more and more complicated by additional elements and by cross associations the results are more and more im- possible of prediction. Conduct therefore tends toward the unpredictable and in fact we are accus- tomed to think of that conduct which is the least predictable as the most voluntary. As already set forth, however, modern psychology is deterministic and therefore can only regard such an attitude ORGAN INFERIORITY 265 towards conduct as but another attempt to regain our lost omnipotence. From this point of view, however, we again get light upon the correlation of the organic and func- tional viewpoints. The structure of the cortex is the organic substratum upon which are based these reactions. Cortical organ inferiority therefore is perhaps at the basis of certain defects of conduct. We feel sure that it is in the graver defects of idiots and imbeciles. The question is whether the concept is valuable for the higher types of defect. The concept is a valuable one if it is not over- worked. So long as we think only of the struggle for power r.mong the partial libido trends reaching temporary solutions as a result of successes, failures, and compromises which results receive a final sym- bolic representation in the psyche the concept is valuable. But so soon as we jump at the conclusion that any failure to adjust is dependent upon an organ defect which is inherent and therefore unchangeable the reason for a therapeutic attack upon the problem is at once destroyed. In the face of what we actually know about therapeutic possibilities not only in the field of mental medicine but in general medicine such an attitude is unwarranted. We know, for example, that an accumulation of pus if left to itself may burrow into some vital part and cause death or into some obscure and complex region where it may result in a chronic poisoning of the patient with serious invalidism or injury of important structures and permanent crippling. A simple incision by the 266 CHARACTER FORMATION surgeon may obviate all this danger, permit the pus a safe outlet and so direct the forces of repair into channels that lead to a prompt and real recovery. Suppose that with one of Pawlow's dogs it was found that the ringing of the bell had become asso- ciated with a motor response that carried the dog in the direction from which the sound came and that a ringing bell in a nearby mill might easily lead it to a place of danger and possible death. It would be comparatively easy to re-educate the dog by de- stroying that association and if necessary building up a new one. Uncontrolled and left to chance the symbolic rep- resentations may easily be combined in patterns that are far from desirable and far from the most effec- tive ones that might have been utilised. Under guidance and by intelligent education and re-educa- tion, however, their capacity for harm may easily be lessened as the energy bound up in the symbols (Chapter V) is made available for more constructive ends. Aside, however, from the therapeutic attack upon actual situations of mal-adjustment this concept is of value in getting at the inner meaning of symptoms bodily as well as mental. Under its guidance we are inquiring for the first time into the meaning of some diseases from the point of view of the strivings of the individual as a biological unit. Can we, for example, express certain diseases in terms of partial libido strivings in the sense set forth in Chapter 1X1 Can a carcinoma of the stomach be understood ORGAN INFERIOEITY 267 in terms of nutritional libido! A rectal tabetic crisis in terms of anal erotic? a pulmonary tubercu- losis in terms of respiratory libido? A tremor in terms of muscle libido! And so on throughout the whole category. Such questions as these can hardly be more than asked at this time. If we pick up an average book on the practice of medicine we find almost nothing regarding the characteristics of the psyche in the different diseases except those that are obviously of nervous origin. We find the pa- thology and physical signs stressed in the description but the psyche is largely left out of account. Of course in a disease like exophthalmic goitre the mental state is generally described in some detail, although superficially, but in as important and wide- spread a disease as pulmonary tuberculosis the men- tal state, is, in general, not even referred to. In approaching this problem it is important to get rid of a bugaboo quite as sterilising in its effects as the theory of psycho-physical parallelism — ^the com- plete separation of mind and body, as if they were two absolutely different sets of phenomena unrelated in any way whatever (see Chapter V). This bug- aboo is the belief that we must not use terms, con- cepts that belong to one scientific discipline to explain phenomena in another discipline. In general I have already dealt with this question in Chapter V where I have briefly discussed reasoning by analogy and there shown that reasoning by analogy is not only a legitimate form of reasoning but it is the basis of all reasoning. To carry this bugaboo to its 268 CHAKACTER FORMATION logical conclusion would mean to split phenomena up into an infinite number of compartments, ulti- mately as many as there are phenomena, which would be as mutually exclusive as mind and body are often thought to be and would thus render progress impossible. Without comparison and classification we would indeed be in a sorry plight and analogy is at the basis of both. Aside from this argument the use of terms which have meaning, in the psychological sense, as applied to physiological reactions, for instance, is peculiarly justified in that such terms define the tendencies of the reactions so far as they have reference to the entire individual — the ends of the individual as such. For instance, is it not possible to think of pulmonary tuberculosis in terms of partial libido strivings "F In this case of the strivings of the respiratory libido. From the point of view of the strivings of the indi- vidual — the answer to the question. Where is the individual trying to go! May not this disease rep- resent an inability of the individual to use his res- piratory libido to serve these larger ends 1 In other words, so far as his respiratory libido goes he is unable to get adequate expression through it; this particular channel of expression is obstructed. In the striving for power the respiratory libido has, so to speak, been selfish, wrapt up in its own selfish ends, and has not been able to serve the individual as a whole. It is again the old story of self-preserva- tion versus race preservation or in this case the preservation of the community ; that is, the commun- OEGAN INFEEIORITY 269 ity of partial libido trends which comprise the in- dividual whose salvation depends upon each tend- ency being willing to sacrifice some of its self-seek- ing for the good of the group. The same way of thinking may be applied to other diseases — gastric carcinoma, nephritis, arterio-scle- rosis, etc. Is cerebral arterio-sclerosis, for instance, a setting of the tissues which makes further develop- ment impossible, or is it a tissue response to stop- page of development, a crystallisation of the ways of thinking! These are fascinating ways of looking at the problems and at least emphasise the necessity for a more thorough study of the psyche in so-called organic diseases for the purpose, at least, of dis- covering how these various organic defects receive their symbolic representation at that level. There then remains, of course, the problem of social psychology which must work all the material over again at the still higher, social level. CHAPTEE XII THE RESOLUTION OF THE CONFLICT We have seen (Chapter IV) that the broadest statement of the conflict is that of the theorem of Le Chatelier which states in general, that a system tends to change so as to minimise an external dis- turbance, and I have given many illustrations of this law. In this chapter it is not my intention to discuss the conflict from the point of view of thera- peutics but only from the point of view of the mechanisms and their meanings which enter into its resolution. In Chapters II and IV I have tried to show, not only how conflict was at the basis of life, but how consciousness itself was an expression of conflict and how integration and adjustment were effected by the solution of conflicts, which solutions were then made the basis for new conflicts and new solutions in the process of integrations and adjustments at a higher level. And in Chapter V I showed how, at the psy- chological level, the symbol was utilised as the energy carrier from one level to the next higher level in this process. I wish now to inquire somewhat more in detail into the mechanisms involved. In approaching this problem the first thing that 270 RESOLUTION OF THE CONFLICT 271 must be clearly realised is that, speaking in terms of the libido, the libido has only two pathways open for it and these pathways lead in diametrically oppo- site directions. One leads forward and upward, it is the pathway of constructive tendencies ; the other leads backward and downward, it is the pathway of destructive tendencies. The former leads to fulfil- ment, life, immortality ; the latter to dissatisfaction, failure, death. These directions are to be understood only as tendencies, the goal of immortality leads by the way of development, progress, evolution and is expressed by the conservation of personal life by means of health and the prolongation of personal life in chil- dren and of personal influence as expressed in a material way through the passing on of our personal qualities by way of the germ plasm or our spiritual tendencies by way of our works in our influence upon those about us, upon our own times, and upon the future by the record of our achievements that sur- vive our individual existence. The death goal is by the way of the path of regression, the retracing of the path by which we have come, and leads to failure in the conservation of our individual existence, ill- ness, invalidism (physical and mental) and to failure to hand on our influence either by way of the germ plasm or spiritually as a result of our works. These are the two pathways represented on the one hand by the drag back of our unconscious instinctive tend- encies and on the other by those tendencies sub- limated and applied to constructive conscious ends. 272 CHARACTER FORMATION the ambivalent goals of which are death and life motived respectively by fear and desire. This is the conflict, the path of opposites, along which somewhere, specific tendencies clash and cause that splitting of the psyche, so clearly seen in psy- chotics, which divides the energies of the individual and leaves him torn and broken upon the rocks of indecision, with his consciousness raised to an acute- ness which is painful (fear, anxiety) in its terrific efforts to effect an adjustment. In this sense con- sciousness is remedial in the sense of Hall ^ who says : ^'In a large and pregnant sense consciousness itself is compensation, and is the psychic aspect of a deeper biologic law. In geniuses and in neurotics, it comes more to the surface. Berger's story of a born criminal who became a judge and was noted for his Draconian severity but who lapsed to crime and committed suicide, leaving a confessional autobiog- raphy, is typical of one aspect of it. The work of great artists is often a complement of their lives, expressing in most ideal form what they most lack. If the heart, digestive processes, lungs, muscles, are weak or go wrong, they come into consciousness, and curative agencies are initiated. Pain is a cry of the lower, older parts and functions of our organism to the higher nervous system for help. Paranoiacs tending to delusions of greatness and hyper-self -feel- ing are often over-polite to others. The sense of de- fect prompts training and education to cure and also Ulall, G. S.: A Synthetic Genetic Study of Fear. Chap. I. Am. Jour. Psych. Ap., 1914. All italics mine. RESOLUTION OF THE CONFLICT 273 countless devices to hide them. Culture corrects the errors of instinct and dress hides deformities. Thus nurture supplements nature, and environment has to rectify heredity. These processes constitute con- sciousness, which is always more or less remedial. Taine conceived it as a mutual repression of oppo- site impulses and tendencies, any of which if not checked would develop into insane intensity, and he deemed the neuroses as only the most intense form of it. Where these integrating and compensating processes have more than they can do and break down, whether from strain of outer circumstances or because they find inner resistances too great, so that the power to rectify and adjust is exhausted, abatement of the life impulse is felt, and this sense of abatement is anxiety, diffuse or acute. It is the bi-polar opposite of the pleroma of life abounding, which all crave. From this point of view, then, consciousness itself is incipient anxiety. . . . The summum genus of fear thus is a sense of the inability to cope with life, a dread of being vanquished and becoming not victors in its battle, a sense of limita- tion and of inferiority in our power to achieve the fullest success and happiness, a feeling that our hereditary momentum was originally insufficient or is in danger of being reduced. We would do, be, get all that is possible for man's estate, attain the fullest macrobiotic development, and fear and shock are intimations that we fall short, are less than we might, could or should be. This excelsior impulsion encounters obstacles and suffers arrest, and desire. 274 CHARACTER FORMATION ambition, possibilities, may fail. Hence pain and its anticipation, fear, and their diaphrenic opposites, pleasure and hope, play a great role in the evolution of affective life, not without analogies to that as- signed to nothing and being in the Hegelian logic. The thesis, anti-thesis and synthesis of the one are the basis of an affective, and those of the other of a rational, dialetic system. Hope and fear have had very much to do in shaping not only habits, instincts and probably structure itself, but in making mental and nervous disease or health. Indeed from the genetic standpoint they are the creators of conscious- ness itself, from its lowest to its highest form." It follows from all this that the symbolisation of the conflict, either in the dream or in the symptoms of the neurosis or psychosis, will contain elements representative of both factors, and also that no solu- tion of the conflict can come about except by the satisfaction of both of these diametrically opposed tendencies. It follows, too, that no conflict can be solved at the level of the conflict. That is, two mutually opposed tendencies can never unite their forces except at a higher level, in an all inclusive synthesis which lifts the whole situation to a level above that upon which the conflict arose. The formula is Hegelian and would read something like this thesis, anti-thesis, synthesis. To illustrate: Let us go back to the dream of the young man (Chapter VI) who dreamt that he stood beside a casket in which lay his grandfather's body and that while he stood there the body moved; it seemed to RESOLUTION OF THE CONFLICT 275 be ill at ease. My interpretation of that dream was that the grandfather represented the young man's ideal and that his ideal was dead but it did not rest comfortably in death, it was uneasy and would be up and doing. The dream might be interpreted as a regressive wish-fulfilling structure by way of the ** reversed parentage" phantasy (Chapter VII). But a moment's consideration shows this can not be all. The grandfather is uneasy, he does not rest in death. If then we will assume that the body of the grandfather represents the dreamer we see the ambi- valent tendencies both expressed. The desire to regress, to follow the path of idleness, of the uncon- scious longings that lead to death through identifica- tion with the grandfather (long since dead) based upon an infantile incestuous phantasy — identifica- tion with the grandfather is only a distortion cloaking a desire to be in place of the father — is represented by the dead body. But then the body stirs and is un- easy. This is the opposite tendency, the desire to be on the road of progress, to be active and constructive. Later on this young man was very much better and happier as a result of going into business and being quite successful. His grandfather had been a successful man so he reaches a solution of his conflict by success in business thus identifying him- self with his grandfather but not having to die, or at least to keep upon the road that leads to death, in order to do so. So we see the two opposed tend- encies, the desire to identify himself with the grandfather (death) and the desire for constructive 276 CHARACTEK FORMATION living (life) come to expression in the final syn- thesis, the solution of the conflict, a successful busi- ness career like the grandfather. Leaving this aspect of the problem for the present, to return to it later, I want to take up at this point certain tendencies of the different movements in the psychoanalytic field to further illustrate ways of looking at the problem of the conflict. The original method by which the conflict was dealt with therapeutically, and the still most impor- tant feature of its therapeutic handling, was to get the unconscious factor into consciousness. So long as the unconscious factor remains unconscious the conflict continues with no power to bring matters to a satisfactory conclusion. The patient, the host of the conflict, is in a position similar to a soldier in the trenches being shot at by a sharp-shooter using smokeless powder. He is conscious of the impact of the bullets about him and of his danger but he doesn't know what to do about it, he doesn't know which way to turn, he is as apt to move in the wrong as in the right direction. Just so soon as he can learn the location of the sharp-shooter it will be a relatively simple matter to move around a bend in the trench and get out of range but until he learns this he is helpless. And so the first effort is to help the patient learn this, to help him get the unconscious factor into consciousness. The way in which the scheme works in bringing about a resolution of the conflict is well illustrated in the following story: A group of college profes- RESOLUTION OF THE CONFLICT 277 sors have just entered the physical laboratory and are engaged in conversation when one of them notices that a bowl standing on a table by the window, half exposed to the sunlight and half in shadow, is warm on the side in shadow while the side in the sunlight is cooL He calls the attention of his confreres to this phenomenon whereupon a wordy discussion im- mediately ensues which waxes warmer and warmer as each participant insists upon being heard and expressing his explanation. Meanwhile the janitor, who has been standing by, trying to get an opportun- ity to speak, finally sees his chance and injects into the discussion the statement that just before they en- tered the room he had turned the bowl about. The effect is magical. The loud words, the antagonisms, all disappear. The phenomenon has been explained, there is no longer any occasion for a conflict. The Adlerian point of view does not tend to ex- planation so simple. His concept of organ inferior- ity stresses compensation. The goal of all our striving is for complete masculinity and our striving is determined in its direction by the particular organ inferiority from which we may happen to suffer and which gives us a sense of inferiority. It is this feeling of inferiority which we are constantly trying to overcome and it can only be overcome by succeed- ing in compensating for the organ inferiority which is at its basis. Depending therefore on the particu- lar nature of the inferiority is the resulting effort at compensation and therein lies the origin of char- acter traits. 278 CHARACTER FORMATION The neurosis, from the Adlerian viewpoint, de- pends upon a feeling of inferiority in the face of reality, which cannot be overcome, so the individual runs away from reality, runs to cover, takes a flight into a neurosis or psychosis perhaps, in response to his Sicherungstendenz, his effort to secure safety. This can be seen to be just aiiother way of express- ing the desire to recover the lost omnipotence except that it is based upon an organ inferiority concept. On the contrary the will to power is expressed by the Aggressionstrieb, the tendency to overcome. What shall we say of this organ inferiority as the basis of the conflict 1 Can it be true that all growth, all development comes from the expenditure of effort in trying to overcome some defect? In this sense does all strength have its origin in weakness ? And if so should we not rather welcome suffering because only through trials that tax us to our limit can the full of our powers come to fruition. As Schopen- hauer expresses it ; ^ **He who through such considerations has realised how necessary to our salvation, sorrow and suffer- ing mostly are; he will recognise that we should envy others not so much on account of their happi- ness as of their unhappiness.'' Of course in a certain sense our strength does come from our weaknesses, that is by overcoming our weaknesses. Consciousness itself we have seen is an expression of conflict and if the conflict issues 2 Schopenhauer, A. : "Essays." Contributions to the Doctrine of the Affirmation and Negation of the Will-to-Live. RESOLUTION OF THE CONFLICT 279 in success, that is if tlie energy which is split and flowing in two directions can be freed in a higher synthesis for constructive ends it is only as the result of overcoming, supplanting by sublimation of those restraining, back-dragging lower instincts rep- resented by the unconscious factor of the conflict. If as Aristotle says,^ ^'to be happy means to be self-sufficienf then the possibility of attaining such an end can only mean, in terms of the psychological conflict, to be capable of sublimation. The capacity for sublimation may well depend, in the sense of Adler, in the last analysis, upon the degree of organ inferiority which is at the basis of the conflict. Thus a man whose organs are to all intents and purposes normal, will be free, while the man with marked organ inferiority will be crippled in proportion to that inferiority, the organ defect, however, serving to call forth his most strenuous efforts in his at- tempts to overcome it and therefore serving to bring out the best that is in him. So much for the illustration of the fact that the symbolisation of the conflict must contain elements representative of both factors. From this necessity there arises the bi-polarity of symbols, that is, the representation of both elements of the conflict by the same symbol. In the dream of the young man standing by the casket containing his grandfather: the body of the grandfather represents death, that is the uncon- scious factor in the conflict that drags back and 3 Cited by Schopenhauer: "The Wisdom of Life." / 280 CHAKACTER FORMATION destroys efficiency; but the grandfather also repre- sents life for he stirs and this is the conscious ele- ment of the conflict that would force the young man along the path of usefulness. As pointed out in the chapter on symbolism, it is because of this capacity the symbol has to fit the situation in which it is needed that it is the energy bearer par excellence. If the same symbol can be used to express both ambi- valent terms of the conflict then it would seem that the energy was more available for either. Of course this makes the situation more dangerous but cor- respondingly it also fills it with greater hope. The enormous amount of energy which the symbol carries, and which is therefore available for sub- limation — resolution of the conflict — is also seen in the fact that the symbol always stands for the dreamer himself, or more accurately, that part of the dreamer which the symbol brings forward for review. So, the body of the grandfather, in the dream in question, is the dreamer, or more accu- rately, that portion of the dreamer which it, as a. symbol, represents. The grandfather, it will be remembered, was the dreamer's ideal man. In other words, the grandfather is the ideal of the dreamer and as such is dead but would live again. This is plainly the wish of the dream. Similarly, a young woman dreams that she is chased by a horrible, beastly looking man who does not catch her. The man, by association, turns out to be her husband whom she does not love, who drinks, and whose attitude toward her has never RESOLUTION OF THE CONFLICT 281 risen above the lust leveL The meaning and the wish of the dream seem clear but when we conclude that she wishes to get away from her husband we have only touched one-half the problem and that half about which the dreamer is fully conscious. The other side of the situation is that unconsciously she recognises her own longings as having something of the element of the untamed and the animal in them and she aspires to escape these destructive elements in herself. Both of these elements in the symbolic representa- tion of the conflict, which are so important in the energetics of its resolution, namely, the use of the same symbol to represent both ambivalent factors and the fact that the sjmibol represents that portion of the percipient which is brought forward for re- view, are well illustrated in an ancient dream of Alexander. While Alexander was encamped outside the city of Tyre to which he had long laid unsuccess- ful siege he had a dream. He dreamt that he saw a Satyr dancing upon a shield. Now a Satyr is a demi- god of the country while the shield is manifestly a symbol of war. It therefore seems quite reasonable to see in the dream a desire on the part of the king, who had become tired of this prolonged siege, to re- turn to the quiet and rest of peace and forego further warlike operations. The dream seems to mean the triumph of peace over war. The dream interpreter who was called to explain its meaning, however, saw deeper. Through a play upon words, the Greek for satyr being satyros, while sa Tyros {era Tvpo^) means 282 CHAEACTEE FOEMATION Tyre is tMne. Thus the king could only get the peace he wanted by doing his duty and pushing the siege to a successful issue which he proceeded to do. Therefore peace and war were both represented by the symbolism and also that part of the dreamer which both wanted to retire and seek rest from the conflict and that part which wanted to go forward and succeed. The next aspect of the energetics of the conflict that is important to understand is the regressive tendency of its symbolisation. This aspect of the conflict can be introduced by telling briefly the story of a case communicated to me by Dr. Gregory. The patient was a young girl who lived in the country not far from New York City. Financial straits of the family made it incum- bent upon her to leave her home in the country and betake herself to New York to earn a livelihood. Upon the eve of her departure her parents, solicitous for her safety, warned her against the lures of the great city. They told her to be careful and not to be deceived by suave strangers who might approach her, and by no means ever to permit herself to yield to an invitation to take any alcohol, and they told her about knock-out drops ; if she needed infor- mation to ask an official, a policeman — never a stranger. This was the time, too, when the papers were filled with accounts of the exposures in the white slave traffic, and she had read of these. Shortly after her arrival in New York she was able to secure a position at a salary of $15 per week, RESOLUTION OF THE CONFLICT 283 got a boarding place, and everything went welL After a while, however, her employer came to her and told her that matters had not been going well with him in a business way and that therefore he would be forced to reduce her salary to $8 per week. This necessitated a readjustment on her part, and the first effort that she made was to see if she could not get another position that would pay her as well. This, however, she was unable to do and finally had to realise that she must go on at the reduced com- pensation. This required that she should cut down expenses and live cheaper. To that end she secured a room in a cheaper German boarding house on the East Side. Hardly had she settled in her new quarters than one evening at dinner she was begged to have a glass of beer ; the boarders being German, beer was com- monly served at the table. She refused and resisted, but finally yielded and drank a little beer. While sitting at the table she overheard two of the men opposite talking, and one said to the other, ^*I think it can be done for $50. '' This alarmed her consider- ably, and after leaving the table she went into her room and shut the door and went to bed. She heard constantly, however, footsteps about the house, and she felt convinced that something wrong was going on; that evil designs were in the minds of some of the boarders, and that they were preparing to invade her in her room. About this time, too, the little beer that she had drunk disagreed with her, made her stomach feel bad, and she was afraid that it had 284 CHARACTER FORMATION been doped. She became more and more frightened, and finally arose, put on her things, hastily left the house and sought a physician. He made some exam- ination of her and looked at her tongue, and then, according to her story, said that he thought she had been poisoned. This was the last stroke. She rushed from the physician's office, shrieking into the street, and was shortly taken up by a policeman and sent to the Bellevue Pavilion. Here she was in a wild state of excitement, absolutely inaccessible for two or three days, and then finding that her environ- ment was a friendly one, that they were trying to do things for her and not to injure her, she gradually calmed down, and at the end of approximately three days she had quite recovered from the episode, had ^iill insight, and could I'eave tfie; hospital. We are dealiiig here ' q is Ite' ^evidently with an ^hysteriforih epi^^(3 of ,Ye:^'y acute onset and rapid subsidetice, but how are we to explain, to understand, the symptoms? I have cited the case because it would seem that here we have quite a simple illus- tration of the general concept of regression. In order to understand the mechanisms here in- volved we must realise first that this girl had had certain warnings from her parents on starting for New York. These warnings had been received, understood at the time, and then practically at least, laid aside and forgotten after she had arrived in the city and adjusted herself to the new conditions, secured employment and settled down in the new relations. Now a difficulty arises ; she has to make RESOLUTION OF THE CONFLICT 285 a complete readjustment which involves a consider- able sacrifice of her comfort, and this is a difficult thing to do. In her attempt to deal efficiently with reality she is not successful altogether. Now the interesting thing about her lack of success in dealing with the problem of her new adjustment shows itself by a psychosis that is easily seen to be nothing more than a realisation, a coming to life, as it were, of all the possibilities suggested by her parents' warn- ings. How can we understand this reanimation and reactivating of things which have gone before and been left behind? It will be seen that the psychosis can be under- stood if we first postulate a form of psycho-physical energy which has the capacity under certain circum- stances of flowing b§