The psychical disorders of male potency 22 страница

Psycho-analysis recognized early that every neurotic symptom owes its possibility of existence to a compromise. Every symptom must therefore in some way comply with the demands of the ego which manipulates the repression; it must offer some advantage, it must admit of some useful application, or it would meet with the same fate as the original instinctual impulse itself which has been fended off. The term ‘gain from illness’ has taken this into account; one is even justified in differentiating the ‘primary’ gain to the ego, which must be operative at the time of the generation of the symptom, from a ‘secondary’ part, which supervenes in attachment to other purposes of the ego, if the symptom is to persist. It has also long been known that the withdrawal of this gain from illness, or its disappearance in consequence of some change in real external circumstances, constitutes one of the mechanisms of a cure of the symptom. In the Adlerian doctrine the main emphasis falls on these easily verifiable and clearly intelligible connections, while the fact is altogether overlooked that on countless occasions the ego is merely making a virtue of necessity in submitting, because of its usefulness, to the very disagreeable symptom which is forced upon it - for instance, in accepting anxiety as a means to security. The ego is here playing the ludicrous part of the clown in a circus who by his gestures tries to convince the audience that every change in the circus ring is being carried out under his orders. But only the youngest of the spectators are deceived by him.

Psycho-analysis is obliged to give its backing to the second constituent of Adler’s theory as it would to something of its own. And in fact it is nothing else than psycho-analytic knowledge, which that author extracted from sources open to everyone during ten years of work in common and which he has now labelled as his own by a change in nomenclature. I myself consider ‘safeguarding [Sicherung]’, for instance, a better term than ‘protective measure [Schutzmassregel]’ which is the one I employ; but I cannot discover any difference in their meaning. Again, a host of familiar features come to light in Adler’s propositions when one restores the earlier ‘phantasied’ and ‘phantasy’ in place of ‘feigned [fingiert]’, ‘fictive’ and ‘fiction’. The identity of these terms would be insisted upon by psycho-analysis even if their author had not taken part in our common work over a period of many years.

The third part of the Adlerian theory, the twisted interpretations and distortions of the disagreeable facts of analysis, are what definitely separate ‘Individual Psychology’, as it is now to be called, from psycho-analysis. As we know, the principle of Adler’s system is that the individual’s aim of self-assertion, his ‘will to power’, is what, in the form of a ‘masculine protest’, plays a dominating part in the conduct of life, in character-formation and in neurosis. This ‘masculine protest’, the Adlerian motive force, is nothing else, however, but repression detached from its psychological mechanism and, moreover, sexualized in addition - which ill accords with the vaunted ejection of sexuality from its place in mental life. The ‘masculine protest’ undoubtedly exists, but if it is made into the motive force of mental life the observed facts are being treated like a spring-board that is left behind after it has been used to jump off from. Let us consider one of the fundamental situations in which desire is felt in infancy: that of a child observing the sexual act between adults. Analysis shows, in the case of people with whose life-story the physician will later be concerned, that at such moments two impulses take possession of the immature spectator. In boys, one is the impulse to put himself in the place of the active man, and the other, the opposing current, is the impulse to identify himself with the passive woman. Between them these two impulses exhaust the pleasurable possibilities of the situation. The first alone can come under the head of the masculine protest, if that concept is to retain any meaning at all. The second, however, the further course of which Adler disregards or which he knows nothing about, is the one that will become the more important in the subsequent neurosis. Adler has so merged himself in the jealous narrowness of the ego that he takes account only of those instinctual impulses which are agreeable to the ego and are encouraged by it; the situation in neurosis, in which the impulses are opposed to the ego, is precisely the one that lies beyond his horizon.

In connection with the attempt, which psycho-analysis has made necessary, to correlate the fundamental principle of its theory with the mental life of children, Adler exhibits the most serious departures from actual observation and the most fundamental confusion in his concepts. The biological, social and psychological meanings of ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ are here hopelessly mixed. It is impossible, and is disproved by observation, that a child, whether male or female, should found the plan of its life on an original depreciation of the female sex and take the wish to be a real man as its ‘guiding line’. Children have, to begin with, no idea of the significance of the distinction between the sexes; on the contrary, they start with the assumption that the same genital organ (the male one) is possessed by both sexes; they do not begin their sexual researches with the problem of the distinction between the sexes, while the social underestimation of women is completely foreign to them. There are women in whose neurosis the wish to be a man has played no part. Whatever in the nature of a masculine protest can be shown to exist is easily traceable to a disturbance in primary narcissism due to threats of castration or to the earliest interferences with sexual activities. All disputes about the psychogenesis of the neuroses must eventually be decided in the field of the neuroses of childhood. Careful dissection of a neurosis in early childhood puts an end to all misapprehensions about the aetiology of the neuroses and to all doubts about the part played by the sexual instincts in them. That is why, in his criticism of Jung’s paper ‘Conflicts in the Mind of the Child’, Adler was obliged to resort to the imputation that the facts of the case had been one-sidedly arranged, ‘no doubt by the father’.

I will not dwell any longer on the biological aspect of the Adlerian theory nor discuss whether either actual ‘organ-inferiority’ or the subjective feeling of it - one does not know which - is really capable of serving as the foundation of Adler’s system. I will merely remark in passing that if it were so neurosis would appear as a by-product of every kind of physical decrepitude, whereas observation shows that an impressive majority of ugly, misshapen, crippled and miserable people fail to react to their defects by neurosis. Nor will I deal with the interesting assertion according to which inferiority is to be traced back to the feeling of being a child. It shows the disguise under which the factor of infantilism, which is so strongly emphasized by psycho-analysis, re-appears in ‘Individual Psychology’. On the other hand, I must point out how all the psychological acquisitions of psycho-analysis have been thrown to the winds by Adler. In his book Über den nervösen Charakter the unconscious is still mentioned as a psychological peculiarity, without, however, any relation to his system. Later, he has consistently declared that it is a matter of indifference to him whether an idea is conscious or unconscious. Adler has never from the first shown any understanding of repression. In an abstract of a paper read by him at the Vienna Society (February, 1911) he wrote that it must be pointed out that the evidence in a particular case showed that the patient had never repressed his libido, but had been continually ‘safeguarding’ himself against it. Soon afterwards, in a discussion at the Vienna Society, he said: ‘If you ask where repression comes from, you are told, "from civilization"; but if you go on to ask where civilization comes from, you are told "from repression". So you see it is all simply playing with words.’ A tithe of the acuteness and ingenuity with which Adler has unmasked the defensive devices of the ‘nervous character’ would have been enough to show him the way out of this pettifogging argument. What is meant is simply that civilization is based on the repressions effected by former generations, and that each fresh generation is required to maintain this civilization by effecting the same repressions. I once heard of a child who thought people were laughing at him, and began to cry, because when he asked where eggs come from he was told ‘from hens’, and when he went on to ask where hens come from he was told ‘from eggs’. But they were not playing with words; on the contrary, they were telling him the truth.

Everything that Adler has to say about dreams, the shibboleth of psycho-analysis, is equally empty and unmeaning. At first he regarded dreams as a turning away from the feminine to the masculine line - which is simply a translation of the wish-fulfilment theory of dreams into the language of the ‘masculine protest’. Later he found that the essence of dreams lies in enabling men to accomplish unconsciously what they are denied consciously. Adler must also be credited with priority in confusing dreams with latent dream-thoughts - a confusion on which the discovery of his ‘prospective tendency’ rests. Maeder followed his lead in this later. Here the fact is readily overlooked that every interpretation of a dream which is incomprehensible in its manifest form is based on the very method of dream-interpretation whose premisses and conclusions are being disputed. In regard to resistance Adler informs us that it serves the purpose of putting into effect the patient’s opposition to the physician. This is certainly true; it is as much as to say that it serves the purpose of resistance. Where it comes from, however, or how it happens that its phenomena are at the disposal of the patient is not further enquired into, as being of no interest to the ego. The detailed mechanism of the symptoms and manifestations of diseases, the explanation of the manifold variety of those diseases and their forms of expression, are disregarded in toto; for everything alike is pressed into the service of the masculine protest, self-assertion and the aggrandizement of the personality. the system is complete; to produce it has cost an enormous amount of labour in the recasting of interpretations, while it has not furnished a single new observation. I fancy I have made it clear that it has nothing to do with psycho-analysis.

The view of life which is reflected in the Adlerian system is founded exclusively on the aggressive instinct; there is no room in it for love. We might feel surprise that such a cheerless Weltanschauung should have met with any attention at all; but we must not forget that human beings, weighed down by the burden of their sexual needs, are ready to accept anything if only the ‘overcoming of sexuality’ is offered them as a bait.

Adler’s secession took place before the Weimar Congress in 1911; after that date the Swiss began theirs. The first signs of it, curiously enough, were a few remarks of Riklin’s in some popular articles appearing in Swiss publications, so that the general public learned earlier than those most intimately concerned in the subject that psycho-analysis had got the better of some regrettable errors which had previously discredited it. In 1912 Jung boasted, in a letter from America, that his modifications of psycho-analysis had overcome the resistances of many people who had hitherto refused to have anything to do with it. I replied that that was nothing to boast of, and that the more he sacrificed of the hard-won truths of psycho-analysis the more would he see resistances vanishing. This modification which the Swiss were so proud of introducing was again nothing else but a pushing into the background of the sexual factor in psycho-analytic theory. I confess that from the beginning I regarded this ‘advance’ as too far-reaching an adjustment to the demands of actuality.

These two retrograde movements away from psycho-analysis, which I must now compare with each other, show another point in common: for they both court a favourable opinion by putting forward certain lofty ideas, which view things, as it were, sub specie aeternitatis. With Adler, this part is played by the relativity of all knowledge and the right of the personality to put an artificial construction on the data of knowledge according to individual taste; with Jung, the appeal is made to the historic right of youth to throw off the fetters in which tyrannical age with its hidebound views seeks to bind it. A few words must be devoted to exposing the fallacy of these ideas.

The relativity of our knowledge is a consideration which may be advanced against every other science just as well as against psycho-analysis. It is derived from familiar reactionary currents of present-day feeling which are hostile to science, and it lays claim to an appearance of superiority to which no one is entitled. None of us can guess what the ultimate judgement of mankind about our theoretical efforts will be. There are instances in which rejection by the first three generations has been corrected by the succeeding one and changed into recognition. After a man has listened carefully to the voice of criticism in himself and has paid some attention to the criticisms of his opponents, there is nothing for him to do but with all his strength to maintain his own convictions which are based of experience. One should be content to conduct one’s case honestly, and should not assume the office of judge, which is reserved for the remote future. The stress on arbitrary personal views in scientific matters is bad; it is clearly an attempt to dispute the right of psycho-analysis to be valued as a science - after that value, incidentally, has already been depreciated by what has been said before. Anyone who sets a high value on scientific thought will rather seek every possible means and method of circumscribing the factor of fanciful personal predilections as far as possible wherever it still plays too great a part. Moreover, it is opportune to recall that any zeal in defending ourselves is out of place. These arguments of Adler’s are not intended seriously. They are only meant for use against his opponents; they do not touch his own theories. Nor have they prevented his followers from hailing him as the Messiah, for whose appearance expectant humanity has been prepared by a number of forerunners. The Messiah is certainly no relative phenomenon.

Jung’s argument ad captandam benevolentiam¹ rests on the too optimistic assumption that the progress of the human race, of civilization and knowledge, has always pursued an unbroken one; as if there had been no periods of decadence, no reactions and restorations after every revolution, no generations who have taken a backward step and abandoned the gains of their predecessors. His approach to the standpoint of the masses, his abandonment of an innovation which proved unwelcome, make it a priori improbable that Jung’s corrected version of psycho-analysis can justly claim to be a youthful act of liberation. After all, it is not the age of the doer that decides this but the character of the deed.

¹ [‘For the purpose of gaining good-will.’]3

Of the two movements under discussion Adler’s is indubitably the more important; while radically false, it is marked by consistency and coherence. It is, moreover, in spite of everything, founded upon a theory of the instincts. Jung’s modification, on the other hand, loosens the connection of the phenomena with instinctual life; and further, as its critics (e.g. Abraham, Ferenczi and Jones) have pointed out, it is so obscure, unintelligible and confused as to make it difficult to take up any position upon it. Wherever one lays hold of anything, one must be prepared to hear that one has misunderstood it, and one cannot see how to arrive at a correct understanding of it. It is put forward in a peculiarly vacillating manner, one moment as ‘quite a mild deviation, which does not justify the outcry that has been raised about it’ (Jung), and the next moment as a new message of salvation which is to begin a new epoch for psycho-analysis, and, indeed, a new Weltanschauung for everyone.

When one thinks of the inconsistencies displayed in the various public and private pronouncements made by the Jungian movement, one is bound to ask oneself how much of this is due to lack of clearness and how much to lack of sincerity. It must be admitted, however, that the exponents of the new theory find themselves in a difficult position. They are now disputing things which they themselves formerly upheld, and they are doing so, moreover, not on the ground of fresh observations which might have taught them something further, but in consequence of fresh interpretations which make the things they see look different to them now from what they did before. For this reason they are unwilling to give up their connection with psycho-analysis, as whose representatives they became known to the world, and prefer to give it out that psycho-analysis has changed. At the Munich Congress I found it necessary to clear up this confusion, and I did so by declaring that I did not recognize the innovations of the Swiss as legitimate continuations and further developments of the psycho-analysis that originated with me. Outside critics (like Furtmüller) had already seen how things were, and Abraham is right in saying that Jung is in full retreat from psycho-analysis. I am of course perfectly ready to allow that everyone has a right to think and to write what he pleases; but he has no right to put it forward as something other than what it really is.

Just as Adler’s investigation brought something new to psycho-analysis - a contribution to the psychology of the ego - and then expected us to pay too high a price for this gift by throwing over all the fundamental theories of analysis, so in the same way Jung and his followers paved the way for their fight against psycho-analysis by presenting it with a new acquisition. They traced in detail (as Pfister did before them) the way in which the material of sexual ideas belonging to the family-complex and incestuous object-choice is made use of in representing the highest ethical and religious interests of man - that is, they have illuminated an important instance of the sublimation of the erotic instinctual forces and of their transformation into trends which can no longer be called erotic. This was in complete harmony with all the expectations of psycho-analysis, and would have agreed very well with the view that in dreams and neurosis a regressive dissolution of this sublimation, as of all others, becomes visible. But the world would have risen in indignation and protested that ethics and religion were being sexualized. Now I cannot refrain from thinking teleologically for once and concluding that these discoverers were not equal to meeting such a storm of indignation. Perhaps it even began to rage in their own bosoms. The theological prehistory of so many of the Swiss throws no less light on their attitude to psycho-analysis than does Adler’s socialist prehistory on the development of his psychology. One is reminded of Mark Twain’s famous story of all the things that happened to his watch and of his concluding words: ‘And he used to wonder what became of all the unsuccessful tinkers, and gunsmiths, and shoemakers, and blacksmiths; but nobody could ever tell him.’

Suppose - to make use of a simile - that in a particular social group there lives a parvenu, who boasts of being descended from a noble family living in another place. It is pointed out to him, however, that his parents live somewhere in the neighbourhood, and that they are quite humble people. There is only one way of escape from his difficulty and he seizes on it. He can no longer repudiate his parents, but he asserts that they themselves are of noble lineage and have merely come down in the world; and he procures a family-tree from some obliging official source. It seems to me that the Swiss have been obliged to behave in much the same way. If ethics and religion were not allowed to be sexualized but had to be something ‘higher’ from the start, and if nevertheless the ideas contained in them seemed undeniably to be descended from the Oedipus and family-complex, there could be only one way out: it must be that from the very first these complexes themselves do not mean what they seem to be expressing, but bear the higher ‘anagogic’ meaning (as Silberer calls it) which made it possible for them to be employed in the abstract trains of thought of ethics and religious mysticism.

I am quite prepared to be told again that I have misunderstood the substance and purpose of the Neo-Zurich theory; but I must protest in advance against any contradictions to my view of it that may be found in the publications of that school being laid at my door instead of theirs. I can find no other way of making the whole range of Jung’s innovations intelligible to myself and of grasping all their implications. All the changes that Jung has proposed to make in psycho-analysis flow from his intention to eliminate what is objectionable in the family-complexes, so as not to find it again in religion and ethics. For sexual libido an abstract concept has been substituted, of which one may safely say that it remains mystifying and incomprehensible to wise men and fools alike. The Oedipus complex has a merely ‘symbolic’ meaning: the mother in it means the unattainable, which must be renounced in the interests of civilization; the father who is killed in the Oedipus myth is the ‘inner’ father, from whom one must set oneself free in order to become independent. Other parts of the material of sexual ideas will no doubt be subjected to similar re-interpretations in the course of time. In the place of a conflict between ego-dystonic erotic trends and the self-preservative ones a conflict appears between the ‘life-task’ and ‘psychical inertia’; the neurotic’s sense of guilt corresponds to his self-reproach for not properly fulfilling his ‘life-task’. In this way a new religio-ethical system has been created, which, just like the Adlerian system, was bound to re-interpret, distort or jettison the factual findings of analysis. The truth is that these people have picked out a few cultural overtones from the symphony of life and have once more failed to hear the mighty and primordial melody of the instincts.

In order to preserve this system intact it was necessary to turn entirely away from observation and from the technique of psycho-analysis. Occasionally enthusiasm for the cause even permitted a disregard of scientific logic - as when Jung finds that the Oedipus complex is not ‘specific’ enough for the aetiology of the neuroses, and proceeds to attribute this specific quality to inertia, the most universal characteristic of all matter, animate and inanimate! It is to be noted, by the way, that the ‘Oedipus complex’ represents only a topic with which the individual’s mental forces have to deal, and is not itself a force, like ‘psychical inertia’. The study of individual people had shown (and always will show) that the sexual complexes in their original sense are alive in them. On that account the investigation of individuals was pushed into the background and replaced by conclusions based on evidence derived from anthropological research. The greatest risk of coming up against the original, undisguised meaning of these re-interpreted complexes was to be met with in the early childhood of every individual; consequently in therapy the injunction was laid down that this past history should be dwelt on as little as possible and the main emphasis put on reverting to the current conflict, in which, moreover, the essential thing was on no account to be what was accidental and personal, but what was general - in fact, the non-fulfilment of the life-task. As we know, however, a neurotic’s current conflict becomes comprehensible and admits of solution only when it is traced back to his prehistory, when one goes back along the path that his libido took when he fell ill.

The form taken by the Neo-Zurich therapy under these influences can be conveyed in the words of a patient who experienced it himself: ‘This time not a trace of attention was given to the past or to the transference. Wherever I thought I recognized the latter it was pronounced to be a pure libidinal symbol. The moral instruction was very fine and I followed it faithfully, but I did not advance a step. It was even more annoying for me than for him, but how could I help it?... Instead of freeing me by analysis, every day brought fresh tremendous demands on me, which had to be fulfilled if the neurosis was to be conquered - for instance, inward concentration by means of introversion, religious meditation, resuming life with my wife in loving devotion, etc. It was almost beyond one’s strength; it was aiming at a radical transformation of one’s whole inner nature. I left the analysis as a poor sinner with intense feelings of contrition and the best resolutions, but at the same time in utter discouragement. Any clergyman would have advised what he recommended, but where was I to find the strength?’ The patient, it is true, reported that he had heard that analysis of the past and of the transference must be gone through first; but he had been told that he had already had enough of it. Since this first kind of analysis had not helped him more, the conclusion seems to me justified that the patient had not had enough of it. Certainly the subsequent treatment, which no longer had any claim to be called psycho-analysis, did not improve matters. It is remarkable that the members of the Zurich school should have made the long journey round by way of Vienna in order to wind up at the nearby city of Berne, where Dubois cures neuroses by ethical encouragement in a more considerate manner.¹

The total incompatibility of this new movement with psycho-analysis shows itself too, of course, in Jung’s treatment of repression, which is hardly mentioned nowadays in his writings, in his misunderstanding of dreams, which, like Adler, in complete disregard of dream-psychology, he confuses with the latent dream-thoughts, and in his loss of all understanding of the unconscious - in short, in all the points which I should regard as the essence of psycho-analysis. When Jung tells us that the incest-complex is merely ‘symbolic’, that after all it has no ‘real’ existence, that after all a savage feels no desire towards an old hag but prefers a young and pretty woman, we are tempted to conclude that ‘symbolic’ and ‘without real existence’ simply mean something which, in virtue of its manifestations and pathogenic effects, is described by psycho-analysis as ‘existing unconsciously’ - a description that disposes of the apparent contradiction.

¹ I know the objections there are to making use of a patient’s reports, and I will therefore expressly state that my informant is a trustworthy person, very well capable of forming a judgement. He gave me this information quite spontaneously and I make use of his communication without asking his consent, since I cannot allow that a psycho-analytic technique has any right to claim the protection of medical discretion.7

If one bears in mind that dreams are something different from the latent dream-thoughts which they work over, there is nothing surprising in patients dreaming of things with which their minds have been filled during the treatment, whether it be the ‘life-task’, or ‘being on top’ or ‘underneath’. The dreams of people being analysed can undoubtedly be directed, in the same way as they are by stimuli produced for experimental purposes. One can determine a part of the material which appears in a dream; nothing in the essence or mechanism of dreams is altered by this. Nor do I believe that ‘biographical’ dreams, as they are called, occur outside analysis. If, on the other hand, one analyses dreams which occurred before treatment, or if one considers the dreamer’s own additions to what has been suggested to him in the treatment, or if one avoids setting him any such tasks, then one may convince oneself how far removed it is from the purpose of a dream to produce attempted solutions of the life-task. Dreams are only a form of thinking; one can never reach an understanding of this form by reference to the content of the thoughts; only an appreciation of the dream-work will lead to that understanding.

It is not difficult to find a factual refutation of Jung’s misconceptions of psycho-analysis and deviations from it. Every analysis conducted in a proper manner, and in particular every analysis of a child, strengthens the convictions upon which the theory of psycho-analysis is founded, and rebuts the re-interpretations made by both Jung’s and Adler’s systems. In the days before his illumination, Jung himself carried out and published an analysis of this kind of a child; it remains to be seen whether he will undertake a new interpretation of its results with the help of a different ‘one-sided arrangement of the facts’, to use the expression employed by Adler in this connection.

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