ORGANIC ANALYSIS OF REPRESSION AND OF THE FACTOR OF RESISTANCE FROM THE
INDIVIDUAL VIEWPOINT
As the causative element in the neuroses is societal or subjective,
an analysis that proceeds upon the objective tack of uncovering a
patient’s complexes is futile. If I am objectively interested in a
patient’s separative, dissociative expressions--in the infinite variety
of his sexualities or infantilisms, it is traceable alone to the
retention of this same unconscious mode within my own personality. In
this situation the analytic procedure is such as bids fair to extend to
an indefinite duration. But if, on the contrary, my own mode is organic
and inclusive, my interest in the patient and my whole relationship to
him will rest upon an organic, confluent basis. I shall be interested
not in the dark secrets of sexuality which he may bring himself to
divulge but in the delusion of separateness that leads him to suppose
that my own sexuality or the desperate recourses of separatism and
repression within myself are less dark than his own. Indeed, arguing
merely from presumptive evidence, my absorbing interest in the subject
of the neurosis would of itself make it a safe conjecture that my
own reaction to the societal repression or my own sexual conflicts
must have been by far the greater of the two. But neither is this the
point. The point is that our sins are common because our lives are not
common, and that the patient’s sole need is his understanding of the
causative factor in the reaction of separation and repression of the
collective mind as it may be realized by him in the relationship of his
personality to my own. My sole endeavour, then, will be directed to an
understanding on his part of the cause of his neurotic separatism or of
the societal repression which, in dissociating him from the congeneric
consciousness common to us both, artificially creates his illusion of
difference between us.
Lacking this realization of the societal involvement of the neurosis,
there necessarily ensues a personal involvement in the analysis that
invites situations which not infrequently attain to an acute crisis.
The only remedy is the realization through one’s own analysis of one’s
own societal disaffection. The only recourse is the complete reversal
of one’s own pictorial or introverted habits of experience. It will
not be easy. To accept voluntary subjection to conditions involving
involuntary pain will not become a popular pastime. But it is the only
way in which we may be made aware of our social involvement in the
societal neurosis about us. It is the only way by which we may come
to take a conscious part _in_ and not be an unconscious part _of_ the
analysis.
Never in the drama of human vicissitude has there been staged anything
more ironical than the spectacle of an analyst’s perplexity when the
patient, having become by implication a “cure,” fails to acquiesce
in the principle she is now understood to illustrate. For presumably
the time has arrived at which she (for the sake of dramatic interest
let us say “she”) should naturally wish to withdraw from treatment.
Unhappily, however, she entertains no such intention. On the contrary,
in implacable defiance of analytical canons, she still stoutly
maintains the unabated actuality of her neurosis and offers forthwith
irrefutable vindication of her position in the sudden recrudescence
of her incipient symptoms. In face of the undeniable testimony, the
situation is untoward in the extreme. For at this point the patient’s
attitude toward the analyst is such as can be only adequately expressed
by her in the language of the poet who wrote: “All the current of my
being sets to thee,” and in the interest of a busy practice, if to
no other end, it is urgent that a channel be promptly provided into
which to divert the stream! This is the real climax of the situation.
Its tenseness is further heightened at this point by the introduction
of that most delicate and difficult process in the technique called
“analyzing the transference”! The fact is the transference will not
analyze. It never does. That is the difficulty of this very delicate
phase. At this juncture we cast frantically about for an “interest” for
the patient, that is, an interest other than ourselves--marriage, art,
social service, something, anything! The truth is, our analysis has
failed of its aim, and in our extremity we are driven to seek shelter
under the cover of a subterfuge. It is this subterfuge which consists
in an effort toward what is called, in scientific phraseology, “the
sublimation of the patient’s sexuality” and is the closing act of our
little comedy. As the curtain is finally rung down (the management
is fortunate if it drops without a hitch), it descends upon a much
perplexed psychoanalyst. He feels distinctly that something went wrong.
He is not certain just what it was, but knows that, whatever it was,
the fault lay entirely with the patient. But the circumambient gods,
as one’s fancy pictures, who from their remote recesses have witnessed
until now with unsubdued mirth the transient episode of our unconscious
charade, observing the wretched fate of the patient in her unanswered
need, suddenly alter their mood from levity to grave concern as they
thoughtfully remark one to another in their own wise way that the
essential catastrophe, after all, is the unconscious of the analyst and
that the real drama has but just begun.
However unpalatable the admission, here is the whole crux of the
matter. We have dealt objectively with an inherently subjective
situation. Our approach has been cognitive, not affective. It has been
personal, not inclusive. Again we have merely looked out, not in. Again
it is the illusion of the organic interval, and our problem has eluded
us in the common fallacy of objective reference.
In a list of precepts for psychoanalysts (“precepts” for the
elimination of repressions scarcely requires comment!) there is offered
this naïve word of admonition: “Don’t forget that the neurotic’s chief
dictum is: ‘I am not as other men are.’” But here again the analyst
characteristically fails to recognize that such a dictum is by no means
the private monopoly of the “neurotic.” He overlooks the fact that it
is equally the tendency of us all and (what is of crucial importance)
most especially of the analyst himself in the very utterance of
his dictum. For in imputing to others this unconscious fallacy of
self-distinction, he is in the same breath necessarily assuming the
same distinction for himself--the distinction, namely, that he is
himself in so far “not like other men” as to be privileged to tell
them of the presence of this fallacy within themselves. Of course the
analyst will say: “Well with me, you see, it is different.” But this
is precisely what the patient says, as it is what every one says. And
here we come once more to the heart of the matter, namely, that as the
neurosis is societal the self-distinction underlying it is necessarily
the particular claim of every individual within the societal body. In
this situation the analyst inevitably regards only the disparity of
“the other fellow,” a result which I feel to be typical of the error
of the Freudian analysis.[35] But “who decries the loved decries the
lover.” In the true sense--in the sense of our organic life--there is
no other fellow. Our interpretation of his apparent differentiation
from us is but our own projection of the differentiation within
ourselves, just as his interpretation of our apparent differentiation
from him is but his projection of the division within himself. It
is this unadmitted division within each of us that has created the
illusion of our organic separateness from one another. For this reason
it is only as we accept the subjective task of realizing the spurious
fabric of our own separateness and self-sufficiency that we may come to
realize it within our patient by virtue of our inherent identification
with him. Thus, to realize our division through participation with
another is to pierce the delusion of our mutual separateness and
unconsciousness and so to become mutually united again through the
acceptance of our common organic life.
Based upon the organismic conception here outlined, clearly this
subjective recourse can be the only logical position of the analyst.
For, in the light of this conception, the neurosis or the separate mode
was originally induced in the immature organism through the external
suggestion of the individual in closest contact with it operating to
dissociate it from its primary, organic mode. In consequence, the
dissociated consciousness thus artificially induced can be restored to
the mode of unification and confluence only by substituting for the
superimposed suggestive contact--the predominant social repression
embodied in the parent--the presence of a personality whose tendency
is preponderantly of the confluent, societal mode. It is clear that
in this conception the analysis of a patient, in the sense of his
realization and acceptance of life, presupposes as a rigid organic
condition the prior analysis and acceptance of life on the part of the
analyst. In impaling the cause of this separatism, delusionally assumed
by the patient to reside within himself alone but in reality having its
residence in our common social repression, the analyst’s preoccupation
can only be with this same delusional arrogation of separateness as it
occurs within himself. This means nothing less than that the life of
the analyst must in its consciousness completely encompass the life of
the analysand in its unconsciousness. This, I know, is a large demand.
It is to realize in oneself a breadth of consciousness that embraces
in its scope nothing less than the totality of unconsciousness in its
entire social aspect. It is to include within oneself the collective
unconscious or the far span of normality in all its separateness
and sexuality. In brief, it is to open the way to a reversal of the
unconscious situation now prevailing in which societal men encompass
individual man, and to achieve the mode of consciousness in which
societal man encompasses individual men.
I remember a young woman journalist coming one day into my study on
the pretext of illness but in reality to look me over. She had been
the rounds of the New York analysts, she said, having been “analyzed”
by first one and then another, though I doubt whether any of the able
physicians cited by her would have dignified the interviews in any
such terms. But while herself unconscious, indeed quite paranoid,
she made a remark which has since seemed to me highly significant.
She said that we psychoanalysts appear actuated by an unconscious
attitude of antagonism toward our patients, that we seem motivated by
a determination “to get even.” In the spirit in which it was made, the
remark was obviously a projection and not a judgment, but I think the
criticism is in general true--certainly it has proved true in my own
case. For the analyst is either unconsciously pleased with the patient
who gives him his confidence or he is unconsciously displeased at his
withholding it. In other words, the attitude of the analyst is not
uninfluenced by personal or egoistic predilection.[36] Here, then, is
straightway the factor of unconsciousness, of separation and hence
antagonism in the analyst.
But if the analyst consciously senses the patient’s situation, he sees
without bias that the patient--being of a separative, unconscious
mode--will, and inevitably must, act in every instance from motives of
unconsciousness. If he confides in the analyst, he does so solely in
the hope of winning for himself the good-will of the analyst (positive
infantile affect or suggestion); if he is silent or evasive, it is
because he doubts the advantage to himself of sharing his confidence
(negative infantile affect or repression). The psychoanalyst who would
reckon consciously with a patient’s life may be moved by neither one
nor the other manifestation. Both are outside the mode of reality.
Both are expressions of dissociation. Neither attitude will touch
the analyst affectively if he is truly within his own life. If,
on the other hand, he is himself dissociated, whether normally or
neurotically--in the collusion of the group-expression or in single
isolation--and is ever seeking to reinstate in the present moment
the mother-comfort of his own childhood, he will necessarily either
receive the unconsciously motivated confidence of his patient with
the unconscious satisfaction of self-interest (infantile egotism) or
he will respond to his patient’s unconsciously withheld confidence
with the no less unconscious dissatisfaction of self-interest
defeated (infantile egotism thwarted). In one case he manifests the
sentimentality of unconscious sympathy and approbation, in the other
the equally sentimental reaction of unconscious resentment and hate. In
either case it is to be partisan, separative, personal, unconscious.
This unsuspected personalism or unconsciousness within ourselves makes
it easier for us to condone the personalism or unconsciousness in
another, rather than understand it. Because of the greater significance
to us of our own personal grievance as compared with our understanding
of the impersonal needs of life as a unitary experience, our sympathy
is automatically enlisted on the side of the patient’s personal
grievance. In brief, we prefer to sympathize with the suffering
of an organism rather than with the organism that suffers. This
characterological weakness in our analytic system renders the analyst
an easy mark for the sentimentalizing reveries of the neurotic patient.
It is thus a far cry from “Freud,” the psychological conception as it
tends toward the more unitary formulation and co-ordination of the
problem of neurotic disharmonies, to “Freud” the father-complex as it
tends unconsciously to dominate the consciousness of patient as of
follower.
_The admission that has eventually to be made without qualifying
reservation is that the transference upon which we have laid such
stress as an objective scientific phenomenon is in truth a state of
mind subjectively induced in the patient in direct response to the
attitude of unconsciousness on the part of the analyst himself_.
It is just here, in the dissociated attitude of analyst toward
analysand, that there stands the inevitable impasse to the personal
or individualistic analysis of Freud. Here is the futile revolution
within a vicious circle that is the fallacy of its individualistic
viewpoint. It needs to be repeated that the sexual or the personal,
in the sense of the separative, is itself unconscious. Its primary
source is the reaction originally induced in the organism by the
disunity of the social unconscious as voiced by the parent. We shall be
helped if we keep in mind that much of the confusion of psychoanalysis
is due to the failure of psychoanalysts to realize that there is a
distinction between the mother-image and the mother-organism. We must
ultimately come to see that, due to the dissociative or bidimensional
attitude on the part of the mother, the child automatically replaces
the biological reality of the parent organism with the artificial
_image_ of the parent[37] induced by the parental command. Following
the investigations of the last years it has come to be my definite
conviction that it is this element of the pictorial and statutory,
as reflected in the parent-image, that is the real impediment to
consciousness and the sole meaning of “unconsciousness.”
The suggestive instance (image) of the parental organism, due to
the early influence of separatism operating upon it, savours wholly
of a repressive, non-confluent attitude. It necessarily tends,
therefore, through the gradual inculcation of the ulterior, separative,
behaviouristic mode, to dissociate more and more from its original
biology, the immature organism within its range. As the neurotic
diathesis is induced through the surface diversifications of external
suggestion infringing upon the original consonance of the organism,
as unconsciousness is diversity of outer aspect in contrast with
the concentration of consciousness and personality in its inner
confluence, the resolving of the neurotic conflict lies in recalling
the personality from its precipitation into the manifold quests of
external compensations to the original integrity of its essential
unitary life. In this process of rehabilitation there is abrogated
the ceaseless urge toward the unconscious fulfilment of the _wish_,
through the restoration of the native impetus of life in a conscious
fulfilment of _function_. It cannot be too strongly emphasized that
the original incitement to the neurosis is, from an individualistic
basis, external. This reaction within the individual to a prohibition
acting from without constitutes the whole significance of the attitude
of separatism, of self-seeking and of self-defence that are synonymous
with the repressed sexuality of the neurotic personality. But there is
the need to recognize that this same attitude is also synonymous with
the released sexuality which is “normally” regarded at the present
time as a true expression of life. This so-called normal expression,
however, in its obsessive self-seeking and in its obvious kinship with
secondary dissociative reactions, stands at the very opposite pole to
sex as the instinct of life in its organic significance.
The automatic release of the reaction of self-defence that is the
reflex response to the irritant of organic prohibition is biologically
significant. For with the extraneous interception of the organic
mode or at the instance of prohibition, the individual is reflexly
stimulated to a compensatory effort to replace this mode with the
vicarious mode of self-defence. There is here the psychological
concomitance between organic interdiction and organic recoil, between
repression or curtailment of personality and sexuality or the
retroactive impulse to individual aggression. In this connection it is
interesting to note the etymological agreement of the ideas of defence
and prohibition in the French word _défense_ meaning prohibition. There
is psychological warrant for assuming that the relation between these
two words is more innate than accidental.
This psychological parallelism between repression or self-love and
sexuality or self-defence, between the egoistic wish and the suspicion
of interference with its fulfilment, underlies the identity of
the phenomenon of homosexuality and that of paranoia. Students of
psychoanalysis have tended to regard the reflections of these reactions
as distinct manifestations, viewing them as contradictions rather than
as concomitants, as opposites rather than as alternatives, as different
phases of reaction rather than as different aspects of the same phase.
Freud, for example, lays emphasis upon the factor of sexuality, giving
it the place of dominant importance in the neurotic conflict, while
Adler asserts that it is the factor of the individual’s egotism that
is of central importance in the causation of the disharmony. These
seemingly opposed views are, in reality, the same. One envisages
the somatic, the other the psychic aspect of a condition that is
nuclear and common. Their seeming difference is merely the inevitable
limitation of an objective and absolute mode of approach. In either
case it is the symbolic manifestation that is confronted. Whether
the reaction is represented in lust of body (homosexuality) or in
pride of mind (paranoia), in both conditions the aspect contemplated
is again the mere symptomatic index. In each is expressed but the
secondary response to a deeper, more encompassing factor that has its
substrate in our common consciousness. In each it is the semblance of
the individual personality replacing the actuality of the societal
personality. Each is the objective resultant of a subjective impediment
to the confluent, organic life. In both there is represented but the
superficial aspect, one expressing itself clinically in the symbolic
anomaly of homosexuality, the other, in the symbolic anomaly of
paranoia.
Thus far the interest of these anomalies, as far as psychoanalysts are
concerned, has been their implication as it touches the psychopathology
of the isolated or neurotic personality. Far more significant, however,
is the bearing of these manifestations upon the psychobiology of the
social organism as a whole. That these distortions of personality
exist in a larval stage in the group-neurosis of “normality” is a
circumstance with which the psychopathologist needs yet to reckon
in his wider office of clinical sociologist. Naturally we have not
yet begun to suspect the presence of these unsavoury elements,
homosexuality and paranoia, in the unconscious of “normality,” and as
normality enjoys the security of mutual protective agreement among its
constituents, the existence of these unseemly maladjustments within
its ranks will long be treated by us with stolid disavowal. It is the
distinguishing feature of the naïve countenance of normality that it
experiences no need of self-questioning. A delusion that has become
socially buttressed in the mutual reciprocities of its unconscious
adherents is indeed impregnable.
Human consciousness, however, will not be understood nor a clearer,
saner life opened to man until he has repudiated the unconscious,
vicarious or separative as it exists in its securest, most widespread
and most aggressive form, that is, in the _socially systematized
delusion comprising the collective unconscious of our vaunted
“normality.”_ For if normality, so-called, is in reality a dissociation
existing under the protective mask of society, how can we who are
normal or collectively dissociated comprehend dissociation in the
neurotic personality? How can the actor be at the same time onlooker?
How can subject and object co-exist in the selfsame content? How, in
brief, is it possible for unawareness to envisage unawareness? Surely
it is clear that the dreamer is of necessity partisan to his dream, and
that the contemplation of a dream from within a dream is subversive of
the very principle of consciousness. For knowledge being awareness _of_
or _in regard to_, demands as its condition the two contrasting factors
of a subject looking upon and an object looked upon. If normality is
mere collective unconsciousness and therefore itself an artificially
induced neurosis--if it is a condition of unconsciousness produced
through the influence of external suggestion and therefore represents
in itself a secondary dissociative state, how is it possible to fulfil
the requisite condition of consciousness in respect to the two factors
of subject and object in the matter of our consideration of the dreams
of our patients? As my own work has in the last years come to adopt a
more and more inclusive organismic viewpoint, I have become convinced
that what we psychoanalysts _in our present personal and objective
interpretation_ consider “dream-analysis,” and in regard to which we
have taken ourselves and our patients so seriously, is utterly futile
and invalid. I am convinced that, in the mood in which dream-analysis
is now applied, it is itself the expression of an hysterical symptom--a
cognitive replacement within the social unconscious comprising the
arbitrarily assumed group-differentiation “psychoanalyst.”