SOME years ago, at the Weimar Congress of the International Psychoanalytic
Association, I read a paper on the importance of a knowledge of philosophy
and metaphysics for psychoanalysts regarded as students of human life.
Perhaps if I had had the experience and ability to contribute the results of
some original analytic investigation on specific lines, I should not then
have ventured into the philosophic field. Perhaps, indeed, if those
conditions now obtained I should not be bringing forward similar arguments
again, and if any one feels tempted to maintain that philosophic speculation
is a camp of refuge for those who, in consequence of temperamental
limitations and infantile fixations which ought to be overcome, draw back
from the more robust study of emotional repressions on scientific lines, I
should admit that the allegation contains an element of truth. But in spite
of this, and in spite of the fact that there is some truth also in the
statement that the effects--good and bad--of emotional repression make
themselves felt, as a partial influence, in all the highest reaches of human
endeavor, including art, literature, and religion;--in spite of these
partial truths, philosophy and metaphysics are the only means through which
the essential nature of many tendencies can be studied of which
psychoanalysis describes only the transformations. And this being so it is
perhaps reasonable that one paper should be read at an annual meeting such
as this, where men assemble whose duty it is to study the human mind in all
its aspects.
I presume that just as, and just because men have minds AND bodies, an
evolutional history in the ordinary sense and a mental history in a sense
not commonly considered, so there will always be two, or perhaps three,
parties among psychologists and men of science, and each one, in so far as
it is limited in its vision, may be considered as abnormal, if one will. I
decline, however, to admit that the temperamental peculiarities of one group
are more in need either of justification or of rectification through
psychoanalysis than those of the others. It is probably true that emotional
tension often plays a larger part among persons who love a priori
reasoning--the "tender-minded" of Dr. James--than it does in those who work
through observation; but on the other hand exclusively empirical attitude
has its limitations and its dangers. Philosophy and metaphysics deal more
distinctively with essential function--that is with real existence,--while
natural science and the genetic psychology (of which psychoanalysis,
strictly speaking, is a branch) deal rather with appearances and with
structure. Both are in need of investigation. The FORM which art, religion,
and literature assume is determined by men's personal experiences and
special cravings. The essential motive of art and religion is, however, the
dim recognition by men of their relation to the creative spirit of the
universe.
No one can doubt that function logically precedes structure; or if any one
does doubt this, he need only observe his own experience and see how in
every new acquisition of knowledge or of power there come, first, the
thought, the idea, then the effort, next the habit, and finally the
modification of cerebral mechanism, in which the effort and the habit become
represented in relatively permanent and static form. In fact, the crux of
the whole discussion between science and metaphysics turns on, or harks back
to the discussion between function and structure; and it is the latter, in
the sense in which I mean the word, that has had of late a too large share
of our attention.
The enterprise on which we are all of us embarked,--whether we define it as
an investigation, pure and simple, into human nature and human motives, or
as a therapeutic attempt to relieve invalids of their symptoms,--is a larger
one than it is commonly conceived of as being. Each physician and each
investigator has, indeed, the right to say that for practical reasons he
prefers to confine his attention to some single portion of one or the other
of these tasks, be it never so small. But each one should regard himself as
virtually under an obligation to recognize the respects in which this chosen
task is incomplete. Every physicist is aware that there is some form of
energy underlying, or rather expressing itself in, light and heat and
gravitation. Physicists do not study this form of energy, not because they
do not wish to but simply because they cannot do so by the only methods that
they are allowed to use. But, as a reaction of defense, they sometimes
assert that no one else can do so either, that this underlying energy cannot
be explained. To say this is, however, in my judgment, to misappreciate
what an explanation is.
To explain any matter is to discover the points of similarity, or virtual
identity, between the matter studied and ourselves. But in order to do this
thoroughly, or rather in order to do it with relation to the essential
nature of some form of energy (the "Libido," for example, considered as an
unpicturable force) one must first consider what we, the investigators, are,
not at our less good, but at our best. It is with us, as given, with our
best qualities regarded as defining in part the Q. E. D. of the experiment,
that the investigation must begin. The nature of any and every form of real
underlying energy or essence must be defined in terms of our sense of our
own will and freedom. And this means that we must conceive and describe
ourselves, and expect to conceive and to describe the powers that animate
us, no longer as a system of forces subject to the so-called laws of nature
(which are, in reality, not immutable) but as relatively free, creative
agents; no longer as the product of the interplay of instincts, but as
individuals possessed of real reason, real power of love and real
self-consistent will. To claim to study the effects of the "Libido," to
which we ascribe the vast powers with which we are familiar, yet fail to
seek in it what would correspond to our own best attributes, would be to lay
aside our duties as students of human nature. It would be to confine our
attention to the "structure" of the mind, the form under which it manifests
itself, without having studied the laws of its action under conditions which
are more favorable to its development.
It must, now, have struck students of psychoanalytic literature that a
marked tendency has been shown toward supplementing the study of
structure,--that is, the detailed history of men's experiences and
evolution, regarded as sequences of phenomena,--by the study of the function
or creative energy for which the experiences stand. Silberer, whose work is
endorsed by Freud, has gone to a considerable length in this direction; and
the whole tendency of Freud's insistence on the relevancy, in the mental
sphere, of the law of the conservation of energy has been a movement,
though, I think, a narrow one, in this direction. More recently, Jung has
emphasized the importance of this tendency, and has dwelt more strongly, as
I think, than the facts warrant, on the supposed unwillingness of Freud to
recognize its importance.
Behind the experiences of childhood, for example, lie the temperamental
trends of childhood, and it is these with which we really need to get
acquainted; for these trends, if not the whole causes and equivalents of the
experiences which are recounted to us by our patients, constitute the
conditions without which the latter would not have been what they became.
But Jung himself, strangely enough, in both of his carefully prepared
arguments, specifically rejects all intention of dealing "metaphysically"
with this theme, in spite of the fact that every movement toward a fuller
recognition of creative energy is nothing less than metaphysics, even though
not in name.
The skilled observer, scrutinizing the motives and peering into the history
of the person whose traits and trends he is called on to investigate, must
see, in imagination, not only a vast host of acts, but also a vast network
of intersecting lines of energy of which the casual observer, and even the
intimate friend, may be wholly unaware. We call these lines of energy by
many special names,--"Libido" or "Urlibido," first of all, then love and
hate and jealousy, and so on.
What are these lines of energy, and how can we study them to the best
purpose? Obviously they are incomplete editions of the love and reason and
will the laws of which we can study to best advantage in ourselves and in
men where they are displayed in their best, that is, in their most
constructive form. To make such studies is to recognize metaphysics, but
instead of doing of doing this tacitly and implicitly we should do it openly
and explicitly.
The study of human nature should, in short, begin at the top, rather than at
the bottom; just as, if one had to choose what phase of a symphony one would
choose in order to get an idea of its perfection, one would take some
culminating moment rather than the first few notes simply because they were
the first. To be accurate, one could not do justice to the symphony except
by studying it as a whole, and similarly one should study the man as a
whole, including his relations to the universe as a whole. It is as wholes
that great poets conceived of their poems and great artists of their
pictures, and it is as a whole that each and every human life, standing as
it does as the representative of the body of the universe, and the spirit of
the universe, on the other, should implicitly be viewed.
The psychologist should sympathize deeply with the anatomist and the
physiologist and the student of cerebral pathology, but equally deeply with
the philosopher and the metaphysician who study the implications, present
although hidden, that point to the bonds between the individual and the
universe. To fail to recognize that these bonds exist,--as is done when the
attempt is made to study human beings as if they were really and exclusively
the product of their historic past conceived of in an organic sense,--would
be to try to build one-half of an arch and expect it to endure. The truth
is, we do not, in my opinion, genuinely believe that a human is nothing but
the product of his organic past, or the product of his experience.
We believe, by implication, in our metaphysical selves and our corresponding
obligations, more strongly than we have taught ourselves to recognize. But
to this fact we make ourselves blind through a species of repression, just
as many a child, confident of its parents' affection, assumes, for his own
temporary purposes, the right to accuse them of hostile intentions which
they do not entertain.
We forget, or repress, the fact that the mind of man cannot be made subject
to the laws of physics, and yet we proceed to deal with the phenomena
dependent on the working of the mind of man as if these laws actually did
prevail.
The misleading effects of this tendency are clearly seen where it is a
question of the conclusions to be drawn from the researches, admirable in
themselves, made under the influence of the genetic method.
The notion seems to prevail that we should prepare ourselves for the
formation of just ideas with regard to the mode in which the higher
faculties of men come into existence by wiping the slate clean to the extent
of assuming that we have before us no data except some few acts or thoughts
that are definable in the simplest possible terms, and then watching what
happens as the situation becomes more complicated. But one is apt to forget,
in doing this, that there is one thing which we cannot wipe off the
slate,--namely, ourselves, not taken in the Bergsonian sense alone, but as
fully fledged persons, possessed of the very qualities for which we
undertake to search, yet without the possession of which the search could
not begin. This does not, of course, militate against the value of these
genetic researches in one sense. The study of evolutional sequences is
still, and forever will be, of enormous value. But it does not teach us
nearly as much of the nature of real creativeness as we can learn through
the introspection of ourselves in the fullest sense; and I maintain that
psychoanalysts are persons who could do this to advantage.
Is not the notion that through the careful watching of the sequences of the
evolutionary process, as if from without, we can get an adequate idea of the
forces that really are at work, exactly the delusion by which the skillful
juggler tries to deceive his audience when he directs their attention to the
shifting objects that he manipulates, and away from his own swiftly moving
hands?
My contention is that there are other means of studying the force which we
call "Libido" besides that of noting its effects. The justification for this
statement is that the force itself is identical, in the last analysis, with
that which we feel within ourselves and know as reason, as imagination, and
as will, conscious of themselves, and capable of giving to us, directly or
indirectly, the only evidence we could ever hope to get, for the existence
of real creativeness, spontaneity and freedom.
Every work of art, worthy of the name, gives evidence of the action not
alone of a part of a man, but of the whole man; not only of his repressed
emotions, but of his intelligence and insight, and of relationships existing
between his life and all the other forms of life with which his own is
interwoven.
Unity must prevail throughout all nature. Either we are,--altogether, and
through and through, our best as well as our less good,--nothing but the
expression of repressed cravings, in the sense that they or the conflicts
based on them constitute the final causa vera of all progress; or else the
best that is in us and also our repressed cravings are alike due to the
action of a form of energy which is virtually greater than either one of
them, inasmuch as it has the capacity of developing into something greater
than either.
This is the agency which we should preeminently study and it is best studied
under conditions when, instead of being obviously subject to repression, it
is most free from repression. That is, it is best studied as it appears in
the thoughts and conduct of the best men, at their best, their most
constructive moments.
We cannot use our power of reason to deny our reason; for in so doing we
affirm the very thing which we deny. Nor are we under the necessity of using
our reason to affirm our reason, since that is the datum without which we
cannot undertake our task.
If this view is sound, what practical conclusions can we draw from it? I
wish to insist on this question because it was distinctly and positively
with the practical end in mind that I ventured to write this paper, and I
suggest the following as a few of these conclusions.
(I) We should not speak of the "Libido," in whatever sense this word is
taken, as if it were a fixed quantity, like so much heat, or so much fluid,
that is, as representing so much mesaurable force. One current notion which
has played a very useful part in psychoanalytic work, yet is misleading in
its tendency, is that the "Libido" may be likened to a river which if it
cannot find an outlet through its normal channel is bound to overflow its
banks and perhaps furrow out a new path. This conception is based on this
same law of the conservation of energy to which reference has been made.
If, however, I am right in my contention that the "Libido" is only one
manifestation of an energy,-- greater than simply "vital,"--which can be
studied to the best purpose only among men whose powers have been cultivated
to the best advantage, then it will be seen that this conception of "Libido"
as a force of definite amount is not justifiable by the facts.
One does not find that love or reason is subject to this quantitative law.
On the contrary, the persons whom most of us recognize as of the highest
type do not love any given individual less because their love takes in
another. The bond of love holds not only three, but an indefinite number.
The same statement may be made with regard to reason and to will. The power
and quantity of them are not exhausted but are increased by use.
I maintain, then, that although the "Libido," in so far as it is regarded as
an instinct, does not stand on the same footing with the reason and
disinterested love of a person of high cultivation and large views, neither
does it stand on the same footing with the physical energy that manifests
itself in light and heat and gravitation.
When we come to deal with man and any of his attributes, or as we find them
at any age, we ought to look upon him, in my estimation, as animated in some
measure by his self-foreshadowing best. And whether it is dreams with which
we have to do, or neurotic conflicts, or wilfulness, or regression, we shall
learn to see, more and more, as we become accustomed to look for evidences
thereof, the signs of this sort of promise, just as we might hope to learn
to find, more and more, through the inspection of a lot of seeds of
different plants, the evidences which would enable us to see the different
outcomes which each one is destined to achieve, even though, at first, they
all looked just alike.
(2) The next point has reference to "sublimation." This outcome of
individual evolution, as defined by Freud, has a strictly social, not an
ethical, meaning. Jung also, in the interesting paper referred to, in his
description of the rational aims of psychoanalysis, makes sublimation
(though he does not there use the word) the equivalent of a subjective sense
of well being, combined with the maximum of biologic effectiveness.
"Die Psychoanalyse soll eine biologische Methode sein, welche das hoechste
subjektive Wohlbefinden mit der wertwollsten biologischen Leistung zu
vereinigen sucht."
But in my opinion, while it may be true that the psychoanalyst may often
have reason to be thankful if he can claim a therapeutic outcome of this
sort, the logical goal of a psychoanalytic treatment is not covered by the
securing of a relative freedom from subjective distress, even when combined
with the satisfactory fulfillment of one's biologic mission. A man has
higher destinies than this, and the sense of incompleteness felt by the
neurotic patient, which was emphasized by Janet and is recognized by us all,
must be more or less painfully felt by every man whose conscience does not
assure him that he is really working for an end greater than that here
specified. The logical end of a psychoanalytic treatment is the recovery of
a full sense of one's highest destiny and origin and of the bearings and
meanings of one's life.
On similar grounds I think that the conflicts to which all men find
themselves subjected, must be considered, in the last analysis, as conflicts
of an ethical description. For it is only in ethical terms that one can
define one's relation to the universe regarded as a whole, just as it is
only in ethical terms that a man could describe his sense of obligation to
support the dignity of fine family traditions or the ideals represented by a
team or a social group of which he felt reason to be proud. I realize that a
man's sense of pride of his family, his team, or his country may be a
symptom of narcistic self-adulation; but like all such signs and
symbols--the symbol of the church tower, for example--this is a case where
two opposing meanings meet.
Every act and motive of our lives, from infancy to age, is controlled by two
sets of influences, the general nature of which has here been made
sufficiently clear. They correspond on the one hand, to the numerous partial
motives which psychoanalysis studies to great advantage, and on the other
hand, to the ethical motives which are only thoroughly studied by
philosophy.
(3) Another conclusion, which seems to me practically of great importance,
follows from this same view. Every one who has studied carefully the life
histories of patients, especially of children, and has endeavored in so
doing to follow step by step the experiences through which they reach the
various mile-stones on their journey, must have been astonished to observe
the evidences of PREPAREDNESS on their part for each new step in this long
journey. Human beings seem predestined, as it were, not only in a physical
but in a mental sense, for what is coming, and the indications of this in
the mental field are greater than the conditions of organic evolution could
readily account for. The transcendency of the mind over the brain shows
itself here as elsewhere.
We are told that our visions of the unpicturable, the ideal world, which our
imagination paints and which our logical reasoning calls for as the
necessary cap or final corollary to any finite world which our intelligence
can actually define,-- that such visions are nothing but the pictures of
infantile desires projected on to a great screen and made to mock us with
the appearance of reality.
I have nothing whatever to say against the value of the evidence that a
portion of our visions are of this origin. In fact, I believe this as
heartily as does any one. But I desire strenuously to oppose the view
tacitly implied in the statement of the projection theory just cited, the
acceptance of which as an exclusive doctrine would involve the virtual
rejection of our right, as scientific men, to rely on the principle that the
evidence afforded by logical presuppositions and logical inference is as
cogent as that furnished through observation.
It is, in my opinion, just because we all belong to a world which is in
outline not "in the making" but completed,--because, in short, we are in one
sense like heirs returning to our estates,--that this remarkable
preparedness of each child is found that impresses us so strongly. The
universe is, in a sense, ours by prescriptive right and by virtue of the
constitution of our minds. But the unity of such a universe must, of
course, be of a sort that includes and indeed implies diversity and conflict
as essential elements of its nature.
Psychoanalysts should not make light of inferential forms of reasoning, for
it is on this form of reasoning that the value of their own conclusions
largely rests. We infer contrary meanings for words that are used
ostensibly in one sense, and we infer special conflicts in infancy of which
we have but little evidence at hand, and cravings and passions of which it
may be impossible to find more than a few traces by way of direct testimony.
Our immediate environment and the world that surrounds us in that sense,
appear to our observation, indeed, as "in the making." But besides the power
of observation which enables, and indeed forces us to see the imperfection
in this environmental world, we possess, or are possessed by, a mental
constitution which compels us, with still greater force, to the belief in a
goal of positive perfection of which our nearer goals are nothing but the
shadow.
It is because I believe in the necessity of such reasoning as this that I am
not prepared to accept the "Lust-Unlust" principle (that is, to use
philosophical terms, the "hedonistic" principle) as representing the forces
by which even the child is finally animated. Men do not reach their best
accomplishments, if indeed they reach any accomplishment, through the
exclusive recognition, either unconscious or instinctive, of a utilitarian
result, or a result which can be couched in terms of pleasure or personal
satisfaction as the goal of effort. They may state the goal to themselves in
these terms; but this is, then, the statement of what is really a fictitious
principle, a principle in positing which the patient does but justify
himself and does not define his real motive. Utilitarianism and hedonism
and the pleasure-pain principle, useful though they are, are alike imperfect
in that they refer to partial motives, partial forms of self-expression;
whereas that which finally moves men to their best accomplishments and makes
them dissatisfied with anything less than this, is the necessity rather than
the desire to take complete self-expression as their final aim. The partial
motives are more or less traceable as if by observation. The larger motives
must be felt and reached through inferential reasoning, based on observation
of ourselves through careful introspection.
Finally, the practical, therapeutic question arises, as to what measures the
psychoanalyst is justified in taking to bring about the best sort of outcome
in a given case?
It is widely felt that the psychoanalyst would weaken his own hold on the
strong typically analytic principles through which painful conflicts are to
be removed if he should form the habit of dealing with ethical issues, and
talking of "duties", instead of stimulating his patients to the discovery of
resistances and repressions, even of repression the origin of which is not
to be found within the conscious life. Yet,--parallel, as one might say,
with this clear-cut standard of professional psychoanalytic obligation, the
force of which I recognize,--it has to be admitted that there are certain
fairly definite limitations to the usefulness of psychoanalysis. As one of
these limitations, well-pronounced symptoms of egoism, taking the form of
narcissism, are to be reckoned. These symptoms are not easily analyzed away.
But if one asks oneself, or asks one's patients, what conditions might, if
they had been present from the outset, have prevented this narcistic outcome
(Jehovah type, etc.), the influence that suggests itself--looming up in
large shape--is just this broad sense of ethical obligation to which
repeated reference has here been made. If these patients could have had it
brought home to them in childhood that they belonged, not to themselves
conceived of narrowly (that is, as separate individuals) but only to
themselves conceived of broadly as representatives of a series of
communities taken in the largest sense, the outcome that happened might
perhaps have been averted.
And what might have happened may still happen. What is to be done? Each
physician must decide this for himself. He should be able both to do his
best as a psychoanalyst and at the same time help the patient to free
himself from that sort of repression in consequence of which he is unable to
see his own best possibilities. But he cannot do this unless he has trained
himself to see and feel in himself the outlines of this vision any more than
he could help the patient to rid himself of an infantile complex if he did
not appreciate what this complex means. We must trust ourselves, as
physicians, with deadly weapons, and with deadly responsibilities, and we
ought to be well harried by our consciences if we should do injustice, in
using them, either to our scientific or our philosophic training.