CHAPTER IX

ON SOME CRUCIAL POINTS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS[176]

CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN DR. JUNG AND DR. LOY APPEARING IN

"PSYCHOTHERAPEUTISCHE ZEITFRAGEN." PUBLISHED BY DR. LOY, SANATORIUM

L'ABRI, TERRITET-MONTREUX, SWITZERLAND, 1914.

I

_From Dr. Loÿ._

12th January, 1913.

What you said at our last conversation was extraordinarily stimulating.

I was expecting you to throw light upon the interpretation of my own

and my patients' dreams from the standpoint of Freud's "Interpretation

of Dreams." Instead, you put before me an entirely new conception: the

dream as a means of re-establishing the moral equipoise, fashioned

in the realm below the threshold of consciousness. That indeed is a

fruitful conception. But still more fruitful appears to me your other

suggestion. You regard the problems of psychoanalysis as much deeper

than I had ever thought: it is no longer merely a question of getting

rid of troublesome pathological symptoms; the analysed person gets to

understand not his anxiety-experiences alone, but his whole self most

completely, and by means of this understanding he can build up and

fashion his whole life anew. But he himself must be the builder, the

Analyst only furnishes him with the necessary tools.

To begin with, I would ask you to consider what justification there is

for the original procedure of Breuer and Freud, now entirely given up

both by Freud himself and by you, but practised by Frank, for instance,

as his only method: I mean "the abreaction of the inhibited effects

under light hypnosis." Why have you given up the cathartic method? More

particularly, has light hypnosis in psychocatharsis a different value

from suggestion during sleep, long customary in treatment by suggestion?

that is, has it only the value which the suggestionist contributes,

or does it claim to possess only the value which the patient's belief

bestows upon it? Or, again, is suggestion in the waking-state equivalent

to suggestion in hypnoidal states? This Bernheim now asserts to be

the case, after having used suggestion for many years exclusively in

hypnosis. You will tell me we must talk of psychoanalysis, not of

suggestion. But I really mean this: is not the _suggestion_, by means of

which the psychocatharsis in the hypnoidal state produces therapeutic

effects, (modified naturally, by the patients' age, etc.) the main

factor in the therapeutic success of the psychocatharsis? Frank, in

his "_Affektstörungen_," says: "these partial adjustments of effect,

suggestibility and suggestion, are almost altogether omitted in the

psychocathartic treatment in light sleep, in so far as the content of

the reproduced presentations is concerned." Is that really true? Frank

himself adds: "How can meditation upon the dreams of youth in itself

lead to the discharge of the stored-up anxiety, whether in hypnoidal

states or under any other conditions? Must one not suppose, with

much greater probability, that the anxiety-states would become more

pronounced through such concentration upon them?" [I have noticed that

myself, and much more than I at all liked.] One does indeed say to the

patient: "First we must stir up, then afterwards comes peace." And it

does come. But does it not come _in spite of the stirring-up process_,

because gradually, by means of frequent talks under light hypnosis, the

patient gets such confidence in the doctor that he becomes susceptible

to direct suggestion, and that produces at first improvement and

finally, cure? I go still further: in an analysis _in the waking-state_,

is not the patient's belief that the _method employed will cure him_,

coupled with his ever-growing trust in the doctor, a main cause of

his cure? And I ask even further: in every systematically carried-out

therapeutic treatment, is not faith in it, trust in the doctor, a main

factor in its success? I will not indeed say the only factor, for one

cannot deny that the physical, dietetic and chemical procedures, when

properly selected, have a real effect in securing a cure, over and above

the obvious effect of their indirect suggestion.

II

_From Dr. Jung._

28th January, 1913.

With regard to your question as to the applicability of the cathartic

method, the following is my standpoint: every method is good if

it serves its purpose, including every method of suggestion, even

Christian Science, Mental Healing, etc. "_A truth is a truth, when it

works._" It is quite another question whether a scientific physician

can answer for it to his conscience should he sell little bottles of

Lourdes-water because that suggestion is at times very useful. Even

the so-called highly scientific suggestion-therapy employs the wares

of the medicine-man and the exorcising Schaman. And please, why should

it not? The public is not even now much more advanced and continues

to expect miracles from the doctor. And truly those doctors should be

deemed clever--worldly-wise in every respect--who understand the art

of investing themselves with the halo of the medicine-man. Not only

have they the biggest practices--they have also the best results. This

is simply because countless physical maladies (leaving out of count

the neuroses) are complicated and burdened with psychic elements to an

extent scarcely yet suspected. The medical exorcist's whole behaviour

betrays his full valuation of the psychic element when he gives the

patient the opportunity of fixing his faith firmly upon the doctor's

mysterious personality. Thus does he win the sick man's mind, which

henceforth helps him indeed to restore his body also to health. The cure

works best when the doctor really believes in his own formulæ, otherwise

he may be overcome by scientific doubt and so lose the correct,

convincing tone. I, too, for a time practised hypnotic suggestion

enthusiastically. But there befell me three dubious incidents which I

want you to note:--

1. Once there came to me to be hypnotised for various neurotic troubles

a withered peasant-woman of some fifty years old. She was not easy to

hypnotise, was very restless, kept opening her eyes--but at last I did

succeed. When I waked her after about half an hour she seized my hand

and with many words testified to her overflowing gratitude. I said:

"But you are by no means cured yet, so keep your thanks till the end of

the treatment." She: "I am not thanking you for that, but--(blushing

and whispering)--because you have been so _decent_." So she said,

looked at me with a sort of tender admiration and departed. I gazed

long at the spot where she had stood--and asked myself, confounded,

"So decent?"--good heavens! surely she hadn't imagined, somehow or

other.... This glimpse made me suspect for the first time that possibly

the loose-minded person, by means of that notorious feminine (I should

at that time have said "animal") directness of instinct, understood

more about the essence of hypnotism than I with all my knowledge of the

scientific profundity of the text-books. Therein lay my harmlessness.

2. Next came a pretty, coquettish, seventeen-year-old girl with a

harassed, suspicious mother. The young daughter had suffered since early

girlhood from _enuresis nocturna_, which, among other difficulties,

hindered her from going to a boarding-school abroad.

At once I thought of the old woman and her wisdom. I tried to hypnotise

the girl; she laughed affectedly and prevented hypnosis for twenty

minutes. Of course I kept quiet and thought: I know why you laugh; you

have already fallen in love with me, but I will give you proof of my

decency in gratitude for your wasting my time with your challenging

laughter. I succeeded in hypnotising her. Success followed at once. The

enuresis stopped, and I therefore informed the young lady later that,

instead of Wednesday, I would not see her again for hypnosis till the

following Saturday. On Saturday she arrived with a cross countenance,

presaging failure. The enuresis had come back again. I remembered

my wise old woman, and asked: "When did the enuresis return?" She

(unsuspecting), "Wednesday night." I thought to myself, There it is

again, she wants to show me that I simply must see her on Wednesdays

too; not to see me for a whole long week is too much for a tender,

loving heart. But I was quite resolved to give no help to such annoying

romancing, so I said, "To continue the hypnosis would be quite wrong

under these circumstances. We must drop it for quite three weeks, to

give the enuresis a chance to stop. Then come again for treatment." In

my malicious heart I knew I should then be on my holiday and so the

course of hypnotic treatment would come to an end. After the holidays my

_locum tenens_ told me the young lady had been there with the news that

the enuresis had vanished, but her disappointment at not seeing me was

very keen. The old woman was right, thought I.

3. The third case gave my joy in suggestion its death-blow. This was

the manner of it. She was a lady of sixty-five who came stumbling into

the consulting-room with a crutch. She had suffered from pain in the

knee-joint for seventeen years, and this at times kept her in bed for

many weeks. No doctor had been able to cure her, and she had tried

every possible remedy of present-day medicine. After I had suffered the

stream of her narrative to flow over me for some ten minutes, I said,

"I will try to hypnotise you, perhaps that will do you good." She, "Oh

yes, please do!" leaned her head on one side and fell asleep before

ever I said or did anything. She passed into somnambulism and showed

every form of hypnosis you could possibly desire. After half an hour I

had the greatest difficulty in waking her; when at last she was awake

she jumped up: "I am well, I am all right, you have cured me." I tried

to make timid objections, but her praises drowned me. She could really

walk. Then I blushed and said, embarrassed, to my colleagues: "Look!

behold the wondrously successful hypnotic therapy." That day saw the

death of my connection with treatment by suggestion; the therapeutic

praise won by this case shamed and humiliated me. When, a year later, at

the beginning of my hypnotic course, the good old lady returned, this

time with the pain in her back, I was already sunk in hopeless cynicism;

I saw written on her forehead that she had just read the notice of the

re-opening of my clinic in the newspaper, that vexatious romanticism

had provided her with a convenient pain in the back so that she might

have a pretext for seeing me, and again let herself be cured in the same

theatrical fashion. This proved true in every particular.

As you will understand, a man possessed of scientific conscience cannot

endure such cases without embarrassment. There ripened in me the resolve

to renounce suggestion altogether rather than to allow myself passively

to be transformed into a miracle-worker. I wanted to understand what

really went on in the souls of people. It suddenly seemed to me

incredibly childish to think of dispelling an illness with charms, and

that this should be the only result of our scientific endeavours for

a psychotherapy. Thus for me the discovery of Breuer and Freud was a

veritable deliverance. I took up their method with unalloyed enthusiasm

and soon recognised how right Freud was, when at a very early date,

indeed so far back as the _Studien ueber Hysterie_, he began to direct a

searchlight upon the accompanying circumstances of the so-called trauma.

I too soon discovered that certainly some traumata with an obvious

etiological tinge are opportunely present. But the greater number

appeared highly improbable. So many of them seemed so insignificant,

even so normal, that at most one could regard them as just providing

the opportunity for the neurosis to appear. But what especially

spurred my criticism was the fact that so many traumata were simply

inventions of phantasy which had never really existed. This perception

was enough to make me sceptical about the whole trauma-theory. (But I

have dealt with these matters in detail in my lectures on the theory

of psychoanalysis).[177] I could no longer suppose that the hundred

and one cathartic experiences of a phantastically puffed-up or entirely

invented trauma were anything but the effect of suggestion. It is well

enough if it helps. If one only had not a scientific conscience and that

impulsion towards the truth! I found in many cases, especially when

dealing with more mentally gifted patients, that I must recognise the

therapeutic limitations of this method. It is, of course, a definite

plan, and convenient for the doctor, since it makes no particular

demands upon his intellect for new adaptations. The theory and practice

are both of the pleasantest simplicity: "The neurosis is caused by

a trauma. The trauma is abreacted." When the abreaction takes place

under hypnotism, or with other magical accessories (dark room, peculiar

lighting, and the rest), I remember once more the wise old woman,

who opened my eyes not merely to the magic influence of the mesmeric

gestures, but also to the essential character of hypnotism itself. But

what alienated me once for all from this relatively efficacious indirect

method of suggestion, based as it is upon an equally efficacious false

theory, was the perception I obtained at the same time that, behind the

confused deceptive intricacies of neurotic phantasies, there stands a

_conflict_, which may be best described as a _moral_ one. With this

there began for me a new era of understanding. Research and therapy

now coincided in the attempt to discover the causes and the _rational_

solution of this conflict. That is what psychoanalysis meant to me.

Whilst I had been getting this insight, Freud had built up his sexual

theory of the neurosis, and therewith had brought forward an enormous

number of questions for discussion, all of which I thought deserved

the profoundest consideration. Thus I have had the good fortune of

co-operating with Freud for a long time, and working with him in the

investigation of the problem of sexuality in neurosis. You, perhaps,

know from some of my earlier work that I was always dubious somewhat

concerning the significance of sexuality.[178] This has now become the

exact point where I am no longer altogether of Freud's opinion.

I have preferred to answer your questions in rather non-sequent fashion.

Whatever is still unanswered, let me now repeat: _light hypnosis_ and

_complete hypnosis_ are but varying grades of intensity of unconscious

attraction towards the hypnotist. Who can here venture to draw sharp

distinctions? To a critical intelligence it is unthinkable that

suggestibility and suggestion can be excluded in the cathartic method.

They are present everywhere and are universal human attributes, even

with Dubois and the psychoanalysts who think they work on purely

rational lines. _No technique, no self-deception avails here--the

doctor works, nolens volens--and perhaps primarily--by means of his

personality, that is by suggestion._ In the cathartic treatment, what

is of far more importance to the patient than the conjuring up of old

phantasies is the being so often with the doctor, and having confidence

and belief in him personally, and in his method. The belief, the

self-confidence, perhaps also the devotion with which the doctor does

his work, are far more important things to the patient (_imponderabilia_

though they be) than the recalling of old traumata.[179]

Ultimately we shall some day know from the history of medicine

everything that has ever been of service; then perhaps at last we may

come to the really desirable therapy, to psychotherapy. Did not even

the old materia medica of filth have brilliant cures?--cures which only

faded away with the belief in it!

Because I recognise that the patient does attempt to lay hold of the

doctor's personality, in spite of all possible rational safeguards,

I have formulated the demand that the psychotherapeutist shall be

held just as responsible for the cleanness of his own hands as is the

surgeon. I hold it to be an absolutely indispensable preliminary that

the psychoanalyst should himself first undergo an analysis, for his

personality is one of the chief factors in the cure.

Patients read the doctor's character intuitively and they should find in

him a human being, with faults indeed, but also a man _who has striven

at every point_ to _fulfil his own human duties in the fullest sense_. I

think that this is the first healing factor. Many times I have had the

opportunity of seeing that the analyst is successful with his treatment

just in so far as he has succeeded in his own moral development. I think

this answer will satisfy your question.

III

_From Dr. Loÿ._

2nd February, 1913.

You answer several of my questions in a decidedly affirmative sense. You

take it as proved that in the cures by the cathartic method the main

_rôle_ is played by faith in the doctor and in his method, and not by

the "abreaction" of real or imaginary traumata. I also. Equally I am at

one with your view that the cures of the old materia medica of filth,

as well as the Lourdes cures, or those of the Mental Healers, Christian

Scientists and Persuasionists, are to be attributed to faith in the

miracle-worker, rather than to any of the methods employed.

Now comes the ticklish point: the augur can remain an augur so long

as he himself believes the will of the gods is made manifest by the

entrails of the sacrificial beast. When he no longer believes, he has

to ask himself: Shall I continue to use my augur's authority to further

the welfare of the State, or shall I make use of my newer, and (I hope)

truer convictions of to-day? Both ways are possible. The first is called

opportunism; the second the pursuit of truth, and scientific honour. For

a doctor, the first way brings perhaps therapeutic success and fame;

the second, reproach: such a man is not taken seriously. What I esteem

most highly in Freud and his school is just this passionate desire for

truth. But again, it is precisely here that people pronounce a different

verdict: "It is impossible for the busy practitioner to keep pace with

the development of the views of this investigator and his initiates."

(Frank, "Affektstörungen Einleitung.")

One can easily disregard this little quip, but one must take more

seriously one's self-criticism. We may have to ask ourselves whether,

since science is an undivided, ever-flowing stream, we are justified

in relinquishing on conscientious grounds any method or combination of

methods by means of which we know cures can be achieved?

Looking more closely at the fundamental grounds of your aversion to

the use of hypnosis (or semi-hypnosis, the degree matters nothing) in

_treatment by suggestion_, (which as a matter of fact every doctor

and every therapeutic method makes use of willy-nilly, no matter what

it is called), it is clear that what has disgusted you in hypnotism

is at bottom nothing but the so-called "transference" to the doctor,

which you, with your unalloyed psychoanalytic treatment, can get rid

of as little as any one else, for indeed it plays a chief part in the

success of the treatment. Your insistence that the psychoanalyst must

be answerable for the cleanness of his own hands--(here I agree with

you unreservedly)----is an inevitable conclusion. But, after all, does

anything more "augurish" really cling to the use made of hypnosis in

psychotherapeutic treatment, than to the quite inevitable use made of

the "transference to the doctor" for therapeutic ends? In either case

we must perforce "take shares" in faith as a healing agent. As for the

feeling which the patient--whether man or woman--entertains for the

doctor, is there never anything in the background save conscious or

unconscious sexual desire? In many cases your view is most certainly

correct; more than one woman has been frank enough to confess that

the beginning of hypnosis was accompanied by voluptuous pleasure.

But this is not true in all instances--or how would you explain the

underlying feeling in the hypnotising of one animal by another, _e.g._

snake and bird? Surely you can say that there the feeling of _fear_

reigns, fear which is an inversion of the libido, such as comes upon

the bride in that hypnoidal state before she yields to her husband

wherein pure sexual desire rules, though possibly it contains an

element of fear. However this may be, from your three cases I cannot

draw any ethical distinction between the "unconscious readiness towards

the hypnotist" and the "transference to the doctor" which should avail

to condemn a combination of hypnotism and psychoanalysis as a method

of treatment. You will ask why I cling to the use of hypnotism; or

rather of hypnoidal states. Because I think there are cases that can be

much more rapidly cured thereby, than through a purely psychoanalytic

treatment. For example, in no more than five or six interviews I cured

a fifteen-year-old girl who had suffered from _enuresis nocturna_ from

infancy, but was otherwise thoroughly healthy, gifted, and pre-eminent

at school: she had previously tried all sorts of treatment without any

result.

Perhaps I ought to have sought out the psychoanalytic connexion between

the enuresis and her psychosexual attitude and explained it to her,

etc., but I could not, she had only the short Easter holidays for

treatment: so I just hypnotised her and the tiresome trouble vanished.

It was a lasting cure.

In psychoanalysis I use hypnosis to help the patient to overcome

"resistances."

Further, I use light hypnosis in association with psychoanalysis, to

hasten the advance when the "re-education" stage comes.

For example, a patient afflicted with washing-mania was sent to me after

a year's psychocathartic treatment by Dr. X. The symbolic meaning of

her washing-ceremonial was first made plain to her; she became more and

more agitated during the "abreaction" of alleged traumata in childhood,

because she had persuaded herself by auto-suggestion that she was too

old to be cured, that she saw no "images," etc. So I used hypnosis

to help her to diminish the number of her washings, "so that the

anxiety-feeling would be banished"; and to train her to throw things on

the ground and pick them up again without washing her hands afterwards,

etc.

In view of these considerations, if you feel disposed to go further

into the matter, I should be grateful if you would furnish me with

more convincing reasons why hypnotic treatment must be dispensed with;

and explain how to do without it, or with what to replace it in such

cases. Were I convinced, I would give it up as you have done, but what

convinced you has, so far, not convinced me. _Si duo faciunt idem, non

est idem._

Now I want to consider another important matter to which you alluded,

but only cursorily, and to put one question: behind the neurotic

phantasies there stands, you say, almost always (or always) a moral

conflict which belongs to the present moment. That is perfectly clear

to me. Research and therapy coincide; their task is to search out the

foundations and the rational solution of the conflict. Good. But can

the rational solution always be found? "Reasons of expediency" so often

bar the way, varying with the type of patient, for instance children,

young girls and women from "pious" catholic or protestant families.

Again that accursed opportunism! A colleague of mine was perfectly right

when he began to give sexual enlightenment to a young French patient, a

boy who was indulging in masturbation. Whereupon, like one possessed,

in rushed a bigoted grandmother, and a disagreeable sequel ensued. How

to act in these and similar cases? What to do in cases where there

arises a moral conflict between love and duty (a conflict in married

life)?--or in general between instinct and moral duty? What to do in the

case of a girl afflicted with hysterical or anxiety symptoms, needing

love and having no chance to marry, either because she cannot find a

suitable man or because, being "well-connected," she wants to remain

chaste? Simply try to get rid of the symptoms by suggestion? But that is

wrong as soon as one knows of a better way. How to reconcile these two

consciences: that of the man who does not want to confine his fidelity

to truth within his own four walls; and that of the doctor who must

cure, or if he dare not cure according to his real convictions (owing to

opportunist-motives), must at least procure some alleviation? We live

in the present, but with the ideas and ideals of the future. That is

_our_ conflict. How resolve it?

IV

_From Dr. Jung._

4th February, 1913.

You have put me in some perplexity by the questions in your yesterday's

letter. You have rightly grasped the spirit which dictated my last. I

am glad you, too, recognise this spirit. There are not very many who

can boast of such tolerance. I should deceive myself if I regarded my

standpoint as that of a practical physician. First and foremost I am

a scientist; naturally that gives me a different outlook upon many

problems. In my last letter I certainly left out of count the doctor's

practical needs, but chiefly that I might show you on what grounds we

might be moved to relinquish hypnotic therapy. To remove the first

objection at once, let me say that I did not give up hypnotism because I

desired to avoid dealing with the basic motives of the human soul, but

rather because I wanted to battle with them _directly_ and _openly_.

When once I understood what kind of forces play a part in hypnotism I

gave it up, simply to get rid of all the indirect advantages of this

method. As we psychoanalysts see regretfully every day--and our patients

also--_we do not work with the "transference to the doctor,"_[180] _but

against it and in spite of it_. It is just not upon the _faith_ of the

sick man that we can build, but upon his _criticism_. So much would I

say at the outset upon this delicate question.

As your letter shows, we are at one in regard to the theoretical aspect

of treatment by suggestion. So we can now apply ourselves to the further

task of coming to mutual understanding about the practical question.

Your remarks on the physician's dilemma--whether to be magician or

scientist--bring us to the heart of the discussion. I strive to be no

fanatic--although there are not a few who reproach me with fanaticism. I

contend not for the application of the psychoanalytic method solely and

at all costs, but for the recognition of every method of investigation

and treatment. I was a medical practitioner quite long enough to realise

that practice obeys, and should obey, other laws than does the search

after truth. One might almost say practice must first and foremost

submit to the laws of opportunism. The scientist does great injustice

to the practitioner if he reproaches him for not using the "one true"

scientific method. As I said to you in my last letter: "A truth is a

truth, when it works." But on the other hand, the practitioner must not

reproach the scientist if in his search for truth and for newer and

better methods, he makes trial of unusual ways. After all, it is not the

practitioner but the investigator, and the latter's patient, who will

have to bear any injury that may arise. The practitioner must certainly

use those methods which he knows how to use to greatest advantage, and

which give him the best relative results. My tolerance, indeed, extends,

as you see, even to Christian Science. But I deem it most uncalled for

that Frank, a practising doctor, should depreciate research in which he

cannot participate, and particularly the very line of research to which

he owes his own method. It is surely time to cease this running down of

every new idea. No one asks Frank and all whom he represents to become

psychoanalysts; we grant them the right to their existence, why should

they always seek to cut ours short?

As my own "cures" show you, I do not doubt the effect of suggestion.

Only I had the idea that I could perhaps discover something still

better. This hope has been amply justified. Not for ever shall it be

said--

"The good attained is oft of fairer still

The enemy, calling it vain illusion, falsehood's snare."

I confess frankly were I doing your work I should often be in

difficulties if I relied only on psychoanalysis. I can scarcely imagine

a general practice, especially in a sanatorium, with no other means than

psychoanalysis. At Dr. Bircher's sanatorium in Zürich the principle of

psychoanalysis is adopted completely by several of the assistants, but

a whole series of other important educative influences are also brought

to bear upon the patients, without which matters would probably go very

badly. In my own purely psychoanalytic practice I have often regretted

that I could not avail myself of the other methods of re-education

that are naturally at hand in an institution--this, of course, only

in special cases where one is dealing with extremely uncontrolled,

uneducated persons. Which of us has shown any disposition to assert that

we have discovered a panacea? There are cases in which psychoanalysis

operates less effectively than any other known method. But who has ever

claimed psychoanalysis should be employed in every sort of case, and on

every occasion? Only a fanatic could maintain such a view. Patients for

whom psychoanalysis is suitable have to be selected. I unhesitatingly

send cases I think unsuitable to other doctors. As a matter of fact

this does not happen often, because patients have a way of sorting

themselves out. Those who go to an analyst usually know quite well why

they go to him and not to some one else. However, there are very many

neurotics well suited for psychoanalysis. In these matters every scheme

must be looked at in due perspective. It is never quite wise to try to

batter down a stone wall with your head. Whether simple hypnotism, the

cathartic treatment, or psychoanalysis shall be used, must be determined

by the conditions of the case and the preference of the _particular_

doctor. Every doctor will obtain the best results with the instrument he

knows best.

But, barring exceptions, _I must say definitely that for me, and

for my patients also, psychoanalysis proves itself better than any

other method_. This is not merely a matter of feeling; from manifold

experiences I know many cases can indeed be cured by psychoanalysis

which are refractory to all other methods of treatment. I have many

colleagues whose experience is the same, even men engaged exclusively

in practice. It is scarcely to be supposed that a method altogether

contemptible would meet with so much support.

When once psychoanalysis has been applied in a suitable case, it is

_imperative_ that rational solutions of the conflicts should be found.

The objection is at once advanced that many conflicts are intrinsically

incapable of solution. That view is sometimes taken because only an

external solution is thought of--and that, at bottom, is no real

solution at all. If a man cannot get on with his wife he naturally

thinks the conflict would be solved if he were to marry some one

else. If such marriages are examined they are seen to be no solution

whatsoever. The old Adam enters upon the new marriage and bungles it

just as badly as he did the earlier one. _A real solution comes only

from within, and only then because the patient has been brought to a new

standpoint._

Where an external solution is possible no psychoanalysis is necessary;

in seeking an internal solution we encounter the peculiar virtues of

psychoanalysis. The conflict between "love and duty" must be solved

upon that particular plane of character where "love and duty" are no

longer in opposition, for indeed they really are not so. The familiar

conflict between "instinct and conventional morality" must be solved

in such a way that both factors are taken satisfactorily into account,

and this is only possible through a change of character. This change

psychoanalysis can bring about. In such cases external solutions are

worse than none at all. Naturally the particular situation dictates

which road the doctor must ultimately follow, and what is then his duty.

I regard the conscience-searching question of the doctor's remaining

true to his scientific convictions as rather unimportant in comparison

with the incomparably weightier question as to how he can best help his

patient. The doctor _must_, on occasion, be able to play the augur.

_Mundus vult decipi_--but the cure is no deception. It is true that

there is a conflict between ideal conviction and concrete possibility.

_But we should ill prepare the ground for the seed of the future, were

we to forget the tasks of the present, and sought only to cultivate

ideals._ That is but idle dreaming. Do not forget that Kepler cast

horoscopes for money, and that countless artists have been condemned to

work for wages.

V.

_From Dr. Loÿ._

9th February, 1913.

The selfsame passion for truth possesses us both when we think of pure

research, and the same desire to cure when we are considering therapy.

For the scientist, as for the doctor, we desire the fullest freedom in

all directions, fullest freedom to select and use the methods which

promise the best fulfilment of their ends at any moment. Here we are at

one; but there remains a postulate we must establish to the satisfaction

of others if we want recognition for our views.

First and foremost there is a question that must be answered, an old

question asked already in the Gospels: _What is Truth?_ I think clear

definitions of fundamental ideas are most necessary. How shall we

contrive a working definition of the conception "Truth"? Perhaps an

allegory may help us.

Imagine a gigantic prism extending in front of the sun, so that its

rays are broken up, but suppose man entirely ignorant of this fact. I

exclude the invisible, chemical and ultra-violet rays. Men who live

in a blue-lit region will say: "The sun sends forth blue light only."

They are right and yet they are wrong: from their standpoint they are

capable of perceiving only a _fragment_ of truth. And so too with the

inhabitants of the red, yellow, and in-between regions. And they will

all scourge and slay one another to force _their_ belief in _their_

fragment upon the others--till, grown wiser through travelling in each

others' regions, they come to the harmonious agreement that the sun

sends out light of varying colours. That comprehends more truth, but it

is not yet _the_ Truth. Only when the giant lens shall have recombined

the split-up rays, and when the invisible, chemical and heat rays

have given proof of their own specific effects, will a view more in

accordance with the facts be able to arise, and men will perceive that

the sun emits white light which is split up by the prism into differing

rays with different peculiarities, which rays can be recombined by the

lens into one mass of white light.

This example shows sufficiently well that the road to Truth leads

through far-reaching and comparative observations, the results of which

must be controlled by the help of freely chosen _experiments_, until

well-grounded hypotheses and theories can be put forward; but these

hypotheses and theories will fall to the ground as soon as a single new

observation or experiment contradicts them.

The way is difficult, and in the end all man ever attains to is

_relative_ truth. But such relative truth suffices for the time being,

if it serves to explain the most important actual concatenations of the

past, to light up present problems, to predict those of the future,

so that we are then in a position to achieve adaptation through our

knowledge. But _absolute_ truth could be accessible only to omniscience,

aware of all possible concatenations and combinations; that is not

possible, for the concatenations and their combinations are infinite.

Accordingly, we shall never know more than an approximate truth. Should

new relationships be discovered, new combinations built up, then the

picture changes, and with it the entire possibilities in knowledge and

power. To what revolutions in daily life does not every new scientific

discovery lead: how absurdly little was the beginning of our first

ideas of electricity, how inconceivably great the results! Time and

again it is necessary to repeat this commonplace, because one sees

how life is always made bitter for the innovators in every scientific

field, and now is it being made especially so for the disciples of

the psychoanalytic school. Of course, every one admits the truth of

this platitude so long as it is a matter of "academic" discussion, but

only so long; just as soon as a concrete case has to be considered,

sympathies and antipathies rush into the foreground and darken judgment.

And therefore the scientist must fight tirelessly, appealing to logic

and honour, for freedom of research in every field, and must not

permit authority, of no matter what political or religious tinge, to

advance reasons of _opportunism_ to destroy or restrict this freedom;

opportunist reasons may be and are in place elsewhere, not here. Finally

we must completely disavow that maxim of the Middle Ages: "_Philosophia

ancilla Theologiæ_," and no less, too, the war-cries of the university

class-rooms with their partisanship of one or other religious or

political party. All fanaticism is the enemy of science, which must

above all things be _independent_.

And when we turn from the search for Truth back once more to

therapeutics, we see immediately that here too we are in agreement.

In practice expediency _must_ rule: the doctor from the yellow region

must adapt himself to the sick in the yellow region, as must the

doctor in the blue region, to his patients; both have the same object

in view. And the doctor who lives in the white light of the sun must

take into consideration the past experiences of his patients from the

yellow or blue region, in spite of, or perhaps rather because of, his

own wider knowledge. In such cases the way to healing will be long and

difficult, may indeed lead more easily into a _cul-de-sac_, than in

cases where he has to do with patients who, like himself, have already

come to a knowledge of the white sunlight, or, one might say, when his

patient-material has "already sorted itself out." With such sorted-out

material the psychoanalyst can employ psychoanalysis exclusively; and

may deem himself happy in that he need not "play the augur." Now, what

are these psychoanalytic methods? If I understand you aright, from

beginning to end it is a question of dealing directly and openly with

_the basic forces of the human soul_, so that the analysed person, be

he sick or sound or in some stage between--for health and sickness

flow over by imperceptible degrees into one another--shall gradually

have his eyes opened to the drama that is being acted within him. He

has to come to an understanding of the development of the hostile

automatisms of his personality, and by means of this understanding he

must gradually learn to free himself from them; he must learn, too, how

to employ and strengthen the favourable automatisms. He must learn

to make his self-knowledge real, and of practical use, to control his

soul's workings so that a balance may be established between the spheres

of emotion and reason. And what share in all this has the physician's

_suggestion_? I can scarcely believe that suggestion can be altogether

avoided till the patient feels himself really _free_. Such freedom, it

goes without saying, is the main thing to strive for, and it must be

_active_. The sick man who simply obeys a suggestion, obeys it only just

so long as the "transference to the doctor" remains potent.

But if he wishes to be able to adjust himself to all circumstances he

must have fortified himself "from within." He should no longer need the

crutches of faith, but be capable of encountering all theoretical and

practical problems squarely, and of solving them by himself. That is

surely your view? Or have I not understood correctly?

I next ask, must not every single case be treated differently, of course

_within the limits of the psychoanalytic method_? For if every case is a

case by itself, it must indeed demand individual treatment.

"Il n'y a pas de maladies, il n'y a que des malades," said a French

doctor whose name escapes me. But _on broad lines_, what course, from a

technical point of view, does analysis take, and what deviations occur

most frequently? That I would gladly learn from you. I take for granted

that all "augurs' tricks," darkened rooms, masquerading, chloroform, are

out of the question.

Psychoanalysis--purged so far as is humanly possible from suggestive

influence--appears to have an essential difference from Dubois'

psychotherapy. With Dubois, from the beginning conversation about the

past is forbidden, and "the moral reasons for recovery" placed in the

forefront; whilst psychoanalysis uses the subconscious material from

the patient's past as well as present, for present self-understanding.

Another difference lies in the conception of morality: morals are

above all "_relative_." But what essential forms shall they assume at

those moments when one can hardly avoid suggestion? You will say, the

occasion must decide. Agreed, as regards older people, or adults, who

have to live in an unenlightened _milieu_. But if one is dealing with

children, the seed of the future, is it not a sacred duty to enlighten

them as to the shaky foundations of the so-called "moral" conceptions

of the past, which have only a dogmatic basis; is it not a duty to

educate them into full freedom by courageously unveiling Truth? I ask

this not so much with regard to the analysing doctor as to the teacher.

May not the creation of _free schools_ be looked for as one task for the

psychoanalyst?

VI.

_From Dr. Jung._

11th February, 1913.

The idea of the relativity of "Truth" has been current for ages, but

whether true or not, it does not stand in the way of anything save the

beliefs of dogma and authority.

You ask me, or indeed tell me--what psychoanalysis is. Before

considering your views, permit me first to try and mark out the

territory and definition of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis is primarily

just a method--but a method complying with all the rigorous demands

insisted upon to-day by the conception "method." Let it be made plain

at once that psychoanalysis is not an _anamnesis_, as those who know

everything without learning are pleased to believe. It is essentially

a method for the exploration of the unconscious associations, into

which no question of the conscious self enters. Again, it is not

a _kind_ of _examination_ of the nature of an intelligence test,

though this mistake is common in certain circles. It is no _cathartic

method_, abreacting real and phantastic "traumata," with or without

hypnosis. _Psychoanalysis is a method which makes possible the analytic

reduction of the psychic content to its simplest expression, and the

discovery of the line of least resistance in the development of a

harmonious personality._ In neurosis, straightforward direction of

life's energies is lacking, because opposing tendencies traverse and

hinder psychological adaptation. Psychoanalysis, so far as our present

knowledge of it goes, thus appears to be simply a rational nerve-therapy.

For the technical application of psychoanalysis no programme can be

formulated. There are only general principles, and, for the individual

case, working rules. (Here let me refer you to Freud's work in volume

I. of the _Internationale Zeitschrift für Ärztliche Psychoanalyse_.) My

one working rule is to conduct the analysis as a perfectly ordinary,

sensible conversation, and to avoid all appearance of medical magic.

The leading principle of the psychoanalytic technique is to analyse

the _psychic material which offers itself then and there_. Every

interference on the part of the analyst, with the object of inducing

the analysis to follow some systematic course, is a gross mistake in

technique. _So-called chance is the law and the order of psychoanalysis._

Naturally in the beginning of the analysis the anamnesis and the

diagnosis come first. The subsequent analytic process develops quite

differently in every case. To give rules is well-nigh impossible. All

one can say is that very frequently, quite at the beginning, a series

of resistances have to be overcome, resistances against both method and

man. Patients having no idea of psychoanalysis must first be given some

understanding of the method. In those who already know something of it

there are very often many misconceptions to set right, and frequently

one has to deal also with many reproaches cast by scientific criticism.

In either case the misconceptions rest upon arbitrary interpretations,

superficiality, or complete ignorance of the facts.

If the patient is himself a doctor his special knowledge may prove

extremely tiresome. To intelligent colleagues it is best to give a

complete theoretic exposition. With foolish and limited persons you

begin quietly with analysis. In the unconscious of such folk there

is a confederate that never refuses help. From the analysis of the

very earliest dreams the emptiness of the criticism is obvious; and

ultimately of the whole beautiful edifice of supposedly scientific

scepticism nothing remains, save a little heap of personal vanity. I

have had amusing experiences here.

It is best to let the patient talk freely and to confine oneself to

pointing out connexions here and there. When the conscious material is

exhausted we come to the dreams, which furnish us with the subliminal

material. If people have no dreams, as they allege, or if they forget

them, there is usually still some conscious material that ought to be

produced and discussed, but is kept back owing to resistances. When the

conscious is emptied then come the dreams, which are indeed, as you

know, the chief material of the analysis.

How the "Analysis" is to be made and what is to be said to patients

depends, firstly, upon the material to be dealt with; secondly, on the

doctor's skill; and, thirdly, on the patient's capacity. I must insist

that no one ought to undertake analysis except on the basis of a sound

knowledge of the subject; that necessitates an intimate understanding of

the existing literature. Without this, the work may be bungled.

I do not know what else to tell you beforehand. I must wait for further

questions. In regard to questions of morality and education let me say

that these belong to the later stages of the analysis, wherein they

find--or should find--solutions for themselves. _You cannot compile

recipes out of psychoanalysis._

VII

_From Dr. Loÿ._

10th February, 1913.

You write that a solid knowledge of the psychoanalytic literature is

necessary for initiation into psychoanalysis. I should agree, but with a

certain reservation: the more one reads, the more one notices how many

contradictions there are among the different writers, and less and less

does one know--until one has had sufficient personal experience--to

which view to give adherence, since quite frequently assertions are made

without any proof. For example, I had thought (strengthened in the view

by my own experience of suggestion-therapy) that the transference to

the doctor might be an essential condition in the patient's cure. But

you write: "We psychoanalysts do not build upon the patient's faith,

rather do we have to deal with his criticism." And Stekel writes, on

the other hand (_Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse_, 3rd year, vol. IV.,

p. 176, "Ausgänge der psychoanalytischen Kuren"): "Love for the doctor

can become a power essential to recovery. Neurotics never get well for

love of themselves. They recover out of love for the doctor. They give

him that pleasure." Here again, surely, stress is laid on the power of

suggestion? And yet Stekel too thinks he is a psychoanalyst pure and

simple. On the other hand, you say in your letter of Jan. 20th that "the

doctor's personality is one of the main factors in the cure." Should

not this expression be translated: "When the doctor inspires respect in

the patient and is worthy of his love, the patient will gladly follow

his example and endeavour to recover from his neurosis and fulfil his

human duties in the widest sense"? I think one can only emerge from

all this uncertainty by means of much personal experience, which will

indicate also which way best suits one's own personality and brings the

greatest therapeutic success. This is a further reason for undergoing

analysis oneself, to recognise fully what one is. I was decidedly in

agreement with your definition of psychoanalysis in its first (negative)

portion: psychoanalysis is neither an _anamnesis_ nor a _method of

examination_ after the fashion of a test for intelligence, nor yet

a _psychocatharsis_. In your second (positive) part, however, your

definition: "Psychoanalysis is a method of discovering the line of least

resistance to the harmonious development of the whole personality,"

seems to me valid for the patient's inertia, but not for the releasing

of the sublimated libido with a view to the new direction of life. You

consider that the neurosis causes a lack of singleness of aim in life,

because opposing tendencies hinder psychic adaptation. True, but will

not this psychic adaptation eventuate quite differently according as

the patient, when well, directs his life either to the avoidance of

pain merely (line of least resistance) or to the achievement of the

greatest pleasure?--In the first case he would be more passive, he

would merely reconcile himself "to the emptiness of reality" (Stekel,

_loc. cit._, p. 187). In the second he would be "filled with enthusiasm"

for something or other or some person or other. But what will determine

this choice of his as to whether he will be passive rather than active

in his "second life"? In your view, will the determining factor manifest

itself spontaneously in the course of the analysis, and must the

doctor carefully avoid swaying the balance to one side or other by his

influence? Or must he, if he does _not_ renounce the right to canalise

the patient's libido in some particular direction, renounce the right

to be called a psychoanalyst, and is he to be regarded as "moderate"

or altogether as "wild"?[181] (Cf. Furtmüller, "Wandlungen in der

Freudschen Schule," _Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse_, vols. IV., V.,

3rd year, p. 191.) But I think you have already answered this question,

since in your last letter you write: "Every interference on the part of

the analyst is a gross mistake in technique. So-called chance is the law

and the order of psychoanalysis." But, torn from its context, perhaps

this does not quite give your whole meaning. With regard to detailed

explanation of the psychoanalytic method before the beginning of the

analysis, I think you agree with Freud and Stekel: give too little

rather than too much. For the knowledge _instilled into_ a patient

remains more or less half-knowledge, and half-knowledge engenders "the

desire to know better" (than the analyst), which only impedes progress.

So, after brief explanation, first "let the patient talk," then and

there point out connexions, then after the exhaustion of the conscious

material, take dreams.

But there another difficulty confronts me which I have already pointed

out in our talks: you find the patient adapting himself to the doctor's

tone, language, jargon, whether from conscious imitation, transference,

or even resistance, when he can fight the analyst with his own weapons;

how then can you possibly prevent his beginning to produce all manner of

phantasies as supposedly real traumata of early childhood, and _dreams_

supposedly spontaneous which are in reality, though not designedly,

directly or indirectly _suggested_? I then told you that Forel ("Der

Hypnotismus") made his patients dream just what he wanted, and I have

myself easily repeated the experiment. But if the analyst desires to

_suggest nothing_, should he remain silent for the most part and let the

patient speak--except that in interpreting dreams he may lay before the

patient his own interpretation?

VIII

_From Dr. Jung._

18th February, 1913.

I cannot but agree with your observation that confusion reigns in

psychoanalytic literature. Just at this moment different points of view

are developing in the theoretical conception of the analytic results;

not to mention many individual deviations. Over against Freud's almost

purely _causal_ conception, there has developed, apparently in absolute

contradiction, Adler's purely _final_ view, but in reality the latter

is an essential complement of Freud's theory. I hold rather to a middle

course, taking into account both standpoints. That discord still reigns

round the ultimate questions of psychoanalysis need not surprise us

when we consider the difficulty. The problem of the therapeutic effect

of psychoanalysis is bound up in particular with supremely difficult

questions, so that it would indeed be astonishing if we had yet

reached final certitude. Stekel's statement to which you refer is very

characteristic. What he says about love for the doctor is obviously

true, but it is a simple affirmation, and not a goal or plumb-line of

the analytic therapy. If his statement were the goal, many cures, it is

true, would be possible, but also many calamities might result which are

avoidable. But the aim is so to educate the patient that he will get

well for his own sake and by reason of his own determination, rather

than to procure his doctor some sort of advantage; though of course

it would be absurd from the therapeutic standpoint not to allow the

patient to get better because in doing so he does the doctor a good turn

also. It suffices if the patient knows it. But we must not prescribe

for him which path he should take to recovery. Naturally it seems to me

(from the psychoanalytic standpoint) an inadmissible use of suggestive

influence if the patient is compelled to get better out of love for

the doctor. And indeed such compulsion may sometimes take bitter

revenge. The "you must and shall be saved" is no more to be commended in

nerve-therapy than in any other department of life. It contradicts the

principle of analytic treatment, which shuns all coercion and desires

to let everything grow up from within. I do not, as you know, object to

influencing by use of suggestion in general, but merely to a doubtful

motivation. If the doctor demands that his patient shall get well from

love of himself, the patient may easily reckon on reciprocal services

and will without doubt try to extort them. I can but utter a warning

against any such method. A far stronger motive for recovery--also a far

healthier and ethically more valuable one--consists in the patient's

thorough insight into the real state of affairs, the recognition of how

things are now and how they ought to be. The man of any sort of worth

will then discern that he can hardly sit down at ease in the quagmire of

his neurosis.

With your rendering of what I said about the healing power of

personality I cannot entirely agree. I wrote that the doctor's

personality has a power for healing because the patient reads the

doctor's personality: not that he produces a cure through _love_ of the

doctor. The doctor cannot prevent the patient's beginning to behave

himself towards _his_ conflicts just as the doctor himself behaves,

for nothing is finer than a neurotic's intuition. _But every strong

transference serves this same purpose._ If the doctor makes himself

charming, he buys off from the patient a series of resistances which he

should have overcome, and whose overcoming will certainly have to be

gone through later on. Nothing is won by this technique; at most the

beginning of the analysis is made easy for the patient (though this is

not quite without its use in certain cases). To be able to crawl through

a barbed wire fence without some enticing end in view testifies to an

ascetic strength of will which you can expect neither from the ordinary

person nor from the neurotic. Even the Christian religion, whose moral

demands certainly reached a great height, thought it no scorn to

represent the near approach of the Kingdom of Heaven as goal and reward

of earthly pain. In my view, the doctor may well speak of the rewards

which follow the toils of analysis. But he must not depict himself or

his friendship, in hints or promises, as reward, if he is not seriously

determined to keep his word.

In regard to your criticism of my outline-definition of the conception

of psychoanalysis, it must be observed that the road over the steep

mountain is the line of least resistance only when a ferocious bull

waits for you in the pleasant valley-road. In other words, the line

of least resistance is a compromise with _all_ demands, and not

with inertia alone. It is prejudice to think that the line of least

resistance coincides with the path of inertia. (That's what we thought

in the days when we dawdled over Latin exercises.) Inertia is only an

immediate advantage and leads to consequences which produce the worst

resistances; as a whole, it does not lie in the direction of least

resistance. Life along the line of least resistance is not synonymous

with a man's regardless pursuit of his own egoistic desires. He who

lives thus soon painfully perceives that he is not moving along the line

of least resistance, for he is also a social being, and not merely a

bundle of egoistic instincts, as some people rather like to depict him.

This is best seen among primitive men and herd-animals, who all have a

richly developed social sense. Without it, indeed, the herd could not

exist at all. Man as herd-animal has therefore by no manner of means to

subject himself to laws enforced on him from without; he carries his

social imperatives within himself, _a priori_, as an inborn necessity.

As you see, I here put myself in decided opposition to certain views--I

think quite unjustified--which have been put forth here and there

inside the psychoanalytic movement.

So the line of least resistance does not signify _eo ipso_ the avoidance

of unpleasure so much as the just balancing of unpleasure and pleasure.

Painful activity by itself leads to no result but exhaustion. Man must

be able to take pleasure in his life, or the struggle of life has no

reward. What direction the patient's future life should take is not ours

to judge. We must not imagine we know better than his own nature--or

we prove ourselves educators of the worst kind. Psychoanalysis is but

a means of removing stones from the path, and in no way a method (as

hypnotism often pretends to be) of putting anything into the patient

which was not there before. So we renounce any attempt to give a

direction, and occupy ourselves only with setting in proper relief

all that analysis brings into the light of day, in order that the

patient may see clearly, and be in a position to draw the appropriate

conclusions. Anything that he has not himself won, he does not in

the long run believe in; and all that he has received from authority

keeps him still infantile. He must rather be put in such a position as

will enable him to take control of his own life. It is the art of the

psychoanalyst to follow the patient's apparently mistaken paths without

prejudice, and thus to discover his strayed and separated sheep. Working

on a system, according to a preconceived scheme, we spoil the best

results of the analysis. So I hold fast to the maxim you quote from me:

"Every interference on the part of the analyst is a gross mistake in

technique. So-called chance is the law and the order of psychoanalysis."

You surely recognise that the schoolmaster-view never releases us

from the attempt to correct Nature and the desire to force upon her

our limited "truths." In nerve-therapy we get so many wonderful

experiences--unforeseen and impossible to foresee--that surely we ought

to dismiss all hope of being infallibly able to point out the right

path. The roundabout way and even the wrong way are necessary. If you

deny this you must also deny that the errors in the history of the

whole world have been necessary. That indeed were a world-conception fit

for a schoolmaster. For psychoanalysis this view suits not at all.

The question as to how much the analyst involuntarily suggests to

the patient is a very ticklish one. Undoubtedly that has a much more

important place than psychoanalysts have till now admitted. Experience

has convinced us that the patient rapidly avails himself of the ideas

won through the analysis, and of whatever comes to light through the

shaping of the dreams. You may obtain all manner of such impressions

from Stekel's book: "Die Sprache des Traumes" ("The Language of the

Dream"). I had once a most instructive experience: a very intelligent

lady had from the beginning extreme transference phantasies which

appeared in well-recognised erotic forms. Nevertheless she entirely

declined to admit their existence. Of course she was betrayed by the

dreams in which my own person was hidden behind some other figure, and

often difficult to unveil. A long series of such dreams forced me at

last to say: "So you see it is always like that, and the person of whom

one has really dreamt is replaced and hidden by some one else in the

manifest dream." Till then the patient had obstinately contested this

point. But this time she could no longer evade it, and had to admit my

rule--but only that she might play me a trick. Next day she brought me a

dream in which she and I appeared in a manifest lascivious situation. I

was naturally perplexed and thought of my rule. Her first association to

the dream was the malicious question: "It's always true, isn't it, that

the person of whom one is really dreaming is replaced by some one else

in the manifest dream-content?"

Clearly, she had made use of her experience to find a protective formula

by means of which she secured the open expression of her phantasies in

an apparently innocent way.

This example aptly shows how patients avail themselves of insight

gained during analysis; they use it symbolically. You get caught in

your own net if you give credence to the idea of unalterable, permanent

symbols. That has already happened to more than one psychoanalyst. It

is therefore fallacious to try to prove any particular theory from the

dreams arising in the course of analysis. For this purpose the only

conclusive dreams are those derived from demonstrably uninfluenced

persons. In such cases one would only have to exclude the possibility of

telepathic thought-reading. But if you concede this possibility you will

have to subject very many things to a rigorous re-examination and, among

others, many judicial verdicts.

But although we must do full justice to the force of suggestion, we must

not overrate it. The patient is no empty sack into which you may stuff

whatever you like; on the contrary, he brings his own predetermined

contents which strive obstinately against suggestion and always obtrude

themselves afresh. Through analytic "suggestions," only the outward

_form_ is determined, never the content--this is always being freshly

impressed upon my notice. The form is the unlimited, the ever-changing;

but the content is fixed, and only to be assailed slowly and with great

difficulty. Were it not so, suggestion-therapy would be in every respect

the most effective, profitable, and easiest therapy,--a real panacea.

That, alas! it is not, as every honourable hypnotist will freely admit.

To return to your question as to how far it is conceivable that patients

may deceive the doctor by making use--perhaps involuntarily--of his

expressions: this is indeed a very serious problem. The analyst must

exercise all possible care and practise unsparing self-criticism if

he would avoid, as far as possible, being led into error by patients'

dreams. It may be admitted that they almost always use modes of

expression in their dreams learnt in analysis--some more, some less.

Interpretations of earlier symbols will themselves be used again as

fresh symbols in later dreams. It happens not seldom, for instance, that

sexual situations which appear in symbolic form in the earlier dreams,

will appear "undisguised" in later ones, and here again they are the

symbolic expression of ideas of another character capable of further

analysis. The not infrequent dream of incestuous cohabitation is by

no means an "undisguised" content, but a dream as freshly symbolic and

capable of analysis as all others. You surely only reach the paradoxical

view that such a dream is "undisguised" if you are pledged to the sexual

theory of neurosis.

That the patient may mislead the doctor for a longer or shorter time by

means of deliberate deception and misrepresentation is possible; just as

occasionally happens in all other departments of medicine. Therewith the

patient injures himself most, since he has to pay for every deception

or suppression, with aggravated or additional symptoms. Deceptions are

so obviously disadvantageous to himself that in the end he can scarcely

avoid the definite relinquishment of such a course.

The technique of analysis we can best postpone for oral discussion.

IX

_From Dr. Loÿ._

23rd February, 1913.

From your letter of 16th February I want first to single out the

end, where you so admirably assign to its proper place the power of

suggestion in psychoanalysis: "The patient is no empty sack, into which

you can cram what you will; he brings his own predetermined content

with him, with which one has always to reckon afresh." With this I

fully agree, my own experience confirms it. And you add: "This content

remains untouched by involuntary analytical suggestion, but its form is

altered, proteus-fashion, beyond measure." So it becomes a matter of

a sort of "mimicry" by which the patient seeks to escape the analyst,

who is driving him into a corner and therefore for the moment seems

to him an enemy. Until at last, through the joint work of patient and

analyst--the former spontaneously yielding up his psychic content,

the latter only interpreting and explaining--the analysis succeeds in

bringing so much light into the darkness of the patient's psyche that

he can see the true relationships and, without any preconceived plan of

the analyst's, can himself draw the right conclusions and apply them

to his future life. This new life will betake itself along the line of

least resistance--or should we not rather say, the least resistances,

as a "compromise with all the necessities," in a just balancing of

pleasure and unpleasure? It is not we who must arbitrarily seek to

determine how matters stand for the patient and what will benefit him;

his own nature decides. In other words, we must assume the _rôle_ of

the accoucheur who can bring out into the light of day a child already

alive, but who must avoid a series of mistakes if the child is to remain

able to live and the mother is not to be injured. All this is very

clear to me, since it is only the application to the psychoanalytic

method of a general principle which should have universal validity:

never do violence to Nature. Hence I also see that the psychoanalyst

must follow his patient's apparently "wrong roads" if the patient is

ever to arrive at his own convictions and be freed once and for all

from infantile reliance on authority. We ourselves as individuals have

learnt or can only learn by making mistakes how to avoid them for the

future, and mankind as a whole has created the conditions of its present

and future stages of development quite as much by frequent travel along

wrong paths as along the right road. Have not many neurotics--I do not

know if you will agree, but I think so--become ill partly for the very

reason that their infantile faith in authority has fallen to pieces?

Now they stand before the wreckage of their faith, weeping over it, in

dire distress because they cannot find a substitute which shall show

them clearly whither their life's course should now turn. So they remain

stuck fast betwixt infancy which they must unwillingly renounce, and the

serious duties of the present and future (the moral conflict). I see,

particularly in such cases, you are right in saying it is a mistake to

seek to replace the lost faith in authority by another similar faith,

certain to be useful only so long as the belief lasts. This applies to

the deliberate use of suggestion in psychoanalysis, and the building

upon the transference to the doctor as the object of the analytic

therapy. I am no longer in doubt about your maxim: "Every interference

on the analyst's part is a gross mistake in technique. So-called chance

is the law and the order of psychoanalysis." Further, I am entirely

in agreement with you when you say that _altruism necessarily must be

innate in man considered as a herd-animal_. The contrary would be the

thing to be wondered at.

I should be much disposed to agree that not the egoistic, but the

altruistic instincts are primary. Love and trust of the child for the

mother who feeds it, nurses, cherishes and pets it,--love of the man for

his wife, regarded as the going out towards another's personality,--love

for offspring, care for it,--love for kinsfolk, etc. The egoistic

instincts owe their origin to the desire for exclusive possession of

all that surrounds love, the desire to possess the mother exclusively,

in opposition to the father and the brothers and sisters, the desire

to have a woman for himself alone, the desire to possess exclusively

ornaments, clothing, etc. But perhaps you will say I am paradoxical

and that the instincts, egoistic or altruistic, arise together in the

heart of man, and that every instinct is ambivalent in nature. But I

have to ask if the feelings and instincts are really ambivalent? Are

they exactly bipolar? Are the qualities of all emotions altogether

comparable? Is love really the opposite of hate?

However that may be, in any case it is well that man bears the social

law within himself, as an inborn imperative; otherwise our civilised

humanity would fare badly, having to subject themselves to laws imposed

on them from outside only: they would be impervious to the inheritance

of the earlier religious faiths, and would soon fall into complete

anarchy. Man would then have to ask himself whether it would not be

better to maintain by force an extreme belief in religious authority

such as prevailed in the Middle Ages. For the benefits of civilisation,

which strove to grant every individual as much outward freedom as was

consistent with the freedom of others, would be well worth the sacrifice

of free research. But the age of this use of force against nature is

past, civilised man has left this wrong track behind, not arbitrarily,

but obeying an inner necessity, and we may look joyfully towards the

future. Mankind, advancing in knowledge, will find its way across the

ruins of faith in authority to the moral autonomy of the individual.

X

_From Dr. Jung._

March, 1913.

At various places in your letters it has struck me that the problem

of "transference" seems to you particularly critical. Your feeling is

entirely justified. The transference is indeed at present the central

problem of analysis.

You know that Freud regards the transference as the projection of

infantile phantasies upon the doctor. To this extent the transference

is an infantile-erotic relationship. All the same, viewed from the

outside, superficially, the thing by no means always looks like an

infantile-erotic situation. As long as it is a question of the so-called

"positive" transference, the infantile-erotic character can usually be

recognised without difficulty. But if it is a "negative" transference,

you can see nothing but violent resistances which sometimes veil

themselves in seemingly critical or sceptical dress. In a certain

sense the determining factor in such circumstances is the patient's

relation to authority, that is, in the last resort, to the father. In

both forms of transference the doctor is treated as if he were the

father--according to the situation either tenderly or with hostility.

In this view the transference has the force of a resistance as soon as

it becomes a question of resolving the infantile attitude. But this

form of transference must be destroyed, inasmuch as the object of

analysis is the patient's moral autonomy. A lofty aim, you will say.

Indeed lofty, and far off, but still not altogether so remote, since it

actually corresponds to one of the predominating tendencies of our stage

of civilisation, namely, that urge towards individualisation by which

our whole epoch deserves to be characterised. (Cf. Müller-Lyer: "Die

Familie.") If a man does not believe in this orientation and still bows

before the scientific causal view-point, he will, of course, be disposed

merely to resolve this hostility, and to let the patient remain in a

positive relationship towards the father, _thus expressing the ideal of

an earlier epoch of civilisation_. It is commonly recognised that the

Catholic Church represents one of the most powerful organisations based

upon this earlier tendency. I cannot venture to doubt that there are

very many individuals who feel happier under compulsion from others than

when forced to discipline themselves. (Cf. Shaw: "Man and Superman.")

None the less, we do our neurotic patients a grievous wrong if we try

to force them all into the category of the unfree. Among neurotics,

there are not a few who do not require any reminders of their social

duties and obligations; rather are they born or destined to become the

bearers of new social ideals. They are neurotic so long as they bow down

to authority and refuse the freedom to which they are destined. Whilst

we look at life only retrospectively, as is the case in the Viennese

psychoanalytic writings, we shall never do justice to this type of case

and never bring the longed-for deliverance. For in that fashion we can

only educate them to become obedient children, and thereby strengthen

the very forces that have made them ill--their conservative retardation

and their submissiveness to authority. Up to a certain point this

is the right way to take with the infantile resistance which cannot

_yet_ reconcile itself with authority. But the power which edged them

out from their retrograde dependence on the father is not at all a

childish desire for insubordination, but the powerful urge towards the

development of an individual personality, and this struggle is their

imperative life's task. Adler's psychology does much greater justice to

this situation than Freud's.

In the one case (that of infantile intractability) the positive

transference signifies a highly important achievement, heralding cure;

in the other (infantile submissiveness) it portends a dangerous

backsliding, a convenient evasion of life's duty. The negative

transference represents in the first case an increased resistance, thus

a backsliding and an evasion of duty, but in the second it is an advance

of healing significance. (For the two types, cf. Adler's "Trotz und

Gehorsam.")

The transference then is, as you see, to be judged quite differently in

different cases.

The psychological process of "transference"--be it negative or

positive--consists in the libido _entrenching itself_, as it were, round

the personality of the doctor, the doctor accordingly representing

certain emotional values. (As you know, by _libido_ I understand very

much what Antiquity meant by the cosmogenic principle of _Eros_; in

modern terminology simply "psychic energy.") The patient is bound to

the doctor, be it in affection, be it in opposition, and cannot fail to

follow and imitate the doctor's psychic adaptations. To this he finds

himself urgently compelled. And with the best will in the world and all

technical skill, the doctor cannot prevent him, for intuition works

surely and instinctively, in despite of the conscious judgment, be it

never so strong. Were the doctor himself neurotic, and inadequate in

response to the demands of the external life, or inharmonious within,

the patient would copy the defect and build it up into the fabric of his

own presentations: you may imagine the result.

Accordingly I cannot regard the transference as merely the transference

of infantile-erotic phantasies; no doubt that is what it is from one

standpoint, but I see also in it, as I said in an earlier letter,

the process of the _growth of feeling_ and _adaptation_. From this

standpoint the infantile erotic phantasies, in spite of their

indisputable reality, appear rather as material for comparison or

as analogous pictures of something not understood as yet, than as

independent desires. This seems to me the real reason of their being

unconscious. The patient, not knowing the right attitude, tries to

grasp at a right relationship to the doctor by way of comparison and

analogy with his infantile experiences. It is not surprising that he

gropes back for just the most intimate relations of his childhood, to

discover the appropriate formula for his attitude to the doctor, for

this relationship also is very intimate, and to some extent different

from the sexual relationship, just as is that of the child towards its

parents. This relationship--child to parent--which Christianity has

everywhere set up as the symbolic formula for human relationships,

provides a way of restoring to the patient that directness of ordinary

human emotion of which he had been deprived through the inroad of

sexual and social values (from the standpoint of power, etc.). The

purely sexual, more or less primitive and barbaric valuation, operates

in far-reaching ways against a direct, simple human relationship, and

thereupon a blocking of the libido occurs which easily gives rise to

neurotic formations. By means of analysis of the infantile portion

of the transference-phantasies, the patient is brought back to the

remembrance of his childhood's relationship, and this--stripped of

its infantile qualities--gives him a beautiful, clear picture of

direct human intercourse as opposed to the purely sexual valuation. I

cannot regard it as other than a misconception to judge the childish

relationship retrospectively and therefore as exclusively a sexual one,

even though a certain sexual content can in no wise be denied to it.

Recapitulating, let me say this much of the positive transference:--

The patient's libido fastens upon the person of the doctor, taking the

shape of expectation, hope, interest, trust, friendship and love. Then

the transference produces the projection upon the doctor of infantile

phantasies, often of predominatingly erotic tinge. At this stage the

transference is usually of a decidedly sexual character, in spite of

the sexual component remaining relatively unconscious. But this phase

of feeling serves the higher aspect of the growth of human feeling as a

bridge, whereby the patient becomes conscious of the defectiveness of

his own adaptation, through his recognition of the doctor's attitude,

which is accepted as one suitable to life's demands, and normal in its

human relationships. By help of the analysis, and the recalling of his

childish relationships, the road is seen which leads right out of those

exclusively sexual or "power" evaluations of social surroundings which

were acquired in puberty and strongly reinforced by social prejudices.

This road leads on towards a purely human relation and intimacy, not

derived solely from the existence of a sexual or power-relation, but

depending much more upon a regard for personality. That is the road to

freedom which the doctor must show his patient.

Here indeed I must not omit to say that the obstinate clinging to the

sexual valuation would not be maintained so tenaciously if it had

not also a very deep significance for that period of life in which

propagation is of primary importance. The discovery of the value of

human personality belongs to a riper age. For young people the search

for the valuable personality is very often merely a cloak for the

evasion of their biological duty. On the other hand, an older person's

exaggerated looking back towards the sexual valuation of youth, is an

undiscerning and often cowardly and convenient retreat from a duty which

demands the recognition of personal values and his own enrolment among

the ranks of the priesthood of a newer civilisation. The young neurotic

shrinks back in terror from the extension of his tasks in life, the old

from the dwindling and shrinking of the treasures he has attained.

This conception of the transference is, you will have noted, most

intimately connected with the acceptance of the idea of biological

"_duties_." By this term you must understand those tendencies or

motives in human beings giving rise to civilisation, as inevitably

as in the bird they give rise to the exquisitely woven nest, and in

the stag to the production of antlers. The purely causal, not to say

materialistic conception of the immediately preceding decades, would

conceive the organic formation as the reaction of living matter, and

this doubtless provides a position heuristically useful, but, as far

as any real understanding goes, leads only to a more or less ingenious

and _apparent_ reduction and postponement of the problem. Let me refer

you to Bergson's excellent criticism of this conception. From external

forces but half the result, at most, could ensue; the other half lies

within the individual disposition of the living material, without which

it is obvious the specific reaction-formation could never be achieved.

This principle must be applied also in psychology. The psyche does not

only _react_; it also gives its own individual reply to the influences

at work upon it, and at least half the resulting configuration and its

existing disposition is due to this. Civilisation is never, and again

never, to be regarded as merely reaction to environment. That shallow

explanation we may abandon peacefully to the past century. It is just

these very dispositions which we must regard as imperative in the

psychological sphere; it is easy to get convincing proof daily of their

compulsive power. What I call "biological duty" is identical with these

dispositions.

In conclusion, I must deal with a matter which seems to have caused you

uneasiness, namely, the _moral_ question. Among our patients we see

many so-called immoral tendencies, therefore the thought involuntarily

forces itself upon the psychotherapist as to how things would go if all

these desires were to be gratified. You will have discerned already

from my earlier letters that these desires must not be estimated too

literally. As a rule it is rather a matter of unmeasured and exaggerated

demands, arising out of the patient's stored-up libido, which have

usurped a prominent position, usually quite against his own wish. In

most cases the canalisation of the libido for the fulfilment of life's

simple duties, suffices to reduce these exaggerated desires to zero.

But in some cases it must be recognised that such "immoral" tendencies

are in no way removed by analysis; on the contrary, they appear more

often and more clearly, hence it becomes plain that they belong to the

individual's biological duties. And this is particularly true of certain

sexual claims, whose aim is an individual valuation of sexuality. This

is not a question for pathology, it is a social question of to-day which

peremptorily demands an ethical solution. For many it is a biological

duty to work for the solution of this question, to discover some sort

of practical solution. (Nature, it is well known, does not content

herself with theories.) To-day we have no real sexual morality, only a

legal attitude towards sexuality; just as the early Middle Ages had no

genuine morality for financial transactions, but only prejudices and a

legal standpoint. We are not yet sufficiently advanced in the domain

of free sexual activity to distinguish between a moral and an immoral

relationship. We have a clear expression of this in the customary

treatment, or rather ill-treatment, of unmarried motherhood. For a great

deal of sickening hypocrisy, for the high tide of prostitution, and for

the prevalence of sexual diseases, we may thank both our barbarous,

undifferentiated legal judgments about the sexual situation, and our

inability to develop a finer moral perception of the immense psychologic

differences that may exist in free sexual activity.

This reference to the existence of an exceedingly complicated and

significant problem may suffice to explain why we by no means seldom

meet with individuals among our patients who are quite specially called,

because of their spiritual and social gifts, to take an active part in

the work of civilisation--for this they are biologically destined. We

must never forget that what to-day is deemed a moral law will to-morrow

be cast into the melting-pot and transformed, so that in the near or

distant future it may serve as the basis of a new ethical structure.

This much we ought to have learnt from the history of civilisation, that

the forms of morality belong to the category of transitory things. The

finest psychological tact is required with these critical natures, so

that the dangerous corners of infantile irresponsibility, indolence and

uncontrolledness may be turned, and a pure, untroubled vision of the

possibility of a moral autonomous activity made possible. Five per cent.

on money lent is fair interest, twenty per cent. is despicable usury.

That point of view we have to apply equally to the sexual situation.

So it comes about that there are many neurotics whose innermost delicacy

of feeling prevents their being at one with present-day morality, and

they cannot adapt themselves to civilisation as long as their moral

code has gaps in it, the filling up of which is a crying need of the

age. We deceive ourselves greatly if we suppose that many married women

are neurotic only because they are unsatisfied sexually or because they

have not found the right man, or because they still have a fixation to

their infantile sexuality. The real ground of the neurosis is, in many

cases, the inability to recognise the work that is waiting for them, of

helping to build up a new civilisation. We are all far too much at the

standpoint of the "nothing-but" psychology; we persist in thinking we

can squeeze the new future which is pressing in at the door into the

framework of the old and the known. And thus the view is only of the

present, never of the future. But it was of most profound psychological

significance when Christianity first discovered, in the orientation

towards the future, a redeeming principle for mankind. In the past

nothing can be altered, and in the present little, but the future is

ours and capable of raising life's intensity to its highest pitch. A

little space of youth belongs to us, all the rest of life belongs to our

children.

Thus does your question as to the significance of the loss of faith in

authority answer itself. The neurotic is ill not because he has lost his

old faith, but because he has not yet found a new form for his finest

aspirations.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 176: Translated by Mrs. Edith Eder.]

[Footnote 177: "Psychoanalysis." Nervous and Mental Disease, No. 19.

Monograph series.]

[Footnote 178: See Author's preface to "The Psychology of Dementia

Præcox."]

[Footnote 179: Thus a patient, who had been treated by a young colleague

without very much result, once said to me: "Certainly I made great

progress with him, and I am much better than I was. He tried to analyse

my dreams. It's true he never understood them, but he took _so much

trouble_ over them. He is really a good doctor."]

[Footnote 180: Defined in the Freudian sense, as the transference to the

doctor of infantile and sexual phantasies. A more advanced conception

of the transference perceives in it the important process of emotional

approach [_Einfühlung_] which at first makes use of infantile and sexual

analogies.]

[Footnote 181: "Selected Papers on Hysteria and other Psychoneuroses."

_Monograph Series_, No. 4, last edition.]