A CONTRIBUTION TO THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGICAL TYPES[183]
It is well known that in their general physiognomy hysteria and dementia
præcox present a striking contrast, which is seen particularly in the
attitude of the sufferers towards the external world. The reactions
provoked in the hysteric surpass the normal level of intensity of
feeling, whilst this level is not reached at all by the precocious
dement. The picture presented by these contrasted illnesses is one of
exaggerated emotivity in the one, and extreme apathy in the other, with
regard to the environment. In their personal relations this difference
is very marked. Abstraction creates some exceptions here, for we remain
in affective rapport with our hysterical patients, which is not the case
in dementia præcox.
The opposition between these two nosological types is also seen in
the rest of their symptomatology. From the intellectual point of view
the products of hysterical imagination may be accounted for in a very
natural and human way in each individual case by the antecedents
and individual history of the patient; while the inventions of the
precocious dement, on the contrary, are more nearly related to dreams
than to normal consciousness, and they display moreover an incontestably
archaic tendency, wherein mythological creations of primitive
imagination are more in evidence than the personal memories of the
patient. From the physical point of view we do not find in dementia
præcox those symptoms so common in the hysteric, which simulate well
known or severe organic affections.
All this clearly indicates that hysteria is characterised by a
centrifugal tendency of the libido,[184] whilst in dementia præcox its
tendency is centripetal. The reverse occurs, however, where the illness
has fully established its compensatory effects. In the hysteric the
libido is always hampered in its movements of expansion and forced to
regress upon itself; one observes that such individuals cease to partake
in the common life, are wrapped up in their phantasies, keep their beds,
or are unable to live outside their sick-rooms, etc. The precocious
dement, on the contrary, during the incubation of his illness turns
away from the outer world in order to withdraw into himself; but when
the period of morbid compensation arrives, he seems constrained to draw
attention to himself, and to force himself upon the notice of those
around him, by his extravagant, insupportable, or directly aggressive
conduct.
I propose to use the terms "extroversion" and "introversion" to describe
these two opposite directions of the libido, further qualifying them,
however, as "regressive" in morbid cases where phantasies, fictions,
or phantastic interpretations, inspired by emotivity, falsify the
perceptions of the subject about things, or about himself. We say that
he is extroverted when he gives his fundamental interest to the outer or
objective world, and attributes an all-important and essential value to
it: he is introverted, on the contrary, when the objective world suffers
a sort of depreciation, or want of consideration, for the sake of the
exaltation of the individual himself, who then monopolising all the
interest, grows to believe no one but himself worthy of consideration.
I will call "regressive extroversion" the phenomenon which Freud calls
"transference" (Übertragung), by which the hysteric projects into the
objective world the illusions, or subjective values of his feelings.
In the same way I shall call "regressive introversion," the opposite
pathological phenomenon which we find in dementia præcox, where the
subject himself suffers these phantastical transfigurations.
It is obvious that these two contrary movements of the libido, as
simple psychic mechanisms, may play a part alternately in the same
individual, since after all they serve the same purpose by different
methods--namely, to minister to his well-being. Freud has taught us
that in the mechanism of hysterical transference the individual aims
at getting rid of disagreeable memories or impressions, in order to
free himself from painful complexes, by a process of "repression."
Conversely in the mechanism of introversion, the personality tends to
concentrate itself upon its complexes, and with them, to isolate itself
from external reality, by a process which is not properly speaking
"repression," but which would be better rendered perhaps by the term
"depreciation" (Entwertung) of the objective world.
The existence of two mental affections so opposite in character as
hysteria and dementia præcox, in which the contrast rests on the almost
exclusive supremacy of extroversion or introversion, suggests that these
two psychological types may exist equally well in normal persons, who
may be characterised by the relative predominance of one or other of
the two mechanisms. Psychiatrists know very well that before either
illness is fully declared, patients already present the characteristic
type, traces of which are to be found from the earliest years of life.
As Binet pointed out so well, the neurotic only accentuates and shews
in relief the characteristic traits of his personality. One knows, of
course, that the hysterical character is not simply the product of the
illness, but pre-existed it in a measure. And Hoch has shown by his
researches into the histories of his dementia præcox patients, that this
is also the case with them; dissociations or eccentricities were present
before the onset of the illness. If this is so, one may certainly expect
to meet the same contrast between psychological temperaments outside
the sphere of pathology. It is moreover easy to cull from literature
numerous examples which bear witness to the actual existence of these
two opposite types of mentality. Without pretending to exhaust the
subject, I will give a few striking examples.
In my opinion, we owe the best observations on this subject to the
philosophy of William James.[185] He lays down the principle that no
matter what may be the temperament of a "professional philosopher,"
it is this temperament which he feels himself forced to express
and to justify in his philosophy. And starting from this idea,
which is altogether in accord with the spirit of psychoanalysis,
divides philosophers into two classes: the "tender-minded," who are
only interested in the inner life and spiritual things; and the
"tough-minded," who lay most stress on material things and objective
reality. We see that these two classes are actuated by exactly opposite
tendencies of the libido: the "tender-minded" represent introversion,
the "tough-minded" extroversion.
James says that the tender-minded are characterised by rationalism;
they are men of principles and of systems, they aspire to dominate
experience and to transcend it by abstract reasoning, by their logical
deductions, and purely rational conceptions. They care little for facts,
and the multiplicity of phenomena hardly embarrasses them at all: they
forcibly fit data into their ideal constructions, and reduce everything
to their _a priori_ premises. This was the method of Hegel in settling
beforehand the number of the planets. In the domain of mental pathology
we again meet this kind of philosopher in paranoiacs, who, without
being disquieted by the flat contradictions presented by experience,
impose their delirious conceptions on the universe, and find means of
interpreting everything, and according to Adler "arranging" everything,
in conformity with their morbidly preconceived system.
The other traits which James depicts in this type follow naturally
from its fundamental character. The tender-minded man, he says, is
intellectual, idealist, optimist, religious, partisan of free-will,
a monist, and a dogmatist. All these qualities betray the almost
exclusive concentration of the libido upon the intellectual life.
This concentration upon the inner world of thought is nothing else
than introversion. In so far as experience plays a _rôle_ with these
philosophers, it serves only as an allurement or fillip to abstraction,
in response to the imperative need to fit forcibly all the chaos of the
universe within well-defined limits, which are, in the last resort, the
creation of a spirit obedient to its subjective values.
The tough-minded man is positivist and empiricist. He regards only
matters of fact. Experience is his master, his exclusive guide and
inspiration. It is only empirical phenomena demonstrable in the outside
world which count. Thought is merely a reaction to external experience.
In the eyes of these philosophers principles are never of such value
as facts; they can only reflect and describe the sequence of phenomena
and cannot construct a system. Thus their theories are exposed to
contradiction under the overwhelming accumulation of empirical material.
Psychic reality for the positivist limits itself to the observation
and experience of pleasure and pain; he does not go beyond that, nor
does he recognise the rights of philosophical thought. Remaining on the
ever-changing surface of the phenomenal world, he partakes himself of
its instability; carried away in the chaotic tumult of the universe, he
sees all its aspects, all its theoretical and practical possibilities,
but he never arrives at the unity or the fixity of a settled system,
which alone could satisfy the idealist or tender-minded. The positivist
depreciates all values in reducing them to elements lower than
themselves; he explains the higher by the lower, and dethrones it, by
showing that it is "nothing but such another thing," which has no value
in itself.
From these general characteristics, the others which James points out
logically follow. The positivist is a sensualist, giving greater value
to the specific realm of the senses than to reflection which transcends
it. He is a materialist and a pessimist, for he knows only too well the
hopeless uncertainty of the course of things. He is irreligious, not
being in a state to hold firmly to the realities of the inner world
as opposed to the pressure of external facts; he is a determinist and
fatalist, only able to show resignation; a pluralist, incapable of all
synthesis; and finally a sceptic, as a last and inevitable consequence
of all the rest.
The expressions, therefore, used by James, show clearly that the
diversity of types is the result of a different localisation of the
libido; this libido is the magic power in the depth of our being, which,
following the personality, carries it sometimes towards internal life,
and sometimes towards the objective world. James compares, for example,
the religious subjectivism of the idealist, and the quasi-religious
attitude of the contemporary empiricist: "Our esteem for facts has not
neutralised in us all religiousness. It is itself almost religious. Our
scientific temper is devout."[186]
A second parallel is furnished by Wilhelm Ostwald,[187] who divides
"savants" and men of genius into classics and romantics. The latter
are distinguished by their rapid reactions, their extremely prompt and
abundant production of ideas and projects, some of which are badly
digested and of doubtful value. They are admirable and brilliant
masters, loving to teach, of a contagious ardour and enthusiasm, which
attracts many pupils, and makes them founders of schools, exercising
great personal influence. Herein our type of extroversion is easily
recognised. The classics of Ostwald are, on the contrary, slow to react;
they produce with much difficulty, are little capable of teaching or
of exercising direct personal influence, and lacking enthusiasm are
paralysed by their own severe criticism, living apart and absorbed in
themselves, making scarcely any disciples, but producing works of
finished perfection which often bring them posthumous fame. All these
characteristics correspond to introversion.
We find a further very valuable example in the æsthetic theory of
Warringer. Borrowing from A. Riegl his expression "Volonté d'art
absolue" to express the internal force which inspires the artist, he
distinguishes two forms, viz. sympathy (Einfühlung) and abstraction;
and the term which he employs indicates that here, too, we witness the
activity of the push of the libido, the stirring of the _élan vital_.
"In the same way," says Warringer, "as the sympathetic impulse finds its
satisfaction in organic beauty, so abstract impulse discovers beauty in
the inorganic, which is the negation of all life, in crystallised forms,
and in a general manner wherever the severity of abstract law reigns."
Whilst sympathy represents the warmth of passion which carries it into
the presence of the object in order to assimilate it and penetrate
it with emotional values; abstraction, on the other hand, despoils
the object of all that could recall life, and grasps it by purely
intellectual thought, crystallised and fixed into the rigid forms of
law,--the universal, the typical. Bergson also makes use of these images
of crystallisation, solidification, etc., to illustrate the essence of
intellectual abstraction.
Warringer's "abstraction" represents the process which I have already
remarked as a consequence of introversion, namely, the exaltation of
the intellect, in the place of the depreciated reality of the external
world. "Sympathy" corresponds in fact to extroversion, for, as Lipps
has pointed out, "What I perceive sympathetically in an object is, in
a general manner life, and life is power, internal work, effort, and
execution. To live, in a word, is to act, and to act is to experience
intimately the force which we give out; experience creates activity,
which is essentially of a spontaneous character." "Æsthetic enjoyment,"
said Warringer, "is the enjoyment of one's own self projected into the
"object," a formula which corresponds absolutely with our definition of
transference. This æsthetic conception does not refer to the positivist
in James's sense; it is rather the attitude of the idealist for whom
psychological reality only is interesting, and worthy of consideration."
Warringer adds, "what is essential lies not in the gradation of the
feeling, but pre-eminently in the feeling itself; that is to say, the
inner movement, the intimate life, the unfolding of the subject's own
activity; the value of a line or of a form, depends in our eyes on the
biological value it holds for us; that which gives beauty is solely
our own vital feeling, which we unconsciously project into it." This
view corresponds exactly with my own way of understanding the theory
of the libido, in attempting to keep the true balance between the two
psychological opposites of introversion and extroversion.
The polar opposite of sympathy is abstraction. The impulse of
abstraction is conceived by Warringer "as the result of a great internal
conflict of the human soul in the presence of the external world, and
from the religious standpoint, it corresponds to a strong transcendental
colouring of all the representations man has made to himself of
reality." We recognise clearly in this definition the primordial
tendency to introversion. To the introverted type the universe does not
appear beautiful and desirable, but disquieting, and even dangerous;
it is a manifestation against which the subject puts himself on the
defensive; he entrenches himself in his inner fastness, and fortifies
himself therein by the invention of geometrical figures, full of repose,
perfectly clear even in their minutest details, the primitive magic
power of which assures him of domination over the surrounding world.
"The need of abstraction is the origin of all art," says Warringer.
Here is a great principle, which gains weighty confirmation from the
fact that precocious dements reproduce forms and figures which present
the closest analogy to those of primitive humanity, not only in their
thoughts but also in their drawings.
We should recall that Schiller had already tried to formulate the same
presentation in what he calls the naïve and sentimental types. The
latter is in quest of nature, whilst the former is itself "all nature."
Schiller also saw that these two types result from the predominance of
psychological mechanisms which might be met with in one and the same
individual. "It is not only in the same poet," he said, "but even in the
same work that these two types of mentality are found united.... The
naïve poet pursues only nature and feeling in their simplicity, and all
his effort is limited to the imitation and reproduction of reality. The
sentimental poet, on the contrary, reflects the impression he receives
from objects. The object here is allied to an idea, and the poetic power
of the work depends on this alliance." These quotations shew what types
Schiller had in view, and one recognises their fundamental identity with
those with which we are here dealing.
We find another instance in Nietzsche's contrast between the minds
of Apollo and of Dionysus. The example which Nietzsche uses to
illustrate this contrast is instructive--namely, that between a dream
and intoxication. In a dream the individual is shut up in himself, in
intoxication, on the contrary, he forgets himself to the highest degree,
and, set free from his self-consciousness, plunges into the multiplicity
of the objective world. To depict Apollo, Nietzsche borrows the words of
Schopenhauer, "As upon a tumultuous sea, which disgorges and swallows
by turns, lost to view in the mountains of foaming waves, the mariner
remains seated tranquilly on his plank, full of confidence in his frail
barque; so individual man, in a world of troubles, lives passive and
serene, relying with confidence on the principle of 'individuation.'"
"Yes," continues Nietzsche, "we might say that the unshakeable
confidence in this principle, and the calm security of those whom it has
inspired, have found in Apollo their most sublime expression, and we may
always recognise in him the most splendid and divine personification of
the principle of making an individual." The Apollien state, as Nietzsche
conceives it, is consequently the withdrawal into oneself, that is,
introversion. Conversely in the Dionysian state, psychic intoxication,
indicates in his view the unloosening of a torrent of libido which
expends itself upon things. "This is not only," says Nietzsche, "the
alliance of man with man, which finds itself confirmed afresh under
the Dionysian enchantment; it is alienated Nature, hostile or enslaved,
which also celebrates her reconciliation with her prodigal child,--man.
Spontaneously Earth offers her gifts and the wild beasts from rock and
desert draw near peacefully. The car of Dionysus is lost under flowers
and garlands; panthers and tigers approach under his yoke."
If we change Beethoven's "Hymn of Praise" into a picture, and giving
rein to our imagination, contemplate the millions of beings prostrated
and trembling in the dust, at such a moment the Dionysian intoxication
will be near at hand. Then is the slave free; then all the rigid and
hostile barriers which poverty and arbitrary or insolent custom have
established between man and man are broken down. Now, by means of this
gospel of universal harmony, each feels himself not only reunited,
reconciled, fused with his neighbour, but actually identified with him,
as if the veil of "Maïa was torn away, nothing remaining of it but a few
shreds floating before the mystery of the Primordial Unity."[188] It
would be superfluous to add comment to these quotations.
In concluding this series of examples culled outside my own special
domain, I will quote the linguistic hypothesis of Finck,[189] where we
also see the duality in question. The structure of language, according
to Finck, presents two principal types: in one the subject is generally
conceived as active: "I see him," "I strike him down;" in the other the
subject experiences and feels, and it is the object which acts: "He
appears to me," "He succumbs to me." The first type clearly shews the
libido as going out of the subject,--this is a centrifugal movement;
the second as coming out of the object,--this movement is centripetal.
We meet with this latter introverted type especially in the primitive
languages of the Esquimaux.
In the domain of psychiatry also these two types have been described
by Otto Gross,[190] who distinguishes two forms of mental debility:
the one a diffuse and shallow consciousness, the other a concentrated
and deep consciousness. The first is characterised by weakness of the
consecutive function, the second by its excessive reinforcement. Gross
has recognised that the consecutive function is in intimate relation
with affectivity, from which we might infer that he is dealing once more
with our two psychological types. The relation he establishes between
maniac depressive insanity and the state of diffuse or extended and
shallow mental disease shows that the latter represents the extroverted
type; and the relation between the psychology of the paranoiac and
repressed mentality, indicates the identity of the former with the
introverted type.
After the foregoing considerations no one will be astonished to find
that in the domain of psychoanalysis we also have to reckon with the
existence of these two psychological types.
On the one side we meet with a theory which is essentially reductive,
pluralist, causal and sensualist; this is Freud's standpoint. This
theory limits itself rigidly to empirical facts, and traces back
complexes to their antecedents and their elemental factors. It regards
the psychological life as being only an effect, a reaction to the
environment, and accords the greatest _rôle_ and the largest place to
sensation. On the other side we have the diametrically opposed theory
of Adler[191] which is an entirely philosophical and finalistic one. In
it phenomena are not reducible to earlier and very primitive factors,
but are conceived as "arrangements," the outcome of intentions and
of ends of an extremely complex nature. It is no longer the view of
causality but of finality which dominates researches: the history of the
patient and the concrete influences of the environment are of much less
importance than the dominating principles, the "fictions directrices,"
of the individual. It is not essential for him to depend upon the
object, and to find in it his fill of subjective enjoyment, but to
protect his own individuality and to guarantee it against the hostile
influences of the environment.
Whilst Freud's psychology has for its predominant note the centrifugal
tendency, which demands its happiness and satisfaction in the objective
world, in that of Adler the chief _rôle_ belongs to the centripetal
movement, which tends to the supremacy of the subject, to his triumph
and his liberty, as opposed to the overwhelming forces of existence.
The expedient to which the type described by Freud has recourse is
"infantile transference," by means of which he projects phantasy into
the object and finds a compensation for the difficulties of life in this
transfiguration. In the type described by Adler what is characteristic
is, on the contrary, the "virile protest," personal resistance, the
efficacious safeguard which the individual provides for himself, in
affirming and stubbornly enclosing himself in his dominating ideas.
The difficult task of elaborating a psychology which should pay equal
attention to the two types of mentality belongs to the future.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 183: Delivered at the Psychoanalytical Congress, Munich, 1913.
Translated from _Archives de Psychologie_, by kind permission of the
Editor, Dr. Claparède. Translator, C. E. Long.]
[Footnote 184: "The concept of energy is that which comes nearest to
the concept of libido. Libido can perhaps be described as "effect,"
or "capacity for effect." It is capable of transformation from one
form to another. The metamorphosis can be sudden, as when one function
replaces another in a moment of danger; or it can be gradual, as we
see it in the process of sublimation, where the libido is led over a
long and difficult path through a variety of forms into a different
function."--MARY MOLTZER.]
[Footnote 185: "Pragmatism," Chapter I.]
[Footnote 186: "Pragmatism," ch. i., p. 14.]
[Footnote 187: W. Ostwald "Grosse Männer," Leipzig, 1910 (11th Lecture,
"Classics and Romanticists"). See also his contribution, "A propos de la
Biologie du Savant," Bibliothèque Universelle, Oct., 1910.]
[Footnote 188: Nietzsche, "The Birth of Tragedy," trans. Wm. A.
Haussmann.]
[Footnote 189: Finck, "Der deutsche Sprachbon als Aus druck, deutscher
Weltanschauung." Marburg, 1899.]
[Footnote 190: Gross, "Die zerebrale Sekundärfonktion." Leipsig, 1902.]
[Footnote 191: Adler, "Über den nervösen Charakter." Wiesbaden, 1912.]