nevertheless, something very profound in it. The pursuit after passes
is in our day a favourite “sport” of residents of large cities. To most
such people a journalist or a writer is not an artist who laboriously
strives to give adequate expression to his thoughts, who has to listen
to the secret voices within his breast and to translate them into the
language of every day. No, in their mind a writer is the Croesus of
passes. He only sits in front of his desk, as there accumulate before
him green, blue, and red tickets, the magic keys that open the doors
to all the temples of art without having to go to the trouble of
digging into his money bag and experiencing the pleasure of paying out
his shining coins. And they take it ill of the Croesus that he is so
niggardly as to guard his treasures so greedily and not make everybody
he comes in contact with happy by distributing the little papers. For
to them getting a pass is considered a great piece of good fortune,
almost like drawing a grand small prize in a lottery. It enables one
to temporarily enjoy the greatest sensation in life: pleasure without
cost. That is, it should so enable one.
With a pass one gets everything,--the respect of the upper classes, the
right to be rude and the enforcement of courtesy. If it were possible
to say of certain young women that for a ride they would part with
their honour, then one might aptly vary the phrase and say: for a pass,
with everything.
There are human beings, persons with so-called “good connections,”
who lead a wonderful life with the aid of passes. The physician who
is at their beck and call throughout the year is compensated for his
efforts by the presentation from time to time of a box or a pair of
seats for the theatre. So, too, the lawyer. The Cerberus rage of the
most terrifying of all apartment-house superintendents melts into the
gentlest humility at the prospect of a pass. We expect a thousand
little favours from our fellow-citizens who assume the obligation to
render these favours by the acceptance of a pass.
There are probably only very few persons who feel any shame on going on
a trip with a pass. These exceptional beings have not yet discovered
that nowadays it is only the person who pays who is looked down upon.
Every one takes his hat off to the possessor of a pass. The train
conductor makes a respectful bow because he does not know whether the
“dead-head” is an officer of the company or some other “big gun.” The
ticket collector does the same because experience has taught him that
the dead-head usually overcomes by a treat the social inferiority
associated with “enjoyment without payment.” In short, a pass invests
its possessor with the mysterious air of a great power and weaves about
his head a halo which lifts him above the _misers plebs contribuens_.
But you must not think that the possessor of passes constitutes that
part of the public that is particularly grateful for and appreciative
of the artistic offerings. On the contrary! Artistic enjoyment in the
theatre requires a certain capacity for illusion, and the purchase of
a ticket exercises a considerable influence on this capacity. For one
who has dearly paid for his seat has imposed the moral obligation upon
himself to be entertained.
Down in his subliminal self there dwell forces that may be said to have
been lessoned to applaud. The higher the price, the more painfully the
pleasure was purchased, the greater is the willingness to be carried
away by the work of art and the artists. The poor student who has stood
for hours in front of the opera house and been lucky enough to secure
admission to standing room in the gallery will have a better time than
his rich colleague down in the orchestra, and a very much better time
than the envied possessor of a free seat. For his capacity for illusion
has been tremendously heightened. He expects a reward commensurate
with the trouble he went to and the money he sacrificed. His tension
being much higher, the relaxation of that tension must yield him a much
greater quantity of pleasure. The greater the restraints that one has
to overcome the greater the pleasure in having succeeded in overcoming
them.
The necessity for illusion is absent in the possessor of a pass. There
is nothing to make it incumbent on him to be entertained; he has not
paid anything. He can even leave the performance before it is concluded
if it does not please him. He is more sceptical, more critical, and
less grateful.
Any dramatist who at a _première_ would fill the theatre with his
good friends by giving them passes would have little knowledge of
human nature; certain failure would await him. Not only because
these so-called good friends, in obedience to their unconscious envy,
frankly join the enemy’s ranks, but because the possessors of passes
involuntarily get into the psychic condition which is characteristic
of “dead-heads,” viz: indifferent critical smugness and a diminished
capacity for illusion.
I know of a striking example of this that came under my own
observation. One of my friends, a young playwright, invited his
tailor and his wife to go to his _première_, and not to be backward
in expressing their approval. He had distributed a sufficiently large
number of friends in the orchestra, but the gallery had not been
provided for. He had, naturally, also sent two tickets to one of his
competitors. It so chanced that I was in the thick of it, because I was
interested in seeing how the simple public would receive the piece. I
sat right behind the doughty tailor couple, who, of course, did not
know me. Several times during the performance we almost came to blows.
The married couple hissed with might and main, whereas I applauded with
all my power. We exchanged angry words and otherwise acted in a manner
characteristic of such a situation and of such a youthful temper as
mine then was. The play was a failure. Later we discussed the reason
for this failure. One said that the play was not deep enough for the
enlightened public. I challenged this contention, and referred to the
simple people who sat in front of me and whose names and station I had
discovered from some neighbours. My friend would not believe me at
first until I had convinced him by a detailed description of the couple
that the tailor who had for so many years made his clothes had felt it
incumbent on him to repay the author’s gift of a pass by contributing
to the failure of his play.
To be under obligations always oppresses us. We have the instinctive
impulse to disregard them. A pass is an obligation to acknowledge
the excellence of the offered entertainment, to confirm that it is
worth the price of admission. In addition to the absence of a need
for illusion from material considerations we have to reckon with the
impulse to disregard this obligation. These two psychic factors serve
to bring about in the heart of the possessor of a pass the defence
reaction that I have previously described.
Notwithstanding this, the craving for passes, which formerly was the
privilege of the few exceptional personages, keeps growing more and
more, infecting other levels of society, and would easily become a
serious menace to the directorate of the theatres if these had not
hit upon an adequate remedy in distributing passes on the homœopathic
principle. They fight the “pass with the pass.” They distribute passes
and reduced rate tickets very lavishly for the days on which they
know the receipts will be poor and for plays which no longer draw
large audiences. The exaction of a small fee on the presentation of
the coupon serves to cover part of the running expenses; the house is
filled and the many’s fire for passes is quenched. On the following
days the people are much more willing to buy their tickets because they
think that they can afford to be so extravagant, inasmuch as they had
seen one or more performances free or practically so, and are swayed
by the unconscious instinct that a purchased pleasure is sure to prove
more delightful.
One would have to be a second limping Mephisto to be able to follow
the invisible stream of passes in a large metropolis. The romance of
a pass is still to be written. It would yield us an insight into the
psychology of modern man that would be second to none. It would prove
that one of the most important impulses of our time is the desire not
to have to work for one’s pleasures. I say “not to work for one’s
pleasures” rather than “not to pay for one’s pleasures,” because
money always means an equivalent for our work. The most industrious
persons are in reality those who are most averse to work. For behind
their zeal to accumulate money there is the burning desire to hoard
up as much as will ensure an income sufficient to purchase enjoyment
without additional work. In the language of every day this would be:
a care-free old age. But, in sooth, worry is the main source of our
pleasures. Were there no cares the variegated colours of the spectrum
that constitute the light of life would be replaced by dull monotonous
grays that resemble each other as closely as the two links that unite
the two ends of a chain converting it into a whole.
The pursuit after passes is only a small fragment of that mad pursuit
after “pleasure without work” that is being enacted all around us. I
have gone into the subject so minutely only because it is a typical
example of mankind’s stupid beginning to free itself from the iron
bonds of material dependence. For the more free we think ourselves, the
more enslaved we really are.
IDENTIFICATION
I know a man who suffered a great deal from his wife’s moods. No
matter how much he tried he could never please her. If he was happy
and contented she called him “Mr. Frivolous” and would say what a
fine figure he’d cut in a Punch and Judy show; if, on the contrary,
cares troubled him and his face betrayed his anxiety, she called him
“Old Grouch” and railed at him for making her life bitter. If he
wanted to go to the theatre, she thought they ought to stay home; if
he longed for the peace of the home, she egged him on to take part
in all sorts of senseless pastimes. Is it any wonder that the poor
man became “nervous”? that he lost his peace of mind and his hitherto
imperturbable good humour?
In those painful days his comfort was his quiet daughter who seemed
to be in all respects the opposite of her moody mother. He sought
sanctuary with her, and over and over again she had to listen to his
cries for peace.
Finally his nervous condition got so bad that a physician had to be
consulted. The physician being fully aware of the patient’s domestic
relations did not have to consider very long and ordered the sick man
to take a trip. More easily prescribed than done. For our patient had
one very bad habit: he could not be alone. It was a cruel punishment
for him to have to look after his small daily wants away from home.
What was he to do? His wife would gladly have gone along with him. But
there were numerous objections to that. Besides, the wise physician
would not hear of it. In this quandary the distressed man thought of
his gentle, affectionate, young daughter. Everybody rejoiced at this
happy solution; the anxious physician, the jealous wife, and, not
least, the sensible daughter who had not yet seen anything of the world
and whose secret dreams of youth had been disturbed by the erratic
educational methods of her mother, in which exaggerated love and
pitiless sternness alternated.
Great excitement marked the time for departure. Mother changed her
plans ten times over. First she wanted to drop everything and accompany
her husband; then she wanted to induce the unhappy husband to give up
the trip, and so on. Finally the time for departure arrived. They were
on the platform at the station and were saying the last good-byes.
Mother had an unlimited number of things to say and suggestions to
make. Then the conductor gave the last warning and there was no time to
lose. Through the little window the happy father and the still happier
daughter looked out on the source of their woes who had been suddenly
converted into an inexhaustible fountain of tears. Was she so grieved
because the objects upon whom she was wont to project the discontent of
her unresting heart were gone? With a sudden movement she wiped away
her tears and called after her daughter in stentorian tones: “Freda,
now you’ll take the place of your mother! Remember that!”--What else
she said was lost in the din of the moving train whose shrill whistle
drowned the asthmatic woman’s commanding tones. During the next few
seconds they waved their last greetings and then the scene so painful
to all was over.
Father and daughter looked at each other, their faces beaming. For a
little while, at any rate, they would be free and have nothing else
to do but to enjoy life. The mother’s last words rang in their ears.
Involuntarily the man smiled and remarked tenderly to his daughter:
“Well--I shall be curious to see how my little sunshine will take her
mother’s place.” The little one looked at her father seriously and
replied: “Papa, I shall try to do so to the best of my power, surely.”
And deep within her she rejoiced at the thought that strangers might
think her really the young wife of this fine-looking man.
After a few minutes Freda began to complain that it was getting very
cold. “There is a draught! It’s terribly cold!” The anxious father at
once closed the window. After a little while she complained that the
compartment was unbearably stuffy. Why had not the conductor assigned
them a more spacious one? Had papa given him a tip? She had been told
by a friend who had just returned from a wedding trip in Italy that
conductors are respectful and accommodating only to those who give
liberal tips. She was not so inexperienced as a certain papa seemed to
think. If he gave the man the tip they would surely be transferred to a
more comfortable car. Somewhat irritated, the father complied with his
daughter’s wish. After considerable trouble they were transferred from
their small cosy compartment in which they could sit alone, to a large
one into which a stout elderly gentleman entered at the next station
and plumped himself down beside them. Freda had an insurmountable
repugnance to fat old gentlemen. She reproached her father; he had not
given the conductor a large enough tip.
Why waste words? After a few hours the poor man saw only too clearly
that his daughter was bent on taking her mother’s place in the true
sense of the word. She pestered him with her moods and gave him not
a minute’s rest. He tried to console himself with the thought that
Freda was not herself owing to the excitement of the last few days,
and that she would soon be herself again. Vain hope! The girl was as
if transformed. From a quiet, amiable child, she had become a moody,
fractious torment. The trip which had been intended as a cure became an
unmitigable torture. For at home he knew how to adapt himself quietly
to his wife’s tyranny. But here, away from home, he was constantly
getting into all sorts of unpleasant situations. Finally, he pretended
to be too sick to continue the trip and after a few days they returned
home.
I have narrated this tragic-comical history in such detail because
it makes the meaning of “Identification” clearer than any definition
could. What had happened to the young girl to transform her so quickly?
Her mother had enjoined her to take her place. She had to some extent
taken upon herself her mother’s duties. She identified herself with
her mother. She played the role of mother exactly as she had for years
seen it played at home, though, in secret, she had disapproved of her
mother’s conduct. This identification nullified her own personality and
replaced it with another.
This is a phenomenon that takes the most surprising forms among the
victims of hysteria. But it would be erroneous to think that it occurs
only among hysterics. Almost all persons, especially women, succumb
to the seductive power of identification. I wonder if it is because
of this that all of us secretly bear a measure of neurosis with us
throughout life! At home, Freda might have concealed her hysteria
as a kind of reaction to her mother’s conduct. It was only when she
had to play the mother’s role that the neurosis, in consequence of
an unconscious affect, became manifest. It is thus that epidemics of
hysteria break out. If a neurosis is capable of transferring an affect,
it can arouse another, slumbering neurosis. For to-day we know, from
Bleuler’s studies, that suggestion is not the transference of an idea
but an affect.
The phenomenon that the above case brings out so clearly and
unequivocally may be seen in everyday life behind various motives,
catchwords, tendencies, and strivings. Notwithstanding these disguises
the eye of the investigator will not find it difficult to recognize
the mechanism of identification and the element of the neurosis in the
normal person. But if this is so everybody is neurotic. Let us not get
excited about this conclusion. There is no such thing as a normal human
being. What we call disease and abnormality are only the highest peaks
of a mountain chain that rises to various heights above the sea-level
of the normal. Every person has his weak spots, physical and psychical.
We can reckon only relative heights, never the absolute, inasmuch as a
standard of the normal is really never at our disposal.
There is no difficulty in finding illustrations of the process of
identification in the so-called normal. Take, for example, the valet of
the nobleman. How thoroughly imbued he is with his master’s pride of
ancestry! With what imperturbable scorn he looks down upon the common
rabble! It never enters his mind that he is one of the masses. He has
no glimmer of appreciation of the absurdity of his airs, because the
mechanism of identification has clouded his intellect and an emotion
has strangled his logic. He even gives verbal expression to his feeling
of identification. He seems to have become fused into a unity with
his master, for he submerges his individuality, his ego, and on every
occasion speaks of “we” and “us.”
“We are starting south to-day,” he announces to the neighbours. “We
shall stay home,” he declares oracularly to visitors.
We see the same thing in the school child. It takes a little time
before he can free himself from the influence of his teachers and of
the school. Not infrequently he cannot do so owing to the permanent
fixation of his identification with them. Horace’s “Jurare in verba
magistri” (_i.e._, to echo the sentiments of one’s master) is nothing
but the result of a completely successful identification. One who
cannot free himself from this affect and substitute for the confident
“we” of the school the uncertain “I” of individuality can never hope to
become an independent personality.
Some feelings, such as so-called party spirit, pride of ancestry,
solidarity, national pride, etc., are only identifications. The German
identifies himself with his great national heroes, e.g., Schiller,
Goethe, Bismarck, etc., and is then as proud of being a German as if
that implied that he had himself been responsible for their great
achievements. The well-known and almost ridiculous pride of the
Englishman is only the product of an extreme identification. But, as
a matter of fact, the British Government also identifies itself with
the humblest of its subjects and protects him in whatever corner of
the earth he may happen to be. The officer who takes great pride in
his regiment, the pupil who is all enthusiasm for the colours of his
school, and the ordinary citizen who can see no element of goodness in
any but his own political party, all bear witness to the great power
of identification. It is in this way that socialism has become such
a tremendous power. Not because it furnishes the proletariat with
a dream of a happier future, not because it has supplied it with a
religion. (The Church supplies this want better.) No! Only because
it has enabled the individual, the weak one, to feel himself one with
a tremendous majority, to identify himself with an organization that
is world-wide. Socialism is the triumph of identification and the
death-knell of individualism.
The most beautiful instance of identification is furnished by love.
One who is in love has completely identified himself with the beloved.
“Two souls with but a single thought; two hearts that beat as one.” Has
not Rückert designated his beloved as his “better self”? (Or Kletke’s
very popular song: “What is thine and what is mine?”) A lover almost
literally transfers his whole ego into another’s soul. He projects all
his yearning upon that one object. He is oblivious of his mistakes
until the identification is over. Then the intoxicating dream, too, is
over.
With the aid of identification a lover can transfer his passion upon
any object that stands in some sort of relationship to his beloved.
It is in this way that fetichism sometimes results. That is why love
for a woman so easily leads to a love for her kindred. There is a
Slavic proverb which says: “He who loves his wife also cherishes his
mother-in-law.” And, on the other hand, a discontent with one’s wife
is often concealed behind a stubborn hatred of her relatives. In many
instances the feeling against mothers-in-law cannot be interpreted in
any other way.
Thus there runs through the soul of mankind an endless chain of
identifications ranging from the normal to the pathological. The child
that puts its father’s hat on its head identifies itself with him
just as certainly as the lunatic who thinks himself Napoleon. Both
have realized their wishes. But there is this difference between
them: In the normal the identification is held under control by
the force of facts, whereas in the lunatic the identification has
suffered a fixation. A delusion is frequently only a wholly successful
identification in the interests of the desire to escape from painful
realities. Delusion and truth are plastic conceptions. Who could
presume to define where truth ceases and delusion begins? From
Schopenhauer’s point of view our whole world-philosophy might be said
to be only a process of identification. And truth is nothing but the
transference of our own limited knowledge upon the outer world.
REFUGE IN DISEASE
The psychological study of disease is still, alas! a very young
and immature science. We have been held so long in the thrall of
the materialistic delusion of having to look for bacilli and other
micro-organisms behind all diseases that we have almost wholly
neglected the psychic factor in disease. It now seems that these
psychic factors play the chief role in the so-called “nervous”
diseases, whereas all the other “causes,” namely, the predisposition,
heredity, infection, etc., it now turns out, do play a certain role,
not an unimportant one, it is true, but yet a secondary one. The
influence of emotional disturbance upon these diseases has only
recently received careful study.
We have learned that psychic causes may play a great role in the
occurrence and the prevention of disease. We may confidently assert
that without the presence of a psychic component which invokes
the disease hardly a single case of nervous disease could occur.
Paradoxical as this may sound it is nearer the truth than the orthodox
teachings of our day. For who does not recollect times in his childhood
when he longed to be sick that he might not have to go to school, and
that he might at the same time be petted and indulged by his parents? A
little of this infantilism persists with us throughout life. Hysterics
especially are distinguished by the infantilism of their thoughts,
their feelings, and their ideas. This being so, we must agree with
Bleuler when he asserts that the most common cause of hysteria is
the desire to take refuge in disease. It will be of interest here
to reproduce Bleuler’s report of one of his cases (from his book on
“affectivity, suggestibility, and paranoia,” published by Karl Marhold
in 1906).