To sum up, I may say that the function of the unconscious in conditions of mental disturbance is essentially a compensation of the content of the conscious mind. But because of the characteristic condition of one-sidedness of the conscious striving in all such cases, the compensating correctives are rendered useless. It is, however, inevitable that these unconscious tendencies break through into the conscious mind, but in adapting themselves to the character of the one-sided conscious aims, it is only possible for them to appear in a distorted and unacceptable form.
CHAPTER XI
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.