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.