Collected Papers on Analytical Psychology

by C. G. Jung

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.