Collected Papers on Analytical Psychology

by C. G. Jung

The history shows a series of entirely unrelated symptoms. Why all the queer story of the hat and pince-nez? Why those anxiety-attacks? Why this delusion that the extraction of her teeth was an unpardonable sin? Nothing here is clear. The morphologically-minded psychiatrist would say: This is just a typical case of dementia præcox; it is the essence of insanity, of madness, to talk of nothing but mysteries; the standpoint of the diseased mind towards the world is displaced, is "mad." What is no sin for the normal, the patient finds a sin. It is a bizarre delusion characteristic of dementia præcox. The extravagant lamentation about this supposed sin is what is known as "inadequate"[198] emotional emphasis. The queer ornamentation of the hat, the pince-nez, are bizarre notions such as are very common in these patients. Somewhere in the brain certain cells have fallen into disorder, and manufacture illogical, senseless ideas of one kind and another which are quite without psychological meaning. The patient is obviously a hereditary degenerate with a weak brain, having a kink which is the origin of the disorder. For some reason or other the disease has suddenly broken out. It could just as easily have broken out at any other time. Perhaps we should have had to capitulate to these arguments had real psychological analysis not come to our aid. In filling up the certificate required for her removal to the asylum, it transpired that many years ago she had had an affair which terminated; her lover left her with an illegitimate child. Nobody had been told of this. When she was again in love a dilemma arose, and she asked herself, What will this new lover say about it? At first she postponed the marriage, becoming more and more worried, and then the eccentricities began. To understand these we must immerse ourselves in the psychology of a naïve soul. If we have to disclose some painful secret to a beloved person we try first to strengthen his love in order to obtain beforehand a guarantee of his forgiveness. We do it by flattery or by caresses, or we try to impress the value of our own personality in order to raise it in the eyes of the other. Our patient decked herself out with beautiful feathers, which to her simple taste seemed precious. The wearing of "pince-nez" increases the respect of children even of a mature age. And who does not know people who will have their teeth extracted, out of pure vanity, in order that they may wear a plate to improve their appearance?

After such an operation most people have a slight, nervous reaction, and then everything becomes more difficult to bear. This was, as a matter of fact, just the moment when the catastrophe did occur, in her terror lest her fiancé should break with her when he heard of her previous life. That was the first anxiety-attack. Just as the patient had not acknowledged her secret in all these years, so she now sought to guard it, and shifted the fear in her guilty conscience on to the extraction of the teeth; she thus followed a method well known to us, for when we dare not acknowledge some great sin we deplore some small sin with the greater emphasis.

The problem seemed insoluble to the weak and sensitive mind of the patient, hence the affect became insurmountably great; this is the mental desire as presented from the psychological side. The series of apparently meaningless events, the so-called madness, have now a meaning; a significance appertains to the delusions, making the patient more human to us. Here is a person like ourselves, beset by universal human problems, no longer merely a cerebral machine thrown out of gear. Hitherto we thought that the insane patient revealed nothing to us by symptoms, save the senseless products of his disordered cerebral cells, but that was academic wisdom reeking of the study. When we penetrate into the human secrets of our patients, we recognise mental disease to be an unusual reaction to emotional problems which are in no wise foreign to ourselves, and the delusion discloses the psychological system upon which it is based.

The light which shines forth from this conception seems to us so enormously powerful because it forces us into the innermost depths of that tremendous disorder which is most common in our asylums, and hitherto least understood; by reason of the craziness of the symptoms it is the type that strikes the public as madness in excelsis.

The case which I have just sketched is a simple one. It is transparent. My second example is somewhat more complicated. It is the case of a man between 30 and 40 years of age; he is a foreign archæologist of great learning and most unusual intelligence. He was a precocious boy of quite excellent character, great sensitiveness and rare gifts. Physically he was small, always weakly, and a stammerer. He grew up and was educated abroad, and afterwards studied for several terms at B——. So far there had been no disorder of any kind. On the completion of his university career he became zealously absorbed in his archæological work, which gradually engulfed him to such an extent that he was dead to the world and all its pleasures. He worked incessantly, and buried himself entirely in his books. He became quite unsociable; before, awkward and shy in society, he now fled from it altogether, and saw no one beyond a few friends. He thus led the life of a hermit devoted entirely to science. A few years later, on a holiday tour, he revisited B——, where he remained a few days. He walked a great deal in the environs of the town. His few acquaintances now found him somewhat strange, taciturn, and nervous. After a somewhat protracted walk he seemed tired, and said that he did not feel very well. He then remarked he must get himself hypnotised, he felt his nerves unsteady. On top of this he was attacked by physical illness, viz. inflammation of the lungs. Very soon a peculiar state of excitement supervened which led to suicidal ideas. He was brought to the asylum, where for weeks he remained in an extremely excited state. He was completely deranged, and did not know where he was; he spoke in broken sentences which no one could understand. He was often so excited and aggressive that it took several attendants to hold him. He gradually became quieter, and one day came to himself, as if waking out of a long, confused dream. He soon completely regained his health, and was discharged as cured. He returned to his home and again immersed himself in books. In the following years he published several remarkable works, but, as before, his life was that of a hermit living entirely in his books and dead to the world. He then gradually acquired the name of a dried-up misanthrope, lost to all meaning of the beauty of life. A few years after his first illness a brief holiday brought him again to B——. As before he took his solitary walks in the environs. One day he was suddenly overcome by a faint feeling, and lay down in the street. He was carried into a neighbouring house where he immediately became extremely excited. He began to perform gymnastics, jumped over the rails of the bed, turned somersaults in the room, began to declaim in a loud, voice, sang his own improvisations, etc. He was again brought to the asylum. The excitement continued. He extolled his wonderful muscles, his beautiful figure, his enormous strength. He believed that he had discovered a natural law by which a wonderful voice could be developed. He regarded himself as a great singer, and a marvellous reciter, and at the same time he was a great inspired poet and composer to whom verse and melody came spontaneously.

All this was in pitiable and very remarkable contrast to reality. He is a small weakly man of unimposing build, with poorly developed muscles betraying at the first glance the atrophying effect of his studious life. He is unmusical, his voice is weak and he sings out of tune; he is a bad speaker, because of his stutter. For weeks he occupied himself in the asylum with peculiar jumping, and contortions of the body which he called gymnastics, he sang and declaimed. Then he became more quiet and dreamy, often stared thoughtfully in front of him for a long time, now and then sang a love song which, despite its want of musical expression, betrayed a pretty feeling for love's aspirations. This also was in complete contrast with the dryness and isolation of his normal life. He gradually became accessible for lengthy conversations.

We will break off the history of the disease here, and sum up what is furnished so far by observation of the patient.

In the first illness the delirium broke out unexpectedly, and was followed by a mental disorder with confused ideas and violence which lasted for several weeks. Complete recovery appeared to have taken place. Six years later there was a sudden outbreak of mania, grandiose delusions, bizarre actions, followed by a twilight-stage gradually leading to recovery. Here we again see a typical case of dementia præcox, of the katatonic variety, especially characterised by peculiar movements and actions. In psychiatry the views obtaining at present would regard this as localised cellular disease of some part of the cortex, exhibiting confusional states, delusions of grandeur, peculiar contortions of the muscles, or twilight-states, which taken all together have as little psychological meaning as the bizarre shapes of a drop of lead thrown into water.

This is not my view. It was certainly no accidental freak of the brain-cells that created the dramatic contrasts shown in the second illness. We can see that these contrasts, the so-called grandiose delusions, were very subtly determined by the deficiencies in the patient's personality. Without doubt, any one of us would naturally regard these deficiencies seriously in ourselves. Who would not have the desire to find compensation for the aridness of his profession and of his life in the joys of poetry and music and to restore to his body the natural power and beauty stolen from it by the study's atmosphere? Do we not recall with envy the energy of a Demosthenes who, despite his stammering, became a great orator? If our patient thus fulfilled the obvious gaps in his physical and mental life by delusional wishes, the supposition is warranted that the whispered love-song which he sang from time to time filled up a painful blank in his being, which became more painful the more it was concealed. The explanation is not far to seek. It is simply the old story, born anew in every human soul, in a guise befitting the destined creature's highest sensibilities.