Collected Papers on Analytical Psychology

by C. G. Jung

In this study Freud shows out of what infantile forms of thought and instincts the delusional system was built up. The peculiar delusions which the patient had about his doctor whom he identified with God or with a god-like being, and certain other surprising and really blasphemous ideas, Freud was able to reduce most ingeniously to his infantile relationship to his father. This case also presented similar bizarre and grotesque concatenations of ideas to the one I have described. As the author himself says, his work confines itself to the task of pointing out those universally existent and undifferentiated foundations out of which we may say every psychological formation is historically developed.[204] This reductive analytical process did not, however, furnish such enlightening results in regard to the rich and surprising symbolism in patients of this kind as we had been accustomed to expect from the same method in the realm of the psychology of hysteria. In reading certain works of the Zürich school, for example, Maeder,[205] Spielrein,[206] Nelken,[207] Grebelskaja,[208] Itten,[209] one is powerfully impressed by the enormous symbol-formation in dementia præcox.

Some of the authors still proceed essentially by the method of analytic reduction, tracing back the complicated delusional formation into its simpler and more universal components, as I have done in the preceding pages. One cannot, however, resist the feeling that this method hardly does justice to the fulness and the almost overpowering wealth of phantastic symbol-formation, although it does undoubtedly throw a light upon the subject in certain directions.

Let me illustrate with an example. We should be thankful for a commentary upon "Faust" which traced back all the diverse material of Part II. to its historical sources, or for a psychological analysis of Part I. which pointed out how the dramatic conflict corresponds to a personal conflict in the soul of the poet; we should be glad of an exposition which pointed out how this subjective conflict is itself based upon those ultimate and universal human things which are nowise foreign to us since we all carry the seeds of them in our hearts. Nevertheless we should be a little disappointed. We do not read "Faust" just in order to discover that also we are, in all things, "human, all too human." Alas, we know that but too well already. Let any one who has not yet learnt it go for a little while out into the world and look at it without preconceptions and with open eyes. He will turn back from the might and power of the "too human," hungrily he will pick up his "Faust," not to find again what he has just left, but to learn how a man like Goethe shakes off these elemental human things and finds freedom for his soul. When we once know who was the "Proktophantasmist," to what chronological events the mass of symbols in Part II. relates, how it is all intimately bound up with the poet's own soul and conditioned by it, we come to regard this determination as less important than the problem itself—what does the poet mean by his symbolic creation? Proceeding purely reductively, one discovers the final meaning in these universal human things; and demands nothing further from an explanation than that the unknown and complicated shall be reduced to the known and simple. I should like to designate this kind of understanding as retrospective understanding. But there is another kind of understanding, which is not analytic reduction, but is of a synthetic or constructive nature. I would designate this prospective understanding, and the corresponding method as the Constructive method.

It is common knowledge that present-day scientific explanation rests upon the basis of the causal principle. Scientific explanation is causal explanation. We are therefore naturally inclined, whenever we think scientifically, to explain causally, to understand a thing and to regard it as explained whenever it is reduced analytically to its cause and general principle. In so far Freud's psychological method of interpretation is strictly scientific.

If we apply this method to "Faust" it must become clear that something more is required for a true understanding. It will even seem to us that we have not gathered the poet's deepest meaning if we only see in it universal foregone human conclusions. What we really want to find out is how this man has redeemed himself as an individual, and when we arrive at this comprehension then we shall also understand the symbol given by Goethe. It is true we may then fall into the error that we understand Goethe himself. But let us be cautious and modest, simply saying we have thereby arrived at an understanding of ourselves. I am thinking here of Kant's thought-compelling definition of comprehension, as "the realisation of a thing to the extent which is sufficient for our purpose."

This understanding is, it is true, subjective, and therefore not scientific for those to whom science and explanation by the causal principle are identical. But the validity of this identification is open to question. In the sphere of psychology I must emphasise my doubt on this point.

We speak of "objective" understanding when we have given a causal explanation. But at bottom, understanding is a subjective process upon which we confer the quality "objective" really only to differentiate it from another kind of understanding which is also a psychological and subjective process, but upon which, without further ado, we bestow the quality "subjective." The attitude of to-day only grants scientific value to "objective" understanding on account of its universal validity. This standpoint is incontestably correct wherever it is not a question of the psychological process itself, and hence it is valid in all sciences apart from pure psychology.

To interpret Faust objectively, i.e. from the causal standpoint, is as though a man were to consider a sculpture from the historical, technical and—last but not least—from the mineralogical standpoint. But where lurks the real meaning of the wondrous work? Where is the answer to that most important question: what aim had the artist in mind, and how are we ourselves to understand his work subjectively? To the scientific spirit this seems an idle question which anyhow has nothing to do with science. It comes furthermore into collision with the causal principle, for it is a purely speculative constructive view. And the modern world has overthrown this spirit of scholasticism.

But if we would approach to an understanding of psychological things we must remember the fact of the subjective conditioning of all knowledge. The world is as we see it and not simply objective; this holds true even more of the mind. Of course it is possible to look at the mind objectively, just as at Faust, or a Gothic Cathedral. In this objective conception there is comprised the whole worth and worthlessness of current experimental psychology and psychoanalysis. The scientific mind, thinking causally, is incapable of understanding what is ahead; it only understands what is past, that is, retrospective. Like Ahriman, the Persian devil, it has the gift of After-Knowledge. But this spirit is only one half of a complete comprehension. The other more important half is prospective or constructive; if we are not able to understand what lies ahead, then nothing is understood. If psychoanalysis, following Freud's orientation, should succeed in presenting an uninterrupted and conclusive connection between Goethe's infantile sexual development and his work, or, following Adler, between the infantile struggle for power and the adult Goethe and his work, an interesting proposition would have been solved—we should have learnt how a masterpiece can be reduced to the simplest thinkable elements, which are universal, and to be found working within the depths of everything and everybody. But did Goethe construct his work to this end? Was it his intention that it should be thus conceived?

It must be sufficiently clear that such an understanding, though undoubtedly scientific, would be entirely, utterly, beside the mark. This statement is valid for psychology in general. To understand the psyche causally, means to understand but half of it. The causal understanding of Faust enlightens us as to how it became a finished work of art, but reveals nothing of the living meaning of the poet. That meaning only lives if we experience it, in and through ourselves. In so far as our actual present life is for us something essentially new and not a repetition of all that has gone before, the great value of such a work is to be seen, not in its causal development, but in its living reality for our own lives. We should be indeed depreciating a work like Faust if we were only to regard it as something that has been perfected and finished; it is only understood when conceived as a becoming and as an ever new-experiencing.