Collected Papers on Analytical Psychology

by C. G. Jung

Looking at such a morbid system without preconception, and asking ourselves what goal this delusional system is aiming at, we see, in fact, firstly, that it is endeavouring to get at something, and secondly, that the patient also devotes all his will-power to the service of the system. There are patients who develop their delusions with scientific thoroughness, often dragging in an immense material of comparison and proof. Schreber certainly belongs to this class. Others do not proceed so thoroughly and learnedly, but content themselves with heaping up synonymous expressions for that at which they are aiming. The case of the patient I have described, who assumes all kinds of titles, is a good instance of this.

The patient's unmistakable striving to express something through and by means of his delusion Freud conceives retrospectively, as the satisfaction of his infantile wishes by means of imagination. Adler reduces it to the desire for power.

For him the delusion-formation is a "manly protest," a means of gaining security for himself against his menaced superiority. Thus characterised, this struggle is likewise infantile and the means employed—the delusional creation—is infantile because insufficient for its purpose; one can therefore understand why Freud declines to accept Adler's point of view. Freud, rightly on the whole, subsumes this infantile struggle for power under the concept of the infantile wish.

The constructive standpoint is different. Here the delusional system is neither infantile nor, upon the whole, eo ipso pathological but subjective, and hence justified within the scope of the subjective. The constructive standpoint absolutely denies the conception that the subjective phantasy-creation is merely an infantile wish, symbolically veiled; or that it is merely that in a higher degree; it denies that it is a convulsive and egoistic adhesion to the fiction of its own superiority, in so far as these are to be regarded as finalistic explanations. The subjective activity of the mind can be judged from without, just as one can, in the end, so judge everything. But this judgment is inadequate, because it is the very essence of the subjective that it cannot be judged objectively. We cannot measure distance in pints. The subjective can be only understood and judged subjectively, that is, constructively. Any other judgment is unfair and does not meet the question.

The absolute credit which the constructive standpoint confers upon the subjective, naturally seems to the "scientific" spirit as an utter violation of reason. But this scientific spirit can only take up arms against it so long as the constructive is not avowedly subjective. The constructive comprehension also analyses, but it does not reduce. It decomposes the delusion into typical components. What is to be regarded as the type at a given time is shown from the attainment of experience and knowledge reached at that time.

Even the most individual delusional systems are not absolutely unique, occurring only once, for they offer striking and obvious analogies with other systems. From the comparative analysis of many systems the typical formations are drawn. If one can speak of reduction at all, it is only a question of reduction to general type, but not to some universal principle obtained inductively or deductively, such as "Sexuality" or "Struggle for Power." This paralleling with other typical formations only serves for a widening of the basis upon which the construction is to be built. If one were to proceed entirely subjectively one would go on constructing in the language of the patient and in his mental range. One would arrive at some structure which was illuminating to the patient and to the investigator of the case but not to the outer scientific public. The public would be unable to enter into the peculiarities of the speech and thought of the individual case in question without further help.

The works of the Zürich school referred to contain careful and detailed expositions of individual material. In these materials there are very many typical formations which are unmistakably analogies with mythological formations[211]. There arose from the perception of this relationship a new and valuable source for comparative study. The acceptance of the possibility of such a comparison will not be granted immediately, but the question is only whether the materials to be compared really are similar or not. It will also be contended that pathological and mythological formations are not immediately comparable. But this objection must not be raised a priori, for only a conscientious comparison can determine whether any true parallelism exists or not. At the present moment all we know is that they are both structures of the imagination which, like all such products, rest essentially upon the activity of the unconscious. Experience must teach us whether such a comparison is valid. The results hitherto obtained are so encouraging that further work along these lines seems to me most hopeful and important. I made practical use of the constructive method in a case which Flournoy published in the Archives de Psychologie, although he offered no opinion as to its nature at that time.

The case dealt with a rather neurotic young lady who, in Flournoy's publication, described how surprised she was at the connected phantasy-formations which penetrated from the unconscious into the conscious. I subjected these phantasies, which the lady herself reproduced in some detail, to my constructive methods and gave the results of these investigations in my book, "The Psychology of the Unconscious."