Collected Papers on Analytical Psychology

by C. G. Jung

The reader must now calmly accept the idea that in this psychology he is dealing with something quite unique, if not indeed with some altogether irrational, sectarian, or occult wisdom; for what else could possibly provoke all the scientific authorities to turn away on the very threshold and utterly refuse to cross it?

Accordingly, we must look more closely into this psychology. As long ago as Charcot's time it was recognised that neurotic symptoms are "psychogenic," that is, that they have their origin in the psyche. It was also known, thanks mainly to the work of the Nancy School, that every hysterical symptom can be exactly reproduced by means of suggestion. But how a hysterical system arises, and its relationship to psychic causes, were altogether unknown. In the beginning of the eighties Dr. Breuer, an old Viennese doctor, made a discovery[222] which was really the true starting-point of the new psychology. He had a very intelligent young patient (a woman) suffering from hysteria, who exhibited the following symptoms among others: A spastic paralysis of the right arm, occasional disturbances of consciousness or twilight-states, and loss of the power of speech in so far as she no longer retained any knowledge of her mother-tongue, and could only express herself in English (so-called systematic aphasia). They sought at that time, and still seek, in such a case to establish some theory of anatomical disturbance, although there was just as little disturbance in the arm-centre in the brain as in that of any normal man who boxes another's ears. The symptomatology of hysteria is full of anatomical impossibilities; such as the case of the lady who had lost her hearing completely through some hysterical malady. None the less she often used to sing, and once when she was singing her doctor sat down at the piano unnoticed by her and softly accompanied her. Passing from one strophe to another he suddenly altered the key, and she, quite unconscious of what she was doing, sang on in the altered key. Thus she heard—yet did not hear. The various forms of systematic blindness present similar phenomena. We have the case of a man suffering from complete hysterical blindness. In the course of the treatment he recovers his sight, but at first, and for some long time, only partially: he could see everything with one exception—people's heads. He saw all the people around him without heads. Thus he saw—yet did not see. From a large number of like experiences it has long been concluded that it is only the patient's consciousness which does not see, does not hear, but the sense-function has nothing at all the matter with it. This state of affairs is directly contradictory to the essence of an organic disturbance, which always materially involves the function.

After this digression let us return to Breuer's case. Since there was no organic cause for the disturbance, the case was clearly to be regarded as hysterical, that is, psychogenic. Dr. Breuer had noticed that if during her twilight-states (whether spontaneous or artificially induced) he let the patient freely express the reminiscences and phantasies that thronged in upon her, her condition was afterwards much improved for some hours. He made systematic use of this observation in her further treatment. The patient herself invented the appropriate name for it of "talking cure" or, in jest, "chimney sweeping."

Her illness began whilst she was nursing her dying father. It is easy to understand that her phantasies busied themselves mainly with this disturbing time. In the twilight-states memories of this period reappeared with photographic fidelity, distinct in every detail: no waking recollection is ever so plastically and exactly reproduced. The term hypermnesia is applied to this heightening of the power of memory, which occurs without difficulty in certain states of contracted consciousness. Remarkable things now came to light. Out of the many things told, one ran somewhat as follows.[223]

On a certain night she was in a state of great anxiety about her father's high temperature. She sat by his bed, waiting for the surgeon who was coming from Vienna to perform an operation. Her mother had gone out of the room for a little while, and Anna (the patient) sat by the bed, with her right arm hanging over the back of her chair. She fell into a kind of waking-dream in which she saw a black snake come out from the wall and approach the sick man, prepared to bite. (It is very probable that some real snakes had been seen in the fields behind the house, and that she had been frightened by them; this would furnish the material for her hallucination.) She wanted to drive the creature away, but felt paralysed; her right arm, hanging over the chair, had "gone to sleep," was anæsthetic and paretic, and as she looked her fingers turned into little snakes with death's heads (the nails). Probably she tried to drive the snake away with her paralysed right hand, and thereby the anæsthesia and paralysis became associated with the snake-hallucination. Even after the snake had disappeared, her terror remained great. She tried to pray, but found she had no words in any language, until at length she managed to remember some English nursery rhymes, and then she could go on thinking and praying in that language.

This was the actual scene in which the paralysis and speech-disturbance arose; the describing it served to remove the speech-trouble, and in this same fashion the case was finally completely cured.

I must restrict myself to this one instance. In Breuer and Freud's book there is a wealth of similar examples. It is easy to understand that scenes such as these make a very strong impression, and accordingly there is an inclination to attribute a causal significance to them in the genesis of the symptoms. The then current conception of hysteria, arising from the English "nervous shock" theory, which Charcot strongly supported, came in conveniently to elucidate Breuer's discovery, hence arose the trauma-theory maintaining that the hysterical symptom and in so far as the symptoms comprise the disease, hysteria itself, arises from some psychic injury (or trauma), the effect of which is retained in the unconscious indefinitely. Freud, working as Breuer's colleague, amply confirmed this discovery. It was fully demonstrated that not one out of the many hundred hysterical symptoms came down ready made from heaven; they had already been conditioned by past psychic experiences. To some extent, therefore, this new conception opened up a field of very important empirical work. But Freud's tireless spirit of inquiry could not long rest content at this superficial layer, since already there obtruded deeper and more difficult problems. It is obvious enough that moments of great fear and anxiety, such as Breuer's patient went through, would leave behind a lasting effect, but how is it that these happenings are themselves already deeply stamped with the mark of morbidity? Must we suppose that the trying sick-nursing in itself produce such a result? If so, such effects should occur much more frequently, for there are, unfortunately, many trying cases of sick-nursing, and the nurse's nervous constitution is by no means always of the soundest. To this problem medicine gives its admirable answer; the "x" in the calculation is predisposition; there is a tendency to these things. But for Freud the problem was, what exactly constitutes this predisposition? This question led logically to an investigation of all that had preceded the psychic trauma. It is a matter of common observation that distressing scenes have markedly different effects upon the different participants, and that things which to some are quite indifferent or even pleasant, such as frogs, mice, snakes, cats, excite the greatest aversion in others. There are the cases of women who can calmly be present at a very bad operation, but who tremble all over with horror and nausea at the touch of a cat. By way of illustration let me give the case of a young lady suffering from severe hysteria following a sudden fright.[224] She had been at a social gathering, and was on her way home at midnight accompanied by several acquaintances, when a carriage came up behind them at full speed. All the others moved out of the way, but she, beside herself with fright, ran down the middle of the road just in front of the horses. The coachman cracked his whip and cursed and swore in vain. She ran down the whole length of the street till a bridge was reached. There her strength failed her, and to escape the horses' feet in her despair she would have jumped into the water had not passers-by prevented her. This same lady happened to be in Petrograd during that sanguinary Revolution of the 22nd of January, and saw a street cleared by the volleys of soldiers. All around her people were dropping down dead or wounded, but she retained her calmness and self-possession, and caught sight of a door which gave her escape into another street. These terrible moments agitated her neither at the time nor later on. She was quite well afterwards, indeed felt better than usual.

Essentially similar reactions can quite often be observed. Hence it follows that the intensity of the trauma is of small pathogenic importance; the peculiar circumstances determine its pathogenic effect. Here, then, we have the key which enables us to unlock at least one of the anterooms to an understanding of predisposition. We must now ask what were the unusual circumstances in this carriage scene? The terror and apprehension began as soon as the lady heard the trampling horses. For a moment she thought this portended some terrible fate, her death, or something equally frightful; the next, she lost all sense of what she was doing.

This powerful impression was evidently connected in some way with the horses. The predisposition of the patient to react in such an exaggerated fashion to a not very remarkable incident, might result from the fact that horses had some special significance for her. It might be suspected that she had experienced some dangerous accident with them; this actually turned out to be the case. When a child of about seven years old she was out for a drive with the coachman; the horses shied and galloped at full speed towards a steep river-bank. The coachman jumped down, and shouted to her to do the same, but in her extreme terror she could scarcely bring herself to obey. She did, however, just manage to jump out in the nick of time, whilst the horses and carriage were dashed to pieces below. No proof is needed that such an experience must leave a lasting impression behind it. But it does not offer any explanation for such an exaggerated reaction to an inadequate stimulus. So far we only know that this later symptom had its prologue in childhood, but its pathological aspect remains obscure. To penetrate into the heart of such a mystery it was necessary to accumulate further material. And the greater our experience the clearer does it become that in all cases with such traumatic experiences analysed up to the present, there co-exists a special kind of disturbance which can only be described as a derangement in the sphere of love. Not all of us give due credit to the anomalous nature of love, reaching high as heaven, sinking low as hell, uniting in itself all extremes of good and evil, of lofty and low.[225]

As soon as Freud recognised this, a decisive change came about in his view. In his earlier researches, whilst more or less dominated by Charcot's trauma-theory, he had sought for the origin of the neurosis in actual traumatic experiences; but now the centre of gravity shifted to a very different point. This is best demonstrated by reference to our case; we can understand that horses might easily play a significant part in the patient's life, but it is not clear why there should be this later reaction, so exaggerated, so uncalled for. It is not her fear of horses which forms the morbid factor in this curious story; to get at the real truth we must remember our empirical conclusion, that, side by side with traumatic experiences, there is also invariably present some disturbance in the sphere of love. We must now go on to inquire whether perhaps there is anything unsatisfactory in this respect in the case under review.