Collected Papers on Analytical Psychology

by C. G. Jung

As already stated, Freud sees the great conflict between the ego and natural instinct chiefly under its sexual aspect. This aspect does exist, but a big query should be placed behind its actuality. The question is whether what appears in a sexual form must always essentially be sexuality? It is conceivable that one instinct may disguise itself under another. Freud himself has supplied several notable instances of such a disguise, proving therewith, convincingly, that many of the deeds and aims of human kind are, at bottom, nothing but somewhat figurative expressions substituted, on account of embarrassment, in place of important elementary things. The substitution is not seen through on account of reasons of mutual consideration. There is nothing to hinder certain elementary things being also pushed conveniently into the foreground, in place of more necessary but less pleasant ones, under the illusion that the elementary things only are really in question.

The theory of sexuality although one-sided is absolutely right up to a certain point. It would, therefore, be just as false to repudiate it as to accept it as universally valid.

III.—The other Viewpoint: the Will to Power.

We have so far considered the problem of the psychology of unconscious processes mainly from the point of view of Freud. We have thereby doubtless gained an inkling of a real truth, which perhaps our pride, our consciousness of civilisation, tries to deny, although something else in us affirms it. This situation is extremely irritating to some people, arousing resistances, and at the same time they are terror-stricken by it, a fact which they are most unwilling to acknowledge. There is something terrible in admitting this conflict, for it is an acknowledgment of being swayed by instinct. Has it ever been understood what it means to confess to the sway of instinct? Nietzsche desired to be so swayed and advocated it most seriously. He even sacrificed himself throughout his whole life, with rare passion, to the idea of the Superman, that is to the idea of the man who, obeying his instincts, transcends even his very self. And what was the course of his life? It turned out as Nietzsche himself prophesied in the passage in "Zarathustra" relating to the fatal fall of the rope-dancer, of the man who did not want to be "surpassed." Zarathustra says to the dying rope-dancer: "Thy soul will be dead even sooner than thy body." And later, the dwarf says to Zarathustra: "Oh, Zarathustra, thou stone of wisdom! Thou threwest thyself high, but every thrown-stone must fall! Condemned of thyself, and to thine own stoning: oh, Zarathustra, far indeed threwest thou the stone—but upon thyself will it recoil!"

When he cried his "ecce homo" over himself, it was again too late, and the crucifixion of the soul began even before the body was dead. He who thus taught yea-saying to the instincts of life, must have his own career looked at critically, in order to discover the effects of this teaching upon the teacher. But if we consider his life from this point of view, we must say that Nietzsche lived beyond instinct, in the lofty atmosphere of heroic "sublimity." This height could only be maintained by means of most careful diet, choice climate and above all by many opiates. Finally, the tension of this living shattered his brain. He spoke of yea-saying, but lived the nay. His horror of people, especially of the animal man, who lives by instinct, was too great. He could not swallow the toad of which he so often dreamt, and which he feared he must yet gulp down. The Zarathustrian lion roared all the "higher" men, who craved for life, back into the cavernous depths of the unconscious. That is why his life does not convince us of the truth of his teaching. The "higher man" should be able to sleep without chloral, and be competent to live in Naumburg or Basle despite "the fogs and shadows." He wants woman and offspring; he needs to feel he has some value and position in the herd, he longs for innumerable commonplaces, and not least for what is humdrum: it is this instinct that Nietzsche did not recognise; it is, in other words, the natural animal instinct for life.

But how did he live if it was not from natural impulse? Should Nietzsche really be accused of a practical denial of his natural instincts? He would hardly agree to that; indeed he might even prove, and that without difficulty, that he really was following his instincts in the highest sense. But we may well ask how is it possible that human instincts could have led him so far from humanity, into absolute isolation, into an aloofness from the herd which he supported with loathing and disgust? One would have thought that instinct would have united, would have coupled and begot, that it would tend towards pleasure and good cheer, towards gratification of all sensual desires. But we have quite overlooked the fact that this is only one of the possible directions of instinct. There exists not only the instinct for the preservation of the species (the sexual instinct), but also the instinct for the preservation of the self.

Nietzsche obviously speaks of this latter instinct, that is of the will to power. Whatever other kinds of instinct may exist are for him only a consequence of the will to power. Viewed from the standpoint of Freud's sexual-psychology this is a gross error, a misconception of biology, a bad choice made by a decadent neurotic human being. For it would be easy for any adherent of sexual psychology to prove that all that was too lofty, too heroic, in Nietzsche's conception of the world and of life, was nothing but a consequence of the repression and misconception of "instinct," that is of the instinct that this psychology considers fundamental.

This brings us to the question of perception, or rather it were better to say of the various lenses through which the world may be perceived. For it would hardly be permissible to pronounce a judgment on a life like Nietzsche's. It was lived with rare consistency, from the beginning to the fateful end, in accordance with his underlying natural fundamental instinct for power. It would hardly do to pronounce it to be merely figurative, otherwise we should make the same unjust condemnation that Nietzsche pronounced upon his polar opposite Richard Wagner, of whom he said, "Everything in him is false; what is genuine is hidden or disguised. He is an actor, in every bad and good meaning of the word." Why this judgment? Wagner is a precise representative of that other fundamental instinct, which Nietzsche overlooked, and upon which Freud's psychology is based. If we inquire whether the other main instinct—that of power—was unconsidered by Freud, we shall find that he has included it under the name of the "ego instinct." But these ego instincts drag out an obscure existence, according to his psychology, alongside the broad, all-too-broad, development of the sexual theme. In reality, however, human nature wages a cruel and hardly-to-be-ended warfare between the ego-principle and that of formless instinct. The ego is all barriers; instinct, on the other hand, is without any limits. Both principles are equally powerful. In a certain sense men may account themselves fortunate in being conscious of only one instinct: therefore he who is wise avoids getting to know the other. But if, after all, he does get to know the other instinct, he is indeed a lost man. For then he enters upon the Faustian conflict. Goethe has shown us in the first part of "Faust" what the acceptance of instinct involves, and in the second part, what the acceptance of the ego and of his gruesome unconscious world would signify. Everything that is insignificant, petty, and cowardly in us shrinks from it, and would avoid it—and there is one admirable means of doing so. Namely, by discovering that the other thing in us is "another fellow," a live man who actually thinks, feels, does and desires all the things that are despicable and odious. In this way the bogey is seized, and the battle against him is begun to our satisfaction. Hence arise, also, those chronic idiosyncrasies of which the history of morals has preserved a few examples for us. The instance of Nietzsche contra Wagner, already cited, is particularly transparent. But ordinary human life is crammed full of such cases. It is by these ingenuous devices that man saves himself from the Faustian catastrophe for which he evidently lacks both courage and strength. But a sincere man knows that even his bitterest opponent, or any number of them, does not by any means equal his one worst adversary, that is his other self who "bides within his breast." Nietzsche unconsciously had Wagner in himself, that is why he envied him his Parsifal. But even worse, he was a Saul and also had Paul within. That is why Nietzsche became a stigmatised outcast of the Spirit; he had like Saul to experience Christification when "the other self" inspired him with his "ecce homo." Which man in him "broke down before the cross," Wagner or Nietzsche?

It was ordained by destiny that one of Freud's earliest pupils, Adler,[234] should formulate a view of neurosis as founded exclusively upon the principle of power. It is interesting and even fascinating to observe how totally different the same things appear when viewed in another light. In order to emphasise the main contrast, I would like at once to draw attention to the fact that, according to Freud, everything is a strictly causal consequence of previously-occurring facts; Adler, on the contrary, sees everything as a finally conditioned arrangement. To take a simple example: A young woman begins to have attacks of terror. She wakes at night from some nightmare with a piercing cry; calming herself with difficulty, she clings to her husband, imploring him not to leave her, making him repeat again and again that he loves her, etc. Gradually a nervous asthma develops, attacks of which also come on during the day.

In such a case, the Freudian system begins at once to burrow in the inner causality of the illness: What did the initial anxiety-dreams contain. She recalls wild bulls, lions, tigers, bad men. What does the patient associate with them? She told a story of something that had happened to her when she was still single. It ran as follows: She was staying at a summer-resort in the mountains, a great deal of tennis was played, the usual acquaintances being made. There was a young Italian who played particularly well, and who also knew how to handle the guitar in the evenings. A harmless flirtation developed, leading once to a moon-light walk. On this occasion, the Italian temperament "unexpectedly" broke through, running away with the young man to the great terror of the unsuspecting girl. He "looked at her with such a look," that she could never forget it. This look follows her even in her dreams; the wild animals that persecuted her had it. As a matter of fact, does this look originally come from the Italian? Another reminiscence enlightens us. The patient had lost her father through an accident, when she was about fourteen years old. The father was a man of the world, and travelled a great deal. Not long before his death he took her to Paris, where, among other things, they visited the Follies Bergères. Something happened there that at the time made a deep impression upon her. As they were leaving the theatre, a rouged female suddenly pressed close up to her father in an impertinent way. She looked at her father in fear as to what he would do—and then she saw that look, that animal glare in his eyes. An inexplicable something clung to her day and night. From this moment her attitude to her father was quite changed. At one instant she was irritable and full of venomous moods, at another she loved him extravagantly; then causeless fits of crying suddenly began, and, for a time, whenever her father was at home, she was tormented by terrible choking at table, with apparent attacks of suffocation, which were usually followed by voicelessness lasting from one to two days. When the news of her father's sudden death arrived, she was overcome by uncontrolled grief ending in hysterical laughter. But she soon calmed down, her condition improving quickly, and the neurotic symptoms disappearing almost completely. It seemed as if a veil of forgetfulness had descended over the past. Only the experience with the Italian roused something in her of which she was afraid. She had broken off completely with the young man. A few years later she married. The present neurosis only began after the birth of her second child, that is at the moment when she discovered that her husband took a certain tender interest in another woman.