Collected Papers on Analytical Psychology

by C. G. Jung

VII.—Analytical (Causal-reductive) Interpretation.[243]

This interpretation may be summed up in a sentence: "I understand that I ought to get to the other side of the stream (that is, give up the relation with the friend), but I would much rather that my friend did not let me out of her claws (embrace)." That is, expressed as an infantile wish: Mother would like to attract me to herself again by the well-known mode of enthusiastic embraces. The incompatibility of the wish lies in the strong under-current of homosexuality, the existence of which had been abundantly proved by obvious facts. The crab seizes her foot. The patient having big, "manly" feet, she plays a masculine part towards her friend, having also corresponding sexual fantasies. The foot is known to have phallic significance. (Detailed evidence of this is to be found in Aigremont's writings.) The complete interpretation would run as follows: The reason why she will not let her friend go is because her unconscious homosexual wishes are set upon her. As these wishes are morally and æsthetically incompatible with the tendency of the conscious personality, they are repressed, and therefore unconscious. The fear is an expression of this repressed wish.

This interpretation is exceedingly depreciative of the patient's high-pitched conscious ideal of friendship. It is true at this point in analysis she would no longer have taken this interpretation amiss. Some time before certain facts had sufficiently convinced her of her homosexual tendency, so that she was able to acknowledge the existence of this inclination frankly, although it was of course painful for her to do so. Therefore if, at this stage of the treatment, I had informed her that this was the interpretation, I should not have encountered resistances from her. She had already overcome the painfulness of this unwelcome tendency by understanding it. But she would have said to me: "Why do we analyse this dream at all? It is only repeating what I have now known for a long while." It is true this interpretation does not reveal anything new to the patient, and it is therefore uninteresting and ineffective. This kind of interpretation would at the beginning of the treatment have been impossible in this case, because the patient's prudishness would under no circumstances have acknowledged it. The "venom" of understanding had to be instilled very carefully, and in the smallest of doses, until the patient gradually became more enlightened. But when the analytical or causal-reductive interpretation, instead of furnishing something new, persistently brings the same material in different variations, then the moment has come when another mode of interpretation is called for. The causal-reductive procedure has certain drawbacks. First, it does not take strictly into account the patient's associations—e.g. in this case the association of the illness ("cancer") with "crab" (Krebs = cancer). Second, the particular choice of symbol remains obscure. For instance, why does the friend-mother appear as a crab? A prettier and more plastic representation would have been a nymph. ("Half dragged she him, half sank he down,"[244] etc.) An octopus, a dragon, a serpent, or a fish could have performed the same services. Third, the causal-reductive procedure completely ignores that a dream is a subjective phenomenon, and that consequently even an exhaustive interpretation can never connect the crab with the mother or the friend, but only with the dreamer's idea of them. The whole dream is the dreamer; she is the stream, the crossing, and the crab. That is to say these details are expressions of psychological conditions and tendencies in the subject's unconscious.

I have therefore introduced the following terminology. I call interpretations in which the dream symbols are treated as representations of the real objects interpretation upon the objective plane. The opposite interpretation is that which connects every fragment of the dream (e.g. all the persons who do anything) with the dreamer himself. This is interpretation upon the subjective plane. Objective interpretation is analytical, because it dissects the dream contents into complexes of reminiscence, and finds their relation to real conditions. Subjective interpretation is synthetic, because it detaches the fundamental underlying complexes of reminiscence from their actual causes, regarding them as tendencies or parts of the subject, and reintegrating them with the subject. (In experiencing something I do not merely experience the object, but in the first place myself, although this is only the case if I render myself account of the experience.)

The synthetic or constructive procedure of interpretation[245] is therefore based upon the version on the subjective plane.

VIII.—The Synthetic (Constructive) Interpretation.

The patient is unconscious of the fact that it is in herself that the obstacle lies which should be overcome, the boundary that is difficult to cross which impedes further progress. But it is possible to cross the boundary. It is true that just here a peculiar and unexpected peril threatens, namely, something "animal" (non-human or super-human) which moves backwards and goes into the depths of the stream, wanting to draw down the dreamer as a whole personality. This danger is, moreover, like the deadly disease of cancer, which begins secretly somewhere, and is incurable (overpowering). The patient imagines that her friend hinders her, pulling her down. So long as this is her belief she must perforce influence her friend, "draw her up," teach, improve, educate her, and make futile and impractically idealistic efforts in order to avoid being dragged down herself. Of course, the friend makes similar endeavours, being in a like case with the patient. So both of them keep jumping upon each other like fighting cocks, each trying to fly over the other's head. The higher the point to which the one screws herself, the higher must the other also try to get. Why? Because each thinks the fault lies in the other, in the object. Interpretation of the dream on the subjective plane brings deliverance from this absurdity, for it shows the patient that she has something in herself that is hindering her from crossing the boundary; that is, from getting out of the one position or attitude into another. To interpret change of place as change of attitude is supported by the mode of expression in certain primitive languages, where, e.g., the phrase "I am on the point of going," is "I am at the place of going." In order to understand the language of dreams, we need plenty of parallels from the psychology of primitive peoples, as well as from historical symbolism. This is so because dreams originate in the unconscious, which contains the residual potentialities of function of all preceding epochs of the history of the evolution of man.

Obviously, in our interpretation everything now depends upon understanding what is meant by the crab. We know that it symbolizes something that comes to light in the friend (she connects the crab with the friend), and also something that came to light in the mother. Whether both mother and friend really have this quality in them is irrelevant as regards the patient. The situation will only be changed when the patient herself has changed. Nothing can be changed in the mother because she is dead. The friend cannot be urged to alter; if she wants to alter herself, that is her own affair. The fact that the quality in question is associated with the mother indicates that it is something infantile. What is there in common in the patient's relation both to her mother and her friend? What is common to both is a violently extravagant demand for love, the patient feeling herself overwhelmed by its passion. This claim is an overpowering infantile craving which is characteristically blind. What is in question here is a part of her libido that has not been educated, differentiated, nor humanized, retaining still the compulsive character of an instinct, because it has not yet been tamed by domestication. An animal is a perfectly appropriate symbol for this rôle of libido. But why is the animal a crab in this particular instance? The patient associates cancer with it, of which disease Mrs. X. died at the age the patient has just reached. It may, therefore, well be that this is an allusion to an identification with Mrs. X. We must therefore make inquiries about this Mrs. X. The patient relates the following facts about her: Mrs. X. was widowed early; she was very cheerful and enjoyed life. She had a number of adventures with men, especially with one particular man, a gifted artist, who the patient herself knew personally and who always impressed her as very fascinating and weird.

An identification can only result from an unrecognized unconscious resemblance. Now what is the resemblance between our patient and Mrs. X.? I was able here to remind the patient of a series of former fantasies and dreams, which had shown plainly that she also had a frivolous vein in her, although anxiously repressing it, because she vaguely feared it might seduce her to an immoral life. We have now gained a further essential contribution for a right understanding of the "animal" rôle, which evidently represents an untamed, instinctive greed, which in this case is directed to men. At the same time we understand a further reason why she cannot let go of her friend. She must cling to her in order not to fall a prey to this other tendency, which seems so much more dangerous. By these means she remains at an infantile homosexual stage, which serves her as a defence. (Experience proves this erection of defences to be one of the most effective motives for the retention of unadapted, infantile relations.) But in this missing libido in the animal rôle lies her well-being, the germ of her future healthy personality, which does not shrink from the hazards of human life.