Collected Papers on Analytical Psychology

by C. G. Jung

Case 3.—A thirty-six year old peasant woman, of average intelligence, healthy appearance and robust build, mother of three healthy children. Comfortable family circumstances. Patient comes to the hospital for treatment for the following reasons: for some weeks she has been terribly wretched and anxious, has been sleeping badly, has terrifying dreams, and suffers also during the day from anxiety and depression. All these things are admittedly without foundation, she herself is surprised at them, and must admit her husband is perfectly right when he insists they are all "stuff and nonsense." All the same she cannot get away from them. Strange ideas come to her too; she is going to die and is going to hell. She gets on very well with her husband.

The psychoanalytic examination of the case immediately brought the following: some weeks before, she happened to take up some religious tracts which had long lain about the house unread. There she read that swearers would go to hell. She took this very much to heart, and has since thought it incumbent on her to prevent people swearing or she herself will go to hell. About a fortnight before she read these tracts, her father, who lived with her, suddenly died from a stroke. She was not actually present at his death, but arrived when he was already dead. Her terror and grief were very great.

In the days following the death she thought much about it all, wondering why her father had to meet his end so abruptly. In the midst of such meditations it suddenly occurred to her that the last words she had heard her father say were: "I also am one of those who have fallen from the cart into the devil's clutches." The remembrance filled her with grief, and she recalled how often her father had sworn savagely. She wondered then whether there really were a life after death, and whether her father were in heaven or hell. During these musings she came across the tracts and began to read them, getting to the place where it said that swearers go to hell. Then came upon her great fear and terror; she overwhelmed herself with reproaches, she ought to have stopped her father's swearing, deserved punishment for her neglect. She would die and would be condemned to hell. Henceforth she was full of sorrow, moody, tormented her husband with this obsessive idea, and renounced all joy and happiness.

The patient's life-history (reproduced partly in her own words) is as follows:—

She is the youngest of five brothers and sisters and was always her father's favourite. The father gave her everything she wanted if he possibly could. For instance, if she wanted a new dress and her mother refused it, she could be sure her father would bring her one next time he went to town. The mother died rather early. At twenty-four the patient married the man of her choice, against her father's wishes. The father simply disapproved of her choice although he had nothing particular against the man. After the wedding she made her father come and live with them. That seemed a matter of course, she said, since the other relations had never suggested having him with them. The father was a quarrelsome swearer and drunkard. Husband and father-in-law, as may easily be imagined, got on extremely badly together. The patient would always meekly fetch her father spirits from the inn, although this gave rise perpetually to anger and altercations. But she finds her husband "all right." He is a good, patient fellow with only one failing: he does not obey her father enough; she finds that incomprehensible, and would rather have her husband knuckle under to her father. All said and done, father is still father. In the frequent quarrels she always took her father's part. But she has nothing to say against her husband and he is usually right in his protests, but one must help one's father.

Soon it began to seem to her that she had sinned against her father by marrying against his will, and she often felt, after one of these incessant wrangles, that her love for her husband had quite vanished. And since her father's death it is impossible to love her husband any longer, for his disobedience was the most frequent occasion of her father's fits of raging and swearing. At one time the quarrelling became too painful for the husband, and he induced his wife to find rooms for her father elsewhere, where he lived for two years. During this time husband and wife lived together peaceably and happily. But by degrees the patient began to reproach herself for letting her father live alone; in spite of everything he was her father. And in the end, despite the husband's protests, she fetched him home again because, as she said, in truth she did love her father better than her husband. Scarcely was the old man back in the house before strife was renewed. And so it went on till the father's sudden death.

After this recital she broke out into a whole series of lamentations: she must separate from her husband: she would have done it long ago if it were not for the children. She had indeed done an ill-deed, committed a very great sin when she married her husband against her father's wish. She ought to have taken the man whom her father had wanted her to have. He certainly would have obeyed her father and then everything would have been right. Oh, her husband was not by a long way so kind as her father, she could do anything with her father, but not with her husband. Her father had given her everything she wanted. Now she would best of all like to die, so that she might be with her father.

When this outburst was over, I inquired eagerly on what grounds she had refused the husband her father had suggested to her.

The father, a small peasant on a lean little farm, had taken as a servant, just at the time when his youngest daughter came into the world, a miserable little boy, a foundling. The boy developed in most unpleasant fashion: he was so stupid that he could not learn to read or write or even speak quite properly. He was an absolute idiot. As he approached manhood there developed on his neck a series of ulcers, some of which opened and continually discharged pus, giving such a dirty, ugly creature a horrible appearance. His intelligence did not grow with his years, so he stayed on as servant in the peasant's house without any recognised wage.

To this youth the father wanted to marry his favourite daughter.