The Theory of Psychoanalysis

by C. G. Jung

In the child’s unconsciousness, the phantasies are considerably simplified, in relation to the proportions of the infantile surroundings. Thanks to the united efforts of the psychoanalytic school, we discovered that the most frequent phantasy of childhood is the so-called Œdipus-complex. This designation also seems as paradoxical as possible. We know that the tragic fate of Œdipus consisted in his loving his mother and slaying his father. This conflict of later life seems to be far remote from the child’s mind. To the uninitiated it seems inconceivable that the child should have this conflict. After careful reflection it will become clear that the tertium comparationis consists just in this narrow limitation of the fate of Œdipus within the bounds of the family. These limitations are very typical for the child, for parents are never the boundary for the adult person to the same extent. The Œdipus-complex represents an infantile conflict, but with the exaggeration of the adult. The term Œdipus-complex does not mean, naturally, that this conflict is considered as occurring in the adult form, but in a corresponding form suitable to childhood. The little son would like to have the mother all to himself and to be rid of the father. As you know, little children can sometimes force themselves between the parents in the most jealous way. The wishes and aims get, in the unconscious, a more concrete and a more drastic form. Children are small primitive people and are therefore quickly ready to kill. But as a child is, in general, harmless, so his apparently dangerous wishes are, as a rule, also harmless. I say “as a rule,” as you know that children, too, sometimes give way to their impulses to murder, and this not always in any indirect fashion. But just as the child, in general, is incapable of making systematic projects, as little dangerous are his intentions to murder. The same holds good of an Œdipus-view toward the mother. The small traces of this phantasy in the conscious can easily be overlooked; therefore nearly all parents are convinced that their children have no Œdipus-complex. Parents as well as lovers are generally blind. If I now say that the Œdipus-complex is in the first place only a formula for the childish desire towards parents, and for the conflict which this craving evokes, this statement of the situation will be more readily accepted. The history of the Œdipus-phantasy is of special interest, as it teaches us very much about the development of the unconscious phantasies. Naturally, people think that the problem of Œdipus is the problem of the son. But this is, astonishingly enough, only an illusion. Under some circumstances the libido-sexualis reaches that definite differentiation of puberty corresponding to the sex of the individual relatively late. The libido sexualis has before this time an undifferentiated sexual character, which can be also termed bisexual. Therefore it is not astonishing if little girls possess the Œdipus-complex too. As far as I can see, the first love of the child belongs to the mother, no matter which its sex. If the love for the mother at this stage is intense, the father is jealously kept away as a rival. Of course, for the child itself, the mother has in this early stage of childhood no sexual significance of any importance. The term “Œdipus-complex” is in so far not really suitable. At this stage the mother has still the significance of a protecting, enveloping, food-providing being, who, on this account, is a source of delight. I do not identify, as I explained before, the feeling of delight eo ipso with sexuality. In earliest childhood but a slight amount of sexuality is connected with this feeling of delight. But, nevertheless, jealousy can play a great part in it, as jealousy does not belong entirely to the sphere of sexuality. The desire for food has much to do with the first impulses of jealousy. Certainly, a relatively germinating eroticism is also connected with it. This element gradually increases as the years go on, so that the Œdipus-complex soon assumes its classical form. In the case of the son, the conflict develops in a more masculine and therefore more typical form, whilst in the daughter, the typical affection for the father develops, with a correspondingly jealous attitude toward the mother. We call this complex, the Electra-complex. As everybody knows, Electra took revenge on her mother for the murder of her husband, because that mother had robbed her of her father.

Both phantasy-complexes develop with growing age, and reach a new stage after puberty, when the emancipation from the parents is more or less attained. The symbol of this time is the one already previously mentioned; it is the symbol of self-sacrifice. The more the sexuality develops the more the individual is forced to leave his family and to acquire independence and autonomy. By its history, the child is closely connected with its family and specially with its parents. In consequence, it is often with the greatest difficulty that the child is able to free itself from its infantile surroundings. The Œdipus- and Electra-complex give rise to a conflict, if adults cannot succeed in spiritually freeing themselves; hence arises the possibility of neurotic disturbance. The libido, which is already sexually developed, takes possession of the form given by the complex and produces feelings and phantasies which unmistakably show the effective existence of the complex, till then perfectly unconscious. The next consequence is the formation of intense resistances against the immoral inner impulses which are derived from the now active complexes. The conscious attitude arising out of this can be of different kinds. Either the consequences are direct, and then we notice in the son strong resistances against the father and a typical affectionate and dependent attitude toward the mother; or the consequences are indirect, that is to say, compensated, and we notice, instead of the resistances toward the father, a typical submissiveness here, and an irritated antagonistic attitude toward the mother. It is possible that direct and compensated consequences take place alternately. The same thing is to be said of the Electra-complex. If the libido-sexualis were to cleave fast to these particular forms of the conflict, murder and incest would be the consequence of the Œdipus and Electra conflicts. These consequences are naturally not found among normal people, and not even among amoral (“moral” here implying the possession of a rationalized and codified moral system) primitive persons, or humanity would have become extinct long ago. On the contrary, it is in the natural order of things that what surrounds us daily and has surrounded us, loses its compelling charm and thus forces the libido to search for new objects, an important rule which prevents parricide and inbreeding.

The further development of the libido toward objects outside the family is the absolutely normal and right way of proceeding, and it is an abnormal and morbid phenomenon if the libido remains, as it were, glued to the family. Some indications of this phenomenon are nevertheless to be noticed in normal people. A direct outcome of the infantile-complex is the unconscious phantasy of self-sacrifice, which occurs after puberty, in the succeeding stage of development. Of this I gave a detailed example in my work, “Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido.” The phantasy of self-sacrifice means sacrificing infantile wishes. I have shown this in the work just mentioned and in the same place I have referred to the parallels in the history of religions.

The Problems of the Incest-Complex

Freud has a special conception of the incest-complex which has given rise to heated controversy. He starts from the fact that the Œdipus-complex is generally unconscious, and conceives this as the result of a repression of a moral kind. It is possible that I am not expressing myself quite correctly, when I give you Freud’s view in these words. At any rate, according to him the Œdipus-complex seems to be repressed, that is, seems to be removed into the unconscious by a reaction from the conscious tendencies. It almost looks as if the Œdipus-complex would develop into consciousness if the development of the child were to go on without restraint and if no cultural tendencies influenced it. Freud calls this barrier, which prevents the Œdipus-complex from ripening, the incest-barrier. He seems to believe, so far as one can gather from his work, that the incest-barrier is the result of experience, of the selective influence of reality, inasmuch as the unconscious strives without restraint, and in an immediate way, for its own satisfaction, without any consideration for others. This conception is in harmony with the conception of Schopenhauer, who says of the blind world-will that it is so egoistic that a man could slay his brother merely to grease his boots with his brother’s fat. Freud considers that the psychological incest-barrier, as postulated by him, can be compared with the incest-taboo which we find among inferior races. He further believes that these prohibitions are a proof of the fact that men really desired incest, for which reason laws were framed against it even in very primitive cultural stages. He takes the tendency towards incest to be an absolute concrete sexual wish, lacking only the quality of consciousness. He calls this complex the root-complex, or nucleus, of the neuroses, and is inclined, viewing this as the original one, to reduce nearly the whole psychology of the neuroses, as well as many other phenomena in the world of mind, to this complex.

CHAPTER VIII
The Etiology of the Neuroses

With this conception of Freud’s we have to return to the question of the etiology of the neuroses. We have seen that the psychoanalytic theory began with a traumatic event in childhood, which was only later on found to be a phantasy, at least in many cases. In consequence, the theory became modified, and tried to find in the development of abnormal phantasy the main etiological significance. The investigation of the unconscious, made by the collaboration of many workers, carried on over a space of ten years, provided an extensive empirical material, which demonstrated that the incest-complex was the beginning of the morbid phantasies. But it was no longer thought that the incest-complex was a special complex of neurotic people. It was demonstrated to be a constituent of a normal infantile psyche too. We cannot tell, by its mere existence, if this complex will give rise to a neurosis or not. To become pathogenic, it must give rise to a conflict; that is, the complex, which in itself is harmless, has to become dynamic, and thus give rise to a conflict.

Herewith, we come to a new and important question. The whole etiological problem is altered, if the infantile “root-complex” is only a general form, which is not pathogenic in itself, and requires, as we saw in our previous exposition, to be subsequently set in action. Under these circumstances, we dig in vain among the reminiscences of earliest childhood, as they give us only the general forms of the later conflicts, but not the conflict itself.

I believe the best thing I can do is to describe the further development of the theory by demonstrating the case of that young lady whose story you have heard in part in one of the former lectures. You will probably remember that the shying of the horses, by means of the anamnestic explanation, brought back the reminiscence of a comparable scene in childhood. We here discussed the trauma theory. We found that we had to look for the real pathological element in the exaggerated phantasy, which took its origin in a certain retardation of the psychic sexual development. We have now to apply our theoretical standpoint to the origin of this particular type of illness, so that we may understand how, just at that moment, this event of her childhood, which seemed to be of such potency, could come to constellation.

The simplest way to come to an understanding of this important event would be by making an exact inquiry into the circumstances of the moment. The first thing I did was to question the patient about the society in which she had been at that time, and as to what was the farewell gathering to which she had been just before. She had been at a farewell supper, given in honor of her best friend, who was going to a foreign health-resort for a nervous illness. We hear that this friend is happily married, and is the mother of one child. We have some right to doubt this assertion of her happiness. If she were really happily married, she probably would not be nervous and would not need a cure. When I put my question differently, I learned that my patient had been brought back into the host’s house as soon as she was overtaken by her friends, as this house was the nearest place to bring her to in safety. In her exhausted condition she received his hospitality. As the patient came to this part of her history she suddenly broke off, was embarrassed, fidgetted and tried to turn to another subject. Evidently we had now come upon some disagreeable reminiscences, which suddenly presented themselves. After the patient had overcome obstinate resistances, it was admitted that something very remarkable had happened that night. The host made her a passionate declaration of love, thus giving rise to a situation that might well be considered difficult and painful, considering the absence of the hostess. Ostensibly this declaration came like a flash of lightning from a clear sky. A small dose of criticism applied to this assertion will teach us that these things never drop from the clouds, but have always their previous history. It was the work of the following weeks to dig out piecemeal a whole, long love-story.