The Theory of Psychoanalysis

by C. G. Jung

The Significance of the Actual Conflict

In the case I have described, we saw that we could understand the symptomatological dramatization as soon as it could be conceived as an expression of the actual conflict. Here the psychoanalytic theory agrees with the results of the association-experiments, of which I spoke in my lectures[^[10]] at Clark University. The association-experiment, with a neurotic person, gives us a series of references to certain conflicts of the actual life, which we call complexes. These complexes contain those problems and difficulties which have brought the patient into opposition with himself. Generally we find a love-conflict of an obvious character. From the standpoint of the association-experiment, neurosis seems to be something quite different from what it appeared from the standpoint of the earlier psychoanalytic theory. Considered from the standpoint of the latter theory, neurosis seemed to be a growth which had its roots in earliest childhood, and overgrew the normal structure. Considered from the standpoint of the association-experiment, neurosis seems to be a reaction from an actual conflict, which is naturally found also among normal people, but among them the conflict is solved without too great difficulty. The neurotic remains in the grip of his conflict, and his neurosis seems, more or less, to be the consequence of this stagnation. So we may say that the result of the association-experiments tell in favor of the theory of regression.

With the former historical conception of neurosis, we thought we understood clearly why a neurotic person, with his powerful parent-complex, had such great difficulty in adapting himself to life. Now that we know that normal persons have the same complex, and in principle have to pass through just the same psychological development as a neurotic, we can no longer explain neurosis as a certain development of phantasy-systems. The really illuminating way to put the problem is a prospective one. We do not ask any longer if the patient has a father- or a mother-complex, or unconscious incest-phantasies which worry him. To-day, we know that every one has such things. The belief that only neurotics had these complexes was an error. We ask now: What is the task which the patient does not wish to fulfil? From which necessary difficulties of life does the patient try to withdraw himself?

When people try always to adapt themselves to the conditions of life, the libido is employed rightly and adequately. When this is not the case, the libido is stored up and produces regressive symptoms. The inadequate adaptation, that is to say, the abnormal indecision of neurotics in face of difficulties, is easily accounted for by their strong subjection to their phantasies, in consequence of which reality seems to them, wholly or partly, more unreal, valueless and uninteresting than to normal people. These heightened phantasies are the results of innumerable regressions. The ultimate and deepest root is the innate sensitiveness, which causes difficulties even to the infant at the mother’s breast, in the form of unnecessary irritation and resistances. Call it sensitiveness or whatever you like, this unknown element of predisposition is in every case of neurosis.

The Etiological Significance of Phantasy Criticized

The apparent etiological development of neurosis, discovered by psychoanalysis, is in reality only the work of causally connected phantasies, which the patient has created from that libido which at times he did not employ in the biological adaptation. Thus, these apparently etiological phantasies seem to be forms of compensation, disguises, for an unfulfilled adaptation to reality. The vicious circle previously mentioned between the withdrawing in the face of difficulties and the regression into the world of phantasies, is naturally well-suited to give the illusion of an apparent striking causal relationship, so that both the patient and the physician believe in it. In such a development accidental experiences are only “extenuating circumstances.” I feel I must make allowance for those critics who, on reading the history of psychoanalytic patients, get the impression of phantastic elaboration. Only they make the mistake of attributing the phantastic artefacts and far-fetched arbitrary symbolism to the suggestion and to the awful phantasy of the physician, instead of to the unequalled fertility of phantasy on the part of the patient. Of a truth, there is a good deal of artificial elaboration in the phantasies of a psychoanalytic case. There are generally significant signs of the patient’s active imagination. The critics are not so wrong when they say that their neurotic patients have no such phantasies. I have no doubt that patients are unconscious of the greater part of their own phantasies. A phantasy only “really” exists in the unconscious, when it has some notable effect upon the conscious, e. g., in the form of a dream; otherwise, we may say with a clear conscience that it is not real. Every one who overlooks the frequently nearly imperceptible effects of unconscious phantasies upon the conscious, or renounces the fundamental, and technically incontestable analysis of dreams, can easily overlook the phantasies of his patients altogether. We are, therefore, inclined to smile when we hear this repeated objection. But we must admit that there is some truth in it. The regressive tendency of the patient is strengthened by the attention bestowed on it, and directed to the unconscious, that is to say, to the phantasies he discovers and forms during analysis. We might even perhaps go so far as to say that, during the time of analysis, this phantasy-production is greatly increased, as the patient is strengthened in his regressive tendency, by the interest taken by the physician and originates even more phantasies than he did before. Hence, our critics have repeatedly stated that a conscientious therapy of the neurosis should go in exactly the opposite direction to that taken by psychoanalysis; in other words, it has been the chief endeavor of therapy, hitherto, to extricate the patient from his unhealthy phantasies and bring him back again to real life.

CHAPTER IX
The Therapeutical Principles of Psychoanalysis

While the psychoanalyst, of course, knows of this therapeutic tendency to extricate the patient from his unhealthy phantasies, he also knows just how far this mere extricating of neurotic patients from their phantasies goes. As physicians, we should never think of preferring a difficult and complicated method, assailed by all authorities, to a simple, clear and easy one without good reason. I am perfectly well-acquainted with hypnotic suggestion, and with Dubois’ method of persuasion, but I do not use these methods, on account of their relative inadequacy. For the same reason, I do not use the direct “ré-éducation de la volonté” as the psychoanalytic method gives me better results.

In applying psychoanalysis we must grant the regressive phantasies of the patient, for psychoanalysis has a much broader outlook, as regards the valuation of symptoms, than have the above psychotherapeutic methods. These all emanate from the assertion that a neurosis is an absolute morbid formation.

The reigning school of neurology has never thought of considering neurosis as a healing process also, and of attributing to the neurotic formations a quite special teleological meaning. Neurosis, like every other disease, is a compromise between the morbid tendencies, and the normal function. Modern medicine no longer considers fever as the illness itself, but a purposeful reaction of the organism. Psychoanalysis, likewise, no longer conceives a neurosis as eo ipso morbid, but as also having a meaning and a purpose. From this there follows the more reserved and expectant attitude of psychoanalysis towards neurosis. Psychoanalysis does not judge the value of the symptoms, but first tries to understand what tendencies lie beneath these symptoms. If we were able to abolish a neurosis in the same way, for instance, as a cancer is destroyed, then at the same time there would be destroyed a great amount of available energy also. We save this energy, that is, we make it serve the purposes of the instinct for health, as soon as we can trace the meaning of these symptoms; by taking part in the regressive movement of the patient. Those unfamiliar with the essentials of psychoanalysis will have some difficulty in understanding how a therapeutic effect can come to pass when the physician takes part in the pernicious phantasies of the patient. Not only critics, but the patients also, doubt the therapeutic value of such a method, which concentrates attention upon phantasies which the patient rejects as worthless and reprehensible. The patients will often tell you that their former physicians forbade them to occupy themselves with their phantasies, and told them that they must only consider that it is well with them, when they are free, if but momentarily, from their awful torments. So, it seems strange enough that it should be of any use to them, when the treatment brings them back to the very thing from which they have tried constantly to escape. The following answer may be made: all depends upon the position which the patient takes up towards his own phantasies. These phantasies have been hitherto, for the patient, an absolutely passive and involuntary manifestation. As we say, he was lost in his dreams. The patient’s so-called brooding is an involuntary kind of dreaming too. What psychoanalysis demands from a patient is only apparently the same. Only a man who has a very superficial knowledge of psychoanalysis can confuse this passive dreaming with the position taken up in analysis. What psychoanalysis asks from the patient is just the contrary of what the patient has always done. The patient can be compared to a person who, unintentionally, has fallen into the water and sunk, whilst psychoanalysis wants him to dive in, as it was no mere chance which led him to fall in at just that spot. There lies a sunken treasure, and only a diver can raise it.