Psychoanalysis and the unconscious

by D. H. Lawrence

Now before we can have any sort of scientific, comprehensive psychology we shall have to establish the nature of the consciousness at each of the dynamic poles—the nature of the consciousness, the direction of the dynamic-vital flow, the resultant physical-organic development and activity. This we must do before we can even begin to consider a genuine system of education. Education now is widely at sea. Having ceased to steer by the pole-star of the mind, having ceased to aim at the cramming of the intellect, it veers hither and thither hopelessly and absurdly. Education can never become a serious science until the human psyche is properly understood. And the human psyche cannot begin to be understood until we enter the dark continent of the unconscious. Having begun to explore the unconscious, we find we must go from center to center, chakra to chakra, to use an old esoteric word. We must patiently determine the psychic manifestation at each center, and moreover, as we go, we must discover the psychic results of the interaction, the polarized interaction between the dynamic centers both within and without the individual.

Here is a real job for the scientist, a job which eternity will never see finished though even to-morrow may see it well begun. It is a job which will at last free us from the most hateful of all shackles, the shackles of ideas and ideals. It is a great task of the liberators, those who work forever for the liberation of the free spontaneous psyche, the effective soul.

In these few chapters we hope to hint at the establishment of the first field of the unconscious—at the nature of the consciousness manifested at each pole—and at the already complex range of dynamic polarity between the various poles. So far we have given the merest suggestion of the nature of the first plane of the unconscious and have attempted the opening of the second or upper plane. We profess no scientific exactitude, particularly in terminology. We merely wish intelligibly to open a way.

To balance the solar plexus wakes the great plexus of the breast. In our era this plexus is the great planet of our psychic universe. In the previous sympathetic era the flower of the universal blossomed in the navel. But since Egypt the sun of creative activity beams from the breast, the heart of the supreme Man. This is to us the source of light—the loving heart, the Sacred Heart. Against this we contrast the devouring darkness of the lower man, the devouring whirlpool beneath the navel. Even theosophists don’t realize that the universal lotus really blossoms in the abdomen—that our lower man, our dark, devouring whirlpool, was once the creative source, in human estimation.

But in calling the heart the sun, the source of light, we are biologically correct even. For the roots of vision are in the cardiac plexus. But if we were to consider the heart itself, not its great nerve plexus, we should have to go further than the nervous system. If we had to consider the whole lambent blood-stream, we should have to descend too deep for our unpractised minds. Suffice it here to hint that the solar plexus is the first and main clue to the great alimentary-sexual activity in man, an activity at once functional and creatively emotional, whilst the cardiac plexus is first and main clue to the respiratory system and the active-productive manifestations. The mouth and nostrils are gates to each great center, upper and lower—even the breasts have this duality. Yet the clue to respiration and hand activity and vision is in the breast, while the clue to alimentation and passion and sex is in the lower centers. The duality goes so far and is so profound. And the polarity! The great organs, as well as the lymphatic glands, depend each on its own specific center of the unconscious; each is derived from a specific dynamic conscious-clue, what we might almost call a soul-cell. The inherent unconscious, or soul, is the first nucleus subdivided, and from its own subdivisions produced, from its own still-creative constellated nuclei, the organs, glands, nerve-centers of the human organism. This is our answer to materialism and idealism alike. The nuclear unconscious brought forth organs and consciousness alike. And the great nuclei of the unconscious still lie active in the great living nerve-centers, which nerve centers, from the original solar-plexus to the conclusive brain, form one great chain of dual polarity and amplified consciousness.

All this is a mere incoherent stammering, broken first-words. To return to the direct path of our progress. It is not merely a metaphor, to call the cardiac plexus the sun, the Light. It is metaphor in the first place, because the conscious effluence which proceeds from this first upper center in the breast goes forth and plays upon its external object, as phosphorescent waves might break upon a ship and reveal its form. The transferring of the objective knowledge to the psyche is almost the same as vision. It is root-vision. It happens before the eyes open. It is the first tremendous mode of apprehension, still dark, but moving towards light. It is the eye in the breast. Psychically, it is basic objective apprehension. Dynamically, it is love, devotional, administering love.

Now we make already a discrimination between the two natures, even of this first upper consciousness. First from the breast flows the devotional, self-outpouring of love, love which gives its all to the beloved. And back again returns to the ingathered objective consciousness, the first objective content of the psyche.

This argues the dual polarity. From the positive pole of the cardiac plexus flows out that effluence which we call selfless love. It is really self-devoting love, not self-less. This is the one form of love we recognize. But from the strong ganglion of the shoulders proceeds the negative circuit, which searches and explores the beloved, bringing back pure objective apprehension, not critical, in the mental sense, and yet passionally discriminative.

Let us discriminate between the two upper poles. From the sympathetic heart goes forth pure administering, like sunbeams. But from the strong thoracic center of the shoulders is exerted a strong rejective force, a force which, pressing upon the object of attention, in the mode of separation, succeeds in transferring to itself the impression of the object to which it has attended. This is the other half of devotional love—perfect knowledge of the beloved.

Now this knowledge in itself argues a contradistinction between the lover and the beloved. It is the very mould of the contradistinction. It is the impress upon the lover of that which was separate from him, resistant to him, in the beloved. Objective knowledge is always of this kind—a knowledge based on unchangeable difference, a knowledge truly of the gulf that lies between the two beings nearest to each other.