In the case of abnormal people, the individual entirely fails to recognize the compensating influences which arise in the unconscious. He even continues to accentuate his onesidedness; this is in accord with the well-known psychological fact that the worst enemy of the wolf is the wolfhound, the greatest despiser of the negro is the mulatto, and that the biggest fanatic is the convert; for I should be a fanatic were I to attack a thing outwardly which inwardly I am obliged to concede is right.
The mentally unbalanced man tries to defend himself against his own unconscious—that is to say, he battles against his own compensating influences. In normal minds opposites of feeling and valuations lie closely associated; the law of this association is called "ambivalence," about which we shall see more later. In the abnormal, the pairs are torn asunder, the resulting division, or strife, leads to disaster, for the unconscious soon begins to intrude itself violently upon the conscious processes.
An especially typical form of unconscious compensation ... is the paranoia of the alcoholic. The alcoholic loses his love for his wife; the unconscious compensation tries to lead him back again to his duty, but only partially succeeds, for it causes him to become jealous of his wife as if he still loved her. As we know, he may go so far as to kill both his wife and himself, merely out of jealousy. In other words, his love for his wife has not been entirely lost. It has simply become subliminal; but from the realm of consciousness it can now only reappear in the form of jealousy.... We see something of a similar nature in the case of the religious convert.... The new convert feels himself constrained to defend the faith he has adopted (since much of the old faith still survives in the unconscious associations) in a more or less fanatical way. It is exactly the same in the paranoiac who feels himself constantly constrained to defend himself against all external criticism, because his delusional system is too much threatened from within.
It is not necessary for us to enter here upon a discussion of the processes by which these compensating devices are wrought out in the psychoneurosis. It is significant, though, that Jung calls attention to the likeness between religious fanaticism and paranoia. Now it is obvious that the fanaticism of the religious convert differs psychologically not at all from that of any other convert. We have already noted the fact that most religious conversions are accomplished by the crowd. Moreover the crowd everywhere tends to fanaticism. The fanatic is the crowd-man pure and simple. He is the type which it ever strives to produce. His excess of devotion, and willingness to sacrifice both himself and everyone else for the crowds cause, always wins the admiration of his fellow crowd-members. He has given all for the crowd, is wholly swallowed by it, is "determined not to know anything save" his crowd and its propaganda. He is the martyr, the true believer, "the red-blooded loyal American" with "my country right or wrong." He is the uncompromising radical whose prison record puts to shame the less enthusiastic members of his group. He is the militant pacifist, the ever-watchful prohibitionist, and keeper of his neighbors consciences, the belligerent moral purist, who is scandalized even at the display of lingerie in the store windows, the professional reformer who in every community succeeds in making his goodness both indispensable and unendurable.
One need not be a psychologist to suspect that the evil against which the fanatic struggles is really in large measure in himself. He has simply externalized, or "projected" the conflict in his own unconscious. Persons who cry aloud with horror at every change in the style of womens clothing are in most cases persons whose ego is gnawed by a secret promiscuous eroticism. The scandalmonger, inhibited from doing the forbidden thing, enjoys himself by a vicarious indulgence in rottenness. The prohibition agitator, if not himself an alcoholic barely snatched from the burning, is likely to be one who at least feels safer in a democracy where it is not necessary to resist temptation while passing a saloon door. Notice that the fanatic or crowd-man always strives to universalize his own moral dilemmas. This is the device by which every crowd seeks dominance in the earth. A crowds virtues and its vices are really made out of the same stuff. Each is simply the other turned upside down, the compensation for the other. They are alike and must be understood together as the expression of the type of person who constitutes the membership of some particular group or crowd.
I'll never use tobacco, it is a filthy weed
I'll never put it in my mouth, said little Robert Reed.
But obviously, little Robert is already obsessed with a curious interest in tobacco. His first word shows that he has already begun to think of this weed in connection with himself. Should a crowd of persons struggling with Roberts temptation succeed in dominating society, tobacco would become taboo and thus would acquire a moral significance which it does not have at present. So with all our crowd-ethics. The forbidden thing protrudes itself upon consciousness as a negation. The negation reveals what it is that is occupying the inner psyche, and is its compensation. There are certain psychoneuroses in which this negative form of compensation is very marked. Now it is a noteworthy fact that with the crowd the ethical interest always takes this negative form.
The healthy moral will is characterized by a constant restating of the problem of living in terms of richer and higher and more significant dilemmas as new possibilities of personal worth are revealed by experience. New and more daring valuations are constantly made. The whole psychic functioning is enriched. Goodness means an increase of satisfactions through a more adequate adjustment to the real—richer experience, more subtle power of appreciation and command, a self-mastery, sureness, and general personal excellence—which on occasions great and small mark the good will as a reality which counts in the sum total of things. Something is achieved because it is really desired; existence is in so far humanized, a self has been realized. As Professor Dewey says:
If our study has shown anything it is that the moral is a life, not something ready-made and complete once for all. It is instinct with movement and struggle, and it is precisely the new and serious situations which call out new vigor and lift it to higher levels.
It is not so with the crowd-ethic. It is interesting to note that from the "Decalogue" to Kants "Categorical Imperative," crowd-morals always and everywhere take the form of prohibitions, taboos, and ready-made standards, chiefly negative. Freud has made an analytical study of the Taboo as found in primitive society and has shown that it has a compensatory value similar to that of the taboos and compulsions of certain neurotics.
The crowd admits of no personal superiority other than that which consists in absolute conformity to its own negative standards. Except for the valuations expressed by its own dilemmas, "one man is as good as another"—an idea which it can be easily seen serves the purpose of compensation. The goodness which consists of unique personal superiority is very distasteful to the crowd. There must be only one standard of behavior, alike for all. A categorical imperative. The standard as set up is of the sort which is most congenial, possible of attainment, and even necessary for the survival of the members of some particular crowd. It is their good, the converse and compensation of their own vices, temptations, and failures. The crowd then demands that this good shall be THE GOOD, that it become the universal standard. By such means even the most incompetent and unadventurous and timid spirits may pass judgment upon all men. They may cry to the great of the earth, "We have piped unto you and you have not danced." Judged by the measure of their conformity to the standards of the small, the great may be considered no better, possibly not so good as the little spirits. The well are forced to behave like the spiritually sick. The crowd is a dog in the manger. If eating meat maketh my brother to be scandalized, or giveth him the cramps, I shall remain a vegetarian so long as the world standeth. Nietzsche was correct on this point. The crowd—he called it the herd—is a weapon of revenge in the hands of the weaker brother. It is a Procrustean bed on which every spiritual superiority may be lopped off to the common measure, and every little ego consciousness may be stretched to the stature of full manhood.