FREUD AND JUNG
In this short sketch of what—from the results of psycho-analytic Non-sexual aspects of Individual development in relation to the family and other investigations—we may regard as the normal development of the individual mind in regard to the family relationships, we have hitherto been concerned more particularly with the sexual emotions and tendencies, using the word sexual in the wide sense current among writers of the psycho-analytic school. This has been the case, partly because in our account we have been largely governed by historical considerations with regard to the actual chronology of recent psychological progress in this field (and it was chiefly the sexual aspects of the family relationships that were first brought to light in the course of this progress); partly also because it is with regard to these sexual aspects that the increase of our knowledge through the application of new psychological methods has been in many ways the most extensive, the most startling and the most difficult to assimilate. The results considered in the last two chapters are of such a nature as to have been for the most part unrealised and unsuspected either by the professional psychologist or by the ordinary student of human nature: they are, indeed, of such a kind as could only be obtained by means of a special technique capable of overcoming the formidable resistances which, as we have seen, are interposed between the conscious and the unconscious levels of the mind.
The positive results of recent research on the psychological influences of the family as regards matters less directly connected with sexuality are of a less unexpected kind, and seem to lie to some extent in the direct path of psychological progress even apart from the introduction of the methods of psycho-analysis. Nevertheless, it is the use of these methods that has given some precision to our knowledge in these respects also, and rendered more certain and definite what before was but vaguely suspected. At this point, therefore, it becomes necessary to review the principal results of psycho-analytic research with regard to these non-sexual aspects of mental development in relation to the family environment.
The treatment of these non-sexual aspects is of special Controversies on this subject difficulty for two reasons. In the first place, these aspects are, in their actual occurrence, intimately bound up with the processes of sexual development with which we have been dealing; and are often difficult to disentangle from them. In the second place, this very question of the distinction of the sexual from the non-sexual aspects of the observed facts of development has recently been, and still is, a subject of keen dispute among certain members of the psycho-analytic and post-psycho-analytic schools. The authors who have dealt more especially with the non-sexual aspects have written largely under the influence of this dispute and from a somewhat different point of view from that of the writers who have laid the principal emphasis upon the sexual side. Hence a comparison of the chief contributions on the two aspects is not always easy. In spite of these difficulties, however, certain conclusions stand out with some degree of clearness from the mists of controversy, and these are of considerable importance for our present purpose.
In the course of his pioneer work, Freud himself had in more than one connection drawn attention to the importance of the family relationships in regard to the general development of character and vital activity of the individual. It is however The work of Jung more especially to C. G. Jung of Zürich that we are indebted for a more explicit, vigorous and extended treatment of the problems of the family from this point of view[21]. The more recent work of Jung is marred by an exaggerated insistence on a single aspect, and by a tendency to mysticism which is apt to confuse and obscure the scientific consideration of the problem. But in spite of these defects it undoubtedly contains many contributions of value and, especially when taken as complementary to, rather than opposed to, the work of Freud, Rank and others of the orthodox psycho-analytic school, it would seem to constitute in some ways an important step forward in our knowledge of the matters with which we are here concerned.
Jung's present position is, in many respects, a reaction against Freud's views as to the extreme importance of the sexual tendencies in mental life. With Freud the term Libido had been used to signify the sum total of these tendencies taken in a sense much wider than that which seems to have been contemplated by any previous writer; so wide indeed that many inferred that there could be but a small field left over for the operation of the other instincts and tendencies. With Jung the reaction against this attitude takes place not by a restriction of the term Libido to its former narrower sense, but by a still further extension of its meaning so as to include all the conative tendencies which manifest themselves in mental life. By so doing Jung is enabled to take up a relatively non-committal attitude as regards the sexuality or non-sexuality of many of the factors which Freud had regarded as definitely sexual in character, while at the same time he succeeds in minimising the importance of certain unmistakably sexual manifestations by ignoring their specific character and regarding them rather exclusively from the point of view of the development and value of the individual as an independent vital unit.
As regards the application of this general attitude to our The family and the development of the individual own immediate problem, Jung appears to look upon the family influences as principally of importance in so far as they afford the necessary conditions and mental environment for the growth of the general life force of the individual personality. The child at birth is entirely dependent on his parents for the satisfaction of his vital needs. His development and education would appear to consist ultimately in the process of learning to satisfy these ever increasing needs himself. Hence if the child remains dependent on his parents for an abnormal length of time or to an abnormal extent, we may infer that an arrest of development has taken place. Such arrests are however liable to occur in a great many cases, since the process of learning to satisfy our own needs by our own efforts is an arduous business which (in virtue, we may suppose, of some aspect of the law of inertia) many of us would fain escape if we could. Undue dependence on the family would therefore appear to indicate a shirking of the "life task," i. e. an unwillingness to make the effort which adult life itself demands, manifesting itself in an exaggerated tendency to remain at the stage of relatively slothful ease and maintenance through the efforts of others which is enjoyed in infancy and early childhood.
In the neuroses the patient suffers, according to Jung, from Attachment to the parents regarded as symbolic of deficient individual development an unconscious tendency to return to this happy state of affairs rather than to face the hard struggle which adult life may entail. This tendency expresses itself in a symbolic way, according to the mechanisms which are characteristic of the neuroses; and what better or more appropriate symbol is possible than some form of exaggerated attachment to, and dependence on, the parents—through whom alone that happy time, to which return is now desired, was possible? Thus it would appear from this point of view that the incestuous fancies and wishes, to which Freud had drawn attention, are not to be taken literally as the expression of ultimate desires, but are only symbols of the wish to escape the hard task which life imposes and to return once more to the irresponsible condition of childhood.
There are probably no experienced psycho-analysts who are prepared to follow Jung to this last extreme position, in which he appears to deny all ultimate significance to the sexual Difficulties presented by this view aspects of the family complexes. Jung's view would seem indeed to involve a number of serious difficulties, amongst which the following are perhaps the most important.