NEW PATHS OF PSYCHOLOGY
BY A. W. VAN RENTERGHEM M.D., AMSTERDAM
(Concluded)
WE are frequently confronted with the question: "Just why does an erotic conflict cause the neurosis? Why not just as well another conflict?" To this the only answer is, "No one asserts that this must be so, but evidently it always is so, in spite of anything that can be said against it. It is, notwithstanding all assurances to the contrary, still true that love (taken in its large sense of nature's course, which does not mean sexuality alone), with its problems and its conflicts of the most inclusive significance, has in human life and in the regulation of the human lot a much greater importance than the individual can image.
The trauma-theory (meaning what was in the beginning conceived by Breuer and Freud) is therefore out of date. When Freud came to the opinion that a hidden erotic conflict forms the real root of the neurosis, the trauma lost its pathogenic significance.
An entirely different light was now thrown upon the theory. The trauma question was solved, and thrown aside. Next in order came the study of the question of the erotic conflict. If we consider this in the light of the chosen example, we see that this conflict contains plenty of abnormal moments, and at first sight does not suffer comparison with an ordinary erotic conflict. What is especially striking, seemingly almost unbelievable, is the fact that it is only the exterior action, the pose, of which the patient is conscious, while she remains unconscious of the passion which governs her. In the case in question the actual sexual factor unquestionably remains hidden, while the field of consciousness is entirely governed by the patient's pose. A proposition formulating this state of affairs would read as follows.
In the neurosis there are two erotic inclinations which stand in a fixed antithesis to each other, and one of these at least is unconscious.
It might be said of this formula, that although perhaps it is adapted to this case, possibly it is not adapted to all cases. Most people, however, are inclined to believe that the erotic is not so widespread. It is granted that it is so in a romance, but it is not believed that the most affecting dramas are more often enacted in the heart of the citizen who daily passes us by unnoticed, than upon the stage.
The neurosis is an unsuccessful attempt of the individual to solve in his own bosom the sexual question which perplexes the whole of human society. The neurosis is a disunity in one's inmost self. The cause of this inward strife is because in most men the consciousness would gladly hold to its moral ideal, but the subconsciousness strives toward its (in the present-day meaning) immoral ideal. This the consciousness always wants to deny. These are the sort of people who would like to be more respectable than they are at bottom. But the conflict may be reversed; there are people who apparently are very disreputable, and who do not take the slightest pains to limit their sexual pleasures. But looked at from all sides this is only a sinful attitude, adopted, God knows for what grounds, because in them, back of this, there is a soul, which is kept just as much in the subconsciousness as the immoral nature is kept in the subconscious of moral men. (It is best for men to avoid extremes as far as possible, because extremes make us suspect the contrary.)
This general explanation was necessary in order to explain to some extent the conception of the erotic conflict in analytical psychology. It is the turning-point of the entire conception of the neurosis.