The Journal of Abnormal Psychology, Volume 10

by Various

The psychologist should sympathize deeply with the anatomist and the physiologist and the student of cerebral pathology, but equally deeply with the philosopher and the metaphysician who study the implications, present although hidden, that point to the bonds between the individual and the universe. To fail to recognize that these bonds exist,—as is done when the attempt is made to study human beings as if they were really and exclusively the product of their historic past conceived of in an organic sense,—would be to try to build one-half of an arch and expect it to endure. The truth is, we do not, in my opinion, genuinely believe that a human is nothing but the product of his organic past, or the product of his experience.

We believe, by implication, in our metaphysical selves and our corresponding obligations, more strongly than we have taught ourselves to recognize. But to this fact we make ourselves blind through a species of repression, just as many a child, confident of its parents' affection, assumes, for his own temporary purposes, the right to accuse them of hostile intentions which they do not entertain.

We forget, or repress, the fact that the mind of man cannot be made subject to the laws of physics, and yet we proceed to deal with the phenomena dependent on the working of the mind of man as if these laws actually did prevail.

The misleading effects of this tendency are clearly seen where it is a question of the conclusions to be drawn from the researches, admirable in themselves, made under the influence of the genetic method.

The notion seems to prevail that we should prepare ourselves for the formation of just ideas with regard to the mode in which the higher faculties of men come into existence by wiping the slate clean to the extent of assuming that we have before us no data except some few acts or thoughts that are definable in the simplest possible terms, and then watching what happens as the situation becomes more complicated. But one is apt to forget, in doing this, that there is one thing which we cannot wipe off the slate,—namely, ourselves, not taken in the Bergsonian sense alone, but as fully fledged persons, possessed of the very qualities for which we undertake to search, yet without the possession of which the search could not begin. This does not, of course, militate against the value of these genetic researches in one sense. The study of evolutional sequences is still, and forever will be, of enormous value. But it does not teach us nearly as much of the nature of real creativeness as we can learn through the introspection of ourselves in the fullest sense; and I maintain that psychoanalysts are persons who could do this to advantage.

Is not the notion that through the careful watching of the sequences of the evolutionary process, as if from without, we can get an adequate idea of the forces that really are at work, exactly the delusion by which the skillful juggler tries to deceive his audience when he directs their attention to the shifting objects that he manipulates, and away from his own swiftly moving hands?

My contention is that there are other means of studying the force which we call "Libido" besides that of noting its effects. The justification for this statement is that the force itself is identical, in the last analysis, with that which we feel within ourselves and know as reason, as imagination, and as will, conscious of themselves, and capable of giving to us, directly or indirectly, the only evidence we could ever hope to get, for the existence of real creativeness, spontaneity and freedom.

Every work of art, worthy of the name, gives evidence of the action not alone of a part of a man, but of the whole man; not only of his repressed emotions, but of his intelligence and insight, and of relationships existing between his life and all the other forms of life with which his own is interwoven.

Unity must prevail throughout all nature. Either we are,—altogether, and through and through, our best as well as our less good,—nothing but the expression of repressed cravings, in the sense that they or the conflicts based on them constitute the final causa vera of all progress; or else the best that is in us and also our repressed cravings are alike due to the action of a form of energy which is virtually greater than either one of them, inasmuch as it has the capacity of developing into something greater than either.

This is the agency which we should preeminently study and it is best studied under conditions when, instead of being obviously subject to repression, it is most free from repression. That is, it is best studied as it appears in the thoughts and conduct of the best men, at their best, their most constructive moments.