But there are men and women who are not jealous even though they love intensely. And with this we hit upon a second and important root of jealousy. Only one who contemplates an act of disloyalty against the object of his jealousy, or who, as a result of doubts about his own erotic powers, thinks he cannot gratify that object can be jealous. Of course I am not now speaking of justified jealousy based on facts, but of baseless, unjustified jealousy. Whence comes the suspicion that attributes infidelity to the beloved being? What is the driving power in these cases? Only the knowledge of one’s true nature. Only they can be jealous, jealous without cause, who cannot guarantee for themselves. In other words: jealousy is the projection of one’s own shortcomings upon the beloved.
If we find a woman who is all her life torturing her husband with her jealousy, complaining now that he has been looking at some woman too long, now that he stayed out too long, now that he was too friendly with one of her friends, etc., then it is the woman who has seen the weakness of her own character and who, in thought, is guilty of every infidelity which she will not admit even to herself. And in the same way faithless husbands who love their wives make the most jealous husbands. That is the vermuth potion which leaves with them a bitter after-taste as soon as they have made another conquest. Their own experiences entitle them to be jealous. Bachelors who had been philanderers and can boast of many conquests usually marry plain or unattractive women—alleging, by way of explanation, that they want to have the woman for themselves and not for others, meanwhile forgetting how often they themselves had been caught in the nets of homely women. For almost any woman who will permit herself to do so can find admirers, and ugliness is no protection against dramatic or comic marital infidelities.
The absence of jealousy in cases of intense affection usually, but not always, indicates a nature immune against all assaults. But those who are free from this passion need not therefore be puffed up. We are poor sinners all, and the time may come sooner or later for any of us in which we shall transfer our weaknesses upon others and become jealous. But it also happens that freedom from jealousy is a sign not of security but of stupidity, unlimited vanity. The woman is regarded as a paragon of all the virtues, without a touch of frailty. The husband may be an ideal specimen of an otherwise frivolous species. In these cases one’s inadequacy is so covered up by our over-estimation of our endowments that comparisons are never instituted and projection is impossible.
Consequently baseless jealousy and baseless confidence will always be. And therefore we shall not follow Bleuler in his estimation of jealousy as one of the “unconscious commonplaces” which makes love valueless as “the plant-louse does the rose-bud.” We shall recognise in it, when it is baseless, a disease of the soul occurring in persons whose cravings and realities do not coincide and who have with a heavy heart been forced to the recognition after cruel inner conflicts that their virtue is only an over-emphatic opposition to their weakness. Their jealousy has taken on a pathological (neurotic) character because of this repression and this relegating of their own desires into the unconscious. That is why all the logic of realities is effectless when opposed to the logic of the unconscious. One might almost say that jealousy is a cultural disease which results from the restrictions on our love-life imposed by law and morality. If so-called “free love” ever becomes a fact there will be far fewer cases of jealousy than we have to-day. That sounds plausible. But will life be more worth living when there will be no more jealousy? We gladly put up with jealousy if only our costly treasure of love continues secure. Would a life free from all jealousy and pain, a life without passions, be worth while? Is it not a fact that our possessions are most highly valued by us at the moment when we fear to lose them?... The sweetest harmonies are to be found only in contrasts. The wagon of life rolls with greater tempo over the endless lonely roads when it is harnessed to the passions.
CHILDHOOD FRIENDSHIP
An indescribably sweet breeze blows over the friendships of childhood. They are tender, delicate, pale blue petals that tremble with each stir of the childish soul and whose roots even then already penetrate down to the deep layers in which inherited instincts and tempting desires fertilise the soil of the passions. Its first friendship is a revelation for the child. Till then it loved its parents, its surroundings, its teacher. But behind this love the educational tendency was always in evidence. “You must love your parents because they are so good to you. You must respect your teacher because from him you get the knowledge that is indispensable to you in your life.” Thus we make that love a duty for the child which ought, on the contrary, to make it conscious of its duties.
How different it all is in the case of friendship. Here the child can follow its natural inclinations. Here it can choose according to its own standards without having to listen to the dictates of its educators. And indeed one has thousands of opportunities to observe that a child is much more cautious than adults in the selection of its friends, that it will not accept a friend assigned it by its parents unless he meets with its approval, unless an unconscious urge pleads in his behalf.
How peculiar children are in their choice of a friend! Either he is the nicest or the finest, the quietest or the noisiest, the best or the worst, the strongest or the weakest. They prefer one whose traits are clearly and sharply defined, rather than one who is neither one thing nor the other. There must be something about the friend that they can admire; he must excel them in something. But it is not a bar to friendship that they excel the other in something.