“We are starting south to-day,” he announces to the neighbours. “We shall stay home,” he declares oracularly to visitors.
We see the same thing in the school child. It takes a little time before he can free himself from the influence of his teachers and of the school. Not infrequently he cannot do so owing to the permanent fixation of his identification with them. Horace’s “Jurare in verba magistri” (i.e., to echo the sentiments of one’s master) is nothing but the result of a completely successful identification. One who cannot free himself from this affect and substitute for the confident “we” of the school the uncertain “I” of individuality can never hope to become an independent personality.
Some feelings, such as so-called party spirit, pride of ancestry, solidarity, national pride, etc., are only identifications. The German identifies himself with his great national heroes, e.g., Schiller, Goethe, Bismarck, etc., and is then as proud of being a German as if that implied that he had himself been responsible for their great achievements. The well-known and almost ridiculous pride of the Englishman is only the product of an extreme identification. But, as a matter of fact, the British Government also identifies itself with the humblest of its subjects and protects him in whatever corner of the earth he may happen to be. The officer who takes great pride in his regiment, the pupil who is all enthusiasm for the colours of his school, and the ordinary citizen who can see no element of goodness in any but his own political party, all bear witness to the great power of identification. It is in this way that socialism has become such a tremendous power. Not because it furnishes the proletariat with a dream of a happier future, not because it has supplied it with a religion. (The Church supplies this want better.) No! Only because it has enabled the individual, the weak one, to feel himself one with a tremendous majority, to identify himself with an organization that is world-wide. Socialism is the triumph of identification and the death-knell of individualism.
The most beautiful instance of identification is furnished by love. One who is in love has completely identified himself with the beloved. “Two souls with but a single thought; two hearts that beat as one.” Has not Rückert designated his beloved as his “better self”? (Or Kletke’s very popular song: “What is thine and what is mine?”) A lover almost literally transfers his whole ego into another’s soul. He projects all his yearning upon that one object. He is oblivious of his mistakes until the identification is over. Then the intoxicating dream, too, is over.
With the aid of identification a lover can transfer his passion upon any object that stands in some sort of relationship to his beloved. It is in this way that fetichism sometimes results. That is why love for a woman so easily leads to a love for her kindred. There is a Slavic proverb which says: “He who loves his wife also cherishes his mother-in-law.” And, on the other hand, a discontent with one’s wife is often concealed behind a stubborn hatred of her relatives. In many instances the feeling against mothers-in-law cannot be interpreted in any other way.
Thus there runs through the soul of mankind an endless chain of identifications ranging from the normal to the pathological. The child that puts its father’s hat on its head identifies itself with him just as certainly as the lunatic who thinks himself Napoleon. Both have realized their wishes. But there is this difference between them: In the normal the identification is held under control by the force of facts, whereas in the lunatic the identification has suffered a fixation. A delusion is frequently only a wholly successful identification in the interests of the desire to escape from painful realities. Delusion and truth are plastic conceptions. Who could presume to define where truth ceases and delusion begins? From Schopenhauer’s point of view our whole world-philosophy might be said to be only a process of identification. And truth is nothing but the transference of our own limited knowledge upon the outer world.
REFUGE IN DISEASE
The psychological study of disease is still, alas! a very young and immature science. We have been held so long in the thrall of the materialistic delusion of having to look for bacilli and other micro-organisms behind all diseases that we have almost wholly neglected the psychic factor in disease. It now seems that these psychic factors play the chief role in the so-called “nervous” diseases, whereas all the other “causes,” namely, the predisposition, heredity, infection, etc., it now turns out, do play a certain role, not an unimportant one, it is true, but yet a secondary one. The influence of emotional disturbance upon these diseases has only recently received careful study.