Psycho-analysis and its place in life

Front matter

CORNELL UNIVERSrQC

LIBRARIES

ITHACA, N. Y. 14853

Preface

Since the publication of Freud's " Studien iiber Hysterie " (with Breuer) in 1895 and of his " Die Traumdeutung " in 1900 (English translation 1918), the subject -of Psycho-analysis has been claiming an ever increasing amount of attention, both from the medical profession and also from the thoughtful public. There is a certain danger, on the one side, of its being treated from the somewhat narrow point of view inseparable from any particular branch of knowledge, and, on the other, of its being taken out of the realm of serious and scientific thought by amateurs who, " rushing in where angels fear to tread," think themselves competent to discuss a highly technical subject without the essential training in its technique, viz., a thorough course of psycho-analysis under the guidance of an expert analyst.

A study such as the one presented here is, therefore, greatly to be welcomed. It introduces the subject from the point of view of a layman, who is at the same time a serious student of psychology, of psycho-analysis, and of human life in general as viewed intimately in more ' than one social stratum, for since taking the Mental and Moral Science Tripos at Cambridge Miss Bradby has been engaged in educational and social work.

The psycho-analyst proper, whether he agrees or not with the opinions expressed, can only be grateful vi PREFACE

for such a book, raising as it does interesting and important questions which have not yet engaged his attention. The author's very individual outlook on life seems to me to enhance the stimulating qualities of the work.

I share with her the belief that in this new branch of mental science we have another means of approaching both the individual and the social problem. Psycho-analysis presents but one aspect of the work to be done. We aim at a reconstruction of life which can only be conceived as a psycho-synthesis. But we must not fall into the error of superficial minds who would step over the analytical side and arrive, as it were, by magic at the synthetic.

Constance E. Long.

2, Habley Place,

N.W.I.

Introduction

This book aims at four things. It attempts an answer to the increasing number of people who want to know something about psycho-analysis and who find the existing literature some of it too brief and some of it too difficult. It discusses certain questions raised in the mind of the ordinary educated man or woman who has begun to study psycho-analysis and is puzzled ; such questions for instance as "where does it lead," "how does it fit in with the desire to be a moral human being, and with the ideas entertained by modern scientists." It supplies the reader with some notion of how to arrive at the meaning of his own dreams, and lastly, it hopes to induce psycho-analysts and psychologists to study each other's works.

The unconscious mind is viewed in its character of normal but undeveloped mind, as well as in its betterknown character of abnormal and neurotic, and an attempt is made to expound some of the teachings of modern anthropology and to link them up with those of psycho-analysis.

I have nothing new to say, but I am impressed with the profound importance to thought, and consequently to life in general, of the discoveries of Freud, their development by Jung and the Zurich school, and of that theory of human progress reached by modern psychologists through the study of mind as it develops in the race, as x „ INTRODUCTION

well as the individual : a theory which has been lucidly set out by Professor L. T. Hobhouse. It is from the books of these three writers and of Miss Jane Harrison that I have gathered most of the notions here advanced, and above all from the conversation and papers of Dr. Constance Long. Where I venture to disagree with any of them it may be from a failure to understand them ; but, after all, truth is best served by each sincere student of human life describing the truths he sees. Thought is advanced by the exposure of our own and the correction of each other's errors. The views here set out make no claim to any sort of completeness ; they aim at stimulating thought and challenging discussion. Where they appear dogmatic it is from an effort to be concise, and the reader's indulgence is asked on this account.

The future influence of psycho-analysis on psychology proper I imagine as bearing a resemblance to that on Chemistry of Pasteur's discovery of the connection between chemical structure and the polarisation of light. As Pasteur himself said, he "opened one of the weightiest, most astonishing chapters in science, one which offers to physiology (and, it may be added, to chemistry) a horizon, new, far distant, yet quite distinct." Modern psychologists see every act of mind as possessing three fundamental aspects, those of knowing, feeling, and will (or conation). So far, they have concentrated research upon the first — knowing or cognition. The great body of knowledge they haye built up of the psychology of cognition remains untouched by psycho-analytic theories, but when we turn to feeling and conation the matter is different. Here they have done no more than make a timid start, lacking the clue to direction which psycho-analysis will henceforth supply. Already the psychology of the emotions, even of so brilliant and original a thinker as William James, is almost as out of date as a medieval book on natural history.

One may look forward hopefully to a day in the near

INTRODUCTION xi

future when psychologists, who are on the whole amongst the least prejudiced of people, will give the views of psycho-analysts of the schools of both Freud and Jung the serious consideration they deserve, and when psycho-analysts on their side will turn their attention to those important factors in the unconscious which they overlook. They are too much inclined to interpret the higher in terms of the lower, to explain the advanced by a reference to the rudimentary. They have found man's repressed appetites and the conflict between conventional morality and sexual^desire, but they have not yet devoted equal attention to his higher interests which are also to*be found in the unconscious mind — interests which man does not share with the animals — to the longing after knowledge and beauty and power for their own sakes and the desire for moral goodness apart from any particular system of morality. Since man became aware of his own aims these things have been recognised as amongst the ruling passions of humanity, and they are not sexuality, important though sexuality may be.

All genuine men of science have much to learn from each other, and the generality of mankind has much to learn from psychologists, while nowadays even philosophy has dismounted from her pedestal and become the friend and fellow student of the man in the street, admitting that her subject-matter in homely guise has always formed one of the great interests of the multitude. This conviction has emboldened me to write, and this book is an attempt to put forward certain views and discuss certain questions on the meeting ground of the man of science and the man in the street.

THE UNCONSCIOUS MIND

THE UNCONSCIOUS MIND

Chapter I

THE REPRESSED UNCONSCIOUS MIND AS SEEN IN THE NEUROTIC, THE MEDIUM, THE ARTIST AND THE NORMAL PERSON

'_' What do I see now, suppose you, there where you see rock around us ? " — (St, John log.) R. Browning.

What is meant by " the unconscious mind " ?

Our present state of knowledge does not allow us to attempt a definition, but some idea of the meaning of the term may be gained by passing in review typical cases in which it is employed. Accordingly it is proposed in this and the following chapter to bring before the reader's notice examples of the kind of thing psycho-analysts have in view when~EKey speak of " the unconscious." These examples will be chosen from three fields : " the unconscious " of psycho-analysis, " the subliminal " of psychical research, and lastly from certain everyday experiences of ordinary people.

First let us glance at the so-called " unconscious " of the psycho-analyst. Psycho-analysis is a method of curing functional nervous disorders, which has been evolved by certain nerve specialists who were dissatisfied with the results of hypnotic treatment. 1 It is a method based upon the assumption that every neurotic symptom has its origin and explanation in the background of the patient's mind. This explanation is unknown to the patient himself, but can be discovered by him through reference to that part of his mind which is active in his dreams. The symptom is, as it were, a little bit of his dream life thrust into his waking life, of his unconscious mind into his conscious. The psycho-analyst follows up the clue which the symptom gives ; under his guidance the patient reveals to himself the contents and mode of working of a sphere of his own mind to which he was a stranger, that part whereby his dreams are woven, his nervous symptoms formed.

Works on psycho-analysis employ technical terms, but the actual things of which they treat are familiar to us in ordinary life on both sides of the border-line of sanity. The " unconscious mind " to which they introduce us is the source of dreams, visions and trances, of queer fancies, unreasoning fears, hobbies, and little ways, of strange and erratic behaviour, of absentmindedness and fixed ideas.

When we turn to Psychical Research we find some of the same material treated from a different point of view. 2 Here a scientific inquiry is pursued into the nature and origin of striking and mysterious " psychic phenomena." The psycho-analyst encounters some of these phenomena in the course of his efforts to cure nervous illness, the student of psychical research in the course of his inquiry as to what strange things actually occur and- what is their scientific explanation. We read in the Society's

1 In functional nervous disease the actual physical apparatus of brain and nerves is comparatively sound, but its working is deranged In organic disease, some definite injury to the structure prevents it from working properly. So far as we know, no mental impression can cure a cut nerve or a broken bone, but some of the pain accompanvina these may be functional and so susceptible to mental treatment (2. A. T. Schofield, " The Force of Mind." ^ Bee

2 See a paper by Dr. Constance Long in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research. Vol. XXX, July, 1918. • *

VISUAL FANTASIES 5

Proceedings, amongst other things, of the doings of spiritualistic mediums, of people in the hypnotic trance and in what are,best known to the layman as states of double personality ; we read of automatic writing and painting, of visions seen by crystal-gazers and clairvoyants. All these are evidence of the mind's activity below the threshold of consciousness. The " subliminal " of psychical research is identical with the " unconscious " of psycho-analysis.

In both these fields of inquiry the experiences dealt with are those of abnormal people, but we xannot fail to be struck by their resemblance to certain common experiences of everyday life. There would seem to be no clear line of demarcation between the healthy person and the neurotic, the normal and the " sensitive " (or person with mediumistic powers). The sanest of us knows what it is to dream, to have fits of absent-mindedness, unaccountable lapses of memory, unreasoning fears ; and most of us at some time or other have seen or heard things which were not there. The illustrations which follow of the workings of the unconscious mind are taken from its normal and abnormal , states alike, showing how the one state merges into the other.

It is not unusual to hear someone confronted with the subject declare that he has no unconscious mind. One speedy method of convincing such a sceptic is to lead him to produce visual fantasies from the unconscious. Most people see faces in the fire, or, like Polonius, strange creatures in the clouds, but on investigation it would be found that each of us sees different forms, though it be the same fire and the same cloud into which we gaze. 1 This fact may be strikingly brought home to us by means of a simple process; Let anyone take a sheet of paper and a bit of soft, coloured chalk, cover the paper with rough shading, then put down the chalk and simply look. With a pencil he may catch

1 Blake and Mrs. Blake saw different " faces in the fire." See " Wm. Blake,*' by Arthur Symons, 1907, p. 48.

and outline some of the forms that will appear and disappear from his view. No two people see the same thing. Some produce apparently insignificant scribbles or crude and childish outlines, others rhythmical designs ; some grotesque and horrible faces, others a jumble of fragmentary objects mingled with geometrical figures. Leonardo da Vinci made the same discovery. Instructing his pupils in the principles of the painter's art he wrote:

" I will not refrain from setting among these precepts a new device for consideration which although it may appear trivial and almost ludicrous, is nevertheless of great utility in arousing the mind to various inventions. And this is that if you look at any walls spotted with various stains or with a mixture of different kinds of stones, if you are about to invent some scene you will be able to see in it a resemblance to various different landscapes adorned with mountains, rivers, rocks, trees, plains, widevalleys, or various groups of hills. You will also be able to see divers combats and figures in quick movement, and strange expressions of faces, and outlandish costumes, and an infinite number of things which you can then reduce into separate and well conceived forms. With such walls and blends of different stones it comes about as it does with the -sound of bells, in whose clanging you may discover every name and word that you can imagine." 1

It is here suggested that what each sees in the chalked paper and what Leonardo saw in the stained wall are largely the product of the unconscious mind. Leonardo used these fantastic images as material for his conscious mind to work upon ; the unconscious mind of the born artist, when he is in the mood, leads him to see in any blurred and homogeneous mass visions of grandeur and beauty, of terror and grace, which do not linger, but fuse into each other. 2 The object presented to consciousness forms a basis or substratum upon which the unconscious moulds or weaves these images.

We may notice a continuous gradation of visual images in which the part played by the object looked at grows

1 " Leonardo da Vinci's Note-books," edited by Edward McCurdv 1906, p. 173.

* Cf. the paintings of the cubists, vorticists, etc. See " Cubism " by Gleizes and Metzinger (Fisher Unwin, 1913), especially p. 83.

AUTOMATIC SPEECH 7

less while the part supplied by the unconscious fantasy increases. The child beguiles a dull sermon by gazing at the mysterious figures which lurk in the veining of the marble pulpit ; William Blake, the visionary artist, saw imaginary portrait-heads before him and copied them on to paper; 1 the spiritualistic medium draws " separate and well-conceived forms " without knowing what he is drawing, it may be in the dark. A well-known medium, David Diiguid, who produced drawings in this way, on one occasion reproduced certain illustrations to a family Bible recently published and seen by him. The unconscious plagiarism was brought home to him by a threatened legal action. 2 ~

As with visual images, so with speech, oral or written ; we may trace the increasing preponderance of the unconscious contribution along a similar course. Automatic drawing, we have seen, is sometimes done in the dark, the executant not knowing what his pencil is producing. Similarly, in speech from the unconscious, one may produce words and phrases and even a long discourse without knowing what one is saying. Speech of this kind, proceeding from levels of the mind which remain unconscious, is uttered by people in their sleep, in delirium, while coming-to after an anaesthetic and when intoxicated whether with drugs or emotion, in short, when the speaker is beside, beyond or beneath himself. Here the unconscious has it all its own way, but slighter indications of its activity are to be noticed in everyday life whenever we blurt out things we did not intend to say, make slips of the tongue or are bothered with words or phrases that run in the head.

The examples so far given enable us to recognise a distinction between the so-called conscious and unconscious spheres of the mind. Each exhibits the same material, but treated differently. That material

2 See " Direct Phenomena of Spiritualism," by B. T. Bennett, p. 30. " The Shilling Library of Psychical Literature and Enquiry," No. IV.

C is supplied by external objects presented to the senses, facts of experience, along with their corresponding memories. The individual, who for the time being is living in the unconscious, reacts to sensations and ideas spontaneously,, automatically, instinctively, without, knowing what he is doing ; his perceptions and mental images have little correspondence with objective facts, but close correspondence with his subjective feelings. When he is conscious his perceptions have a closer correspondence with objective facts, he knows more or less clearly what he is doing and he brings his actions under the control of the will.

The distinction between the two spheres is sometimes strikingly shown in the course of recovering consciousness after an anaesthetic. A psycho-analytic patient described such an experience as follows : "At first I found myself talking and I was merely an observer, listening to what I was saying, and rather shocked at some of the things I heard. Then I tried to take control of my speech, at first unsuccessfully, but with more and more success as I experienced a series of slight jerks at each of which I became more awake. To start with, I found my head was wagging itself. Then I could stop it wagging, but directly I began to wag it, it ran away with me and wagged itself. Then I could start it wagging, and control it within limits, much as one drives a frisky horse. Finally, I was awake and could control it altogether. My tongue wagged in a similar manner." Here we see the factors of the conscious mind, purposive and controlling, asserting themselves gradually over those of the unconscious, impulsive and automatic. The specific quality of the sensations seems to change along with the increasing control of the will.

Just as visual fantasies are of use to the artist, so is speech from the unconscious to the painter in words. Many people who are not poets compose verses in their dreams, and when these are caught and studied they are seen to exhibit some of the characteristics of the

THE UNCONSCIOUS IN POETRY 9

magical passages of inspired poetry. They appeal to their creator in the dream as full of meaning, vague, unfathomable and elusive, like that of music. They deal in clang associations, alliteration and repetition." They are mostly doggerel, but not dull doggerel such as is deliberately composed.

Here are some typical dream-lines, the creation of one who throughout a long life neither made verse nor appreciated it :

" On the shores Where the Mogadores Run swiftly iftly by."

Compare the wonderful lines of Rossetti written during

" O what is this that knows the road I came The flame turned cloud the cloud returned to flame The lifted shifted steeps and all the way ? "

We feel it was Rossetti's unconscious mind which supplied that last line.

We find the same mysterious depth of meaning in the well-known lines from Keats in which he speaks of

The student of the unconscious mind thinks he recognises passages characteristic of it with their element of the unexpected either in the words used or (as with George Meredith) in the images described. He finds a treasure-house of unconscious gems in the poetry of Shelley, Francis Thompson, Henry Vaughan, and many others, but we are on safer ground in quoting Coleridge's " Kubla Khan," since we have his word for it that he dreamed the poem and wrote it down, so

1 Given in Ward's " British Poets." ' " Ode to a Nightingale."

c 2 much as he could remember, on waking. He dreamed of

" A damsel with a dulcimer Singing of Mount Abora."

and says : —

" Could I revive within me Her symphony and song, To such a deep delight 'twould win me That with music loud and long I would build that dome in air That sunny dome ! Those caves of ice ! And all who hear should see them there, And all should cry Beware ! Beware ! His flashing eyes, his floating hair. Weave a circle round him thrice, And close your eyes with holy dread, For he on honey-dew hath fed And drunk the milk of Paradise."

Writing from the unconscious, like drawing and speaking, passes through a gradation in which the conscious element diminishes and the unconscious grows. Everyone whose pen flows easily occasionally^ finds himself writing what he did not intend. He mis-spells a familiar word, omits, repeats or changes a phrase without noticing. Freud narrates how a patient of Dr. Brill's wished to get out of an appointment which he dreaded. Consciously, he was polite and intended to write that he was unable to keep his appointment " owing to unforeseen circumstances," but the unconscious, which, says Freud, does not lie, guided his pen so that he actually wrote " owing to foreseen circumstances." Freud also quotes a case of a public man vindicating his sincerity in a newspaper article, who called witness to the fact that he had always " acted in a selfish manner for the good of the community " — a slip of the pen which passed into print unnoticed. 1

In the above cases the unconscious took control of

1 Freud, " Psycho-pathology in Everyday Life," 1914.

AUTOMATIC WRITING 11

the pen for a single word, but there have been wellauthenticated instances in which it controlled whole passages and even books. William Blake again fur nishes an example. Some of his prophetic works were written, as he said, " from dictation." 1 He did not know what his pen was about to write. Here is a specimen of the sort of thing it wrote :

" For when Urizen shrunk away From Eternals, he sat on a Rock, Barren — A Rock which himself, From redounding fancies had petrified. Many tears fell on the Rock, Many sparks of vegetation.

Soon shot the pained root Of Mystery under his heel : It grew a thick tree : he wrote In silence his Book of Iron ; Till the horrid plant bending its boughs, Grew to roots when it felt the earth, And again sprung to many a tree." 2

To give another example from our own times. Miss Bramston, the authoress, at one period of her life wrote dialogues with her automatic hand, of the purport of which she knew nothing until she took them up and read them. At first she was inclined to think them marvellous, but she soon formed the opinion that they had a purely personal and subjective value and could appeal to nobody but herself.

The following is a specimen. The principal speaker in the dialogues was one " B. P." He professed to be the spirit of a boy friend who had died twelve or fourteen years earlier, but after a time she found " that he was but a personage of my automatic romance."

B. P. speaks of " the other side " and says :

" When people who are not good come here they

1 Arthur Symons, op. dt., 147.

* " Ahania," Chap. Ill, 3. See Oxford Edition of " British Poets," Wales, 1913, p. 344.

have a great deal to learn before the stripping of the sheath, and they may or may not submit to discipline. If they refuse to submit they are allowed to choose their own sphere of life, and those who are sottish and those who are indolent choose the earth to hover about their former Reli- (sic) spheres of interest which are the only interests they have and those who are sensual and malicious try to enter again into the

bodies of human spirits and possess them . When

you wish murderers should be sent into the next life as they are, they are more likely to produce more murders than less." 1

We have touched upon automatic drawing, speech and writing because they furnish plain examples of the kind of mental activity we seek to illustrate, but the unconscious may be operative in any sphere of human action. The sleep-walker performs various kinds of acts unconsciously, the hypnotised person does, within limits, whatever is suggested to him, the patient who is suffering from a " compulsion neurosis " may feel impelled, he knows not why, to do things of one sort or another, such as collecting little bits of . string or counting the ticks of the clock. It appears that actions of this kind spring direct from that part of the mind which is not under the control of the will, and if we look closely we shall find that many of the" things we do have in them an element of such unconscious compulsion. We imply this whenever we tax people with a mania or a phobia, such as the dust mania, the mania for hoarding, the phobia against flies and cats. We tax them unjustly, however, where their actions are guided by conscious deliberate purpose, in accordance with and not against their better judgment.

We have now indicated one set of facts we have in view when we speak of the unconscious mind ; but the unconscious has two aspects, as " repressed "" and

1 The Occult Review, July, 1905.

THE UNCONSCIOUS AS PRIMITIVE 18

as " primitive," and so far we have taken examples which emphasise the former aspect only.

Psycho-analysts have been studying neurotic symptoms and how to cure them by an understanding of their place in the mind of the patient. Incidentally, they have learnt a great deal about the unconscious mind of man in general, chiefly on its repressed side, i.e. about those contents of unconsciousness which might be conscious but are expelled from consciousness because they are painful.

Meanwhile, anthropological psychologists have been studying the nature and development of mind in primitive man. In so doing they too have learnt a great deal about the unconscious mind of man in general, chiefly on its undeveloped side, i.e. about the contents of unconsciousness which may become conscious as the result of education but which are as yet incapable of clear realisation. In the next chapter we shall turn our attention to a sphere "of primitive mental' activity, where, it will be claimed, the unconscious though less discussed is of even greater importance for everyday life.

Before leaving this part of the subject, however, we will give a brief glance at. the opinions held by modern psychologists which directly bear upon it.

Modern psychologists recognise the significance of those observed phenomena classed under the term " unconscious mind," but they are not agreed as to the best name to give them. The " unconscious mind " implies a contradiction in terms, for mind, in common parlance, means consciousness, and consciousness which is unconscious is nonsense. The logical difficulty is not removed by the " subliminal self " or the " subconscious " mind of Myers and James, for at some point or other they too imply the existence of a self or a mind which is not in- any degree conscious. The unsatisfactory name reflects our vague and unsatisfactory knowledge about the thing for which it stands ;

it challenges to further discrimination. We accept it provisionally as a working hypothesis which enables us to talk about a group of facts we wish to study.

Psychologists see in the unconscious mind a background to the conscious, a kind of matrix forming a connection between all the individual's conscious experiences. We can only become directly aware of any feature of this background at the moment when it ceases to be unconscious, so that as a background it remains an hypothesis incapable of being verified by immediate experience. Thus we are conscious (not unconscious) of the dreams we remember, but at the time of dreaming them we were unconscious, and from them we infer other dreams of which we have no recollection, and which remain unconscious. Yesterday I heard a name which I have forgotten. To-morrow I shall recall it to mind. The gulf between the consciousness of yesterday and that of to-morrow is bridged by supposing an activity of the mind akin to consciousness which we call " unconscious." Examples of. this aspect of the unconscious occur where objects apparent to the senses pass unnoticed, because attention is strongly directed elsewhere. The artilleryman ceases to hear his gun, the factory hand his machinery ; we are all of us habitually unconscious of the sensations accompanying blinking, and in moments of great excitement people have been known not to feel severe pain. These unnoticed or unfelt sensations and feelings are often found to have left traces in memory. Similarly, we may reproduce from the storehouse of memory recollections of things which we have only imperfectly perceived, as when one repeats a phrase correctly which one has not understood. In the famous case quoted by Coleridge, an untutored German servant girl in delirium repeated the Hebrew she had heard from the lips of her scholarly master. 1 The unconscious back-