Psychology and the psychosis. Intellect

Contents

PAGE

I. Sense-perception ....... 56

External Factor ...... 62

Introduction

The central fact in Psychology is the Ego. This fact may also be called the Self, or the Person. The science of Psychology shows the unfolding of the Self, and in this aspect we may name it the science of the Person.

At the heart of our science, therefore, we place Personality, which is truly the heart of all things. The universe without Person at its center would be not only meaningless, but impossible. Upon the infinite worth of the Person all education, all advancement of civilized society, the whole institutional world repose. Now, the Person is essentially self-unfolding, or rather is the unfolding of Self ; it has an order, and hence there is a science of it, which is this order duly formulated.

The first thing which the student is to grasp in Psychology, is himself, or his Self. And if he obtain the best return for his study, he will get not merely some curious information about his mind, but will develop into a completer selfhood. Undoubtedly the knowledge of the mental activities has worth for every rational being; herein is Psychology of great use. But the real function of our science is to help the individual unfold into his true Self, to become an actual Person, and not merely remain an undeveloped, potential one. Psychology has an important theoretical side which is, in general, to impart knowledge of the Ego, but it has also an intensely practical side, which is that the Ego come into full possession of its heritage, namely, a complete Personality.

The central fact in Psychology, which is the Ego, is also called Mind, Consciousness, and sometimes Soul, and sometimes Spirit. The science of Psychology shows the unfolding of the Ego into consciousness, or into the knowledge of its own activities, and in this aspect it is often named the science of Mind.

In the present work we shall cling pretty closely to the word Ego to express the central fact out of which our science develops. The Ego is Person, which puts stress upon the element of the will, or self-activity; the Ego is Mind, which puts stress upon the side of intellect or self-consciousness. Still both sides are one totality, the Ego, and each side has no existence without the other. In every act of intellection there is some phase of volition, and in every volition there is some phase of intellection. The highest philosophy reaches up to the insight that Will and Intellect are one in the Divine; but the humblest act of mind is a reflection of the same unity.

Objections have been raised to the use of the Latin word Ego in Psychology. Its English equivalent can not well be tolerated on account of the ambiguity in sound with the organ of vision — I and eye. Some form of the term must be employed, and the Latin word has the advantage of being a technical term in Psychology. Its English flavor is, however, said sometimes to be unpleasant, on account of its connection with egotism and selfishness on the one hand and its suggestion of brooding and excessive self-occupation on the other. Undoubtedly in using it the reader may have to lay aside some of his preconceptions.

A great philosopher has shown that the idea of the Ego itself is chargeable with ambiguity, since it has two quite opposite strands: it is the most individual thing in the universe, being the very essence of individuality, and it is the most universal thing in the universe, being the essence of universality. But this ambiguity or twofoldness is really the chief recommendation of the term; the Ego must have just these two opposite poles in order to be the theme of Psychology. It is the most comprehensive word that can be used, and at the same time the most definite.

We should also note that Psychology, as the Evolution of the Ego, means not the unfolding of- the latter in time, but its movement into an ordered totality. The activities of the child's Ego develop cotemporaneously as well as in succession ; the scientific order is not always the chronological. But the science of Psychology shows the Ego ordering itself according to its own highest activity, namely, Thought. The principle of psychological procedure is not to be taken from the outside, is not to be picked up from physical science, say, and clapped on externally, to the movement of Mind; that is the most alien, artificial and jejune of all methods. On the contrary the Ego must order the Ego, being just the self-orderer in its highest potence.

Already the question concerning the definition of the Ego has arisen. To define it formally, from the outside, through something else besides itself, is clearly impossible. Any such definition would have to leave out the main fact, and so would be partial or indeed meaningless. Let us, however, give a fresh, and, if possible, deeper glance into the matter.

The Ego is, first, Self, Person; the Ego is, secondly, the conscious, the knowing; the Ego is, thirdly, the self-conscious, the self-knowing, uniting thus both its sides into one process. From the standpoint of definition, the Ego is Self, is the definer, and is the Self-definer.

Is this to define the Ego? Or, to put the question in a little different shape, Can the Ego define the Ego? Some psychologists say that, inasmuch as the Ego must define everything, it cannot define itself. But this statement is really a contradiction, and hence self-annulling. The Ego does define all and itself too ; or, rather, since it is included in the all, which it defines, it cannot be left outside of its own definition. The Ego is, accordingly, self-defined, not defined through anything else but itself. Indeed its fundamental characteristic is to be self-definition.

Thus we touch the peculiarity of Psychology: the very thing to be observed, ordered, and defined, is just the thing observing, ordering, and defining; the central sun which reveals the whole universe, cannot fail of revealing itself at the same time. The Ego is the witness and the fact witnessed, the spectator and the spectacle ; double in its action, yet single; ground of all difference, yet of all unity as well ; divided within itself, yet individual (note the force of in, which is negative). It is often said that Psychology has to do with " the facts of consciousness only," or with " the phenomena of mind; " but who or what is the getter of the fact? The getter of the fact is also the fact gotten, the producer of the phenomenon is the phenomenon produced, the ordering principle is just what is ordered.

This reflexive movement of the Ego is the essence of it, is indeed the Ego defining itself as self-active, and still further, as self-knowing. The learner in Psychology must wrestle with the conception of his science just here ; this double action of the Ego is the primal fact of it, as yet quite abstract and empty, but which is to fill itself with all the riches of concrete psychical life.

The Ego is often called the conscious subject, and the fact just set forth is designated as consciousness. These terms we shall also use by the way. When I feel, or know, or wish, I am conscious that I feel, know, wish ; the Ego knows itself as feeling, knowing, wishing ; it can recognize itself in every mental activity ; still further it recognizes itself to be just that which recognizes itself, in which fact lies its definition, or indeed its self-definition.

The beginner may have already wearied of. his first lesson in Psychology; the matter surely is not easy, especially at the start. But let him take courage, and have another grapple not only with the definition of the Ego, but with the very idea of definition. The Ego is not to be defined by anything outside of itself, not by any major term for subsuming it, not by any middle term for mediating it, since all major terms and all middle terms are simply its own creatures. The Ego must define itself, and it is just that thing in this universe of ours which is capable of defining itself. All definition goes back to self-definition as its ground; there could be no definition of anything unless there was a self-definer to give it. The Ego is supremely the self-definer, and as such defines itself ; that is, the Ego defines itself to be just that which defines itself.

The student is not to forget himself in this study of Psychology, he also is in the psychical sweep and must not be left out. Not only must he confirm each statement by introspection, but must make actual the fact that he too is Ego by taking himself up into its movement. Thus when be defines the Ego as self-definer, what is he but the Ego defining itself just in that way?

Very easy is it to dismiss all this as dialectical subtlety; such it is, but it cannot be evaded, since it is the subtle dialectic of consciousness itself, and lies at the root of the whole psychological process. Not simply the fleeting, changeful, contradictory phenomena of mind do we wish to know, but also what is in it abiding and eternal.

We shall now seek to grasp the process of the Ego as it primarily unfolds within itself, and as it essentially remains through all its activities. One may say that it is the author's Ego trying to project itself into an act of self-definition, and to formulate the same; still further, that it is the student's Ego trying to re-think that act and to identify the same with his own. In both cases it is manifestly the Ego defining itself, which is the movement of all Psychology, and which we shall find to be the principle lurking in many another science. Now, having said that the Ego was self-definition, let it proceed to define itself, for when lam defining my Ego, and you yours, it is merely the Ego defining the Ego.

The Ego unfolds within itself through three stages : —

First, it is simple, undivided, in immediate unity with itself. In this stage the Ego cannot yet know itself, it is unconscious, yet full of the possibility of consciousness.

We may call such a stage the infantile, for the infant has an Ego, quiescent, slumbering, sunk in the wrappage of nature. The child is the potential man, and is always giving out intimations of his coming destiny ; he is continually anticipating manhood. These anticipations of children are a mighty instrument of development in the hands of the skillful educator ; it is the great merit of Froebel that he grasped their import and organized them in his kindergarden. In sleep also the Ego is in an unconscious, immediate condition, unseparated within itself, the sport of its environment. Likewise in waking states of the mature mind there are many degrees of unconsciousness, yet always with an impulse toward consciousness; indeed the Ego is forever hovering between the unconscious and the conscious, or between the less and the more conscious activity, having an inner force or motion to burst from the bud into the flower. Still in the present stage the Ego is, has being, though not yet thinking and self-relating ; it is blank identity of Self, without difference realized, though always impelled inwardly toward selfdifferentiation.

Secondly, the Ego is the divided, the different ; it separates itself within itself and makes itself its own object. Now it is awake, and distinguishes itself from the world; it has become conscious, the dualism has entered, and man can know.

This twofoldness of the Ego is the matter to be grasped in the present stage. Look inwardly, you behold yourself; you are your own other, you have othered yourself ; that is, you have made yourself the object of yourself, you being still the subject. These two words, subject and object, coming to light at this point will henceforth never drop out of our psychological vocabulary. Their birth-place is just here, they are sprung of the self-separation of the Ego, twins, Siamese twins, distinct individuals, yet everlastingly bound together. Historically, these two terms, originating with the Schoolmen, have descended into modern thought and have colored its entire course. They express the fundamental dualism of consciousness, and form the real starting-point of the psychology of our epoch. According to Hamilton, the term consciousness was unknown to ancient Plato and Aristotle, and was first employed by Des Cartes, the precursor of modern philosophy.

If the previous stage was that of infancy and of paradisaical innocence, this second stage is the eating of the tree of knowledge, whereby dualism (_deuce, devil) enters and separates man from his primeval condition of simple unity with himself and with nature. Thus the start is made, according to the Hebrew account; Greek legend has many similar statements. Both the Iliad and the Odyssey spring from mighty breaches in the Hellenic soul, grand separations of the spirit, especially the separation of Occident from Orient, in whose throes Greece was born.

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The Ego is in itself the different, and hence the source of all notions of difference. I could not say that yonder house was different from the tree which stands before it, unless the fact lay in me. I could not think myself as different from you, if my Ego did not have difference within itself. I could not know an external world, I could not separate myself from this book, unless I had separation in me. Without this differentiation of the Self, there would be for me no multiplicity of nature, no shifting landscape, no variety of any kind ; I could not distinguish, could not analyze, could not know.

Hence this second stage of the Ego will be found in every psychological process, small and great; we shall note it in each act of the Ego, which, in order to act, must separate itself.

Thirdly, the Ego is the return out of separation into unity with itself. This unity is distinct from the unity of the first stage; that was immediate, this is mediated, mediated by passing through the stage of difference. Thi3 unity, therefore, has the separation behind it, present but overcome ; the opposite of itself is now united and reconciled within itself.

The Ego has now gone through the last stage of the process, which gives to it completeness. The cycle of the Ego we may name it, inasmuch as it, like a circular movement, has returned into itself. It is, however, as yet only the inner or subjective cycle, whose destiny is to make itself external (to outer or utter itself) in many forms throughout Psychology.

It also gives the thought of restoration after estrangement ; it shows the nature of the return out of alienation, out of the fall, hinting the grand recovery of man, which is likewise his progressive movement. It is, in fact, the germinal process of the deepest spiritual experiences, and gives the basis of that inner harmony which comes from the resolution of the sharp discords of life.

The story of Eden, which may, from one point of view, be regarded as the story of the development of the first human consciousness, has also its return in later legend; Paradise is lost through the grand estrangement, but this is overcome and Paradise is regained, and man comes back to his Eden. Especially in the great poem of Dante is this last form of the old Semitic legend wrought over and transfigured into a new spiritual utterance for the race. But the same movement and essentially the same thought are found in the Greek Mythus, notably in Homer, whose two poems, parts of one whole, may be respectively designated as the Separation and the Return. Undisguisedly the Odyssey is called by the poet himself a Eeturn; it is the story of the return of the hero Ulysses from war, estrangement, negation. It is a very shallow view of the poem, which sees only the hero's external voyage back to his home, with some strange adventures thrown in by the way. In fact, the Iliad and the Odyssey together exhibit the purest movement of the Ego found in literature, clothed of course in the events of a world-historical epoch ; in Homer the infant Occident awakes and separates itself from the Orient. It may seem a very remote relationship, but really it is a very near one when we say that what Homer did for the childman of his age, Froebel has done for the actual child of our time : through play and song and story he has helped to lead it out of its unconscious state, and gradually to take possession of the culture of its race, and thus to become the heir of the future.

We must, accordingly, seize the movement of the Ego as essentially the movement of Mythology, of History, of Literature. These are all products of mind seeking to utter itself and to become real in the world ; they all must bear the mind's impress. There is, accordingly, an objective psychology which is the best illustration of the subjective one, veritably its necessary counterpart.

Let us, however, turn back to the three stages above given; they must be grasped as a process, always separating yet always uniting. The Ego is not a crystallized thing, nor is it capable of being forever fixed in a category, so that it may be handled in an external way. The Ego must always be re-thought, that is, re-created ; it cannot simply be remembered or be represented. However successful its formulation in words, it cannot thus live and move, for all speech is crystallization, while the Ego in its very nature is the process. Still the words we must have, just to transcend them; speech is a ladder by which the spirit climbs to its treasure-house beyond the ladder.

II

The process of the Ego as just given is the germinal movement of Psychology, unfolding into all its distinctions, and yet uniting these distinctions into the one principle, which is just this process of the Ego. For designating it from somewhat different points of view, we shall employ in the main four terms or categories, of which we shall give a brief exposition. These terms are subject-object, limit-transcending, injinile, psychosis.

More terms might be added, but these will suffice to show the purpose and the usage of nomenclature in general. Psychology has to speak its own language ; least of all, can it borrow its vocabulary from Physiology without shooting into chaos-.

But the student must not imagine that all he has to do is to write these terms down in a notebook, or to store them up in his memory. They must be generated anew every time they are employed, if they are to have any life. The Ego is not a dead thing, it can be grasped only in the living movement of itself.

Hence the above analysis of the Ego must be followed at once by synthesis, which is not an external putting together, but a more than vital process, nay a thinking process. The second stage of the Ego is the analytic, separative, differentiating, which has to find its higher truth in the return to unity. The terms Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis, have been used a good deal in some systems of philosophy; they must at last obtain their justification in the movement of the Ego, and not in any separated, fixated condition. In Psychology there has to be life, more than life, there must be the self-active Thought.

The Ego has been described by a number of thinkers as subject-object, which, when genetically thought out, is the true definition of it. Here is the division within itself ; the Ego separates itself from itself, holds itself up before itself, and looks at itself; then it sees that the two sides are one. Consider again your Ego; you project it before you as object and regard it; yet the object is the subject, is also the Ego regarding, both are one. The twain have been put together and called subject-object, an awkward but very useful term, in whose outward form we see division, and in the division we see unity. Or, to state the same thing as a process: the inner Ego throws itself outward and is external to itself, while still within. The hyphen is important, since it cancels the difference between the two sides, yet indicates it also as present, though overcome, ideated, ideal.

A valuable point in regard to the term subject-object is, that it persists in remaining meaningless unless we go through the Ego's complete process in thinking it. The triple movement lurking in it must be seized, if it is to have any life or intelligent purpose.

Another important predicate of the Ego is limit-transcending . The Ego reaches out beyond its bounds, it bursts its barriers, it cannot rest satisfied in limits, even its own limits. We saw that it would not remain in mere identity, but passed to difference ; just as little could it remain in difference. Limit-transcending is the Ego; if it posits a limit, straightway it must in some way assert itself as beyond the same, being the free, unbounded spirit.

This characteristic is taken for granted in every form of education ; ignorance is a limit which can be transcended, unless all learning be a mistake. The child goes to school under the

supposition that mind is limit-transcending; you are now reading this book of mine buoyed with the hope (which may be vain) of removing certain limits of yours in Psychology.

Upon the same characteristic rests the moral nature of man. Vice is a limit of which the Ego must be able to liberate itself, if we are to be held accountable. The Christian world holds that the worst sinner can repent, that the deepest and darkest limitation of the Ego this Ego can wipe out and become free again. Here we are suddenly brought face to face with what is often called the infinitude of man.

Mind, Spirit, Ego, is designated as infinite. Not that it knows every particular object in the universe, not that it stretches itself externally and extends bevond the sun and stars, filling all space, but that it can rise above its own finitude, and can assert its infinite and eternal nature.

Undoubtedly, there has been much vague talk about the infinite spirit of man. Such talk, if not attaining quite the infinite, certainly reaches the indefinite with supreme success. But what is here meant by the infinite nature of the mind can be made definite by the process of thinking. The Ego has its bound, is finite, finds its limit on many sides in error, sin, ignorance. But it is also aware that it can pass its bound, that its limit is in reality no limit, is not fixed against it from the outside.

Employing these terms still further, we may say that the Ego is both infinite and finite ; its very finitude is self-canceling ; its movement is the movement of the Finite, which, to be true to itself, has to put an end to itself, and become infinite. To use other terms, the limit is negation, but negation when fully thought negates itself and becomes positive.

The process of the Ego through its three stages is the Psychosis. Here we introduce a word which will remain with us to the end of the present book, a word which expresses the active, unitary principle in all our science. As the Psyche is the soul of man, so the Psychosis is the soul of Psychology.

It is a fundamental mistake to suppose that Psychology deals merely in difference and distinction, that it is a dividing of the mind into faculties and activities, as if these were the rooms of a huge apartment house. The Ego has unquestionably division as one of its phases, but its process is to get out of division and distinctions and return to unity. A psychological treatise which gives only distinctions, contradicts therein the Ego itself, which must also cancel distinctions, even its own distinctions. The Ego cannot be held fast in a state of separation, else it were not itself, at least not its whole living self, but merely some dead fragment of itself. Thus analysis the acutest can never reach the total Ego, though analysis is certainly one phase of its process, which has, however, to cancel analysis in order to be the process.

The Psychosis is, therefore, always to come after distinction the most minute and classification the most sweeping, after the smallest and largest divisions of Psychology, in order that the dislocated and anatomized Ego be restored to unity. To be sure all this will require mental effort, especially will it demand the limit-transcending act which has been mentioned. Language often stands in the way of the Psychosis, yet the latter has to be formulated in words in order to be imparted. Words are always in danger of getting fixed, crystallized, and so destroy the very process which they are designed to express. Language is essentially the uttered, the externalized, the separated ; it is the product of the second stage of the Ego and must be transcended by the spirit. If I am sunk in the mere forms of speech, I cannot employ them aright, I am their slave, the Ego loses its free movement which is just the thing to be uttered. The writer who fills and overfills language is really the master of it ; he compels it to express the Psychosis. This is true of literary composition, far truer of psychological writing, which too often slays the soul in trying to tell of it.

Accordingly we shall endeavor to lay the Psychosis under the spell of words, well knowing the difficulty, and also well knowing that the most successful formulation will be dead to the reader, till he creates it anew, that is, re-thinks it by an immediate act of his own Ego. Nothing can be more lifeless than the corpse of Ps}'- chology cut up into innumerable distinctions with out the Psychosis; the dead human body is hardly so repugnant. There must be the new life, nay the new genesis, which makes whole ; still we must not forget that distinction has its place in the process of the Ego.

We have now mentioned four terms which may reasonably be employed in mental science — - subject-object, limit-transcending, infinite, the Psychosis. It is to be noted that all these terms are to be understood in substantially the same sense, yet they exhibit their contents in different ways. They are points on the circumference of a circle which have the one common center, though each has a separate direction toward that center. Each requires a special act of thought to reduce it to unity. The Ego has to go through its process in order to find itself in these terms ; there has, in each case, to be a Psychosis in order to identify the Psychosis. No definition of terms is this in the ordinary sense ; it is the Ego revealing itself under different forms as its own single process.

To mark the distinction in these terms just a little in passing: subject-object indicates more the Ego with division present but overcome — ideality ; limit-transcending indicates more the Ego as reaching over its bound — aspiration ; infinite indicates more the Ego as coming to its true Self in thus reaching over its bound — attainment; Psychosis insists upon the unification of these distinctions, however minute or however colossal, in the one process of the Ego. For if the Ego be order and not chaos, it must have a plan; this plan must be its own, its very Self, and recognizable by itself. Underneath these distinctions, accordingly, and indeed underneath all distinction whatever, lies the Psychosis.

Historical. The previous view of the Ego is by no means a new doctrine; it is substantially the way in which man has looked at himself from the beginning, that is, since he began to regard himself as a self-conscious being. The poetry of the race gives many a glimpse of this view. Mythology is much occupied with it also. Especially have the religions of the world taken hold of it and incorporated it into their systems of belief; under diverse shapes the Divine Ego is held to be threefold, and thus to manifest itself to man. Hence comes the sacred nature of the number three among so many peoples, it is God's number, the quantitative form of Spirit. In philosophy the same tendency can be observed, particularly among those philosophers who hold to a spiritual view of the world. Ancient Plato is famous for his trichotomy, or threefold movement of mind ; modern Hegel organizes his vast system on the same lines. Superstition has undoubtedly misapplied the number three, and fancy has capriciously played with it, so that it has been at times discredited ; moreover it can be used in the most external fashion and clapped on anywhere to anything. Still it has also its deeply internal principle which cannot be ignored.

Modern philosophy moves about the development of the Ego as the center, or self-consciousness. Thinking and Being are the two opposites which are to be reconciled by a philosophic view of the world. Cogito, ergo sum is the key-note, or rather short overture, out of which all succeeding harmonies and discords are unfolded. Hence it is that modern philosophy is occupied with the psychological problem, while ancient philosophy was occupied with the ontological, as has often been observed.