The child's unconscious mind; the relations of psychoanalysis to education; a book for teachers and parents

Contents

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CHAPTER PAGE

I Introduction . ,. . , ,. i

Introduction

A DEEPER knowledge than ever before is now possible concerning the nature of the child, and with it the nature of the problems of education. By virtue of the new knowledge education becomes more nearly a science than it has been in the past. The new knowledge is a knowledge of a hitherto unexplored, or at least unsuccessfully explored, stratum of the mind, as evident in the child as in the adult, and in the child more controllable than in the adult, because more fluent, less fixed and crystallized. We knew that children were, in general, more educable than adults. Now we know the true cause why, and also why some children are more educable than others, and why some children do better in school than others, or learn as easily in school as they do in life.

The method of the newer psychology, which is that of modern science, is the formation and working out of an hypothesis, testing it daily with all the phenomena that do not fit into older hypotheses, and ultimately giving it up, if another theory more inclusive is found. The hypothesis adopted in the newer psychology, which is that tentatively presented here as a basis for a newer science of education, is the hypothesis that the unconscious por- Hon of each human mind, child or adult, is an activity which plays an extremely important, if not an exclusively controlling, role in the life of every individual.

The results of a scientific method of testing this hypothesis leave nothing, so far, to be desired. Language alone is found defective, at times, to give a universally comprehensible account of the conclusions which are reached. But it is the behef of the present writer that so much of value for education, so much that is almost imperative for parents and teachers, and even older children to take into account, has been recently discovered, that it is quite time for an attempt to be made to put this new point of view before all those concerned in the bringing up of children. And at no previous time in the history of mankind has there been so great a need for radical knowledge of mankind as in a time following almost universal war.

The object-matter of the newer knowledge is infinitely broader than any ever studied by the same methods before. I say by the same methods, because the existence of unconscious mental activity has been guessed for ages, and human conduct has always been motivated by the unconscious desires; but no conscious cognizance has been taken of it except in a very indefinite and unproductive way^

The object-matter of the newer knowledge is the human organism and its modes of functioning, including the unconscious thoughts upon which before the present time no really scientific observations have been made. Whether we regard the human organism, with the acts

INTRODUCTION 3

and thoughts which express Its functioning, as purely physical or purely psychical seems to me to make no difference, if we suppose, as we must, that the same natural laws are found to exist in both. There do appear, to be sure, activities which seem predominantly physical, but it would be difficult or impossible to think away the mental element of such activities; and there are activities which are apparently purely mental, but it is impossible to believe that they are really entirely disconnected from what we call physical conditions.

As examples of what might be taken as purely physical, because not apparently caused by any conscious thoughts, there are the instinctive acts, to which we do not attribute any consciousness in animals, because we do not notice any in ourselves. Mention will be made later of the instincts under two heads of self-preservative and race-preservative.

The modes of functioning of the human organism, taken in toto as both mental and physical at the same time, and as Including both their conscious and unconscious manifestations, may be regarded descriptively and dynamically. But the description of a state and the narration of an act are both needed in the account of any human condition at any time. I shall be very little concerned with the descriptive end of this matter, except in so far as previous psychology may have been inadequate in its account. The current conceptions of the senses, of perception and of the emotions may have to be added to, in order to include the unconscious in the reckoning.

The problem of education in general, whether academic or other, cannot be adequately solved without Ineluding consideration of the unconscious, and the means of education in schools will have to be amplified In order to take In this factor which Is now almost universally Ignored or " wished onto '' fate.

The specific problems are those which touch at the present time, and with the present school equipment and management, the relations between the work, the child, the teacher and the parent. In this we deal with concrete realities and Interests which are, from whatever angle viewed, admittedly vital.

The Point of View

In order to get the point of view of the most modern analytic psychology, a view from an angle from which education has so far been very little regarded, it will be necessary for the reader to accept the fundamental postulate of the newer psychology and frankly admit the existence in each and every human of an unconscious (sometimes called subconscious and sometimes co-conscious) mentality. This implies not only that each one of us has mental states that never enter consciousness but also that these unconscious mental states are not only states or conditions or dispositions, arrangements of something inert, but are activities, energies or groups of forces which are operating by mechanisms of which only the special student knows anything definite at all. The ordinary person knows practically nothing of the detailed working of these activities, but in his own everyday life he has frequent examples of the conscious results produced by these elaborate and complicated mechanisms.

If we do not know the least thing about the part of the

THE POINT OF VIEW 5

mind below the horizon of consciousness, below the terrestrial surface above which alone our consciousness is able to see what is going on in full view, yet we have many times wondered, most of us, what Is beyond that visible horizon or what is the nature of the basis on which our consciousness sports here and there, like an animate being on the face of the earth, and on which we build our mental and intellectual structures. The architect of a real building knows what kind of soil the foundations are in, and makes different arrangements, according to whether he is building on sand or rock, or whether, as in the case of a well-known New York City hotel, a subterranean river has to be provided with an artificial course under the subcellar.

One of the commonest illustrations of the flexibility or fluidity of the substratum on which our mental life is built is the ordinary everyday blunder.* When such a blunder involves loss of money or injury to person or property, one frequently hears the blunderer repeat to himself: " I can't imagine how I ever could have done that 1 What power got hold of me to make me so careless as not to see that that very thing was most likely to happen? "

In a number of these blunders, particularly where there Is no great loss of any kind, the operating cause of the mistake is easily seen, and mosjt_people will readily admit ^hatit Is caused by an unconscious desire or tendency to do the very thing that was done, or leave undone the very thing that one forgets to do.

A person makes an engagement with another person,

* A careful study of almost any blunder shows first that an activity is responsible for it, an activity with which our familiar consciousness had nothing whatever to do.

but does not really wish to keep the appointment. He either forgets it, or absent-mindedly puts himself in a position where it is impossible for him to keep it. For instance, with the conscious purpose of taking dinner with a friend in a suburb, I get ready and go down to the station and find either that I have missed the last train which would get me there in time for dinner, or, by some unaccountable ( ?) mental freak, have left my money and my check book at home. With conscious irritation but with unconscious satisfaction I give it up, and go back to my real interests. That is, if I have not totally forgotten the engagement or misplaced it mentally to the following day, also a common error.

A blunder of my own shows in an unmistakable way the operation of the unconscious wish.

I went to a department store and bought $27.47 worth of goods and asked to have them charged to my deposit account. After reaching home I was informed by my wife that she had used it up and I had but a dollar or so on deposit there. I immediately wrote a check for $30.00 and mailed it, on the supposition that they would send the goods with a note stating that I had overdrawn. Instead they sent the goods collect on delivery. I asked the driver if he could take a check. As he consented, I left him at the door, wrote a check to R. H. Mercer & Company, for $27.47 and handed it to the driver. He looked at it to see if it was correct, put it in his book, receipted the bill and departed. The next day a special messenger came from Mercer's with the check, and asked if I had received the goods and had written that check. I had not signed it! Why? Unconsciously I had not wished to pay twice or even to do anything that looked like paying

THE POINT OF VIEW 7

twice. I should have been much surprised, and possibly annoyed at myself, had I been unacquainted with the fact that wishes play so important a part in the actions of every one of us. It is needless to say that at the time I was totally unaware that I had not signed the check. I never should have supposed that with a driver from a large New York store I could get away with a trick like that.

This unconscious omission on my part Is a very good example of an omission caused by the unconscious part of my personality. This unconscious factor is an element in the constitution of every normal human mind. Its nature is described in one word: desire. It constantly desires my superiority to my fellow-men in all the relations of life. It has been compared to a current of power which is forever flowing and ready to be applied to any purpose for which the human body is a suitable machine. But it lives on the gratification which comes from the worsting of any contestant, and in a certain sense everything with which and everyone with whom I come in contact is taken by it as a possible or actual rival. It feeds on a feeling of power which it gets by making me overcome or outwit my adversaries. If I do not think of this or that man as an opponent, my unconscious factor does, and makes me unconscious for a brief moment. Of course I was unconscious to a small degree when I forgot to sign my name to that check. I was not in a complete trance, nor did I faint. So was the driver unconscious when he looked at the check and forgot to note that it was unsigned. Neither did he faint nor fall in a trance. He simply did not see that the check had no signature, although every part of the check was making an impression on his eye. His brain was working too. Possibly the unconscious of the driver also had its reasons for wishing not to see that the check was imperfect. He may have been tired, or he may have had a grudge against his employer. The failure to see was purely mental. So is the failure of almost all of us purely mental when we do not see an error in a printed page. If a letter is left out we see it though it is not there. If I saw a person in my room though he was not there, we should rightly call this vision of mine an hallucination. The psychologists call the failure to see a real object a negative hallucination.

Why did I not sign the check? I was not well pleased to have my order changed from deposit account to collect on delivery. I did not intend to keep even $30.00 on deposit at Mercer's, and really did not want to take the trouble either to write to them for a check or to go in person to draw out the money. So I made a worthless check. Every mistake ever made can be explained in the same way. Every action that we do is done clearly because we have a motive for doing it, a wish to do it. Similarly every act that we omit doing has equally a wish behind it, a wish not to do that very thing.

No soldier is excused for omission of a duty because he forgot it. It is the same in love as in war. Rosalind in As You Like It expresses the principle that a failure to do a thing is on account of a wish not to do it, in the following words : '* Break an hour's promise In love ! He that will divide a minute Into a thousand parts, and break but a part of the thousandth part of a minute In the affairs of love. It may be said of him that Cupid hath clapped him o' the shoulder, but I'll warrant him heart-whole."

In the case of the check unsigned, which is the case of

THE POINT OF VIEW 9

forgetting to write a letter of apology, or to post a letter already written, or to return a book or an umbrella, the wish is transparent enough, when once called to our attention. But it was an unconscious wish, or a wish of which we were at the time unconscious. It is the same with anyone who has " builded better than he knew." His unconscious has been helping him.

Another amusing mistake, which I made and which very clearly showed what I really wished to do, is as follows. I consciously wished to get up one morning at half-past six. I told my wife, who, without my knowledge, set the alarm clock for that hour. Just before I went to bed myself, I went to the alarm clock, with the conscious purpose of setting it to ring at the desired hour. I took the clock from the shelf where it was, and turned it around to see the dial where the hour of the alarm is adjusted. I saw that the indicator pointed to half-past six. So far so good. I then looked at the arm which stops the alarm bell from ringing or releases it so that it can ring at the proper time. It actually pointed to the word " alarm," but I saw only the word " silent." Unconsciously I must have made the inference that because I saw the word " silent," therefore the arm was set for silence, because what I did was to turn it. Mentally, that is consciously, at the time I thought that I was setting it for alarm, though I really turned it off, and went to bed with a perfectly satisfied conscious conscience. Next morning I slept till ten minutes of seven and awoke with a start. For twenty minutes my unconscious conscience had been trying to wake me up and had succeeded in doing so at such a time as to enable me to make, but with a great deal of hurry, the train I wished both consciously and unconsciously to catch. I certainly admire the skill of my unconscious in thus giving me a little more rest, and letting me get the train just the same. What I really wanted to do was just what I did do — namely, sleep a little longer, and catch the train too. No one will doubt that the influence of the unconscious wish which I had tried to repress was sufficient to blind me to the real positions of the mechanisms of the alarm clock. If I had been asked, just after turning it off, whether I had set the alarm, I should certainly have said I had done so, and with the clearest conscience.

In all these errors it is quite clear that there was a wish, as evident as the wish-content of Rip Van Winkle's otherwise irrelevant statement about his latest drink: *' Well, ril not count this one." The unconscious so successfully counts out a great many things which it wills not to do or to reckon or to notice, that the things themselves simply do not occur to one's mind. And if they do not occur, what power will cause us to do those things ? We may write them down, but we shall forget to look at the memorandum. We may get another person to remind us of them, but we shall either not hear him, or not listen to him, or shall reason so plausibly to ourselves why the whole thing is off anyway, that we shall feel justified, even consciously for a while, in not doing It.

A rower in a swift tide will not go directly across the stream if he goes directly across the current, but will strike the opposite shore some distance either above or below the point opposite which he started, because the current carries him up or down. If a mariner knew nothing about the Gulf Stream and attempted to steer across the ocean, he might land hundreds of miles from his purposed destination.

THE POINT OF VIEW u

So In Ignorance of the trend of the unconscious we do not arrive whither we aim, and we make all sorts of excuses for not doing so. But excuses or no excuses, we are forced by these blunders of ours to see that we are to a certain extent controlled by a power which is outside of our conscious life. It Is not outside of our complete mental life any more than the current is outside of the river or the Gulf Stream is outside of the ocean. On the other hand, the current of the river Is no more Intimately a part of the river than is the unconscious a part of my mental life as a whole. If we swim In a river that has a current, and do not look at the river bank, but only at the water near us, we never know the motion of the current. We learn that we are being carried several miles an hour by the current as we swim in it only after looking at the water and the river bank at the same time. In the modern analytic psychology we have a means of seeing and estimating the influence of the mental current in which our consciousnesses are swimming. The analogy of many consciousnesses swimming in the current of one river Is not so very misleading, either, as it is found that we are all carried toward the same goal by the same unconscious trend.

The Importance of the new viewpoint which includes both consciousness and the unconscious is as vital as is the necessity that the navigator should allow for currents in the ocean when sailing from port to port. And as the knowledge of the modern navigator is so faradvancedthat the pilot of today can cross the ocean without the wastage of a mile, so the modern science of analytic psychology has superseded the older doctrine which recognized the dynamics of only the conscious mentality. For the vision into the lower strata of the mind is a deeper vision, and makes intelligible much of what was paradoxical before. For instance, it has shown what the force is, and how it operates, which controls that association of ideas, that topic which, In the mental science of the past, caused so much dispute and produced so much paradox.

Recognizing, then, the existence and the elemental power of the unconscious portion of human mentahty, we are in a position to understand the simpler of its mechanisms and the effects produced by them in the outward actions and words of our fellow-beings.

The deeper knowledge of the nature of the individual, now for the first time available for teacher and parent, takes into consideration the unconscious mental activities, and a knowledge of these as they appear In the child is now an essential part of the equipment of all who hope to do the best work in the bringing up of the young. The ordinary blunder Is the clearest illustration of the working of the unconscious wish.

Chapter II

As each one of us desires to develop his personality to the utmost, and as the recognition of the existence of the unconscious element in the mind as a whole at once suggests a comparison between it and the conscious element, it is a natural question to ask what kind of acts are the most personal.

What Act Is Most Personal?

Which of our acts are most likely to be regarded by ourselves as most our own ? Are they those which are the most conscious or those which are the most unconscious? I think no one will hesitate to say that the acts which we perform in a state of semi-consciousness are but half ours, but what we perform with the most intense attention, what in that sense must be called the most keenly conscious acts, are those which we would be most likely to call our own. This comes to the same thing as saying that our consciousness is the most real part of us. And yet, from one point of view, our conscious life, in which we seem to take the greatest amount of interest, is the smallest part of our mental life. I dismiss for the moment the question of being able to call by the name mental what is not conscious. Modern psychology goes on the principle that it is, and that no proper and complete account can be given of the whole mental life which does not give acknowledgment to the unconscious.

But there we have what seems to be a dilemma. What is most important is what is most proper to the ego, and what is most peculiarly the ego's is consciousness. But when compared to the extent and the depth of the unconscious part of the mind, the conscious part seems most unimportant. The truth is that the two parts have different roles in the drama of life, and that life would be incomplete, at least human life would, without both of them. Not only does the unconscious mental life play a great role in the adjustments which are necessarily made between the physical organism and the complexities of modern life, in causing adaptations, of which we are never conscious, of the various physiological functions to the ever changing environment of the life of today, but the unconscious wishes are forever causing mental, and purely mental, not physiological, changes to take place in our minds, of whose results only and not the processes we are conscious.

Not only do we eat new and unaccustomed foods, to which our unconscious powers are obliged to adjust our digestive apparatus, but we are fed from time to time upon new and unaccustomed mental pabulum which requires a change in our attitude towards many things. In these days we are gradually adapting ourselves mentally to the mental atmosphere of a nation at war. The sight of multitudes of uniformed men, which would in previous years have been extremely exciting to all of us, is now seen with quite another feeling, which has been produced In us by a great many circumstances to which we do not consciously attend, and yet there is a change, and a great

WE ARE MOST WHAT WE MOST DESIRE 15

one, which has taken place, in our hearts we call it in common parlance. The sight of women running trolley cars and elevators and acting as ticket choppers on street railway systems, although we do not make much conscious comment on it, is nevertheless a factor in the total change which is being wrought in our unconscious mentality.

We Are Most What We Most Desire

In one sense what we call most our own spiritually is what we have consciously desired most and most earnestly striven to secure the attainment of. But there are in each one of us a great many desires, and strong ones too, of which we are totally unconscious. When, after a certain amount of study of the newer wish psychology, we come to realize how great and how strong these unconscious desires are, we for a time begin to think that those are really the most peculiarly our own and in a sense ourselves, our real selves. Frequently what we have consciously most desired we find after its attainment giving us comparatively little or no pleasure. We cease to want many things, such as riches, when once we have got them.

If what we most desire is what we ourselves most are, then the converse of this proposition is that our desires most exactly represent us. Now, if this is true and if it is also true that the greater number of our desires are absolutely unknown to us, then the conclusion naturally follows that of ourselves we know comparatively little. It is only the superficial conscious desires that we really know, and we are all frequently puzzled by their apparent contradictions, not to say by the manifest inability of some persons to form any idea of why they want this or that thing. The phenomenon of the capricious will is quite familiar in the case of children. They are expected to wish this and that and to be unable to say why. The modern form of psychology, sometimes called the wish psychology, has given an answer to many of these problems. Its answer is that all the unconscious wishes are forms of the creative wish for reproduction, and that the reason why they have been forced into unconsciousness is that things sexual have been tabooed in many civilizations. The fact that these desires have been forced into unconsciousness accounts for the fact that they never enter consciousness except under disguise. For instance. It has been repeatedly shown that among many others the unduly strong desire to smoke tobacco or to use certain kinds of foods is a compensation for certain wishes for the more direct form of physical creativeness against which society has set up a strong barrier, and the unconscious, groping like a blind animal, or stretching forth like a blade of grass under a board toward the light, takes, in its struggle, an indirect way towards gratification Instead of the most direct which has been blocked.

From the multitudinous prohibitions aimed by society at the exploitation of things directly sexual has come a sort of Idea, partly conscious and partly unconscious In the minds of men and women alike, that such things are wicked or sinful or at least dangerous. It Is called playing with fire, with the Implication that all those who play with fire are likely to be burned, furthermore that It Is a bad thing In every way to be burned. A state of society is conceivable In which such a fear of being burned did not exist and In which therefore there would be plenty of

WE ARE MOST WHAT WE MOST DESIRE 17

people in evidence who had been burned and been disfigured by their burns. Now, the fact is that in avoiding the one kind of burns we are suffering another kind. What we are really doing is exchanging a physical for a mental burn. There is an absolute law of the conservation of energy in the mental as well as in the physical world. What we gain in the way of physical advantage by our constant curbing of the natural instincts, which is the name which we have given to the primordial urge toward the maintenance of the individual and of the race, is lost in mental advantage. For the absolutely natural and therefore wholesome instinct of the girl to be a mother is constantly being repressed and in our present civilization is in many cases not being replaced in any way by a socially valuable substitute.

There is nothing to which one can devote his or her whole heart, to use the common expression, which does not enlist all the instincts with which nature has so generously provided us; there is, in short, no activity available for us that will not leave some of the instinctive desire ungratified, unless it enlists the whole of our personality, including the unconscious wishes above referred to. In other words, unless we can find something to do which satisfies our conscious desires, which we have seen above to be at best whimsical and illogical, and at the same time gratifies in some substitutive form the unconscious wishes, which are a very great proportion of the motive force of all human action, we shall not be working, or playing either for that matter, with our entire available energy, and therefore we shall be working at cross-purposes with ourselves.