Only too frequently the physician must be satisfied with the cure of the symptoms, with lightening the load. He always strives to remove the cause. Freud's great service is that he has opened before the physician a path which leads to the cause.
These lines of Vondel's seem as if composed for him:
"The physician must not only know How high the pulse has mounted, And where the sickness lies, which makes him groan with pain, But he must see the cause, from where The great weakness of this sickness came."
AN ELEMENTARY STUDY OF THE BRAIN, BASED ON THE DISSECTION OF THE BRAIN OF THE SHEEP. By Eben W. Fiske, A.M., M.D. Illustrated with photographs and diagrams by the author. The Macmillan Company, New. York, 1913.
The study of the brain is confessedly a difficult subject, and particularly so for the elementary student. There is certainly no royal road to its conquest, but this is an added reason why an introduction to its study should be made as simple as the subject permits, and also as interesting. Dr. Fiske has attempted this task in this book, which he entitles "An elementary study of the brain." The brain of the sheep is chosen as the basis of study because of its availability, its relative simplicity of structure, and its essential similarity to that of man. It appears to the author, and we think with justice, that the subject should be approached from a biological standpoint; hence, throughout the book, there is constant reference to the evolution of nervous structure and to fundamental conceptions of a biological character. Further than this, the relations of cerebral anatomy and function, together with allied psychological considerations, demand continual reference as a supplement to purely anatomical considerations. The secret of exciting interest in any anatomical study surely lies in a consideration of the function of the organ or structure in relation to its anatomical form. Bare descriptions cannot and should not inspire interest, whereas the driest anatomical facts, if seen in their broader relationships, at once assume a significance in the student's mind which may be attained in no other way.
The first chapter is a brief statement of phylogeny, followed, as are succeeding chapters, by directions to the student regarding means of study. The second chapter concerns itself with ontogeny, and the student is wisely advised to make drawings of various stages in the development of the brain of one of the higher mammals. An actual brain is always to be preferred to a model. The third chapter gives directions of a simple and practical sort as to methods of removing the sheep's brain. Thereafter, chapters follow, descriptive of the various surfaces of the brain, of sagital, horizontal and transverse sections, and of certain of the internal structures and the brain stem.
A summary concludes the volume, and a very brief but well selected bibliography. The illustrations are thoroughly adequate, the excellent method being used of photographic reproductions, with accompanying descriptive plates done in outline. In general, the book, modest though it is, should prove a most admirable laboratory guide, not only for students of zoology, but also for those who propose, as physicians, to make a final study of the human brain. It is, no doubt, more difficult to write an acceptable elementary text-book than a more complete treatise, but the author, we have no hesitation in saying, has succeeded in this object, and has added a book of positive value to the long list which has gone before. The BNA nomenclature has been adopted in part, but by no means to the exclusion of the old terminology, which is certainly a far more efficient means of introducing an ultimate uniform nomenclature than an immediate complete change to the BNA system. The text is well printed and readable, and the proof reading in general good. We note, however, on page 86, that the name Von Gudden is spelled with one d instead of two. E. W. TAYLOR.
THE BACKWARD CHILD, A STUDY OF THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BACKWARDNESS: A PRACTICALMANUAL FOR TEACHERS AND STUDENTS. By Barbara Spoffard Morgan. G. P.Putnam's Sons, New York, 1914. Pp. xvii plus 263.
This book by Mrs. Morgan, which is somewhat unique and certainly very different from other books on the same subject, promises to be one of the most widely read educational works which has recently appeared. It is based on two years' experience in an experimental clinic for backward children in New York City and the author states that, "It is an effort to persuade teachers and parents, in spite of a hide-bound educational system, to study the children that interest them as individuals and to recognize their faculties and tendencies." It "Looks to a future when teachers will so understand every child's mental structure that his whole education will be directed to the fortifying of his weak points and the development of his tendencies."
The author terms her process "mental analysis" and says it differs from the Binet and Simon tests in that they are merely to classify children, and her method discovers peculiarities and also gives the training necessary to bring the child up to normal. She gives a psychological basis for her work which will be surprising to many readers because of its great divergence from the usual psychological treatment. The child's mind is considered as having four primary processes, namely: (1) Sense Impressions, (2) Recollections of Sense Impressions, (3) Association Channels (4) Abstraction Processes. As the child grows older these are elaborated into Imagination, Reasoning, and Expression. Attention is of three kinds: (1) Homogeneous Attention or concentrating, which consists in attending to one thing for a period of time; (2) Simultaneous Attention or observing, which consists in giving attention to a number of things at once; and (3) Disparate Attention, or giving attention to two or more things over a period of time. Memory may be (1) Automatic, (2) Voluntary, or (3) Retentive. The function of the tests is to determine just which one of these processes are weak or strong and discover a method of education which is suited to the individual. Other mental processes, such as sensation, perception, abstraction, and judgment are discussed, and an interesting treatment distinguishing between the analytic and synthetic type of mind is given.
One of the most important parts of the book is the discussion of the way in which the tests are given. She insists that the relation of the child and the examiner be very personal and informal and that the process be varied as much as possible in order to prevent crystallization. Many of the tests are the same, or much the same, as those of Simon and Binet, but the greatest of liberty is taken in adapting them to the particular case. Much use is made of conversation, puzzle-pictures and other little friendly means by which the personal characteristics of the child may be learned. After this is done, the proper training of the child is to be selected and the effort made to bring him back to normality, for which purpose, some quaint and interesting devices are used. One case given is that of a little girl whose senses of sound and form were defective and who therefore could not learn her letters. These letters were pasted on the keys of a piano and she was taught to play a piece with one finger, meanwhile chanting over the names of the letters as they were struck. In this way her sense of sound was trained, she learned her letters and gained ability to learn more and faster. Abstraction may be strengthened by having the child measure distances with a rule, first calculating the distance with his eye. The power of association may be made stronger by having the individual sort words or pictures which are pasted on slips of cardboard; he is to arrange them according to meaning or according to the activities with which they have to do. Simultaneous attention may be trained by such games as "Hide-the-thimble" or Jack-straws, and homogeneous attention may be trained by some such action as hammering nails in the upper left hand corners of all the squares on a board. Imagination is developed by retelling stories, and invention by solving puzzles; voluntary memory is strengthened by writing original rhymes and automatic memory may be strengthened by having the child write out a list of all the things in his kitchen or any other room with which he may happen to be familiar.
Different types of backward children are described and a few pages are devoted to a discussion of hysteria.
It is a book which will, in all probability, arouse considerable discussion and which will find some warm friends and some determined enemies. As one more publication calling attention to this important problem, it is of great value and it will probably be read more widely than any other book in this field which has appeared. Perhaps its greatest practical value lies in its suggestiveness as to the ways in which one may use his personality and initiative in dealing with backward children, rather than sticking so closely to prescribed tests and methods. RAYMOND BELLAMY. Emory & Henry College, Emory, Va.
CONTINUITY: THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS TO THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION FOR 1913. By Sir Oliver Lodge. G. P. Putnam s Sons, New York and London, 1914. Pp. v, 131.
The most obvious particular wisdom of the present scientific period is undoubtedly just that concept denoted by the title of this volume, continuity. And this wisdom is advanced wisdom and, withal, wisdom which is very expedient and even indispensable at this day, as a reaction required to set right the over-specialization of recent minds thoughtful only of some little branch of knowledge. Just in proportion as one esteems "authority" will one give heed to the pronouncement of the presidential address before the British Association, yet for its own intrinsic sake it is a piece of work which cannot be ignored.
Interesting and revolutionary as are the recent additions to philosophical physics brought about by the discovery of radium and its like, it is the other phase of this great physicist's mental trend which particularly interests the student of human behavior— that wisdom which gives him (as it gave William James, and for a like reason), the bravery to look a bit beyond the more or less materialistic confines of mere science into the broader realm. And strange, is it not, that a man NEED be brave in this twentieth century Domini to discuss spiritism and survival and telepathy? Only those do it who cannot "lose their jobs." Can one indeed honestly doubt that many an intelligent psychologist to-day is kept from investigating this pressing phase of knowledge largely, or even solely, by the materialistic incubus whose continuance still stands for an academic salary usually sufficient to buy wife and children bread, if not a little meat?
"Material bodies are all that we have any control over, are all that we are experimentally aware of; anything that we can do with these is open to us; any conclusions we can draw about them may be legitimate and true. But to step outside their province and to deny the existence of any other region because we have no sense-organs for its appreciation, or because (like the ether) it is too uniformly omnipresent for our ken, is to wrest our advantages and privileges from their proper use and apply them to our own misdirection." . . . "I am one of those who think that the methods of science are not so limited in their scope as has been thought: that they can be applied much more widely, and that the psychic region can be studied and brought under law too. Allow us anyhow to make the attempt. Give us a fair field. Let those who prefer the materialistic hypothesis by all means develop their thesis as far as they can; but let us try what we can do in the psychical region, and see which wins. Our methods are really the same as theirs—the subject-matter differs. Neither should abuse the other for making the attempt."
Here is this matter in a nutshell, and the evolution of cosmology in the last few years makes this argument and this plea greatly more persuasive still, for it forges one more link in the actual knowledge of continuity.
Twenty-four pages of useful, explanatory notes follow in this volume, the text of the Address. The book lacks an index. To those sapient ones who have not already saved the important little work out of Science, the dollar which this volume costs is a dollar well-spent, unless, indeed, philosophy be to him but a reproach. GEORGE V. N. DEARBORN. Tufts Medical and Dental Schools.
ADVENTURINGS IN THE PSYCHICAL. By H. Addington Bruce. Little, Brown & Co., 1914.
Professor Flournoy, in the Preface to his Spiritism and Psychology, made the remark: "It will be a great day when the subliminal psychology of Myers and his followers, and the abnormal psychology of Freud and his school, succeed in meeting, and will supplement and complete one another. That will be a great forward step in science and in the understanding of our nature." (Page VI.)
Any one who attacks the problem from this standpoint, in the right manner, is to be commended; and this is, very largely, the method of attack taken by a certain group of "psychical researches"; it is also the method of approach of Mr. Bruce, in the book under review. Although it will probably contain but little new to the student of abnormal psychology, it is, nevertheless, a welcome and extremely sane presentation of the problems discussed; while, for the general public, the effect of the book cannot be other than beneficial,— giving a sound and scientific view-point of many of these obscure and outlying problems.
Much of this book will be familiar to readers of the JOURNAL. The chapters on the "Subconscious" (extended and amplified in his final chapter on "The Larger Self"), "Dissociation and Disease," and "The Singular Case of B. C. A.," contain a summary of material long familiar to general psychological students—though this data has not been sufficiently popularized as yet,—while the case of B. C. A. is a relief after the oft-quoted earlier cases!
The first chapter, "Ghosts and their Meaning," deals with apparitions of the living, of the dying, and of the dead—according to the tentative arrangement of these cases made by the English S. P. R. Most of these are quoted from the Society's Proceedings, and the usual theories are offered to account for them; in the case of apparitions of the dead, e. g., "ghosts," the theory of deferred telepathic suggestion being held. This brings us naturally to the second chapter, "Why I believe in Telepathy," which again contains a summary of much of the S. P. R. work in this field; accompanied, however, by some other cases and a few interesting incidents which fell under the author's personal observation. The next two chapters deal with "Clairvoyance and Crystal Gazing" and "Automatic Speaking and Writing" respectively. Here, again, the bulk of the material is familiar to psychical and psychological students; though it must be admitted that this material is all excellently and carefully summarized. The author's attitude, throughout, is strictly critical and scientific; and while he believes in telepathy and other supernormal powers, he rejects spiritism as an explanation, and his views throughout are temperate and modest.
The remaining chapter, dealing as it does with "Poltergeists and Mediums," takes us into the more dubious field of "physical phenomena"—spontaneous and experimental—and cases are discussed which lie outside the province of the psychologist,— since they entrench more upon the domain of physics and biology. As such they have been treated and discussed by the majority of Continental savants.
One word more regarding the famous medium, Eusapia Palladino, whom Mr. Bruce refers to in several passages in this Chapter, referring to her in a footnote on page 196, as "The discredited Eusapia Palladino, once the marvel of two continents." May I take this occasion to repeat here what I have often repeated in public and private, elsewhere? and that is, that I retain my unshaken belief, amounting to a conviction, in the genuineness of Eusapia's power, and that, despite the trickery which was undoubtedly discovered here—and which had also been discovered, I may add, more than twenty years before she ever came to this country—she yet possesses genuine, remarkable powers of a supernormal character, and this belief, I may say, is shared equally by all the continental investigators, who remain unaffected by the so-called American expose. A statement of their attitude is perhaps well summarized by Flournoy, in his Spiritism and Psychology (Chap. VII); while I have published the records of the American seances— for those who may be interested—in my "Personal Experiences in Spiritualism," where copious extracts from the shorthand notes of the American sittings are given.
To return, however: If there is a criticism to make of Mr. Bruce's book, it is that it displays a lack of personal investigation and experimentation, and bears throughout the ear-marks of a literary compilation. But this is, after all, not a serious detraction from a work of this character,—which is, as I have said before, excellently done. HEREWARD CARRINGTON.
DES TROUBLES PSYCHIQUES ET NEVROSIQUES POST-TRAUMATIQUES, Par R. Benon.Ancien interne de la Clinique des Maladies Mentales et de l'Encephale a laFaculte de Paris, Medecin de l'Hospice General de Nantes (Quartiersd'Hospice). G. Steinheil, editeur, Paris, 1913; pp. x-449.
The author in this volume has written a clinical and medico-legal treatise on traumatic nervous affections from a broad and philosophical standpoint. The subject is treated under the following headings: "Generalities," in which is discussed the historical development of our knowledge of the effects of traumatism, the etiology, the evolution of the various disturbances, and the legal side of the questions at issue.
Following this introduction, under Chapter I, the general topic of what the writer terms the traumatic dysthenias or the traumatic sthenopathies is discussed under the following subheadings: (a) Simple post-traumatic asthenia; (b) Post-traumatic astheno-mania; (c) Prolonged asthenia and chronic traumatic asthenia, under which he includes traumatic neurasthenia, traumatic hystero-neurasthenia, traumatic neurosis, and traumatic psychoneurosis; (d) Chronic post-traumatic mania; (e) Periodic post-traumatic dysthenias; (f) Asthenic mania and pathological anatomy. Chapter II, under the general heading, "Traumatic Dysthymias: (a) Anxiety post-traumatic hyperthymia; (b) Traumatic hypochondriasis and traumatic hysteria; (c) Special hyperthymia of accidents; (d) Hysterical and traumatic crises; (e) Prolonged or permanent post-traumatic disturbances of character in children and adults. Chapter III, under the general heading, "Traumatic Dysthymias": (a) Traumatic amnesia; (b) Post-traumatic Korsakoff syndrome; (c) Traumatic mental confusion; (d) Post-traumatic agnosia; (e) Post-traumatic dementias; (f) Systematized chronic post-traumatic deliriums. Chapter IV, under the general heading, "Psychic states and Diverse Post-Traumatic Neuroses": (a) Post-traumatic epilepsy; (b) Traumatic aphasia; (c) Alcoholism, traumatism and hallucinatory conditions; (d) Post-traumatic sensual perversions; (e) Pains, vertigos, deafness, etc., following trauma; (f) Distant post-traumatic psychic disorders with cerebral lesions; (g) Unclassifiable observations. To this comprehensive material is added an appendix on the topic of psychic and neurotic disturbances as indications for trephining.
This outline of the contents of the book, which contains in addition many subheadings, gives a sufficiently clear idea of its scope and of the pains which the author has taken to subdivide his subject matter to the last possible degree. Whether such a detailed classification has merit sufficient to justify its complexity must be left to the individual reader to determine. It may, however, with justice be said that the author has spared no pains to illustrate by case reports the various phases of traumatic disorder which he enumerates. He has a keen sense of the significance of psychiatric knowledge in a proper understanding of the various results of trauma, and lays special stress upon the breadth of the psychiatric field, under which he properly enough includes the various so-called psychoneuroses as well as epilepsy, tics and aphasia. He believes that one may only arrive at a diagnostic criterion of such affections through the sensations and emotions expressed by the patients. The somatic phenomena he regards as always subordinate and accessory. Under this point of view, he attacks his problem, and with considerable success An admirable brief historical review of traumatism in relation to the nervous system constitutes a valuable section of the book, in which he brings out the conflicting views which have prevailed since the earlier work of Erichsen down through the fundamental investigations of Westphal, Charcot, Knapp, Oppenheim and others.
The author finds fault with the common use of the word traumatism in the sense of trauma, and correctly draws attention to the fact that traumatism should express a general condition, whereas, trauma should be used as indicative of a local lesion. This distinction has been too often overlooked, with resulting confusion.
In general, the book represents a vast amount of painstaking thought and an earnest but somewhat confusing attempt to bring light into the somewhat dark places of a much-discussed subject, which has frequently been the source of more or less acrimonious discussion. Not the least significant part of the volume is the constant reference to the legal implications of the traumatic affections. It should therefore be useful, not only to the physician, but also to the legal profession. It will doubtless be used rather as a book of reference than as a readable treatise. E. W. TAYLOR.
VERBRECHERTYPEN. 1 Heft. Geliebtenmorder von Albrecht Wetzel und KarlWilmanns. Verlag Julius Springer, Berlin: 1913.
With a better understanding of psychopathic phenomena, the underlying psychology of criminology becomes more clearly defined. Maladjustment may express itself in an insane outbreak, criminal act, or in an anti-social deed, indeed, in all of them the underlying phenomenon is a psychopathic condition which comes under the realm of abnormal psychology. The large group of criminals SHOULD not be looked upon as a homogenous class, but the individuality of criminal and the type of the delinquent act in reaction to his heredity, mental make-up and environmental influences should be fully considered. Herein lies the great value of Wetzel's and Willmann's Monograph—these authors report three cases in which criminal acts were attributed to abnormal mental life.
The first case was that of a young man of twenty-three, who showed a psychopathic personality with tainted heredity on the paternal side. He was subject to convulsive attacks, which were regarded as hysterical and not epileptic. In his intelligence he was above the average. He was engaged to a young woman, and because she refused to marry him, he at first contemplated to take his life, but later shot at her three times without injuring her, and then made an unsuccessful attempt at suicide. His delinquent act was determined not only by his environment, but also by his peculiar type of personality, which was taken into consideration by the court, and on this ground he was acquitted.
In the second case, a young man of twenty shot his fiancee through the temporal region, injuring her severely. Soon after committing this act he surrendered himself to the police. He also showed striking evidences of a psychopathic personality with a strong suggestion of epilepsy, but with intact intelligence. He was given to periods of depression and was unstable mentally. He was easily suggestible and his general conduct was not only controlled by environmental influences, but also by his mood. Suicidal ideas and jealousy played a very important role in his mental life; especially they were marked when he began to keep company with the young woman. Although his abnormal constitution was taken into account, nevertheless he was punished by one year's imprisonment. During confinement he attempted suicide, but was unsuccessful. Some time after his release he committed suicide, the cause of which he assigned to an abortion that was induced by his sweetheart.
The third case is very interesting and rather intricate, by reason of the fact that murder or double suicide was suspected. The following are the details of this case: A young man of eighteen kept company with a young woman about the same age, from another town. The girls of the town were jealous of her and began to gossip about her to the extent of casting aspersions upon her character, etc. The young man's father, without investigating this case, forbade his son to marry her. However, the two lovers would have frequent secret rendezvous, and his fiancee became depressed over this scandalous and groundless rumor and also because of the peculiar attitude her young man's father assumed. One evening the young man returned home late, and upon confessing to his father of his secret meetings with his fiancee, he was severely beaten and prohibited to see her again.
A few days later the young man wrote a letter to his sweetheart, telling her of his father's emphatic determinations, but soon they met again and she suggested that they should die together on account of this gossip that was circulated about her. A day following this meeting both of them were missed, and after some search the young woman was found lying on the ground with two shots in her head and one in the breast, and the young man was hanging from a tree, in a near-by wood; the latter was resuscitated, but the former was dead. It is interesting to note that the autopsy showed that death in her case was due to strangulation and not to the bullets. This young man was endowed with a psychopathic personality, and there was a history of short attacks of depression. He received several head traumata and suffered from enuresis in his early life.
Following the resuscitation, he grew confused and excited, and within twenty-four hours he recovered from the acute episode but showed incomplete amnesia for his act. He stated that he remembered firing the shots, but had no remembrance of strangulating her. Soon after this he passed into a peculiar state of confusion; in addition, fabrications and retention defect were also demonstrated. The cerebrospinal fluid revealed some abnormal changes which were suggestive of an organic brain disease. The Wassermann test was negative. Finally, he made a complete recovery except for the incomplete amnesia.
Since the death of the young woman was caused by strangulation, the question had to be decided whether he was the cause of her death or she died as the result of her own hand. The court favored suicide, and held that the bodily injury was inflicted with the pistol by the young man. He received a lenient sentence—only nine months imprisonment. In this case, the type of his personality, and all the circumstances that led to the development of the act were taken into consideration.
Although the authors presented this subject purely objectively, yet their studies are extremely interesting and important, and show conclusively the importance of psychopathological methods in criminology. One who is interested in this subject will find this monograph of great value and help. It may also be added that the authors give a complete list of the casuistic literature of the murder among lovers. MORRIS J. KARPAS.
DEVELOPMENT AND PURPOSE. AN ESSAY TOWARDS A PHILOSOPHY OF EVOLUTION. By L.T. Hobhouse, Martin White Professor of Sociology in the University ofLondon. Macmillan & Co., London: 1913; pp. xxix, 383.
"Development and Purpose" is essentially the complement of Professor Hobhouse's well-known and valuable "Mind in Evolution," published in 1901; if it were rather a continuation than the complement, many would be pleased, for the exposition already made practically guarantees a rich application, were it undertaken, to matters still further "away" in the realm of thought. The present volume lacks the multitude of scientific data and references which make "Mind in Evolution" so important for the study of psychology (as behavior or not as behavior, as the reader pleases), but it contains in their space many timely discussions, in some cases seemingly prophetic, of teleology in its relation to evolution.
The seventeen chapters of the book (there is also an extremely thoughtful Introduction and a full Index), are divided into two parts, one entitled "Lines of Development" and the other "The Conditions of Development." The reviewer's lazy cortex, and possibly those of other and more leisurely readers, is made glad by a complete chapter-synopsis or syllabus, occupying seven pages). So much of the whole treatise is suggested in the synopsis of the first three chapters that it is well to give them in full, as follows:
"I. The Nature and the Significance of Mental Evolution. (1) The biological view regards Mind as an organ evolved to adapt behavior to the environment, (2) and tends to reduce its action to a mechanical process. (3) Parallelism in the end reduces Mind to an epi-phenomenon {an important undoubted fact which has been often ignored by what are left of the Parallelists!] (4) The object of Comparative Psychology is to determine empirically the actual function of Mind in successive stages of development. (5) It involves a social as well as an individual psychology. (6) The statement of the higher phases also opens up philosophical questions, (7) and on the solution of these depends the final interpretation of the recorded movement.
"II. The Structure of Mind. (1) Mental operations are known in the first instance as objects of consciousness. (2) Mind is the permanent unity including consciousness and the sum of processes continuous with consciousness and determining it. (3) These processes involve, but are not identical with physical processes, constituting with them a psychophysical unity.
"III. The General Function of Mind and Brain. (1) The generic function of Mind, as of the nervous system, is correlation (2) The special organ for effecting fresh correlation is consciousness. (3) The deliverances of consciousness arise from stimuli acting upon structures built up by experience, (4) on foundations laid by heredity, (5) which supplies not only specific adaptations, but a background to the entire life of consciousness."
It would be hard to find a more concise, complete, and timely formularization of the seeming trend of present resultants in this particular direction than these sentences set forth for whomsoever will ponder each carefully-built statement and really understand what it means as part of a system. "Mind is the permanent unity including consciousness and the sum of processes continuous with consciousness and determining it. These processes involve, but are not identical with, physical processes, constituting with them a psychophysical unity,"—this quotation might almost serve as the motto of early Twentieth Century scientific philosophy. It seems to the present reviewer to have almost as much philosophy in it as Harold Hoffding's well-known sentence has of psychology: ("the unity of mental life has its expression not only in memory and synthesis, but also in a dominant fundamental feeling, characterized by the contrast between pleasure and pain, and in an impulse, springing from this fundamental feeling, to movement and activity"). It might be the creed of the Neoidealism.
Hobhouse's discussion of mechanism in relation to teleology and to the universal harmony and reality is fairly representative of the drift of thought as set forth by recent English and French writers such as J. S. Haldane, Oliver Lodge and some of the prominent biologists, and by Henri Bergson: "An organic whole is therefore like a machine in being purposive, though unlike it in that its purpose is within." "A purposive process is one determined by its tendency to produce a certain result, purpose itself being an act [sic] determined in its character by that which it tends to bring about. As such it differs fundamentally from a mechanical cause." "The empirical and philosophical arguments point to the same general conclusion, that reality is the process of the development of Mind." As a guide to one's thinking, and as integrators of one's subconscious intuitions and resultants, such concise formulae certainly have much value, especially when, as here, clearly and ably expounded in the text proper. Tufts College. GEORGE V. N. DEARBORN.
ABNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY. Isador H. Coriat. Pp. xvi and 428. 2d Ed. Moffat,Yard & Co., 1914. $2.00 net.
MENTAL MEDICINE & NURSING. Robert Howland Chase. Pp. xv and 244. J. B.Lippincott Co., 1914. $1.50.
THE TEACHING OF DRAWING. S. Polak and H. C. Whilter. Pp. 168. Warwick &York, Inc. 85 cents.
OUTLINE OF A STUDY OF THE SELF. Robert M. Yerkes, A.M., Ph.D., and David W.LaRue, A.M., Ph.D. Pp. 24. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1914.
EROS. Emil Lucka. Pp. xx and 379. G. P. Putnam & Sons. 1915. $1.75.
COLLECTED PAPERS OF MARGARET BANCROFT. Ware Brothers Company, Philadelphia, 1915.
EUGENICS: A SCIENCE AND AN IDEAL. Edgar Schuster. Pp. 263. Warwick &York, Inc. 40 cents.
LIFE AND WORK OF PESTALOZZI. J. A. Green. Pp. 393. Warwick & York, Inc. $1.40.
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL METHODS OF TESTING INTELLIGENCE. Wm. Stern. Translated by Guy Montrose Whipple. Pp. 160. Warwick & York $1.25.
[*] Read at a meeting of the American Psychopathological Association, NewYork City, May 5, 1915.
THE exact sciences consist of a body of truth which all accept, and to which all experts strive to contribute. Philosophy, however, like religion, has always been broken into sects, schools or parties, and the body of truth which all accept in these fields is relatively far less, and the antagonistic views far greater. Normal psychology, which a few decades ago, started out to be scientific with the good old ideal of a body of truth semper ubique et ad omnibus, is already splitting into introspectionists, behaviorists, genetic, philosophical and other groups, while in the new Freudian movement, Adler and Jung are becoming sectaries, the former drawing upon himself the most impolitic and almost vituperative condemnation of the father of psychoanalysis. With this latter schism we are not here concerned, but we are deeply concerned with the more general relations between the psychologists of the normal and those of the abnormal; with a very few negligible exceptions psychoanalysis has hardly ever had a place on the program of our American Psychological Association, and the normal has had little representation in your meetings and publications. This I deem unfortunate for both, for unsatisfactory as this sadly needed rapprochement is on the continent, it is far more so here. That the normalists in this country so persistently ignore the unique opportunity to extend their purview into the psychopathological domain at the unique psychological moment that the development of Freudianism has offered, is to me a matter of sad disappointment and almost depression. In reading a plea for Freud in our association of normalists, I am a vox clamantis in deserto and can evoke no response, and even the incursions of psychoanalysis into the domain of biography, myth, religion and dreams, have not evoked a single attempt at appreciation or criticism worthy of mention by any American psychologist of the normal. I have sought in various ways the causes of this reticence, not to say ignorance. While I received various answers, the chief one was to the effect that the alleged hypertrophy of sex in its gross pathological forms, and the conviction of the kind and degree of sex consciousness found in the many hundreds of analyzed cases, are so unique and constitute the very essence of the neurotic and psychotic cases, and conscious and unconscious sex factors are slight or absent in most normal cases, that these patients and their doctors alike are sex-intoxicated, and that the Freudian psychology applies only to perverts and erotomania or other abnormal cases. To ascribe all this aversion to social or ethical repression is both shallow and banousic, for the real causes are both manifold and deeper. They are part of a complicated protest of normality, found in all and even in the resistance of subjects of analysis, which is really a factor which is basal for self-control of the varying good sides of which Freudians tell us nothing. The fact is that there are other things in the human psyche than sex, and its ramifications. Hunger, despite Jung, fear despite Sadger, and anger despite Freud, are just as primary, aboriginal and independent as sex, and we fly in the face of fact and psychic experience to derive them all from sex, although it is freely granted that in morbid cases each may take on predominant sex features. In what follows I can only very briefly hint at the way in which some of the Freudian mechanisms are applied to one of the emotions, viz., anger.
Anger in most of its forms is the most dynamogenic of all the emotions. In paroxysms of rage with abandon we stop at nothing short of death and even mutilation. The Malay running amuck, Orlando Furioso, the epic of the wrath of Achilles, hell-fire, which is an expression of divine wrath, are some illustrations of its power. Savages work themselves into frenzied rage in order to fight their enemies. In many descriptions of its brutal aspects, which I have collected, children and older human brutes spit, hiss, yell, snarl, bite noses and ears, scratch, gouge out eyes, pull hair, mutilate sex organs, with a violence that sometimes takes on epileptic features and which in a number of recorded cases causes sudden death at its acme, from the strain it imposes upon the system. Its cause is always some form of thwarting wish or will or of reduction of self-feeling, as anger is the acme of self-assertion. The German criminalist, Friedrich, says that probably every man might be caused to commit murder if provocation were sufficient, and that those of us who have never committed this crime owe it to circumstances and not to superior power of inhibition. Of course it may be associated with sex but probably no human experience is per se more diametrically opposite to sex. Some temperaments seem to crave, if not need, outbreaks of it at certain intervals, like a well-poised lady, so sweet-tempered that everybody imposed on her, till one day at the age of twenty-three she had her first ebullition of temper end went about to her college mates telling them plainly what she thought of them, and went home rested and happy, full of the peace that passeth understanding. Otto Heinze, and by implication Pfister, think nations that have too long or too assiduously cultivated peace must inevitably sooner or later relapse to the barbarisms of war to vent their instincts for combat, and Crile thinks anger most sthenic, while Cannon says it is the emotion into which most others tend to pass. It has of course been a mighty agent in evolution, for those who can summate all their energies in attack have survived. But few if any impulsions of man, certainly not sex, have suffered more intense, prolonged or manifold repressions. Courts and law have taken vengeance into their hands or tried to, and not only a large proportion of assaults, but other crimes, are still due to explosions of temper, and it may be a factor in nearly every court case. Society frowns on it, and Lord Chesterfield says the one sure and unfailing mark of a gentleman is that he never shows temper. Its manifestations are severely tabooed in home and school. Religion teaches us not to let the sun go down upon our wrath and even to turn the other cheek, so that we go through life chronically afraid that we shall break out, let ourselves go, or get thoroughly mad, so that the moment we begin to feel a rising tide of indignation or resentment (in the nomenclature of which our language is so very rich, Chamberlain having collected scores of English expressions of it), the censorship begins to check it. In many cases in our returns repression is so potent from long practice, that the sweetest smile, the kindest remarks or even deeds are used either to veil it to others, or to evict it from our own consciousness, or else as a self-inflicted penance for feeling it, while in some tender consciences its checked but persistent vestiges may become centers of morbid complexes and in yet other cases it burrows and proliferates more or less unconsciously, and finds secret and circuitous ways of indulgence which only psychoanalysis or a moral or religious confessional could trace.
I. Anger has many modes of Verschiebung, both instinctive and cultivated. One case in our returns carries a bit of wood in his vest-pocket and bites it when he begins to feel the aura of temper. Girls often play the piano loudly, and some think best of all. One plays a particular piece to divert anger, viz., the "Devil's Sonata." A man goes down cellar and saws wood, which he keeps for such occasions. A boy pounds a resonant eavespout. One throws a heavy stone against a white rock. Many go off by themselves and indulge in the luxury of expressions they want none to hear. Others take out their tantrum on the dog or cat or perhaps a younger child, or implicate some absent enemy, while others curse. A few wound themselves, and so on, till it almost seems, in view of this long list of vicariates, as if almost any attack, psychic or physical, might thus be intensified, and almost anything or person be made the object of passion. Be it remembered, too, that not a few look, do, think, feel their best under this impulsion.
II. Besides these modes of Abreagierung there are countless forms of sublimation. In anger a boy says: I will avenge myself on the bully who whipped me and whom I cannot or will not whip, by besting him in his studies, class-work, composition, or learn skilful stunts that he cannot do, dress, or behave better, use better language, keep better company, and thus find my triumph and revenge. A man rejected or scorned by a woman sometimes makes a great man of himself, with the motivation more or less developed to make her sorry or humiliated. Anger may prompt a man to go in to win his enemy's girl. A taunt or an insult sometimes spurs the victim of it to towering ambition to show the world and especially the abuser better, and to be able to despise him in return; and there are those who have been thus stung to attempt greatness and find the sweetest joy of success in the feeling that by attaining it they compensate for indignities they suffered in youth. In fact, when we analyze ambition and the horror of Minderwertigkeit that goes with it, we shall doubtless find this factor is never entirely absent, while if we were to apply the same pertinacity and subtlety that Jung in his "Wandlungen" has brought to bear in working over the treacherous material of mythology, we might prove with no less verisimilitude than he has shown the primacy of the libido that in the beginning was anger, and that not Anaxagoras' love or the strife of Heraclitus was the fons et origo of all things, that the Ichtrieb is basal, and that the fondest and most comprehensive of all motives is that to excel others, not merely to survive, but to win a larger place in the sun, and that there is some connection between the Darwinian psychogenesis and Max Stirner and Nietzsche, which Adler has best evaluated.
III. Anger has also its dreams and reveries. When wronged the imagination riots in fancied humiliation and even tortures of an enemy. An object of hate may be put through almost every conceivable series of degradation, ridicule, exposure and disgrace. He is seen by others for what our hate deems him to be. All disguises are stripped off. Children sometimes fancy a hated object of anger flogged until he is raw, abandoned by all his friends, an outcast, homeless, alone, in the dark, starving, exposed to wild animals, and far more often more prosaic fancies conceive him as whipped by a parent or stronger friend, or by the victim himself later. Very clever strategies are thought out in detail by which the weaker gets even with or vanquishes the stronger, and one who suffers a rankling sense of injustice can hardly help day-dreaming of some form of comeuppance for his foe, although it takes years to do it. In these reveries the injurer in the end almost always gives up and sues for mercy at the feet of his quondam victim. So weird and dramatic are these scenes often that to some minds we must call anger and hate the chief springs of the imagination. A pubescent girl who was deeply offended went off by herself and held an imaginary funeral of her enemy, hearing in fancy the disparaging remarks of the bystanders, and when it was all over and the reaction came, she made up with the object of her passion by being unusually sweet to her and even became solicitous about her health as fearing that her revery might come true. We all too remember Tolstoi's reminiscences when, having been flogged by his tutor, he slunk off to the attic, weeping and broken-hearted, and finally after a long brooding resolved to run away and become a soldier, and this he did in fancy, becoming corporal, lieutenant, captain, colonel. Finally came a great battle where he led a desperate charge that was crowned with victory, and when all was over and he stood tottering, leaning on his sword, bloody and with many a wound, and the great Czar of all the Russias approached, saluted him as saviour of his fatherland and told him to ask whatever he wanted and it was his, replied magnanimously that he had only done his duty and wanted no reward. All he asked was that his tutor might be brought up and his head cut off. Then the scene changed to other situations, each very different, florid with details, but motivated by ending in the discomfiture of the tutor. In the ebb or ambivalent reaction of this passion he and the tutor got on better.
IV. Richardson has collected 882 cases of mild anger, introspected by graduate students of psychology, and finds not only over-determination, anger fetishes and occasionally anger in dreams with patent and latent aspects and about all the Freudian mechanisms, but what is more important, finds very much of the impulsion that makes us work and strive, attack and solve problems has an element of anger at its root. Life is a battle and for every real conquest man has had to summate and focus all his energies, so that anger is the acme of the manifestation of Schopenhauer's will to live, achieve and excel. Hiram Stanley rather absurdly described it as an epoch when primitive man first became angry and fought, overcoming the great quaternary carnivora and made himself the lord of creation. Plato said anger was the basis of the state, Ribot made it the establisher of justice in the world, and Bergson thinks society rests on anger at vice and crime, while Stekel thinks that temper qualities should henceforth be treated in every biography and explored in every case that is psychoanalyzed. Hill's experiments with pugilism, and Cannon's plea for athletics as a legitimate surrogate for war in place of James' moral substitute, Frank Howard's opinion that an impulse that Darwin finds as early as the sixth week and hardly any student of childhood later than the sixth month, and which should not be repressed but developed to its uttermost, although carefully directed to worthy objects, are all in point. Howard pleads for judicious scolding and flogging, to be, done in heat and not in cold blood, and says that there is enough anger in the world, were it only rightly directed, to sweep away all the evils in it. In all these phenomena there is no trace of sex or any of its symbols, and sadism can never explain but must be explained by it. My thesis is, then, that every Freudian mechanism applies to anger as truly as it does to sex. This by no means assumes the fundamental identity of every feeling-emotion in the sense of Weissfeld's very speculative theory.
In this very slight paper I am only trying to make the single point which I think fear and sympathy or the gregarious or social instinct would still better illustrate, although it would require more time, that the movement inaugurated by Freud opens up a far larger field than that of sex. The unconscious that introspectionists deny, (asserting that all phenomena ascribed to it are only plain neural mechanisms, and therefore outside the realm of psychology,) the feelings which introspection can confessedly never tell much about and concerning which our text-books in psychology still say so little: studies in these fields are marking a new epoch, and here the chief merit of Freudism is found.
SOME years ago, at the Weimar Congress of the International Psychoanalytic Association, I read a paper on the importance of a knowledge of philosophy and metaphysics for psychoanalysts regarded as students of human life. Perhaps if I had had the experience and ability to contribute the results of some original analytic investigation on specific lines, I should not then have ventured into the philosophic field. Perhaps, indeed, if those conditions now obtained I should not be bringing forward similar arguments again, and if any one feels tempted to maintain that philosophic speculation is a camp of refuge for those who, in consequence of temperamental limitations and infantile fixations which ought to be overcome, draw back from the more robust study of emotional repressions on scientific lines, I should admit that the allegation contains an element of truth. But in spite of this, and in spite of the fact that there is some truth also in the statement that the effects—good and bad—of emotional repression make themselves felt, as a partial influence, in all the highest reaches of human endeavor, including art, literature, and religion;—in spite of these partial truths, philosophy and metaphysics are the only means through which the essential nature of many tendencies can be studied of which psychoanalysis describes only the transformations. And this being so it is perhaps reasonable that one paper should be read at an annual meeting such as this, where men assemble whose duty it is to study the human mind in all its aspects.
I presume that just as, and just because men have minds AND bodies, an evolutional history in the ordinary sense and a mental history in a sense not commonly considered, so there will always be two, or perhaps three, parties among psychologists and men of science, and each one, in so far as it is limited in its vision, may be considered as abnormal, if one will. I decline, however, to admit that the temperamental peculiarities of one group are more in need either of justification or of rectification through psychoanalysis than those of the others. It is probably true that emotional tension often plays a larger part among persons who love a priori reasoning—the "tender-minded" of Dr. James—than it does in those who work through observation; but on the other hand exclusively empirical attitude has its limitations and its dangers. Philosophy and metaphysics deal more distinctively with essential function—that is with real existence,—while natural science and the genetic psychology (of which psychoanalysis, strictly speaking, is a branch) deal rather with appearances and with structure. Both are in need of investigation. The FORM which art, religion, and literature assume is determined by men's personal experiences and special cravings. The essential motive of art and religion is, however, the dim recognition by men of their relation to the creative spirit of the universe.
No one can doubt that function logically precedes structure; or if any one does doubt this, he need only observe his own experience and see how in every new acquisition of knowledge or of power there come, first, the thought, the idea, then the effort, next the habit, and finally the modification of cerebral mechanism, in which the effort and the habit become represented in relatively permanent and static form. In fact, the crux of the whole discussion between science and metaphysics turns on, or harks back to the discussion between function and structure; and it is the latter, in the sense in which I mean the word, that has had of late a too large share of our attention.
The enterprise on which we are all of us embarked,—whether we define it as an investigation, pure and simple, into human nature and human motives, or as a therapeutic attempt to relieve invalids of their symptoms,—is a larger one than it is commonly conceived of as being. Each physician and each investigator has, indeed, the right to say that for practical reasons he prefers to confine his attention to some single portion of one or the other of these tasks, be it never so small. But each one should regard himself as virtually under an obligation to recognize the respects in which this chosen task is incomplete. Every physicist is aware that there is some form of energy underlying, or rather expressing itself in, light and heat and gravitation. Physicists do not study this form of energy, not because they do not wish to but simply because they cannot do so by the only methods that they are allowed to use. But, as a reaction of defense, they sometimes assert that no one else can do so either, that this underlying energy cannot be explained. To say this is, however, in my judgment, to misappreciate what an explanation is.
To explain any matter is to discover the points of similarity, or virtual identity, between the matter studied and ourselves. But in order to do this thoroughly, or rather in order to do it with relation to the essential nature of some form of energy (the "Libido," for example, considered as an unpicturable force) one must first consider what we, the investigators, are, not at our less good, but at our best. It is with us, as given, with our best qualities regarded as defining in part the Q. E. D. of the experiment, that the investigation must begin. The nature of any and every form of real underlying energy or essence must be defined in terms of our sense of our own will and freedom. And this means that we must conceive and describe ourselves, and expect to conceive and to describe the powers that animate us, no longer as a system of forces subject to the so-called laws of nature (which are, in reality, not immutable) but as relatively free, creative agents; no longer as the product of the interplay of instincts, but as individuals possessed of real reason, real power of love and real self-consistent will. To claim to study the effects of the "Libido," to which we ascribe the vast powers with which we are familiar, yet fail to seek in it what would correspond to our own best attributes, would be to lay aside our duties as students of human nature. It would be to confine our attention to the "structure" of the mind, the form under which it manifests itself, without having studied the laws of its action under conditions which are more favorable to its development.
It must, now, have struck students of psychoanalytic literature that a marked tendency has been shown toward supplementing the study of structure,—that is, the detailed history of men's experiences and evolution, regarded as sequences of phenomena,—by the study of the function or creative energy for which the experiences stand. Silberer, whose work is endorsed by Freud, has gone to a considerable length in this direction; and the whole tendency of Freud's insistence on the relevancy, in the mental sphere, of the law of the conservation of energy has been a movement, though, I think, a narrow one, in this direction. More recently, Jung has emphasized the importance of this tendency, and has dwelt more strongly, as I think, than the facts warrant, on the supposed unwillingness of Freud to recognize its importance.
Behind the experiences of childhood, for example, lie the temperamental trends of childhood, and it is these with which we really need to get acquainted; for these trends, if not the whole causes and equivalents of the experiences which are recounted to us by our patients, constitute the conditions without which the latter would not have been what they became.
But Jung himself, strangely enough, in both of his carefully prepared arguments, specifically rejects all intention of dealing "metaphysically" with this theme, in spite of the fact that every movement toward a fuller recognition of creative energy is nothing less than metaphysics, even though not in name.
The skilled observer, scrutinizing the motives and peering into the history of the person whose traits and trends he is called on to investigate, must see, in imagination, not only a vast host of acts, but also a vast network of intersecting lines of energy of which the casual observer, and even the intimate friend, may be wholly unaware. We call these lines of energy by many special names,—"Libido" or "Urlibido," first of all, then love and hate and jealousy, and so on.
What are these lines of energy, and how can we study them to the best purpose? Obviously they are incomplete editions of the love and reason and will the laws of which we can study to best advantage in ourselves and in men where they are displayed in their best, that is, in their most constructive form. To make such studies is to recognize metaphysics, but instead of doing of doing this tacitly and implicitly we should do it openly and explicitly.
The study of human nature should, in short, begin at the top, rather than at the bottom; just as, if one had to choose what phase of a symphony one would choose in order to get an idea of its perfection, one would take some culminating moment rather than the first few notes simply because they were the first. To be accurate, one could not do justice to the symphony except by studying it as a whole, and similarly one should study the man as a whole, including his relations to the universe as a whole. It is as wholes that great poets conceived of their poems and great artists of their pictures, and it is as a whole that each and every human life, standing as it does as the representative of the body of the universe, and the spirit of the universe, on the other, should implicitly be viewed.
The psychologist should sympathize deeply with the anatomist and the physiologist and the student of cerebral pathology, but equally deeply with the philosopher and the metaphysician who study the implications, present although hidden, that point to the bonds between the individual and the universe. To fail to recognize that these bonds exist,—as is done when the attempt is made to study human beings as if they were really and exclusively the product of their historic past conceived of in an organic sense,—would be to try to build one-half of an arch and expect it to endure. The truth is, we do not, in my opinion, genuinely believe that a human is nothing but the product of his organic past, or the product of his experience.
We believe, by implication, in our metaphysical selves and our corresponding obligations, more strongly than we have taught ourselves to recognize. But to this fact we make ourselves blind through a species of repression, just as many a child, confident of its parents' affection, assumes, for his own temporary purposes, the right to accuse them of hostile intentions which they do not entertain.
We forget, or repress, the fact that the mind of man cannot be made subject to the laws of physics, and yet we proceed to deal with the phenomena dependent on the working of the mind of man as if these laws actually did prevail.
The misleading effects of this tendency are clearly seen where it is a question of the conclusions to be drawn from the researches, admirable in themselves, made under the influence of the genetic method.
The notion seems to prevail that we should prepare ourselves for the formation of just ideas with regard to the mode in which the higher faculties of men come into existence by wiping the slate clean to the extent of assuming that we have before us no data except some few acts or thoughts that are definable in the simplest possible terms, and then watching what happens as the situation becomes more complicated. But one is apt to forget, in doing this, that there is one thing which we cannot wipe off the slate,—namely, ourselves, not taken in the Bergsonian sense alone, but as fully fledged persons, possessed of the very qualities for which we undertake to search, yet without the possession of which the search could not begin. This does not, of course, militate against the value of these genetic researches in one sense. The study of evolutional sequences is still, and forever will be, of enormous value. But it does not teach us nearly as much of the nature of real creativeness as we can learn through the introspection of ourselves in the fullest sense; and I maintain that psychoanalysts are persons who could do this to advantage.
Is not the notion that through the careful watching of the sequences of the evolutionary process, as if from without, we can get an adequate idea of the forces that really are at work, exactly the delusion by which the skillful juggler tries to deceive his audience when he directs their attention to the shifting objects that he manipulates, and away from his own swiftly moving hands?
My contention is that there are other means of studying the force which we call "Libido" besides that of noting its effects. The justification for this statement is that the force itself is identical, in the last analysis, with that which we feel within ourselves and know as reason, as imagination, and as will, conscious of themselves, and capable of giving to us, directly or indirectly, the only evidence we could ever hope to get, for the existence of real creativeness, spontaneity and freedom.
Every work of art, worthy of the name, gives evidence of the action not alone of a part of a man, but of the whole man; not only of his repressed emotions, but of his intelligence and insight, and of relationships existing between his life and all the other forms of life with which his own is interwoven.
Unity must prevail throughout all nature. Either we are,—altogether, and through and through, our best as well as our less good,—nothing but the expression of repressed cravings, in the sense that they or the conflicts based on them constitute the final causa vera of all progress; or else the best that is in us and also our repressed cravings are alike due to the action of a form of energy which is virtually greater than either one of them, inasmuch as it has the capacity of developing into something greater than either.
This is the agency which we should preeminently study and it is best studied under conditions when, instead of being obviously subject to repression, it is most free from repression. That is, it is best studied as it appears in the thoughts and conduct of the best men, at their best, their most constructive moments.
We cannot use our power of reason to deny our reason; for in so doing we affirm the very thing which we deny. Nor are we under the necessity of using our reason to affirm our reason, since that is the datum without which we cannot undertake our task.
If this view is sound, what practical conclusions can we draw from it? I wish to insist on this question because it was distinctly and positively with the practical end in mind that I ventured to write this paper, and I suggest the following as a few of these conclusions.
(I) We should not speak of the "Libido," in whatever sense this word is taken, as if it were a fixed quantity, like so much heat, or so much fluid, that is, as representing so much mesaurable force. One current notion which has played a very useful part in psychoanalytic work, yet is misleading in its tendency, is that the "Libido" may be likened to a river which if it cannot find an outlet through its normal channel is bound to overflow its banks and perhaps furrow out a new path. This conception is based on this same law of the conservation of energy to which reference has been made. If, however, I am right in my contention that the "Libido" is only one manifestation of an energy,— greater than simply "vital,"—which can be studied to the best purpose only among men whose powers have been cultivated to the best advantage, then it will be seen that this conception of "Libido" as a force of definite amount is not justifiable by the facts.
One does not find that love or reason is subject to this quantitative law. On the contrary, the persons whom most of us recognize as of the highest type do not love any given individual less because their love takes in another. The bond of love holds not only three, but an indefinite number.
The same statement may be made with regard to reason and to will. The power and quantity of them are not exhausted but are increased by use.
I maintain, then, that although the "Libido," in so far as it is regarded as an instinct, does not stand on the same footing with the reason and disinterested love of a person of high cultivation and large views, neither does it stand on the same footing with the physical energy that manifests itself in light and heat and gravitation.
When we come to deal with man and any of his attributes, or as we find them at any age, we ought to look upon him, in my estimation, as animated in some measure by his self-foreshadowing best. And whether it is dreams with which we have to do, or neurotic conflicts, or wilfulness, or regression, we shall learn to see, more and more, as we become accustomed to look for evidences thereof, the signs of this sort of promise, just as we might hope to learn to find, more and more, through the inspection of a lot of seeds of different plants, the evidences which would enable us to see the different outcomes which each one is destined to achieve, even though, at first, they all looked just alike.
(2) The next point has reference to "sublimation." This outcome of individual evolution, as defined by Freud, has a strictly social, not an ethical, meaning. Jung also, in the interesting paper referred to, in his description of the rational aims of psychoanalysis, makes sublimation (though he does not there use the word) the equivalent of a subjective sense of well being, combined with the maximum of biologic effectiveness.
"Die Psychoanalyse soll eine biologische Methode sein, welche das hoechste subjektive Wohlbefinden mit der wertwollsten biologischen Leistung zu vereinigen sucht."
But in my opinion, while it may be true that the psychoanalyst may often have reason to be thankful if he can claim a therapeutic outcome of this sort, the logical goal of a psychoanalytic treatment is not covered by the securing of a relative freedom from subjective distress, even when combined with the satisfactory fulfillment of one's biologic mission. A man has higher destinies than this, and the sense of incompleteness felt by the neurotic patient, which was emphasized by Janet and is recognized by us all, must be more or less painfully felt by every man whose conscience does not assure him that he is really working for an end greater than that here specified. The logical end of a psychoanalytic treatment is the recovery of a full sense of one's highest destiny and origin and of the bearings and meanings of one's life.
On similar grounds I think that the conflicts to which all men find themselves subjected, must be considered, in the last analysis, as conflicts of an ethical description. For it is only in ethical terms that one can define one's relation to the universe regarded as a whole, just as it is only in ethical terms that a man could describe his sense of obligation to support the dignity of fine family traditions or the ideals represented by a team or a social group of which he felt reason to be proud. I realize that a man's sense of pride of his family, his team, or his country may be a symptom of narcistic self-adulation; but like all such signs and symbols—the symbol of the church tower, for example—this is a case where two opposing meanings meet.
Every act and motive of our lives, from infancy to age, is controlled by two sets of influences, the general nature of which has here been made sufficiently clear. They correspond on the one hand, to the numerous partial motives which psychoanalysis studies to great advantage, and on the other hand, to the ethical motives which are only thoroughly studied by philosophy.
(3) Another conclusion, which seems to me practically of great importance, follows from this same view. Every one who has studied carefully the life histories of patients, especially of children, and has endeavored in so doing to follow step by step the experiences through which they reach the various mile-stones on their journey, must have been astonished to observe the evidences of PREPAREDNESS on their part for each new step in this long journey. Human beings seem predestined, as it were, not only in a physical but in a mental sense, for what is coming, and the indications of this in the mental field are greater than the conditions of organic evolution could readily account for. The transcendency of the mind over the brain shows itself here as elsewhere.
We are told that our visions of the unpicturable, the ideal world, which our imagination paints and which our logical reasoning calls for as the necessary cap or final corollary to any finite world which our intelligence can actually define,— that such visions are nothing but the pictures of infantile desires projected on to a great screen and made to mock us with the appearance of reality.
I have nothing whatever to say against the value of the evidence that a portion of our visions are of this origin. In fact, I believe this as heartily as does any one. But I desire strenuously to oppose the view tacitly implied in the statement of the projection theory just cited, the acceptance of which as an exclusive doctrine would involve the virtual rejection of our right, as scientific men, to rely on the principle that the evidence afforded by logical presuppositions and logical inference is as cogent as that furnished through observation.
It is, in my opinion, just because we all belong to a world which is in outline not "in the making" but completed,—because, in short, we are in one sense like heirs returning to our estates,—that this remarkable preparedness of each child is found that impresses us so strongly. The universe is, in a sense, ours by prescriptive right and by virtue of the constitution of our minds. But the unity of such a universe must, of course, be of a sort that includes and indeed implies diversity and conflict as essential elements of its nature.
Psychoanalysts should not make light of inferential forms of reasoning, for it is on this form of reasoning that the value of their own conclusions largely rests. We infer contrary meanings for words that are used ostensibly in one sense, and we infer special conflicts in infancy of which we have but little evidence at hand, and cravings and passions of which it may be impossible to find more than a few traces by way of direct testimony.
Our immediate environment and the world that surrounds us in that sense, appear to our observation, indeed, as "in the making." But besides the power of observation which enables, and indeed forces us to see the imperfection in this environmental world, we possess, or are possessed by, a mental constitution which compels us, with still greater force, to the belief in a goal of positive perfection of which our nearer goals are nothing but the shadow.
It is because I believe in the necessity of such reasoning as this that I am not prepared to accept the "Lust-Unlust" principle (that is, to use philosophical terms, the "hedonistic" principle) as representing the forces by which even the child is finally animated. Men do not reach their best accomplishments, if indeed they reach any accomplishment, through the exclusive recognition, either unconscious or instinctive, of a utilitarian result, or a result which can be couched in terms of pleasure or personal satisfaction as the goal of effort. They may state the goal to themselves in these terms; but this is, then, the statement of what is really a fictitious principle, a principle in positing which the patient does but justify himself and does not define his real motive. Utilitarianism and hedonism and the pleasure-pain principle, useful though they are, are alike imperfect in that they refer to partial motives, partial forms of self-expression; whereas that which finally moves men to their best accomplishments and makes them dissatisfied with anything less than this, is the necessity rather than the desire to take complete self-expression as their final aim. The partial motives are more or less traceable as if by observation. The larger motives must be felt and reached through inferential reasoning, based on observation of ourselves through careful introspection.
Finally, the practical, therapeutic question arises, as to what measures the psychoanalyst is justified in taking to bring about the best sort of outcome in a given case?
It is widely felt that the psychoanalyst would weaken his own hold on the strong typically analytic principles through which painful conflicts are to be removed if he should form the habit of dealing with ethical issues, and talking of "duties", instead of stimulating his patients to the discovery of resistances and repressions, even of repression the origin of which is not to be found within the conscious life. Yet,—parallel, as one might say, with this clear-cut standard of professional psychoanalytic obligation, the force of which I recognize,—it has to be admitted that there are certain fairly definite limitations to the usefulness of psychoanalysis. As one of these limitations, well-pronounced symptoms of egoism, taking the form of narcissism, are to be reckoned. These symptoms are not easily analyzed away. But if one asks oneself, or asks one's patients, what conditions might, if they had been present from the outset, have prevented this narcistic outcome (Jehovah type, etc.), the influence that suggests itself—looming up in large shape—is just this broad sense of ethical obligation to which repeated reference has here been made. If these patients could have had it brought home to them in childhood that they belonged, not to themselves conceived of narrowly (that is, as separate individuals) but only to themselves conceived of broadly as representatives of a series of communities taken in the largest sense, the outcome that happened might perhaps have been averted.