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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78616 ***
+
+
+                           The Social Basis of
+                              Consciousness
+
+                      A Study in Organic Psychology
+                   Based upon a Synthetic and Societal
+                         Concept of the Neuroses
+
+                                   BY
+                             TRIGANT BURROW
+                              M.D., Ph.D.
+
+
+                                NEW YORK
+                     HARCOURT, BRACE & COMPANY, INC.
+             LONDON: KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & CO., LTD.
+                                  1927
+
+
+
+
+                 _THE SOCIAL BASIS OF CONSCIOUSNESS_
+
+      Chapter I, Part I, was first published in _The Journal of
+      Nervous and Mental Disease_, and Chapter II, Part I, in _The
+      Psychoanalytic Review_. Acknowledgment is made to the Editors
+      for permission to include these papers in the present volume.
+
+
+                      PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY
+         THE EDINBURGH PRESS, 9 AND 11 YOUNG STREET, EDINBURGH
+
+
+                _I am that which began;
+                  Out of me the years roll;
+                Out of me God and man;
+                  I am equal and whole;
+          God changes, and man, and the form of them bodily;
+                I am the soul._
+                                     “Hertha.”--Swinburne.
+
+
+
+
+                                CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                                    PAGE
+
+  Preface                                                             xv
+
+  Introduction                                                         1
+
+    Significance of Freud’s basic conception--Misconceptions
+    in psychoanalysis due to present personalistic
+    basis--Psychoanalysis entails the element of personal
+    differentiation and sponsorship presented in other therapeutic
+    systems--Need for abrogation of personal equation--Societal
+    concept an outgrowth of essential objective findings of
+    Freud--This thesis an initial presentation of an organismic
+    interpretation of human consciousness.
+
+
+                                 PART I
+
+                     THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE NEUROSES
+
+  Chapter I                                                            9
+
+    PSYCHOANALYSIS IN THEORY AND IN LIFE
+
+    Theory of psychoanalysis rests upon conception that nervous
+    disorders are substitutive manifestation of repressed sexual
+    life--Sexuality itself, however, as now existing, symptomatic
+    of repression and quite preclusive of the organic instinct of
+    sex--Popular analytic view places a premium upon the reaction
+    embodied in normality but substitution and repression in
+    this collective reaction identical with the unconscious of
+    neurotic individuals--Substitution of self-image for reality,
+    present in reactions of normal, is not as yet recognized by
+    psychoanalysis--Psychoanalysis remains in so far a theory
+    only--In truth, the neurotic personality is index of the urge
+    toward an essential organic mode of consciousness--Continuity
+    with organic processes registered as subjective feeling cannot
+    be approached by objective methods--The insanity of the
+    individual not to be cured as long as there is the insanity of
+    the social mind about him.
+
+  Chapter II                                                          32
+
+    A RELATIVE CONCEPT OF CONSCIOUSNESS: AN ANALYSIS OF
+    CONSCIOUSNESS IN ITS ETHNIC ORIGIN
+
+    The Newtonian system assumes an unqualified absolute and
+    fails to take account of factors operating within the larger
+    system in which it is itself an element--In the sphere of
+    psychic phenomena a similar system of absolutism dominates our
+    presumably conscious world--Analysis of our judgments reveals
+    the assumption that the position intrinsic to the observer
+    is all-inclusive and authentic--But our world of impressions
+    is artificial and reflects the artificial systematization
+    that fails to include our own organisms--This autocratic
+    interpretation of life is based on a bidimensional or image
+    system which in its arbitrary and personal evaluation distorts
+    the universe of reality--Normality is consensus comprising the
+    personal absolute vested in the unconscious of the collective
+    mind--Need to replace pictorial mode by organic coalescence
+    in common affectivity--Personal systems of men, single and
+    collective, are but relative with respect to an organic
+    societal consciousness--Concept of relativity of consciousness
+    abrogates absolute standard and embraces dimensional element of
+    the system, individual and social, of which we ourselves are a
+    component part--Transition from bidimensional (contemplation of
+    aspect) to tridimensional (participation in function) affords
+    basis for measuring deflections of personality, socially as
+    well as individually.
+
+  Chapter III                                                         50
+
+    THE ORIGIN OF OUR INDIVIDUAL UNCONSCIOUS
+
+    Organic societal consciousness can be comprehended only
+    through subjective identification with it--Discussion of
+    the tridimensional reality of human consciousness with
+    its three determinants--Present phase of consciousness
+    admits only the bidimensional image--The position of the
+    bidimensional elements “right and wrong” as incorporated
+    in the life of the child--Advantage of the parent the real
+    motive underlying this moral bidimension--Long-continued
+    experiments with personal mood reactions as substantiation
+    of view that induced image of right and wrong is at the root
+    of human psychopathology--Non-inclusiveness of others is
+    meaning of unconsciousness, individual and social--Present
+    social adaptation is merely collective response, not societal
+    extension of consciousness--Substitution of the absolute of
+    personal interest for inclusive participation as relative
+    elements affords no basis for inclusion of larger whole in
+    which the individual is a contributing element.
+
+  Chapter IV                                                          63
+
+    THE UNCONSCIOUS FACTOR WITHIN THE SOCIAL SYSTEM
+
+    Daily reactions betray state of anxiety in the social
+    mind--These anxieties, sponsored in earlier times by medical
+    and religious fetish, still substantiated by the systems of
+    medicine and religion--Organic analysis of the element of
+    social authority--The systems of psychoanalysis and the Roman
+    Church as paradigms--Factor of resistance in psychoanalysis
+    analogous to factor of doubt in religion--The systematization
+    comprising the social corporation of individuals as much an
+    aspect of the unconscious autocracy of the personal absolute as
+    the systematization of the individual--In the conflict between
+    these two mutually opposed absolutes (socially systematized
+    authority and the resistance of the individual) there is an
+    organic impasse.
+
+  Chapter V                                                           78
+
+    SOCIOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS OF UNCONSCIOUSNESS FROM A VIEWPOINT
+    OF RELATIVITY
+
+    The established system demands conformity to its prescribed
+    norm--The limitation of life to a bidimensional alternative of
+    one’s own pleasure or one’s own pain results in division of
+    personality and in compulsion neurosis involving the entire
+    social consciousness--Bidimensional replacements in social
+    system found in art, science, education, marriage, etc.--The
+    mood alternations of the individual are but obverse aspects of
+    the same bidimensional portrait of personal advantage--This
+    element of unconscious alternation bars unbiased observation
+    of the personal absolute--In the field of preventive
+    medicine the personal cure of the individual subordinated to
+    safeguarding of community health--But within the subjective
+    sphere there is resistance to an approach that would consider
+    the individual’s position as part of a societal unity because
+    such an approach would menace the illusion of personal
+    prerogative--Psychopathologists equally involved unconsciously
+    in the social neurosis--In an objective study of the neurosis
+    the psychopathologist escapes the subjective acknowledgment
+    of its presence within himself--Possibility of fundamental
+    readjustment for dissociated personality lies only in surrender
+    socially of bidimensional or pictorial illusion in favour of
+    tridimensional actuality.
+
+
+                                PART II
+
+                     THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE NEUROSES
+
+  Chapter I                                                          107
+
+    ANALYSIS OF FREUD’S DYNAMIC AND INDIVIDUALISTIC CONCEPTION OF
+    THE NEUROSES
+
+    Freud’s theory assumes breach in integrity of consciousness due
+    to effort of delimited area to establish itself as a separate
+    self-governing unit--Distinction of Freud’s work lies in
+    conception of central totality of consciousness; limitation of
+    Freud’s work consists in assigning totality of consciousness
+    to single individual--Conception of totality of personality
+    tenable only from point of view of inclusive societal
+    consciousness.
+
+  Chapter II                                                         114
+
+    FORMULATION OF AN ORGANIC OR SOCIETAL BASIS OF INTERPRETATION
+
+    The mental life of the infant organism is wholly subjective
+    and is one with the organism’s inherent feeling--With
+    entrance of the ulterior motive appearing in the command and
+    prohibition of the parent there is the issue of personal
+    gain or loss (suggestion and repression)--Appearance of
+    self-consciousness and self-interest forces interruption
+    of the organism’s societal life and a separation from its
+    basic continuum--Maintenance of separativeness of individual
+    destroys organic integrity--There is need to stand apart
+    from self and view it as element within the larger organism
+    of mankind--Instinct of tribal preservation and not
+    self-preservation is the dominant urge among us.
+
+  Chapter III                                                        134
+
+    THE ORGANIC SIGNIFICANCE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS
+
+    Development of the idea of the parallel between individual and
+    phyletic trends in unconscious manifestations--Unconscious
+    worship of self-image source of suggestion and
+    repression--Because of this self-image what man assumes to be
+    cerebration is fictitious brain-state withdrawn from continuity
+    with organic life--Where there is individual lesion, separation
+    among elements is followed by pain and recourse to remedial
+    aids, i.e. the organism as a whole demands relief--In the
+    organic societal whole the individual as separated element is
+    source of lesion but seeks to escape through symbolic disguise
+    the pain of his societal separation--Conflict is between part
+    and whole wherein individual is embodiment of both.
+
+  Chapter IV                                                         154
+
+    ORGANIC ANALYSIS OF REPRESSION AND OF THE FACTOR OF RESISTANCE
+    FROM THE SOCIETAL VIEWPOINT
+
+    The resolution of repression or resistance is regarded by Freud
+    as the essential problem of psychoanalysis--Neurosis, according
+    to Freud, is life’s repression of sexuality--According to an
+    organismic attitude repression and sexuality are concomitant
+    and are equally the results in the individual of organic
+    disunity and interruption of function--The biology of
+    resistance is found in the breach in individual’s continuity
+    with life as confluent, organic whole--Health or disease,
+    psychologically or physiologically, depends upon whether the
+    cell functions integrally or separatively, congruently or
+    resistantly--In social fabric each element is against each--In
+    our unconsciousness we deny the reality of this biological
+    phylum embodied in our organic consciousness and underlying the
+    processes of our individual mentation--Sexuality, currently
+    confused with sex, is egoistic, infantile expression and
+    antithesis of organic expression of sex--Only continuity of the
+    confluent subjective sphere can make possible an analysis that
+    will synthesize the scattered elements of personality.
+
+  Chapter V                                                          165
+
+    ORGANIC ANALYSIS OF REPRESSION AND OF THE FACTOR OF RESISTANCE
+    FROM THE INDIVIDUAL VIEWPOINT
+
+    Transference is an unconscious condition which involves as
+    much the analyst as the analysand--Resistance and repression
+    are the factors in this mutual situation--Under present
+    personalistic procedure in psychoanalysis the analyst deals
+    objectively with an inherently subjective situation--He
+    regards only the disparity of the patient and so preserves the
+    apparent differentiation which is the underlying cause of the
+    patient’s disorder--There is a confusion in psychoanalysis due
+    to the failure to discriminate between the mother-image and
+    the mother-organism--The analyst, being socially dissociated,
+    seeks to reinstate the comfort of his own childhood through an
+    unconscious self-interested response (pleasure or displeasure)
+    to the analysand--The transference which is thus introduced
+    by the unconscious attitude of the analyst cannot be analyzed
+    because of the analyst’s own involvement--This is the impasse
+    of the individualistic analysis--From a societal viewpoint the
+    analyst can be interested only in the patient’s delusion of
+    separateness and will direct his endeavour to an understanding
+    of the social repression which dissociates them both from the
+    common, generic consciousness.
+
+  Chapter VI                                                         177
+
+    THE DREAM AND ITS ANALYSIS IN AN ORGANISMIC INTERPRETATION OF
+    THE NEUROSES
+
+    To analyze the dream from a basis that is equally separative
+    and repressed is to exchange the symbols of the individual’s
+    repression for analogous symbols of the social repression--The
+    night’s reaction, being individual, and the day’s reaction,
+    being social, both represent an endeavour to adjust vicariously
+    man’s societal disunity--The affective or subjective life
+    cannot be adjusted through the study of the objective
+    mechanisms that merely reflect it but only through the
+    subjective (conscious) reabsorption within us of the affects to
+    whose suggestion the dream is the mirrored reaction--The drama
+    and the dream are identical in mechanism--An organic mode of
+    consciousness can regard with equally objective clarity the
+    vicarious processes of the day and of the night.
+
+  Chapter VII                                                        187
+
+    THE BIOLOGICAL SUBSTRATE OF THE NEUROTIC CONFLICT IN ITS
+    ORGANIC SIGNIFICANCE
+
+    Two types of reaction: the _autocentric_ who withdraws
+    _in toto_ and has completely negative attitude toward
+    his congeners, and the _allocentric_ who makes effort at
+    social compromise or adaptation (“sublimation”)--Both reactions
+    equally self-centered: autocentric (precoid, psychasthenic)
+    showing adaptation through individual dream; allocentric
+    (hysteric, hypomanic) through social dream--Biological
+    substrate of these reactions lies in lack of balance between
+    cerebro-spinal and sympathetic systems--In the preconscious
+    form preserved among animals no break between the two systems;
+    there is maintained rhythmic and harmonious co-ordination of
+    response--Period of Greek thought essentially allocentric;
+    Christianity essentially autocentric.
+
+  Chapter VIII                                                       197
+
+    THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN SEXUALITY AND SEX IN RELATION TO
+    UNIFICATION AND ORGANIC MATING
+
+    Psychoanalysis, unconsciously influenced by a division based
+    on the bias of its own arbitrary alternatives, has assumed
+    contrasts of behaviour not warrantable from an organismic
+    conception--Such alternatives are “homosexuality” and
+    “heterosexuality”--The organic instinct of mating has become
+    distorted by the image system of “good” (conceding social
+    consensus) and “bad” (repudiating social consensus)--Both types
+    are response to social consensus and are ego-sexual--Sexuality
+    is effort of conjunction of peripheral and visceral spheres
+    while sex is effortless and non-personal conjugation
+    of organismic poles comprising male and female--Union
+    is of personality as realized in man and woman through
+    identification with life, the one embodying the peripheral,
+    allocentric component, the other the internal, autocentric
+    component--Organically, man is not opposite woman but each is
+    complement of other--Concept of intermediate sex is misnomer
+    for composite sex--Social demand of oppositeness necessitates
+    repression in male of female component and in female of male
+    component--In present stage of society’s development marriage
+    is mutual adjustment of ego-sexual claims, a pooling of the
+    private unconscious of each where each withdraws from an
+    organic place as a societal element--Biological significance
+    of unity of personality is conception of _principle of
+    primary identification_--Autocentric types as Buddha, Plato,
+    Christ, and allocentric personalities of Socrates, Napoleon and
+    Nietzsche equally manifest this urge of the inherent organism
+    of man--In organic integrity of personality is societal
+    instinct that is the composite life of the race.
+
+  Chapter IX                                                         221
+
+    ULTIMATE RESOLUTION OF THE SOCIETAL NEUROSIS IN ITS SOCIAL
+    IMPLICATION
+
+    Back of the pretence of the social mind lies a basis of social
+    fear and mistrust--The mutual accommodations of external
+    agreement used to cloak the introversion of the individual--The
+    development of group analysis permits study of the resistance
+    of the social consensus with respect to the individual as well
+    as the resistance of the individual with respect to the social
+    consensus--Group analysis, like individual analysis, presents
+    an unconscious and bidimensional situation involving reaction
+    clusters which constitute a pooling of the unconscious of
+    the several members--This group situation offers opportunity
+    to secure relative and societal background against which the
+    individual may view in impersonal perspective his habitual
+    arbitrary and personal evaluations--According to the group
+    or relative conception the causative element of the neurosis
+    is societal or phyletic and correction must proceed upon a
+    societal or phyletic basis.
+
+  Chapter X                                                          238
+
+    ULTIMATE RESOLUTION OF THE SOCIETAL NEUROSIS IN ITS PERSONAL
+    IMPLICATION
+
+    Demand for wider concept of organized consciousness of man
+    in order to replace disintegrating structures of present
+    social system--Need to dispel illusion of mental oppositeness
+    and the restraints of an alternative system of morality
+    which aims merely to establish temporary balance between
+    its opposites--Experimental basis for group conception here
+    formulated in practical experience of a few students--As the
+    societal and the individual are organically one in mode, the
+    unification of the individual is a step toward the unification
+    of the societal consciousness--Organismic (societal) group
+    differentiated from collective (social) cluster--The period
+    of man’s substitutive image-production first interrupted by
+    Darwin’s theory of evolution and further threatened by Freud’s
+    theory of the evolutionary processes of the unconscious--The
+    social basis of consciousness, however inadequately formulated,
+    invites an analytic approach to social or mass reactions,
+    exemplified in our national, political, industrial and
+    religious life.
+
+  Index                                                              253
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+I do not know whether I can make clear in what manner the conception
+embodied in the following pages first arose. Conceptions derived from
+data of reason and observation necessarily proceed from a mental basis.
+Scientific and philosophical treatises are the outcome primarily of
+scientific or philosophical ideas. With both inductive and deductive
+methods of reasoning the conclusions that flow from the assumptions are
+our accepted basis of procedure. With the method of the present study,
+however, we are upon other ground, for the inception of this work was
+in no such wise; and yet to say that it is based upon no conceptual
+premise would, of course, not be true. The difference is that what
+follows here has been the outgrowth of events that were prior to and
+independent of any conceptual formulation of them. Biological necessity
+preceded and argument followed after. My meaning may for the moment
+be best understood when it is considered that these events are the
+processes of personal experience inseparable from the sequences here
+embodied. While this is not the place for detailing personal history,
+the presentation of a thesis as intimate as this would not be complete
+without some concrete account of its origin.
+
+Having years ago been “analyzed” in preparation for my work in
+psychopathology, I had been for years duly “analyzing” others. It
+unexpectedly happened one day, however, that while I was interpreting a
+dream of a student-assistant, he made bold to challenge the honesty of
+my analytic position, insisting that, as far as he was concerned, the
+test of my sincerity would be met only when I should myself be willing
+to accept from him the same analytic exactions I was now imposing
+upon others. As may be readily judged, such a proposition seemed to me
+nothing short of absurd. Had I not been “analyzed”? Needless to say
+I had heard this proposal from patients many times before, but while
+my reaction to the suggestion in the present instance was chiefly
+one of amusement, my pride was not a little piqued at the intimation
+it conveyed. So with the thought that in the interest of experiment
+it could at least do no harm to humour for a time the waywardness of
+inexperience, I conceded the arrangement.
+
+Not many weeks after I had taken the patient’s chair and yielded him
+mine I realized that a situation to which I had agreed with more or
+less levity had assumed an aspect of the profoundest seriousness. My
+“resistances” to my self-appointed analyst, far from being negligible,
+were plainly insuperable, but there was now no turning back. The
+analysis proceeded on its course from day to day and with it my
+resistances took tighter hold upon me. The agreement to which I had
+voluntarily lent myself was becoming painful beyond words. Whatever
+empirical interest the situation may have held for me at the outset was
+now wholly subordinated to the indignation and pain of the position to
+which I had been brought.
+
+It is possible to indicate only in their broadest lines the progressive
+events of these trying months. I need hardly record the growing
+sense of self-limitation and defeat that went hand in hand with this
+daily advancing personal challenge, nor the corresponding efforts
+of concealment in unconscious symbolizations and distortions on my
+part. What calls for more vital emphasis, however, is the fact that
+along with the deepening, if reluctant, realization of my intolerance
+of self-defeat, there came gradually to me the realization that
+my analyst, in changing places with me, had merely shifted to the
+authoritarian vantage-ground I had myself relinquished and that the
+situation had remained essentially unaltered still.
+
+This was significant. It marked at once the opening of wholly new
+vistas of experience. In the light of its discovery I began to sense
+for the first time what had all along underlain my own analysis and
+what, as I now see it, really underlies every analysis. I began to see
+that the student before me, notwithstanding his undoubted sincerity of
+purpose, presented a no less personal and proprietary attitude toward
+me than I had held toward him and that all that had been needed was the
+authoritarian background to bring this attitude to expression. With
+the consciousness of this condition I saw what has been for me the
+crucial revelation of the many years of my analytic work--that, in its
+individualistic application, the attitude of the psychoanalyst and the
+attitude of the authoritarian are inseparable.
+
+As from day to day this realization came more closely home to me, and
+with it the growing acceptance of the limitation and one-sidedness
+of the personalistic critique in psychoanalysis, my personal
+self-vindication and resistances began in the same measure to abate.
+At the same time the analyst too, Mr. Clarence Shields, came at
+last into a position to sense the personalism and resistance that
+had unconsciously all along actuated his own reaction. From now
+forward the direction of the inquiry was completely altered. The
+analysis henceforth consisted in the reciprocal effort of each of
+us to recognize within himself his attitude of authoritarianism and
+autocracy toward the other. With this automatic relinquishment of the
+personalistic or private basis and its replacement by a more inclusive
+attitude toward the problems of human consciousness, there has been not
+alone for myself but also for students and patients a gradual clearing
+of our entire analytic horizon.
+
+It will later become clearer how this newer formulation of
+psychoanalysis on the wider basis of its more inclusive impersonal
+meaning has occurred entirely apart from the commonly predicable
+processes of logic. Only the accidental circumstance of a student’s
+protest against my own personal bias, and my subsequent observation of
+an identical personalism in himself, as empirically disclosed upon
+our interchanging places, are answerable for the altered insight into
+psychoanalysis that the recent years have afforded me--an insight
+which the investigations of the small group of students working along
+analytic lines identical with my own have more and more substantiated.
+It was due, then, entirely to this unexpected turn of the tables, which
+placed me in the rôle of the patient and the patient in the analytic
+rôle, that I was fortuitously launched into six years of social
+experimentation upon the discrepancies of an individualistic analysis.
+If the outcome of the process has been the retraction of my earlier
+analytic outlook, it has not been the expression of any personal acumen
+or distinctive asset on my part.
+
+The chance eventuality I have mentioned is alone responsible for
+enforcing the relinquishment of my habitual personalistic basis in
+psychoanalysis and bringing me to feel the need of a more comprehensive
+interpretation of the unconscious. Coming to sense, through a wider
+recognition of the unconscious, the correspondingly larger meaning
+of the consciousness of man, I have come to feel the need of its
+more adequate interpretation in such an organismic view as I have
+here attempted to outline under the theme of “The Social Basis of
+Consciousness.”
+
+I cannot consistently cite authoritative reference in support of
+this work. There is none. It is sponsored alone in the spirit of
+common endeavour actuating the group of students who have united in
+its common realization. But if I am loath to shift to others the
+responsibility for my own venturesomeness, I need not forgo the
+pleasure of acknowledging--as I do with whole-heartedness--the impetus
+that was given me in the beginning of my psychoanalytic work through
+the sympathy and encouragement of Dr. Adolf Meyer.
+
+                                                       TRIGANT BURROW.
+
+    The Tuscany,
+  Baltimore, Maryland.
+
+
+
+
+THE SOCIAL BASIS OF CONSCIOUSNESS
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+After sixteen years devoted to psychoanalytic work based on the
+principles of Freud, I have come to a position which differs so
+essentially from the followers of Freud as well as from his dissenters,
+that I am impelled to set down some account of the development through
+which my conceptions have passed, and to state as clearly as I can the
+position to which they have led.
+
+The conceptions which Freud has brought to the study of abnormal
+and individual psychology have been of incalculable significance in
+aiding us to understand the causes and mechanisms underlying mental
+disharmonies. The personalistic basis, however, on which psychoanalysis
+rests has not in my experience proved sufficiently broad to meet the
+demands of a more inclusive societal psychology in its application
+to the needs of human life. While, in reconstructing the mechanics
+of the unconscious, psychoanalysis has given the impetus to a truer
+comprehension of the many distorted expressions of individual
+mentation, it has not as yet really uncovered the essential meaning
+of our human problems as they touch the consciousness of man in its
+organic reality.
+
+To speak, however, of the organic reality of life is to enter upon
+a new universe of consciousness. It is to acquire a wholly altered
+concept of the inherent consciousness of man. This concept is not one
+that is interpretable upon our accustomed individualistic basis. As its
+envisagement is societal, its realization must necessarily be societal
+also.
+
+To-day it is not possible to contemplate the significance of
+psychoanalysis without realizing the arbitrarily constricted point
+of view that has come to characterize the popularizations of
+psychoanalysis in their various phases. Psychoanalysis possesses
+as yet no specific definition. Personalistic in conception, it is
+personalistically interpreted, and its variations are to-day as
+whimsical as they are many. By one process of handling, psychoanalysis
+has become closely allied with Mysticism and New Thought, by another
+with propagandist measures for scientific birth-control, by a third
+with an authenticated programme of sexual licence, and with all it
+is but a new form of application of the old programme of palliative
+medication.
+
+If, however, the essential truth of Freudian psychology, like all vital
+scientific movements, has been attended by personalistic misconception
+and even by the cruder aims of individual exploitation, it has been
+equally attended by a genuine scientific concurrence of spirit such
+as alone animates the disinterested conscience of the laboratory
+investigator. In the midst of the cheap and shifting divagations of a
+day, there have remained the sounder interpretations of at least a few
+outstanding investigators. While neither Freudian nor anti-Freudian,
+there are those to whom I, as well as others, owe the inspiration of
+those more thoughtful evaluations that are based upon a steadfast
+fidelity to the inclusive spirit of an evolutionary interpretation
+of human pathology, sociological as well as biological. It is these
+few students who, I feel, will welcome an interpretation of our human
+processes that offers a more inclusive, organic comprehension of our
+mental life.
+
+But before undertaking the study of the organic psychology of man, it
+will be necessary first to establish a position that is based upon
+an organismic[1] or societal viewpoint as contrasted with a position
+based upon a viewpoint that is systematized and personal. Many years of
+psychoanalytic practice have led me to the conviction that the basis of
+Freud’s psychology is inadequate to render completely conscious those
+disorders of the personality the essential meaning of which is their
+unconsciousness. The following essay, therefore, is an attempt to offer
+a more adequate concept of the essential consciousness of man than I
+feel has been attained through the interpretations of the unconscious
+patterns embodied in the present system of psychoanalysis. I have come
+to feel that what we have called analysis in the sense of our present
+personalistic systems is just another application of the method of
+suggestion, and that with us analysts, as with others, the method
+involves a situation in which we are as truly the unconscious dupes of
+the suggestive process we employ as are the unconscious subjects upon
+whom we employ it.
+
+After all, it is the fallacy of personalism and of differentiation in
+our human relations which is the essential element in our unconscious
+agencies of suggestion, and I cannot doubt that this same fallacy
+underlies no less the constructions upon which we rest our analytic
+procedure. In the work of psychoanalysis as in our human endeavours
+everywhere, there enters unavoidably the personal bias that is
+inseparable from the position of observation concomitant to the
+observer. It is to abrogate this prejudice of personal partisanship and
+differentiation besetting the intrinsic system of psychoanalysis as
+well as of our private dogmatizations elsewhere, that I have undertaken
+the investigations of which this study is in part the outcome.
+
+With the growth of my experience in psychoanalysis, the factor that
+has exerted the deepest influence in altering my outlook upon the
+problems of the neuroses as upon the processes of life generally has
+been the gradual, if reluctant, elimination of the personal equation
+in relation to those problems. By the personal equation I mean the
+unconscious and arbitrary tendency within us all to adopt _a personally
+systematized mental attitude_ toward life in substitution for the
+physiological reality of life itself. The technical procedure of Freud
+necessarily rests upon this extrinsic mental attitude, whereas in
+the work of my students and myself during the past several years our
+position has tended increasingly toward the more inclusive fulfilment
+of the personality as a whole. Only in an inclusive analysis are our
+affects experienced upon a basis that is common and organic. Accidental
+diversity cannot issue out of organic unity. When the elements of
+consciousness will be truly unified, an association of conscious
+personalities will be unified also. The reason why there are to-day as
+many systems of psychoanalysis as there are psychoanalysts, is that
+our assumed principle of conscious unity is in reality but a personal
+principle of differentiation and unconsciousness.
+
+Let me say at once, however, to anyone who may have lacked the
+opportunity or the candour to verify within himself the essential
+objective findings of Freud, and who is disposed to read into this
+thesis a vindication of his personal reaction against Freud’s
+formulations, that he will find this study in nowise adapted to
+assuage his sense of outrage to injured sensibilities. Whatever may
+be the value of this work, in the spirit of its presentation it is
+in no sense a personal discrimination against the teaching of Freud
+but rather it is the acknowledged outgrowth of that teaching. If in
+our widened outlook we have outgrown the personal interpretations of
+psychoanalysis, there is due our full acknowledgment that it is to
+those interpretations that our position owes its rise. Far, then,
+from representing an antagonistic exclusion of Freud’s theory of the
+unconscious, our position embodies the wider inclusion of it in what
+I feel is its more comprehensive interpretation on the basis of a
+societal concept of consciousness.
+
+In psychoanalysis as in the social systems amid which, unconsciously,
+we are continually moving, we tend to gravitate toward an assumed
+static centre or toward a so-called personal cause that is coincident
+with our assumption of an absolute universe of consciousness. This
+gravitation toward a personal centre of consciousness embodies, in
+reality, a system that represents but the unconscious projection of
+our own ego. We substitute this delusion of an artificial world of
+causality for the reality of a universe of spontaneous sequence, not
+realizing that we ourselves are the subjective expression of the same
+organic sequence which we observe objectively in the world about
+us. When we have learned to accept inherent sequence as organically
+necessary, we shall no longer enforce unconscious causality as
+presumably inevitable.
+
+It is this very general fallacy of personal sponsorship which
+constitutes the intricate disguise of our social unconscious and which
+in our personalistic outlook we have not yet begun to grasp. Ourselves
+unwitting participants in this illusion of personal determinism, we
+have not yet begun to compass the _system of unconsciousness_ that
+lurks beneath its gratuitous assumption of personal agency.
+
+With a view to the analysis and replacement of this absolute or
+self-determined attitude among us I have here offered what I conceive
+to be the more universal and encompassing interpretation of the common
+and organic consciousness of man. As, however, the field of Organic
+Psychology has yet to take a recognized place among us, and as it is
+a conception that is circumscribed only by the limits of life itself,
+naturally this initial step toward its establishment offers but a
+tentative view as to its real scope and meaning. Representing scarcely
+more than a preliminary outline, this work will be seen to embody
+but the merest syllabus in relation to further works based upon an
+organismic theory of consciousness, that doubtless will gradually
+be contributed to the increase of our understanding of life, both
+individual and social. In its present form the thesis here developed
+was first outlined in 1923.
+
+
+
+
+PART I
+
+THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE NEUROSES
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+PSYCHOANALYSIS IN THEORY AND IN LIFE
+
+
+Now that the excitement following the inundation of psychoanalysis
+has died down and the clinical territories most affected have been
+once more built up and restocked, it is interesting to witness the
+changes wrought in different quarters as a result of the general
+havoc to habitual prepossessions. As we stand amid the debris of past
+conceptions there is no question but that the sudden descent upon us of
+Freud’s postulates has destroyed many old landmarks that shall not be
+restored and that it has brought in a wealth of new material that has
+altered no little the configuration of the old.
+
+As I happen to have been of those who were carried in upon the current
+of the general onsweep of new interpretations ushered in by Freud, my
+experience forms the record of a reaction to that movement that is
+internal because it is from the vantage-ground of a participant in
+it. Many of these interpretations are of epoch-making significance in
+their approach to mental disharmonies, but many, being immature and
+unsound, only obstruct the passage that psychoanalysis has contributed
+so splendidly to open. And so my position may be of interest to others
+who, like myself, have earnestly tried to bring order and a permanent
+coherence out of the large mass of conceptions that cluster about
+Freud’s dynamic idea.
+
+The theory of psychoanalysis rests on the conception that nervous
+disorders are the substitutive manifestation of a repressed sexual
+life; its basic position is that this substitutive factor is
+responsible for neurotic processes and that it is the sexual impulse
+for which recourse is sought in the process of substitution. This
+position of psychoanalysis is, in its essential significance, now
+generally accepted--the position, namely, which affirms the factor of
+replacement as the essential account of nervous manifestations and
+assumes the urge of the sexual instinct as the element replaced.
+
+While, with other psychoanalysts, I am in full accord with this thesis,
+my finding in regard to the relation of these two propositions to one
+another is so entirely at variance with the prevailing psychoanalytic
+view, and alters so fundamentally for me the ultimate interpretation
+of psychoanalysis in its bearing upon the problems of consciousness,
+that I shall make clearer the ideas expressed in this work if, at the
+outset, I may state briefly in what manner my interpretation of this
+relation differs from the accepted conception.
+
+The difference lies in the fact that I do not regard this replacement
+as _primarily_ a replacement for sexuality as we now know it. On the
+contrary, sexuality, as manifested to-day amid the sophistications
+of civilization, is itself a replacement for the organic unity of
+personality arising naturally from the harmony of function that
+pertains biologically to the primary infant psyche. This original mode
+I have referred to in a previous work as the preconscious, and this
+preconscious mode[2] I regard as the matrix of the mental life. The
+spontaneous process of the organism’s unhindered growth through the
+gradual development of experience or awareness from this unitary mode
+as a basis is, in my interpretation, the meaning of consciousness.
+The whole meaning of sexuality on the other hand is substitution,
+compensation, repression. In a word, sexuality, as it has come to exist
+socially to-day, is identical with the unconscious, while a unification
+of personality is alone to be found through eliminating the recourses
+of substitution and sexuality and thus reuniting the elements of the
+conscious and organic modes now kept asunder through the interposition
+of the unconscious.
+
+Hence the modern substitutions existing under the name of sexuality,
+whether repressed or indulged, are but a symptom of this denial of
+man’s organic affective life. Sexuality, as it now exists, is not only
+utterly unrelated to sex but it is intrinsically exclusive of sex. Sex
+is life. It is life in its deepest significance. Sex is the spontaneous
+expression of a natural hunger. In the instinct of sex there is felt a
+yearning from the depths of man’s organism for mating and reproduction,
+while sexuality is the personal coveting of momentary satisfaction in
+mere superficial sensation. By sexuality, then, I mean something very
+different from sex. I mean the restless, obsessive, over-stimulated
+quest for temporary self-gratification that everywhere masquerades as
+sex and is everywhere substituted for the strong, simple, quiet flow
+of feeling that unites the organic and the conscious life in a single
+stream and is the expression of personality in its native inherency.
+
+With this altered conception other modifications have followed
+which necessarily entail a distinct departure from certain accepted
+psychoanalytic formulations. The organic denial and the restless
+compensations and substitutions comprising the unconscious are, in
+essence, the psychology of the mental reaction-average known as
+normality. The popular analytic view places a premium upon this
+manifestation of the collective unconscious and assigns the criterion
+of normality as the desired goal of adaptation for the neurotically
+repressed personality.
+
+I cannot accept this view. For an analysis of the social unconscious
+shows that the collective reaction embodied in the adaptations commonly
+accepted as normal betrays a tendency to repression and replacement
+that is no less an indication of disease-process than is the reaction
+presented in the individual neurosis. Indeed, from the point of view of
+constructive consciousness and health, our so-called normality is, of
+the two, the less progressive type of reaction. In truth, normality,
+in evading the issues of the unconscious, envisages less the processes
+of growth and a larger consciousness than the neurotic type of
+reaction, which, however blind its motivation, at least comes to grips
+with the actualities of the unconscious.
+
+It is the hall-mark of normality that, suspecting nothing, it takes
+itself completely for granted. In the spirit of true conformity, it
+accepts its expressions of the vicarious at their face value and
+assumes the burden of its self-inflicted compensations with entire
+complacency. The neurotic, on the other hand, at least senses the
+inherent discrepancy in his life. He at least demurs in so far as to
+withhold assent from the mass-compromise embodied in the substitutions
+and connivances of the social unconscious. In a word, it is the
+distinction of the neurotic personality that he is at least consciously
+and confessedly “nervous.”
+
+This, as far as I can see, is the chief distinction between the
+condition represented in normal adaptations and that represented in
+the neurosis. The distinction lies merely in the greater weight of
+numbers. Normality, in its numerical strength, concedes acceptance to
+the average-reaction and so yields it right of way. In normality the
+unconscious carries the day, while in the neurosis it is pushed to the
+wall. The distinction psychologically lies in the successful compromise
+of the one as contrasted with the enforced doubt and self-questioning
+of the other. On the one hand there is the compact security of the
+social polity; on the other, there is the more sensitive isolation and
+uncertainty of the individual unit.
+
+From the point of view of life, therefore, many of our normal reactions
+are psychologically as truly a manifestation of the distorted and
+substitutive as are those more isolated manifestations we commonly
+stigmatize as neurotic disharmonies. I cannot see but that the
+element of the repressed and substitutive on which is based Freud’s
+theory of the neuroses is an element that underlies the expression
+of consciousness in all phases of its manifestation and that hence
+underlies also the phase represented in normality. In brief, normality
+too is nervous. Normality too, since it is actuated no less from
+motives of the ulterior and vicarious, even though it supposedly
+represents the criterion of adult consciousness, is no less an
+expression of the distorted and symbolic. This distortion is to be seen
+upon every hand in the restless greed and obsessive self-seeking that
+underlie the national, industrial, political, social and religious
+possessivism and competition which are the typical psychology of
+the normal mind, notwithstanding its plausible exterior of human
+progress and universal goodwill. Universality and goodwill are not
+there. These are but the manifest symptoms embodied by the social
+personality after it has undergone the distortion represented in the
+substitutive reactions characteristic of the social neurosis, that is,
+after it has been subjected to the mechanism of diplomatic repression
+and modification. What is there, in reality, is the will-to-self and
+the particular aim which best serves the narcistic advantages of the
+individuals comprising the social unit in question. The mechanism is
+identical with that which underlies the individual neurosis, namely,
+the covert aim toward the satisfactions of self which constitute
+unconsciousness.
+
+Normality too, then, is neurotic. Normality too has its repressions and
+its substitutions, its secret symbols and equivocations. The difference
+is that as normality possesses the warrant of the institutionalized
+and current, it enjoys the protection of the consensus. And just
+as the neurotic fails to comprehend the meaning of this vicarious
+manifestation in its individual expression within himself and is a
+prey to the inscrutable symptoms in which his organism finds its
+compensations, so we, who are accounted normal, as little suspect the
+meaning of this same symptomatology existing in its social expression
+within ourselves. The neurotic resolutely defends his unconscious
+duplicity behind an ingenious charade of unconscious symbolism, and
+we no less resolutely defend ours through recourse to an identical
+device. But if we will look beyond the narrower confine of the clinic
+and face squarely the logical issue of Freud’s thesis, we cannot avoid
+the conclusion that it is an indictment of man’s consciousness in its
+entirety. Hence normality too must make answer for its complicity in
+the unconscious ruse of substitution and evasion which we observe in
+its more intense reaction as the introversions of personality presented
+in the obviously arrested expression we call neurotic.
+
+If anyone is disposed to question this view, let him consider but
+one symptomatic reaction recently manifested throughout the social
+organism. Could there be anywhere imagined an unconscious reaction
+more wasteful and destructive or one of wider scope or severer
+intensity than the symptom-reaction represented by the war that has
+recently convulsed the world? Or consider the equally unconscious
+expression presented in the tendency to religious emotionalism that has
+followed in the wake of this world-war, with the corresponding effort
+towards compensation and self-propitiation through recourse to the
+sentimental and spiritualistic. Yet all the while the existence and
+the significance of the unconscious motives that are latent in the two
+extremes of emotional reaction underlying these manifest expressions
+have not yet begun to be suspected and reckoned with on any clear,
+conscious, analytic basis.
+
+What, then, is the meaning of this tendency to substitution as shown
+in the reaction of the social as well as of the individual organism?
+If sexuality is the element substituted for, what is the psychology of
+this factor called sexuality? What is its meaning? In analyzing the
+unconscious of the neurotic personality it has become gradually clearer
+to me that the factor underlying and actuating the conflict Freud
+describes as repressed sexuality is nothing else than the personal
+desire of ascendancy or the lust of acquisition _concomitant with the
+organism’s unconscious reversion upon its own image_.[3]
+
+Sexuality, then, is but a larger word for self. Sexuality is the
+effort to limit life to the ends of personal aggrandizement. It is
+the greed of the self-limited personality to compass the whole, as
+contrasted with the societal personality that is encompassed by the
+whole. But, since the unconscious is the same under all forms, self
+or sexuality, with its pride of possession, its lust of gain, is no
+less the unconscious element underlying the psychology of the normal
+reaction-average. And precisely as in the individual reaction these
+unconscious wishes are manifested only in the disguised symbols and
+substitutive equivalents portrayed in neurotic symptoms, so too
+in the social organism these egocentric interests antagonistic to
+consciousness and growth venture to express themselves only in the
+corresponding substitutions of the mass unconscious.
+
+Thus the unconscious represented in the social reaction we call
+normality is no whit different from the unconscious represented in
+the individual reaction observable as the neurosis. We are habitually
+deceived by the give-and-take policy of normal adaptation with its
+secret covenant of good manners and outward forms. But the apparent
+difference between the social and the individual neurosis consists
+merely in the fact that the poignancy of the conflict underlying the
+symptomatology of the social personality is largely mitigated and
+condoned by reason of the wider numerical distribution of the social
+organism and the consequent freer dissemination of the elements
+involved.
+
+But, though of wider distribution, there underlies the expressions of
+normality no less of conflict and repression than exists in the acuter
+expression seen in the individual neurosis. In the personality of the
+more sensitive or feeling type we think of as neurotic, this tendency
+to self-acquisitiveness or sexuality and its organic incompatibility
+with the physiological inherency of life become, as it were, stalled
+and impacted within him; while in the social organism the discrepancy
+of personality, occasioned by its sexuality or pride of ascendancy,
+apparently entails no such organic blocking as that occurring in the
+individual. But the pain and impaction are present nevertheless, and
+are betrayed no less in the recourse to the substitutive and symbolic
+manifestations, characteristic of our prevalent social hysterias, not
+to mention the more violent disorders that crash upon the world in the
+reactions of political and industrial dissension and in the fiercer
+paroxysms of war.
+
+Such is the meaning of our so-called normality. To a degree that is
+quite unsuspected by us its psychology is unconsciousness, and the
+psychology of unconsciousness is the psychology of the self-image
+secretly worshipped under the habitual guises of symbolism and
+replacement. It is time we should recognize that this recourse to
+the vicarious image is the psychology of many of the reactions of
+the normal as well as of the neurotic, that in ourselves, no less
+than in the neurotic, there is the putting forward of that which
+_stands for_--the exploitation, under countless different aspects, of
+that which may be adroitly put _instead of_ rather than the simple
+acceptance of that which _is_.
+
+Part of the purpose of the present study, however, is to try to bring
+into clearer light a substitutive reaction that is much nearer home. As
+psychoanalysts we need to take into account a distortive process that
+has a much closer bearing upon ourselves and our responsibility toward
+the problems of our common social consciousness. For, of all the forms
+of substitution to which normality has recourse, the form that seems
+to me of deepest significance for us and that presents the most vital
+need of analysis and understanding within ourselves, is the vicarious
+expression growing out of the tendency to an extrinsic approach to
+the problems of consciousness that has come to be embodied in the
+formulated _system_ of psychoanalysis.
+
+In the whole symptomatology of normality with its social expression
+of the vicarious there is no symptom-complex that is of greater
+significance than that embodied in the attempt to apply to the reality
+of human life the _system_ of human life offered in psychoanalysis as
+it is to-day interpreted and applied. For a system of psychoanalysis is
+itself but a substitution for life, a theory of life in place of life
+itself. The theory of psychoanalysis sets out with a premise; life does
+not. Psychoanalysis offers a solution; life is its own solution.
+
+It is not theory as theory at which I demur; it is theory as
+application to the needs of human growth. From the point of view of the
+theory of psychoanalysis this therapeutic recourse in the treatment of
+nervous disorders seems to me completely adequate and true; but from
+the point of view of life I have come to regard the application of the
+system or theory of psychoanalysis to the problems of individual needs
+as an utterly futile procedure. I have come to feel that what is here
+of value in the text-book is utterly worthless in our daily relation to
+human personality.
+
+I would not, of course, be understood as repudiating theory as such.
+Seen clearly as the extrinsic expression it is, theory undoubtedly
+has its place, but its place is not in the earnest relationship of
+one human being to another such as obtains in the confidence and
+communication offered in the actuality of psychoanalysis. It has
+not yet been recognized, however, that we who are psychoanalysts
+are ourselves theorists, that we also are very largely misled by an
+unconscious that is social, that we too are neurotic, in so far as
+every expression but that of life in its native simplicity is neurotic.
+Our disharmony, however, is a phase of that widely diffused neurosis
+that exists under the prevailing social consensus represented in the
+normal adaptation.[4]
+
+And so, as I now see it, there is no more subtle form of substitution
+or one that is more successful in its capacity to evade the censor of
+consciousness and obtain the stamp of genuineness than the symptom
+represented in the _theory_ of the reactions of human beings as a
+replacement for the reality of these reactions in life itself. Personal
+experience compels me to concede that it is such a symptom that is
+comprised in the theory of psychoanalysis as it is widely operative in
+the consultation rooms of psychoanalysts to-day.
+
+We have assumed that, in envisaging the unconscious, psychoanalysis
+presupposes a more inclusive position than is generally characteristic
+of the theoretical or systematized clinician. But it is a far-reaching
+commentary upon the analyst’s capacity of discrimination that he still
+presumes to analyze another on the basis of a system or theory, as
+though a neurosis which is an essentially subjective condition were
+of the nature of an objective bodily lesion. A dissociation within
+the personality may find its analogy in a bodily lesion but never
+its understanding. In the field of objective phenomena, theory is
+entirely commensurate with its application. After all, the theory of
+a mechanism is but the description of the principle of its operation.
+In the objective world such an objective description presents no
+discrepancy. It is the application of the objective method to an
+objective principle. The theory of the hydraulic press is perfectly
+consistent with its application. Between theory and application there
+is here complete conjunction. No disparate element intervenes to mar
+the transition from the descriptive to the practical.
+
+So too with the theory of psychoanalysis as long as it pertains to the
+objective viewpoint of the text-book. But in the subjective sphere
+a totally different situation is presented. In dealing with life in
+its actuality, we are not dealing with the descriptive and objective.
+Human life is subjective. It is something experienced, something felt.
+Life is not theoretical; it is actual. It is not descriptive; it is
+dynamic. Human life _is_; it is not a _theory_ of what is. Life, as
+it is felt, is our ultimate subjective actuality. Subjectivity or
+intrinsic feeling is the very basis of life. As such, feeling is life’s
+reality and no theory of feeling is an adequate substitute for this
+reality. And so the objective theory of psychoanalysis or the objective
+theory of the motives of human life is wholly inapplicable to the
+subjective experience or to the actuality of human life as it is felt
+in individual personality.
+
+We have not begun to reckon in the least understandingly with the
+nature of the subjective as contrasted with the objective sphere
+of life. We are, in fact, quite naïve in our attitude toward the
+whole subjective field, preferring to adopt toward it either a
+mood of beatific reverence and mysticism, in which we conjure
+unwarranted images of “psychic phenomena” that are allied with man’s
+pseudo-religious vagaries, or we adopt a pseudo-scientific attitude
+which repudiates as nonexistent or regards as unworthy of serious
+thought any phenomena that do not lend themselves to objective
+observation. Neither position seems to me tenable. We may dismiss
+at once the attitude of the occultists, for mysticism entertains
+no argument. But there is the need to consider very seriously the
+subjective field of scientific reasoning and to keep clearly before
+us the distinctive and impassable interval between the subjective and
+objective domains of scientific inquiry.
+
+It is most true that objective observation is the sole method whereby
+we may obtain knowledge concerning the phenomenal world. This is true
+whether the knowledge concern substances themselves or the manner of
+their interaction. But we forget that knowledge thus gained is always
+knowledge _concerning_. If I consider any object--a book, a flower,
+or a stone--all that my knowledge will ever yield me is restricted to
+the attributes that pertain to the substance in hand. I observe that
+the stone is smooth, hard, ovoid. Submitting it to certain physical
+and chemical tests I learn still further about its qualities, and so,
+little by little, bring myself into ever closer touch with the object
+in question. But always my data furnish only _closer touch with_. The
+essential matter informing the substance we recognize as stone remains
+as inaccessible at the conclusion of an ultimate analysis as in the
+beginning. It is still knowledge _concerning_ and my facts, however
+widely accumulated, are but attributive. Thus the _essential_ nature
+of the objects about us is not to be approached by a method that is
+_unessential_ or attributive.
+
+The same circumstance confronts us in dealing with the phenomenal
+world of our own experience. Here too we proceed upon the method of
+objective inquiry--a perfectly legitimate field of “observation.”
+We posit and collate all manner of phenomena and note no end of
+“reactions.” But always we are restricted to a knowledge _concerning_,
+to data _in regard to_. In brief, we remain apart from--are ever
+outside of the reaction observed. Not that we may hold the attitude
+of the philosophers and assume the “existence” of a “metaphysical
+essence” that is inaccessible to us. We need rather to recognize
+that the alleged essence is merely that organic condition of matter
+with which our conscious processes are not organically continuous.
+There are, however, organic conditions or processes with which our
+consciousness is continuous--namely, the organic processes occurring
+within our own bodies and registering themselves within us as feeling.
+It is this continuity registered within us as feeling that is an
+essentially subjective state of mind and that must not be confused with
+the objective state of mind that merely registers impressions of the
+observable action or outer condition of such feeling processes. This
+subjective continuity is organic and inherent. True, it is possible
+through a shunting of interest or attention (repression or misplaced
+affect) to divert the course of our organic processes from their
+natural perception in consciousness. But this artificial situation
+through which we divert organic process from conscious participation
+and acknowledgment is the condition of unconsciousness.
+
+My whole contention is precisely this: we are constantly attempting to
+deal objectively or attributively with experiences that are subjective
+and essential. We fail to understand that our knowledge _about_ our
+feelings is but attributive, that it brings us no nearer the feelings
+themselves; that our feelings are essential, physiological and that
+we may no more know our essential feelings through _observation_ of
+their _attributes_ than we may reach the essence of any object about us
+through a knowledge of _its_ attributes.
+
+The basis of this essay is precisely the recognition of this impossible
+breach between the condition of consciousness produced through a
+knowledge _about_ feeling and the condition of consciousness that is
+the feeling itself, between the state of mind that is _commentative_
+and the state of mind that is _functioning_. The former is objective,
+the latter is subjective. The failure of our psychological methods to
+recognize this intrinsic distinction is to my mind the failure of our
+entire approach to the problems of mental and social disharmony. It is
+this unwitting substitution of the _theory_ of human feelings for the
+unannotated experience of the feelings themselves as recorded in our
+interactive functioning as human beings that is the impossibility of
+our present “method” of psychoanalysis.
+
+This position is for me an all-important one. Upon the acceptance
+or rejection of it, I believe, depends the growth or the decline of
+psychoanalysis as an agency of release for the intrinsic needs of the
+neurotic personality. To-day, under the impetus of psychoanalysis in
+its theoretical or vicarious form, we are carrying theory to the point
+of absurdity. There is now, for example, the psychoanalytic theory of
+the nursery. Anxious young mothers are running about looking for texts
+which will serve them as guides in the love of their children. They are
+diligently searching upon every hand for the latest approved theory
+of maternal love. And in response to the demand the popular literature
+is supplying them with full details. But there are no librettos of the
+nursery. Baedekers to motherhood are not to be had. The motherhood that
+is true is a subjective relationship, and it is only subjectively that
+it can be felt and understood.
+
+I shall not forget the experience told me by a patient whose mother,
+actuated by the theory of motherhood in its highest “scientific”
+interpretation, undertook to enlighten her upon the significance of
+sex. The incident left the most painful impression upon her. The
+mother, having gathered courage for the performance of her maternal
+duty, delivered her errand with a punctiliousness which from the point
+of view of technique was irreproachable. She spoke out of the strictest
+regard for the theory of motherhood. But unfortunately her theory left
+out of account an item that needs to be reckoned with, namely, the
+native simplicity of the consciousness of childhood. The woman spoke
+out of the theory of a truth, but her child listened with the organic
+susceptibility of truth itself. The mother had not accepted within
+herself the actual significance of life, and so, in accordance with
+the formality of a theory, was vicariously imposing its acceptance
+upon her child. But childish perception pierces the veil of pedagogic
+finesse. The rigid demeanour of her instructor readily disclosed the
+discrepancy between the verbal recital and the utter lack of conscious
+acceptance within herself. For the child, now a middle-aged woman, the
+moment was an unforgettable one. She had witnessed in her mother an
+outrage to organic truth, and the shock of that experience caused a
+psychic disunity between mother and child from which there resulted an
+introversion of personality that covered half a lifetime. And so, while
+the theory of the nursery is from the point of view of theory wholly
+irreproachable, it is from the point of view of the nursery wholly
+absurd.
+
+A lesson which parents have yet to learn is that the child is closer
+to the heart of things than the grown-up--that the consciousness of
+childhood stands in a far more truthful relationship to the actuality
+of life, as it is, than the consciousness of the conventionalized and
+sophisticated adult. For years it has been my feeling that beneath the
+conflict of the neurotic personality there is reiterated an urge toward
+the expression of this primal inherency of consciousness. To-day, it is
+more than ever my view that in the neurotic reaction there is expressed
+an inherent plea for the native simplicity and truth of this organic
+consciousness. It becomes more and more clear to me that the pain of
+these personalities is due solely to the organic discrepancy of an
+unconsciousness and indirection within themselves, and that essentially
+their urge is to bring themselves again into harmony with the law of
+their personality by reuniting the needs of their consciousness with
+the needs of their organic life.
+
+As Nietzsche says: “May there not be--a question for
+alienists--neuroses of health?”[5] This question for alienists is
+indeed a vital one but it is one which, as far as I am aware, has
+not as yet even dimly occurred to us. There is nowhere, it may be
+noted, a clearer argument for Nietzsche’s hypothesis than Nietzsche’s
+own neurosis. Unfortunately, however, alienists are still as little
+interested in the positive processes that bespeak the organism’s
+conscious health, as physicians in general are interested in the
+positive processes that insure the organism’s physical health. But, as
+long as the collective social mind remains the collective unconscious
+mind, it is not to be expected that we shall approach the unconscious
+of the individual, in either its psychic or in its somatic aspect, from
+the basis of an inclusive consciousness and health. The question is
+often asked whether insanity will ever become curable. The answer can
+only be that the insanity of the individual cannot be curable as long
+as there exists the insanity of the social mind about him. It is not
+humanly possible for the psychiatrist to remedy conditions of mental
+disorganization as long as he himself is part of a disorganized social
+mind.
+
+If the psychoanalyst, in applying to the lives of his patients a theory
+of life, is himself unconsciously resorting to the self-protection
+of the substitutive and symbolic; if the blocked personality of our
+patients meets with a blocking in ourselves, with a compromise, a
+theory, a something which stands as a _sign for_ rather than that
+which _is_--a situation which offers a compromise mechanism identical
+with that for which they have sought aid from us--then clearly the
+way is not yet open for the release of the conflict within these
+personalities. For a patient may be untrammelled only in so far as the
+analyst is himself untrammelled.
+
+In taking this attitude I do not make any personal claim for myself.
+This position is not one to which I have come through the success of
+my work but rather through its failure. For in the measure in which
+I have adhered to the dictates of a preconceived normality, in just
+that measure has my work defeated itself. Though I have for some time
+theoretically disavowed the mental status represented in the normal
+reaction, I have tended unconsciously all the while to ally myself with
+this standardized brand of unconsciousness and thus, in my own work,
+have inclined to hold to a theory of life rather than to its actuality.
+Not, then, with the neurotic alone, but with us all, it would seem that
+consciousness is mainly employed in efforts of self-protection and
+evasion. Truly, consciousness makes cowards of us all. But this is not
+consciousness in the sense of life and growth; it is consciousness in
+the sense of retention and self. It is not a free consciousness; it is
+consciousness with a reservation. It is not true consciousness; it is
+unconsciousness.
+
+In accordance with such a mode of consciousness each of us is elbowing
+for a place for himself. Each is seeking more territory for his own
+expansion. Each of us is an unconscious overlord striving to secure
+the supremacy of his own “personality.” Universal and normal as this
+reaction is, its tendency is obsessive and ill. I do not believe that
+life is aggressive and that growth is concerned for itself. Personality
+is impersonality. What is needed is the quiet acceptance of life in its
+actuality. In this and this alone lies the opportunity for freedom and
+growth.
+
+We hear much to-day of the technique of psychoanalysis. In truth
+there is no such thing. It is just another defence mechanism, just
+another resistance to the actualities of life. As in all instances
+of therapeutic specialization, the technique of psychoanalysis has
+become a fetish with us. It has become a veritable complex, a disorder
+from which I find patients actually suffering. The situation is quite
+ridiculous. The more I think of it, the more I am convinced that
+the so-called technique of psychoanalysis is but another hobgoblin
+wherewith the unconscious tendency of professionalism with its egoistic
+striving for preferment contrives to preserve its own separateness
+and distinction. I confess that, in my own unconsciousness, I have
+more than once laid stress upon the importance of the analytic
+technique. But let us not be misled by what is called the technique of
+psychoanalysis. It is but another subterfuge for the reality of life.
+A technique of psychoanalysis is no more possible than a technique of
+love or of friendship or of motherhood. There is a technique and a
+very difficult technique of the _theory_ of psychoanalysis. But that
+is quite a different thing. Psychoanalysis itself or, as its name
+implies, the loosening or freeing of consciousness is nothing else than
+the conscious acceptance of life. As such, it is the exact contrary
+of the objective and technical. Life is not a technique. It does
+not express itself in terms of technique. Technique is an objective
+instrument. Life is a subjective experience. It is a joy or a sorrow,
+a disappointment or an aspiration, and it can no more be handled from
+the point of view of technique than it can be handled with the scalpel
+of the anatomist.[6]
+
+From these and similar reflections I have come to regard the formality
+of applying a system of psychoanalysis to the life of an individual
+as an actual hindrance rather than as an aid to the true expression
+of his personality. It is but an added repression, blocking the very
+way it attempts to open. For to meet the unconscious of a patient with
+unconsciousness within oneself, is only to answer symbolic substitution
+and indirection with the same substitution and indirection in an
+altered, more subtle, socially plausible form.
+
+The whole meaning, therefore, of an analysis that is actual and not
+theoretical is the realization and acceptance on the part of the
+analyst of the utmost unconscious symbolization and distortion within
+himself. The analysis of a patient is the analysis of oneself. It
+cannot be otherwise. And when I say analysis, I do not mean an analysis
+that is a mere unconscious concession to normality--a giving vent
+to the egoistic erotism of the individual by diffusing it among the
+widely distributed elements of the social personality in the manifold
+distortions of sexuality. I mean an analysis of personality in its
+widest expression--an analysis through which the individual comes into
+the conscious acceptance not only of the repression or distortion that
+is personal and that is comprised within the individual introversion
+we know as the neurosis, but of the distortion or substitution of
+personality that is social and that constitutes the confederacy of
+unconsciousness popularly endorsed as normality.
+
+The prime requisite for clear, free, untrammelled work in the
+analysis of human personality is the unqualified rejection of the
+unconscious compromise embodied in the social reaction of normality.
+The analyst who is not himself capitulating to the concession of the
+social unconscious will repudiate the attitude of the psychotherapist
+whose criterion is the restoration of his patient to a condition
+of normality, and will take his stand against any recourse that is
+based upon a programme of compromise and habituation. He will see
+that normality is merely unconsciousness on a co-operative basis and
+he will not be deceived by its insidious offers. It is only through
+such an attitude of complete freedom within oneself that it is
+possible to offer the opportunity of freedom to the personality of
+the neurotic patient, the very heart of whose disharmony lies in an
+inner repugnance, however bewildered and confused, to the untruth of
+the social unconscious comprising his milieu. Viewed analytically,
+normality is but the self-flattery through which we pretend we are not
+unconscious. By so pretending, however, we are only furthering our
+tendency to deeper unconsciousness.
+
+As long as there is self-protection, there is self-limitation; as long
+as there is self-limitation, we are necessarily setting a limitation
+to the possibility of growth and consciousness in others. Only through
+rejecting such protection may we come to accept the testimony of the
+unconscious within ourselves. Otherwise, we ourselves become the
+inhibitors rather than the liberators of consciousness; we who are
+psychoanalysts become mere guardians of disease-processes instead of
+the willing repositories of these unconscious factors, as they exist
+in others, through our understanding and acceptance of these processes
+as they exist within ourselves. For consciousness grows upon the
+medium of consciousness. It cannot be nourished upon an extraneous
+soil. Theories of consciousness are extraneous. In the presence of
+the actuality of life, theories of life become mere intellectual
+snobbery. Being wise, sophisticated and remote, they are inadequate
+to meet life in its native simplicity. Bearing the testimonials of
+authority, the credentials of office, they do not come low enough.
+These insignia of rank only tend to intimidate personality in its
+natural simplicity. What is needed for the release of the neurotic
+individual is the personality who imposes nothing of his own and thus
+allows the completest opportunity for the unfolding of the repressed
+and introverted personality of others.
+
+As psychoanalysis develops and our understanding deepens, it will be
+seen that it is not scientific equipment alone but also directness
+of outlook that make the psychoanalyst. It will be seen that the
+personalities who are adapted to an understanding of the needs of
+human life will not necessarily occupy places of importance amid the
+distractions of affairs, but that their place may be an unobtrusive
+one in which understanding for understanding’s sake will be their sole
+concern. The various rules laid down by medical or other syndicates
+with a view to determining what are the literal qualifications for a
+psychoanalyst are wholly beside the point.[7] The qualifications for
+understanding are not literal. Although we may formulate the most
+meticulous of programmes setting forth the requirements of tuition,
+it will be found that personality will, in the final count, override
+them all. Besides, I cannot think that it is due entirely to the
+accidents of chance that the spokesman for the adoption of this or
+that recipe as a prerequisite to “sound training” in psychoanalysis
+should unfailingly submit a menu that tallies in detail with his own
+catalogue of merits. After all, psychoanalysis is a very large name
+for a very simple thing. I well know that this statement offers a
+delectable morsel to any who are disposed to misinterpret my meaning.
+It will be readily regarded as recklessly casting aside as valueless
+all the years of my own medical and psychological training. But the
+responsibility for such a misinterpretation rests upon those who are
+unable to distinguish between the culture that is applied academically
+and the academy that is applied culturally. All that I mean is that
+whosoever follows the calling of psychoanalysis is merely one who seeks
+to understand and accept life as it is without intruding himself or
+imposing his view or exerting his authority. Indeed psychoanalysis is
+essentially the abrogation of authority. For the psychoanalyst is not
+content but receptacle. Lacking method or design he offers nothing, but
+is the recipient of all there is of human experience as subjectively
+substantiated within himself.
+
+But there enters here a consideration of vital importance and one
+that has not yet been adequately reckoned with and understood. If the
+psychoanalyst is to be the recipient, there must be those who stand to
+him as recipient also. If he is to understand, he must be understood.
+If the life of the analyst is to be a reality and not a system, he
+himself must in reality participate in the life in which he invites
+others to participate. If it is his thesis that human life cannot
+subsist alone, that communication is life, that it is the very meaning
+of consciousness, neither can he subsist without communication.
+
+And so there need to be in the life of the analyst the personalities
+with whom he may share, with whom he may communicate, who accept him
+and are accepted by him in turn. For to analyze is to be analyzed, to
+understand is to be understood. Needless to say these are conclusions
+to which I have not come alone. I could not have. They are the outcome
+of my own opportunity of participation and expression, as the need of
+communication has come to unfold itself in my own experience.
+
+Clearly, then, we who stand as the promoters of a new and untrammelled
+consciousness must look carefully into our own lives to discover
+whether we ourselves, as part of the social consciousness, are not
+theorists rather than unified personalities actuated solely by the law
+of understanding and of growth within ourselves. Clearly, we ourselves
+must realize the completely vicarious and repressed element underlying
+the expression of unconsciousness embodied in the social unrest of
+normality, and, fearlessly repudiating this collective reaction of
+substitution and evasion, break completely with the popular policies of
+compromise and untruth underlying it. In this course we shall take our
+stand for the freedom and clarity of a mode of consciousness that aims
+solely toward the growth of self-understanding and communication. For
+life is not a system, it is not a technique. Life is simple, and its
+course is one of quiet flow. In so far as psychoanalysis is technical,
+it is not life. In so far as its aim is normality, it is not free.
+
+The choice is an unequivocal one. It is a choice between expediency
+and truth, between fixity and growth. For the habitual or normal
+mind whose criterion is expedience the choice is already determined;
+but for the personality that is sensitive to the values of life, the
+choice of growth is no less inevitable. It is organically so. Hence it
+is for each of us to make his choice on which side he will take his
+stand--whether, adhering to a theory of life, he will blindly protect
+himself against the recognition and acknowledgment of the vicarious
+element of normality and compromise within his own unconscious, or
+whether he will stand for a mode of consciousness that flings away
+every habitual protection and accepts only the conditions of life as
+they unfold themselves in the development of his own personality as
+well as in that of others. The outlook is really not ambiguous. The
+question is whether life will be a theory or system corroborated by the
+technical outfit of the consultation room or whether it will be the
+deeply fulfilled experience that comprises consciousness in its organic
+reality.
+
+The definite biological theory on which this thesis rests implies an
+organic or societal continuum as the essential basis of consciousness.
+To understand this theory we shall be helped if, in the beginning,
+we will seek to replace the more or less arbitrary divergences of
+personal outlook with a conception that attempts to stand far enough
+removed from this personal mode to contemplate within its more
+ample formulation the personal outlook as well. For this purpose we
+must discover, as far as possible, our tendency to personalistic
+delimitation--a tendency due to the unconscious systematization of the
+restricted individual unit--and in this way approach consciousness anew
+from the more inclusive basis of its societal meaning.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+A RELATIVE CONCEPT OF CONSCIOUSNESS--AN ANALYSIS OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN
+ITS ETHNIC ORIGIN
+
+
+In presenting a psychological discussion that presupposes the altered
+basis of the relativists, I am under no illusion as to the wide
+disparity between the mathematical conception of the relativists
+in regard to the universe and the clinical preoccupations of a
+psychopathologist. It is now conceded, however, that the theory
+of relativity is not without its revolutionary influence upon our
+scientific thought processes generally. And so, although I am not
+competent to an appreciation of the theory of relativity in the
+objective sense of the physicists, I hope I shall not seem presumptuous
+in attempting a discussion of consciousness that demands as its basis a
+viewpoint that is analogous to theirs.[8]
+
+As I understand it, the inadequacy of the Newtonian system of astronomy
+is its autogenous exclusion of data requisite to a principle which
+presupposes a basis of universal applicability. Assuming an unqualified
+absolute to reside within the limits of its own circumscribed area, it
+posits a principle which fails to take account of factors operating
+within the larger constellation wherein its own system is but a
+contributory element. So that, in estimating the components requisite
+to a more inclusive scale of computation, the Newtonian postulate
+omits to reckon with the principle of the time-space element that
+is constitutive of the extension intrinsic to itself and that is,
+therefore, mathematically indispensable in an encompassment of the
+universal and all-inclusive astronomical purview with respect to which
+its own system becomes but relative and extrinsic.
+
+Little by little the necessities of a widening outlook have demanded
+a gradual broadening of conceptual principles generally. Of late I
+have been led to views that appear to warrant the conclusion that, in
+the sphere of psychic phenomena no less than in the realm of physics,
+a system of absolutism, preclusive of data existing outside its own
+autogenously circumscribed principle, wholly dominates our presumably
+conscious world. Accordingly, if we are to reckon with consciousness
+upon a true and inclusive basis, it is required that the system of
+absolutism thus embodied shall give way to a conception of relativity
+in the conscious sphere comparable to the principle of relativity in
+the physical universe.[9]
+
+I do not see why, in his mental and emotional reactions, man may not so
+far free himself from the traditional superstitions of imbued inference
+as to recognize at last that, even with respect to conceptions that are
+the basis of his own mental operations, there is a difference between
+the values that _seem_ and the values that _are_. I do not see why he
+may not recognize that processes which he has hitherto regarded as
+habitually inevitable are not by any means organically necessary, but
+that the two may in fact be essentially contradictory one of the other.
+If in the objective world man may ungird himself of the accustomed
+limitations of a hitherto accepted Euclidean geometry, may he not
+within the sphere of his subjective consciousness also rid himself of
+prepossessions which, though they appear to us now as no less basic,
+may ultimately prove equally non-essential?
+
+We have recently waged a world-war which, according to the _state of
+mind_ of its participants prior to its occurrence, was the admittedly
+inevitable recourse, but which, in the opinion of thinking men
+subsequent to its enactment, is now equally admitted to have been a
+wholly unnecessary eventuality. How then, upon our present basis of
+mentation, may we conclude what is an adequate criterion by which
+we may determine a dependable process of thinking? If we may know
+our states of mind only after we have vented the emotions that first
+incited them, of what use is it to know them? If states of mind can
+produce calamities that gather their toll of human life by the millions
+and we can, by subsequently taking thought, come to regard them as
+unnecessary, what must be felt toward states of mind that have produced
+such calamities? Surely it is not the part of intelligence to feel
+regret of a disaster only after the disaster has befallen. If disaster
+need not befall, would it not be wiser to deplore it beforehand and so
+avert the disaster? This would seem the logical course, but the truth
+is that the logical course is not accessible to man in his present
+state of unconsciousness. Man may think logically but he cannot be
+warranted to act logically. For, in his present stage of development,
+his actions are predominantly under the guidance of his emotions and
+his thought can therefore only follow after.
+
+Consciousness is the individual’s acquiescence in sequences that are
+determined by the necessities of organic law. Unconsciousness is the
+individual’s resistance to these organic processes. As consciousness
+is anterior to its own realization, so unconsciousness ever follows
+in the wake of its own event. We think to-day only in terms of what
+ought to have been yesterday, and the event of to-morrow embodies
+again the reaction to the issues of to-day. Thus our actions are
+always but the unconscious reflections of the day preceding, and in
+our unconsciousness it is only in the aftermath of the morrow that we
+interpret the omens of to-day.
+
+If man’s judgment is competent to apprehend the data of events
+subsequent to their occurrence, why may it not be equally possible,
+through our prior apperception of the mental states leading up to them,
+to envisage the same events with the same clarity anteriorly and thus
+forestall the useless mistakenness and destruction that now follow
+inevitably with their enactment? Surely it is clear that, in continuing
+to preserve unaltered this same state of mind whose world-wide
+consequences we have just witnessed, we may be, at the present moment,
+preparing a similar if not a yet greater catastrophe, the while we
+are at the same moment as completely oblivious of it. Indeed, from a
+position that is anterior to the emotional inducements to which our
+mental states are inevitably subject in our present absolute view, it
+will be seen that an unconscious and destructive disposition toward
+life is as inseparable from an absence of self-cognizance on the part
+of the social mind as the factors of disintegration and unconsciousness
+are inseparable within the life-sequences of the individual unit.
+
+In its necessary limitation with respect to the relativity of
+consciousness in its universal compass, the constellated system of
+processes which at present comprises the sphere of the mental life
+will, in my view, ultimately appear analogous to the traditional
+system of Newton with respect to the universe of relativity in the
+encompassment of objective mathematics. As in the intrinsic principle
+of absolutism comprising the Newtonian system of gravitation, so in the
+self-determined principle of absolutism, comprising our present system
+of psychology, a dimensional factor has been left out of account, the
+inclusion of which completely shifts the basis of former calculations
+and so distorts our habitual reckonings as to demand the fundamental
+reconstruction of accepted values.
+
+But while the principle of relativity comprehended by the objective
+formulae of the physicists is mathematically beyond my reach, the
+conception of relativity within the subjective life appears to me not
+only compellingly clear, but organically necessary. Indeed, in the
+absence of this conception of the relativity of consciousness, it is no
+longer possible for me to reckon adequately with the processes of the
+mental life. For in default of a working basis broad enough to embrace
+the dimensional element of the system, individual and social, whereof
+we ourselves are a component part, there is lacking the scientific
+comprehensiveness requisite to a universal principle of evaluation.
+
+It is worthy of note that between the objective or mathematical
+theory of relativity of Einstein and the subjective or organismic
+theory of relativity here considered there is to be traced, however
+inconclusively, a philosophical parallelism that is significant.[10]
+My feeling is, though as yet it is little more than an intimation
+with me, that this cosmological parallel between the subjective and
+objective spheres of relativity marks a concomitance that is consistent
+throughout. I do not see how it could be otherwise since the subjective
+and the objective spheres of life, embodying the bipolar aspects of
+the phenomenal world, represent but obverse phases of one and the same
+universe. The analogy that interests me here, however, has to do with
+the feature that is equally the basis of the two modes of relativity,
+namely, the feature which entails the abrogation of absolute standards
+of evaluation and the recognition of the kinetic factor that is organic
+to both. In the objective interpretation of astronomy this factor
+comprises the mathematical space-time coefficient of the physicists’
+fourth dimension; and in a subjective interpretation of consciousness
+it comprises correspondingly the kinetic element that determines the
+functional coefficient of the organic life as a whole.
+
+The thought represented in “the organic life as a whole” is, like the
+inclusive scheme of the physicists, to be understood only by exclusion,
+that is, by exclusion of a point of view that is _not_ organic, or by
+exclusion of the absolute system, individual and social, comprising our
+present static basis of consciousness. As this organismic conception
+of consciousness is relativity itself within the subjective sphere,
+its encompassment can no more be apprehended in our present scheme of
+psychological evaluation than the relativity of the physicists can be
+apprehended on a static Newtonian basis.
+
+Einstein’s theory of relativity is not intelligible on the absolute
+basis of the older system of astronomy, of which conception the newer
+mathematical theory is, by reason of its wider inclusiveness, the
+logical replacement. Likewise, the theory of subjective relativity or
+the organismic conception of consciousness cannot be understood on the
+basis of the absolute principle resident in the Freudian conception of
+the unconscious, of which principle the organismic conception is, by
+inclusion, the more encompassing formulation.
+
+Hence this organismic conception of consciousness, subsumed under
+the postulate of relativity, will be understood only as we discard
+entirely the absolute conception represented in our present system of
+psychology. Because of our own absolutistic basis, we do not realize
+that the absolutism intrinsic to the dynamic system of our present
+individualistic conception of consciousness maintains a position that
+is relatively not less static than the older descriptive systems of
+consciousness in relation to the dynamic psychology of Freud. The
+Freudian system is dynamic in respect to the system it has superseded
+but static in respect to the principle by which it must now in turn,
+I believe, be superseded, precisely as our own Newtonian system is
+dynamic with respect to the older Ptolemaic system of astronomy it has
+transcended but static with respect to the mathematical principle of
+relativity which now in turn has transcended it.
+
+Of course, the fact that the intrinsic limitation of our astronomical
+systematization has led us arbitrarily to regard time and space as
+absolute entities, rather than as the functional co-ordinates of
+matter, has no immediate bearing whatever beyond the need of adjusting
+a quite infinitesimal error in the astronomical reading of certain
+minimal deflections. It does not in the least alter the practical
+conduct of human affairs. For the grocer and the apothecary our
+standards remain undisturbed. So also in the more intimate adaptations
+of our human relations, the absolute basis of mensuration that has
+actuated our reckonings with respect to the objective world about us
+has not for a moment touched our subjective mode or the affective
+sphere of our living. But when this artificial basis of self-determined
+absolutism operates within the organic sphere of man’s affective life,
+wherein is the very centre of his being, there are recorded errors
+whose consequences reach to the core of life itself. It is here, in the
+absolute system of evaluations pertaining to the affective reactions
+of human conduct, that there is needed the correcture in reading
+the deflection, both individual and social, that comprises man’s
+unconsciousness.
+
+We have yet to learn that it is in the common affects of men that there
+resides the basis of their collective biology. Only in the affective
+reactions comprising the native, organic continuum of life may we
+trace the menstruum of our human consciousness. And so, in approaching
+the affective or organic implications entailed through the arbitrary
+systematization that is our own absolutism, we are entering upon the
+study of the distorted sensations and reactions in which is embodied,
+I believe, the essential pathology of consciousness represented in the
+neuroses.
+
+In considering the conception of the relativity of consciousness we
+shall acquire a clearer insight into the more comprehensive scheme
+subsumed under it, if we will begin with an analysis of the rudimentary
+processes comprising our personal judgments and consider the elements
+into which our primary impressions may be resolved.
+
+Our judgments are formed from the material of our impressions or, as
+we say, we reason from observation. This being so, what must be the
+substance of our observations and what the nature of the processes
+of reason thus derived? To observe is to stand apart from and record
+the impressions reflected to us from the object observed. So that upon
+consideration our observations are seen to consist of the _reflected
+images_ or mental _pictures_ of the world of objects by which we are
+surrounded. That is to say, impressions of objects consist of the
+aspect or surface which is reflected to us from them and which is thus
+mirrored in the reflecting surface of our own perceptions.
+
+But in this very process of observation an unwarranted assumption
+has already been posited in advance--the assumption, namely, that
+the position intrinsic to the observer is an all-inclusive and
+authentic one. Already it presumes a universe of which the onlooker’s
+own self-limited position is the basis. It does not account for the
+integral component that is the observer’s own organic dimension.
+In brief, the very point of view of the observer lays claim to the
+prerogative of an absolute cosmogony whereof he is himself the
+unconsciously static, self-determined centre. Whatever the point of
+view, it is invariably “the point of view” of the observer. So that
+in constituting ourselves perceptual foci from which, according to
+our self-appointed terms, we look out as from a background upon the
+phenomena of life, we have unconsciously become artificially detached
+spectators of a merely static _aspect_ of life. This is what I mean
+by the autogenous exclusion of data extrinsic to the self-determined
+system of which we ourselves are only a part, but which, in the
+light of the relativity of consciousness as a whole, is revealed, on
+the contrary, as an arbitrary system determined by our own static
+absolutism. Regarded from the point of view of relativity, to adopt
+such a detached, observational outlook toward life is to view it in the
+merely flat, bidimensional plane of the image. It is not to experience
+life through participation in the extension of its full-dimensional
+actuality.
+
+Upon analysis, then, our world of subjectively tabulated impressions
+becomes but an artificial world reflecting the artificial
+systematization that is our own detached observation of it. Our
+unconsciousness is our failure to realize that bidimensional
+reproductions of actuality are not actuality. Our own organisms as well
+as the surrounding objects of actuality are elements that are equally
+to be included in the organic continuum of our human experience. The
+mental pictures comprising our bidimensional _impressions_ of objects,
+however adequate as pictures, are not adequate as expressions of
+actuality in the sense of the dynamic extension comprising our own
+organic inclusion.
+
+Contrary, therefore, to the casual assumption current among us, we
+do not apprehend the objects about us as they exist in their cubic
+outline, but only in the bidimensional “foreshortening” that is our
+own mental or pictorial impression of them. Our so-called objective
+apperception of the world of actuality is in fact superficial and
+unreal. Our alleged world composed of impressions is pictorial rather
+than actual. It is static rather than kinetic. In consequence of the
+bidimensional visual plane in which our objective fields are reflected,
+it is inevitable that our environmental actuality should appear in
+the form of pictures before us. Looking out upon the world from a
+bidimensional basis, we can perceive it only in terms of the reflected
+image formed upon our own bidimensional mental background. It is due
+also, then, to this contributing factor of a flat or reflected visual
+image within ourselves that there is registered within ourselves a
+flat or reflected mental image of the world about us. For in virtue
+of the bidimensional picture in which our impressions are necessarily
+reflected, our mental perception of objects is likewise necessarily
+pictorial and bidimensional.[11]
+
+Such is the probable ethnological account of this misconstruction
+of actuality that underlies our mental world. The significance of
+such a pictorial and artificially foreshortened representation of
+the objective world and its mental influence in foreshortening the
+tridimensions of actuality in general cannot be overstressed. We need
+to realize the circumstance of our remote or bidimensional position
+of merely mental or impressionistic observers. From this position the
+mentally reflected and artificially pictorial outlook with which the
+world of solidarity is individually viewed by us represents but the
+portrait of life whereof the reality is the inclusiveness of life as
+experienced through our subjective continuity as functional elements in
+the organic whole. So that while it is most true that we reason from
+observation, yet if our observation is imbued with a bidimensional
+or superficial bias, then our reason is also influenced by this same
+bidimensionally imbued bias. If our observation is not subjectively
+inclusive of the objective world about us, in the same measure our
+judgments are not inclusive of it.
+
+It is this non-inclusiveness of consciousness that constitutes our
+mental systematization. In this perceptual relationship to life, due to
+our detached basis of interpretation of it upon grounds of the apparent
+aspect rather than of its solid actuality, consists the arbitrary
+absolutism of our present system of consciousness. Due to this organic
+misconception of consciousness, we habitually prefer the picturesque
+semblance of the aspect to the pragmatic inclusiveness of the actual.
+This is why we tend to explain life rather than to live it. This is why
+the adduced hypothesis of life counts with us more than life itself.
+But an account of life that does not include the consciousness that
+is our own kinetic function and repudiate the static pictures of life
+arbitrarily projected by us does not compass life in the full orb of
+its rounded actuality. A principle of life that does not embrace the
+principle arising out of the bias of our own self-made systems of
+personal absolutism and unconsciousness is not adequate to encompass
+life in the rounded sum of its functional inclusiveness. It is needful
+to recognize that, in the unconscious absolute underlying the personal
+relatedness of each of us to every other, there is involved an organic
+_resistance_ or a mutual repulsion among the elements of the societal
+personality that forms an impasse to its concerted function. On the
+contrary, in the mutual inclusiveness of our individual organisms as
+elements within the confluent sum we thus compose, there is embodied
+the organic continuum that underlies the societal organism of man as
+a whole. It is this homogeneous substrate of man’s consciousness in
+its totality that is implied in the principle of the relativity of
+consciousness.
+
+If, however, an ethnological account is adequate to explain the
+remote, pictorial relation in which we stand with respect to the
+world of objective actuality, such an account is not adequate to an
+understanding of the pictorial view we have unconsciously come to
+assume toward the world of subjective actuality or in relation to the
+organisms with which we constitute a common species and with which,
+being subjectively akin, we are organically identical. If phylogenetic
+theory accounts for the deflections from reality of the reactions of
+consciousness in the large, it does not account for the deflections
+of consciousness in the particular reactions of the personality that
+determine our relations to our individual fellows. Thus far we have
+considered this absolute system comprising our personal basis only in
+relation to the objective world or to the world of things; we have not
+yet considered it subjectively or in relation to the individuals with
+whom a common affectivity renders us organically identical. It is only
+within the subjective sphere of our affects, representing man’s organic
+racial continuum, that this distortion of our outlook is manifested in
+its deepest poignancy.
+
+It is, therefore, only in its ontogenetic mode that we may fully
+realize the organic deviations within the consciousness of man, due to
+his bidimensional and unreal apperception of his fellows, and to his
+consequently false inferences resultant upon an artificially remote
+and pictorial attitude toward them. It is here alone, I believe, that
+is to be traced the philosophy of the deflections observable in the
+above-mentioned reaction of personal resistance as it appears not only
+in the difform reaction characterizing the isolated personality of
+the neurotic individual, but also in the uniform reactions presented
+in the _relatively no less deflected group-expressions comprising the
+collective personality of the social consensus_. It has become more
+and more clear to me that it is this error of our mental refraction,
+due to the subjective deflection comprising the bidimensional judgment
+of each in assuming a pictorial rather than a real relationship to
+others, that is the essence of our resistances. In this surface
+reflection, that is the personal attitude of each toward every other
+and that embodies the psychology of our resistances, is represented
+man’s traditional systematization, both individual and social. For, in
+judging or viewing life on the _absolute_ basis of how it appears to
+_me_, I automatically render it beholden to my personal interpretation
+of it. In my autocratic attitude of onlooker I necessarily repudiate
+the inherency of the individual or object looked on. Thus, as the
+self-assumed centre of the universe, the individual is completely
+detached psychically from the organic actuality of everything within
+his observation, and, in his present mental attitude, whatever he
+thinks that he knows and feels is unconsciously constrained by the
+illusory supremacy of his personal wish. This is the insidious fallacy
+of the reflected aspect. This constitutes the personal absolute or
+systematization which, in dominating our present mode of consciousness,
+completely distorts the universe of reality. It is such a reflective
+attitude of personalism and unconsciousness that is our exclusion of
+data that lie outside the system intrinsic to ourselves and that may be
+included only in the fuller comprehension of an organic relativity.
+
+This reflective attitude entails an autocratic interpretation of life
+on the basis of one’s own personal evaluation, and its effect is to
+sever the natural bond between the elements of the societal body. As
+the inevitable concomitant of this habitually reflective attitude
+toward life there is mental dissociation rather than an assimilative
+participation such as may only be realized in the inclusiveness of
+consciousness as an organic whole. Only an organic coalescence in
+our common affectivity, as contrasted with our present attitude of
+detached, bidimensional perception of one another, will open the course
+to spontaneous development in yielding the natural way to the instinct
+of mating and reproduction wherein alone is the basis of a constructive
+societal life. For resistance is of the affective life. It is a
+phenomenon that is essentially organic in that it marks an obstruction
+within the societal personality of man in the relation _inter se_ of
+the elements, individual and social, of which our societal personality
+is composed. In our blind inversion of the essential processes of life,
+we fail to recognize that there can be no healthful growth of the
+organism apart from the soil to which it is indigenous. If isolation
+and an artificial medium are death to the growth of vegetation, they
+are death no less to the societal instinct of our common consciousness
+in which is found the natural medium for the growth and activity of
+man. In the measure in which we allow ourselves to participate in and
+become intrinsic and contributory elements in the world of organic
+actuality about us, will our pictorial mode of envisagement yield place
+to the subjective experience of a dimensional inclusiveness that is
+complete in its actuality. To view the world of actuality in its merely
+static, cross-sectional appearance is to know only the photography of
+life. Its kinetic reality may be known only through the subjective
+inclusion of our organic participation in it.
+
+We cannot return too often to original sources in repudiating
+conceptions whereof they are the basis. We experience reality only in
+the measure in which we disavow the symbols of unreality. In proportion
+as we apprehend subjective fallacy may we encompass the reality
+underlying it. It is where our conceptual constructions of life leave
+off that our constructive conceptions of life begin. We have seen that
+the mathematicians have come to regard as theoretically worthless those
+objective calculations whose standards of evaluation are not measured
+in accordance with the principle of an inclusive relativity. Likewise
+a formulation of values in the subjective sphere of consciousness
+lacks an adequate principle of evaluation if it does not rest upon the
+relative principle comprising the organic and inclusive conception of
+consciousness in its societal totality.
+
+If, in the dissociation of the consciousness of man from his organic
+individuality, he is unconsciously assuming a personal absolute that
+is merely a reflection of the mass absolute assumed by the collective
+social unconscious about him, then what we call the consciousness of
+man with its presumable function of dependable evaluation is at all
+times but a system of images, and his vaunted prerogative of a personal
+absolute is only a dissociative reaction due to his own secondarily
+adaptive systematization. Upon this basis, what we call our opinions
+are, after all, not our opinions, and our so-called beliefs are not
+beliefs at all. For all our formulations and systematizations with
+respect to human consciousness are but rationalizations serving as
+convenient foils for the blind assertion of the personal absolutism
+that is but the autocratic prerogative of our own dissociation, both
+individual and social.
+
+While theoretically, the objective findings of Freud are of
+unquestionable validity throughout, as has been fully corroborated
+through the repeated investigations of those of us who have studied
+the manifestations of the unconscious in ourselves and in others, my
+researches within the last years have convinced me that our objective
+finding is not the point--that what we have called the objective
+evidence has been all along but our personal or adaptive evidence
+and that, being unconsciously based upon habitual bidimensional
+inference, this basis has no relation whatever to life in its organic
+inclusiveness. The system of Freud is thus adequate only on the
+adaptive basis of normality. _By normality I mean the consensus
+comprising the personal absolute vested in the unconscious of the
+collective mind determining the social average_.
+
+It is disconcerting, I know, now that we have but recently settled
+ourselves to enjoy in comfort the established principles of Freud’s
+psychology, to think that we may be compelled through the requirements
+of wider accommodation to seek other ground. Nevertheless, if the
+position in which we have settled to study the complexes of men is
+itself just another complex of the social mind whereof the individual
+mind we would study is but a reproduction, it is clear that we have
+no choice but to recognize the autonomy of our absolutistic values of
+reckoning and to readjust our measures of consciousness in accordance.
+
+Surely, if the whole meaning of our mental orientation is a
+disorientation, if our rationality is everywhere but irrationality,
+if with all of us alike the vicarious image comprising the reflection
+of our systematized selves takes precedence over the native reality
+of our primary organic individuality, there is no other course than
+that we wipe the board clean and approach the problem of consciousness
+completely anew. For, clearly, since our present process of mentation
+is not spontaneous or from within out, it is necessarily adaptive or
+from without in. Hence, as the reflection of the absolute principle
+that is the personal basis of each, it can never lead to a realization
+of the relativity of our conscious life nor to the acceptance of the
+organic individuality that is the all-embracing life of man in the
+inclusive principle wherein alone his consciousness truly resides.
+
+It is the position of this thesis that, when we neglect to take account
+of the _organic mass consciousness of man_ to which the personal
+systems of men, single and collective, are but relative, we fail to
+reckon with a significant dimension entering into the determination of
+the subjective life of man. On the basis of the time-space extension
+of the astronomers’ fourth dimension it is possible to compute errors
+of deflection only through a conception of the universe which regards
+our own planetary system as a function of and hence relative to a
+more encompassing programme of planetary motion. Concomitantly, it
+is possible to evaluate accurately man’s place in the subjective
+scheme of consciousness only through a conception which regards
+his present personal and social absolute as being itself relative
+to a more comprehensive background comprising the relativity of
+man’s consciousness as a whole. There is the need to recognize that
+in the sphere of consciousness, as in the realm of physics, it is
+in the kinetic dimension comprising the organic participation and
+inclusiveness of life itself that consists the functional component
+which actuates the other three dimensions and which, in uniting all,
+embodies the relativity of consciousness as an organic reality.
+
+In this transition from bidimensional picture to tridimensional
+actuality, from contemplation of aspect to participation of function,
+a gulf is spanned that bridges a most significant hiatus in the course
+of man’s evolution. It is no less an interval than that which separates
+the mode of man’s unconsciousness from the mode of his consciousness.
+For in this transition we are no longer dealing with the mere static
+dimension of the pictorially reflected _image_ of actuality, but there
+enters the kinetic extension of an organic inclusiveness corresponding
+to the functional or space-time extension of the physicists’ universe
+of relativity--a universe which, in the psychological no less than in
+the physical sphere, entails the abrogation of our prevailing system of
+absolutism and its replacement through the conception of the relativity
+of the conscious life as a whole.
+
+With a view to measuring the deflections of personality, by and large,
+in the light of the relativity of consciousness, it is necessary that
+they be regarded first in the concrete expression of their individual
+and social forms, and that subsequently we study these aberrations
+of consciousness in the yet wider expression of their sociological
+implications generally.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE ORIGIN OF OUR INDIVIDUAL UNCONSCIOUS
+
+
+In the preceding chapter I attempted to indicate the analogy between
+the principle of relativity as set forth by the physicists and
+what I described as the principle of relativity in the sphere of
+consciousness. If the bipolar concomitance there outlined in its
+phylogenetic aspect possesses sufficient warrant, a no less consistent
+parallelism should be traceable in an ontogenetic concurrence of the
+two theories as we come to consider the principle of the relativity of
+consciousness in its individual implications.
+
+If it is true in an ethnic comparison of mental values that a basis of
+absolutism is no more tenable in computing aberrations occurring in the
+sphere of consciousness than in the sphere of physics, it must also
+be true that a basis of absolute evaluation is inadequate to account
+for deflections of consciousness in its individual application. It
+is admitted that in the physical universe a principle of absolutism
+requires to be abandoned and a revaluation of standards established in
+its stead because it fails to take account of data extrinsic to its own
+static dimensions. Likewise, it would seem that, in the concomitant
+sphere of consciousness, an absolute basis of determination would be
+equally inadequate to reckon with data exclusive of its own absolute
+principle of measure and that, accordingly, there is here too demanded
+a restatement of values in terms of a more comprehensive conception.
+
+In such an outlook the requisite readjustment is of so wide a scope
+that I do not find it easy to contemplate, far less to actualize.
+It involves no less a task than that of placing the fulcrum of one’s
+mental processes upon a basis that lies outside the habitual domain
+of one’s individual consciousness. For this reason the conception of
+the organic inclusiveness of consciousness, here understood, is, from
+our present individualistic viewpoint, a most difficult and elusive
+one. It is a conception that is not possible of comprehension on the
+basis of the static and absolute principle of consciousness that is
+our present mode of evaluation. In this conception, the evolution of
+individual knowledge enters the organismic sphere of the relative
+and subjective. It is only relatively, therefore, or through our
+subjective identification with it that we may participate in its
+meaning. As this subjective experience is the flux of life itself, as
+it is this component that is consciousness in process--the organic
+tide whose stream we ourselves are, the while we are carried along
+upon it--this experience is an extension which is, of its essence,
+inaccessible to objective cognition. This is the veil which life in
+its subjective reality draws across its features, rendering their
+meaning for ever imperceptible to objective observation. Except through
+the faint intimations of analogy, I cannot, of course, claim to do
+more than merely indicate the existence of this subjective extension.
+So that I must ask the reader to concede me the fullest measure of
+his hospitality by following my trend with the utmost intuitive
+participation on his own part. It is, after all, only in common that we
+may sense our common part in respect to the relativity of consciousness
+as a whole.
+
+The child that is born amid the cultural influences of civilization
+comes at an early age to learn the names of things. With these labels
+he acquires his objective identification with the world about him. In
+these symbols are the talismans that insure the safety of his future
+wayfaring. They are indispensable to his proper equipment and an early
+adeptness in their use is a wise and salutary provision. In this same
+school in which the child is taught the handy designations for the
+objects surrounding him, he learns also to recognize the nameless signs
+of a certain immanent category called “right and wrong”--signs which,
+through the accidental empiricism of spontaneous trial and error, he
+comes likewise to sense and gradually to incorporate into the code of
+his adaptation.
+
+As with others, who have been inured to a curriculum of daily
+adaptation from the impressionable years of earliest childhood, so
+with ourselves, it is well-nigh impossible to study the virgin soil of
+consciousness from our present adaptive premise without vitiating our
+conclusions with the bias of our own adaptation. And yet it is clear
+that an analysis of the reactions of consciousness, which fails to
+include the primary elements of which it is composed, leaves out of
+reckoning the basic ingredients of a structure which we are supposedly
+analyzing in its elementary content.
+
+For the past three years I have been occupied with the daily challenge
+of my own habitual processes of adaptation--an inventorial procedure,
+be it said, which proved of the utmost discomfort in the necessity it
+disclosed for the fundamental reduction of personal assessments. The
+outlook of these inquiries, even though they mark as yet but the merest
+beginnings, will at least denote a tendency that cannot, I think, be
+without interest nor, I hope, without incentive in the further approach
+of others toward an envisagement of consciousness in its ultimate,
+pre-adaptive composition.
+
+The present study, then, forms part of the altered conceptual insight
+into consciousness that was gradually induced through the spontaneous
+sequence of a long continued and uninterrupted experiment in individual
+reaction. The experiment consisted in repeatedly testing the personal
+reflex under the hourly present conditions of mood-variation due to the
+accidental release of affective stimuli arising from circumstantial
+and unpredictable sources both internal and external to the ego. The
+unprepossessing details of this brief excursion into the underworld of
+personal motivation must be reserved for some subsequent chapter. I am
+now concerned with the complete shift of basis which these experiments
+have forced me to take account of in my attempts to reckon with the
+recurring problems of consciousness as they are presented in the daily
+routine of my analytic work.
+
+Within the scope of the present thesis we shall have to do solely
+with the mental reaction inculcated under the manifesto of our early
+induced presentiment of “right and wrong” or of “good and bad”
+with its concomitant incitement to _hope_ or _fear_ as reflected
+in the unconscious attitude of _praise_ or _blame_ surrounding the
+child. It is my conviction, based on the subjective test of personal
+experimentation, _that the deeply entrenched root of our human
+pathology is to be traced alone to the conflict incurred through
+this suggestively induced image of right and wrong and that it is
+profitless, therefore, to seek beyond the impasse of this unconscious
+alternative for the ultimate source of neurotic reactions_.[12]
+
+Because of some element implicit in the behaviour determining the
+“right” or “wrong” adaptation of the individuals surrounding the child
+in the formative period of his early growth, something is imposed upon
+him that operates to check spontaneous impulse. The check I am speaking
+of does not consist in the interdiction itself. Our admonitory “do” or
+“don’t” is in itself quite harmless. Indeed these positive and negative
+commands may serve an undoubtedly useful end. I have never known of
+untoward nervous manifestations occurring among animals because of the
+restraining warnings of maternal solicitude. On the contrary, such
+mediation commonly proves an effective safeguard against misadventure.
+Of the inhibiting influence itself, therefore, I am not speaking. What
+I have in mind is something far subtler than this. It will demand our
+most searching scrutiny if we are clearly to apprehend its meaning.
+
+As I see this miscarriage of instinct incurred through our embargo of
+good and bad, it is the cunning _pretence_ underlying the interdiction
+which induces the reaction that works mischief in the child’s organism.
+It is the insidious intimation of benefit or of harm inherent in the
+tabooed act itself that is the pernicious instance. The destructive
+occasion lies in the implied premium or forfeit appertaining to the
+act as it recoils upon the child in automatic retaliation. I believe
+that it is due to this enforced superstition of an arbitrary “good and
+bad” that there have been wrought the spurious reactions of our human
+consciousness. I believe that the utterly specious system of behaviour,
+which surrounds us as social beings on every hand, is definitely due
+to this falsely imbued suggestion of retributive sequence which, as
+commonly inculcated in early childhood, has been prompted through the
+implied mediation of invisible moral agencies. I furthermore believe
+that it is this pretence, and its unconsciousness, that is the basis
+of our adaptation, both individual and social, as embodied in the
+artificial code of morality represented in the collective unconscious
+of our present-day civilization.
+
+What the adult arbiter of the child really has up his sleeve is the
+child’s conformity to _him_ and _his_ convenience. Accordingly, the
+parent or guardian lays down the proposition that a good little boy
+doesn’t destroy costly bric-à-brac or that only a bad little girl would
+play in the mud with her nice clean rompers on. Both these postulates
+are utterly false as every sponsor for them knows. But that is not the
+point. The point is that such statements are incomparably adapted to
+the ends of adult commodity. The truer rendering of the proposition
+in either instance would be to the effect that the misdemeanour in
+question would occasion inconvenience or chagrin to the parent. But
+so sincere a statement on the part of the parent might alienate the
+child’s jealously coveted affection, as we commonly term the infantile
+dependence we secretly tend to beget. Hence, the real motive of
+interdiction must be hidden from the child and a comprehensive edict
+cunningly invoked such as will place an effectual check upon him and
+yet amply safeguard the parental interest. It is this bogus morality
+which, by our unconscious social consent, the conscripted phantom
+called “good and bad” is unanimously commissioned to represent.
+
+Because of this attitude of pretence in others whereby the child is
+tricked into complicity with the prevalent code about him, there
+is begotten this self-same reaction of pretence within him. This
+illusion that is in the air he learns to assimilate from others
+through imitative affinity, and from now forward the ruse becomes
+self-operative. What began as a social coup is continued as an
+individual policy. The silent intimation of a mysteriously pervasive
+immanence of “good and bad” having now been engendered, the child
+henceforth responds automatically, not alone to the signals of
+make-believe about him but to the signals of make-believe within him.
+For in unconsciously succumbing to the contagion of the autocratic
+system of “right and wrong” about him, this hobgoblin of arbitrary
+make-believe becomes equally systematized within his own consciousness.
+Accordingly, the pretence involved in interdictions of conduct
+(fear-blame reaction) is accompanied by the mental suggestion of
+“wrong” or “bad,” and the pretence underlying the inducements of
+conduct (hope-praise reaction) is accompanied by the mental suggestion
+of “right” or “good”--_that is, of good or bad as it reverts upon
+the individual from the point of view of his personal advantage as
+reflected in the image of the parent_.
+
+An analysis, however, does not reach elementary principles if it merely
+discovers motives prompted by suggestion and repression corresponding
+to the two opposed factors of inducement and interdiction actuating
+human behaviour. It is not enough to invoke in explanation the
+sweeping denominator “self-consciousness.” Such an account is historic
+or psychological; it is not organic or biological. It is, I believe,
+only as we unearth the mental reaction _intrinsic_ to the organism
+when it responds to the subjective inference of right or wrong in its
+personal inflection that we shall reach the basic element responsible
+for the organism’s inhibited mental states.[13]
+
+One would think, as we look about us to-day at the utterly destructive
+processes, social and political, that have been incited throughout
+entire nations of individuals “brought up” in this vicarious fashion,
+that the spectacle would give us pause. But we have had a too thorough
+bringing-up ourselves. Our own bringing-up has seen to it that we
+shall not look about us and learn what _is_ but that we shall only
+respond to the suggestion about us and acquiesce in what _seems_. If
+we should really look about us and see unflinchingly into the meaning
+of things, our children would do so too, but that would be subversive
+of their proper up-bringing. This is the self-contradictory element in
+the adult’s “education” of the child. In truth, it is not possible to
+“bring up” a child at all. One may let a child grow up, naturally, as
+a plant, tending only the soil about its roots, or one may hinder its
+growth. But to bring a child up by moulding its personality to one’s
+own is organically contradictory. A child comes up, if at all, only of
+himself or in accordance with the law of his own growth.
+
+If it is true, then, that this factor of pretence is the ultimate
+element in the dissociations of consciousness, what is the nature of
+this factor of pretence actuating our behaviour? As has been said, in
+order to secure a substratum adequate to build upon, it is requisite
+that we forgo at the outset our present conceptions based upon a system
+of valuations which presupposes an absolute principle of consciousness.
+It should be understood, therefore, that it is from the fundamentally
+altered premise of a relative basis of consciousness that the present
+thesis sets out.
+
+In an objective view of the components of man’s consciousness, it
+may be seen that there are three determinants of the affective life,
+namely, one’s own self, the selves by whom one is surrounded, and the
+positive or negative reactions of the self in respect to other selves
+such as comprise our progressive or regressive interrelationships one
+to another. So that, to return to the analogy of the physical world,
+a diagram outlining man’s affective life would represent a contour of
+three components. There is first the dimension consisting of oneself;
+second, the collateral dimension, with its extension backward to one’s
+parents and forward to one’s offspring and comprising in general one’s
+social congeners, singly and collectively; and third, the societal
+extension representing the reactions that depend upon the co-ordination
+or non-co-ordination of individuals in the assimilative processes
+of their common activities. Thus our subjective or affective life,
+statically considered, is as truly tridimensional in its actuality
+as our cognitive or objective world, statically considered, is
+tridimensional in its actuality. Nevertheless, as was pointed out in
+the preceding chapter, our cognitive apprehension of the world of
+objects about us invariably presents an outline corresponding to the
+bidimensional or pictorial aspect that is our perceptual image of it.
+So in the subjective sphere, it may also be shown that our affective
+reactions invariably present a pictorial or bidimensional plane
+analogous to the bidimensional impressions comprising our objective
+perceptions, and that they are due in the subjective as in the
+objective sphere to the unconscious factor of the personal equation.
+
+But, to adhere to the test of experiment, it has been my analytic
+experience growing out of the study of personal reaction that, owing
+to the distortion of affect within our actual daily life, we do not
+in fact participate in the tridimensional actuality that truly
+comprises our affective world. On the contrary, owing to the rebuff
+to spontaneous impulse incurred through the system of self-conscious
+diplomacy reflected in the social pretence of “right and wrong” as
+first voiced by the parent and seconded on all sides by the community
+about us, the real world of affects is unconsciously replaced by an
+artificial cosmogony whose outline is limited to only two components,
+namely, the self plus the immediate interest to the self as derived
+from the selves (collateral dimension) by whom the individual is
+surrounded (advantage or disadvantage, good or bad, praise or blame).
+Thus our affective reactions invariably present a merely pictorial or
+bidimensional area corresponding to the two extensions comprising the
+personal element of the self plus the element of advantage for the
+self from other selves. Because of this personal foreshortening of
+our affects to the artificial dimensions of self and self-interest,
+our subjective experience of tridimensional actuality is reported
+not in the reality of its three essential determinants but in the
+pictorial aspect of the two-dimensional plane that is our personal and
+autogenous reflection of it. It is, then, the substance of these pages
+that, just as the world of cubic actuality is mentally foreshortened
+into a bidimensional aspect of actuality determined by our static and
+autogenous perception of it, so our world of affects is correspondingly
+reduced to the bidimensional or pictorial aspect that is our socially
+reflected impression of it.
+
+This brings us again to the question we were speaking of--the reaction
+of pretence into which the child is early inducted. It was to help
+clear away the difficulties surrounding this early adaptive reaction
+of our subjective life that I turned to the consideration of the
+dimensional components that comprise our affective world. We have
+seen that the essence of this element of pretence is its implication
+of retroactive gain or loss intrinsic to the social act itself and
+automatically returning upon its agent. Coming a little closer
+still, we see that this attitude of behaviour imposed upon the child
+upon grounds of its retributive sequence is induced in him through
+the cunningly conveyed intimation that such has been the personal
+experience of those about him--that they have learned from experience
+and so are qualified to give warning that “good” behaviour is requited
+in reward or pleasure to one’s self and conversely “bad” behaviour is
+requited in penalty or pain to one’s self.
+
+My position is that an attitude toward the child which posits at the
+outset of life a world of affective actuality, comprised of his own
+_ego_ plus his own egoistic advantage, arbitrarily contracts life to
+the unreal aspect of a mere two-dimensional image. It is to dispose the
+mind of the child in such a way that its entire universe of feeling is
+limited to a mere picture of life consisting of the flat and lifeless
+image of his personal or social adaptation in the light of his personal
+or social gain. It transforms the reality of life into a reflection of
+oneself in a world of self-reflections like one’s own. In other words,
+in falsely premising the bidimensional plane of one’s personal image as
+the basis of actuality, we substitute at the outset a primary condition
+of unreality for the inherent reality of life.
+
+From the altered angle of a relative and inclusive attitude toward the
+problems of consciousness, I am led to think that this artificially
+contracted outlook is the real crux of the dilemma of the unconscious.
+I have come to think that these two factors--the factor of oneself and
+the factor of social advantage for oneself--are insufficient, that
+there is omitted a third factor essential to a completely rounded
+consciousness and that in the absence of it the other two present but a
+static and artificial image of life rather than life in the functional
+inclusiveness of its full-dimensional reality. I refer to the component
+of our societal co-ordination--to the factor of man’s organic continuum
+in the functional extension of his interrelationship with others. I
+believe that it is the miscarriage of instinct with respect to this
+societal co-ordination that is answerable for the artificial recoil of
+self-interest represented in our fancied apparitions of good or bad as
+seen from the limited point of view of one’s individual advantage. In
+the flat bidimensional plane which, in the absence of the inclusive
+societal factor, only reflects the pictorial aspect of actuality in the
+image of the self, there is lacking the rounded extension that is the
+full complement of life in its inclusive, societal meaning. To what
+degree we substitute this reflected aspect of life for the reality
+of an all-inclusive participation in life in its full-dimensional
+extension--if my own experience in this regard is any guide--has not as
+yet begun to be suspected by us.
+
+This primary societal component of consciousness must not be confused
+with our secondary and adaptive social relationships. Our social
+adaptation is as self-reflective and unconscious as our individual
+adaptation. By the societal component I mean the organic continuity
+of consciousness that unites the individuals of the species into a
+confluent whole. In the social adaptation of its members, on the
+contrary, there is registered merely the collective response to
+the reaction of pretence that we have just seen in its individual
+expression as our personal foreshortening of life to the bidimensional
+image. In the reduction of life to the image of self in the light
+of one’s self-advantage, whether individual or social, consists the
+adaptive system that is the personal pretence within and about us.
+In this inversion of life that is the mirrored impression of each,
+as reflected in the aspect of others, is the systematization that is
+man’s unconsciousness. It is our non-inclusiveness of others that is
+the systematization of each. It is this perceptual interpretation of
+life on the basis of a reflected or bidimensional impression, limiting
+life to self and self’s advantage that is, I repeat, the meaning of our
+unconsciousness, both individual and social.
+
+In studying this reaction of pretence in the social mind as reflected
+in the reactions of the individual, we are met with the need of a
+fundamental reconstruction of values in our reckoning with human
+personality as in our measures of consciousness generally. For, in
+this artificial gauge of conduct measured by standards of personal
+advantage, we find established in the individual a criterion of life
+that rests upon an unwarranted assumption of personal supremacy. This
+private criterion has become the arbitrarily assumed prerogative of
+each of us with respect to every other. For, through this distortion
+of the universe of reality into the unreal, bidimensional cosmogony
+that is one’s self-reflection of it, there is unconsciously built up
+within us a mental adaptation whose basis is an inflexible assumption
+of personal absolutism and autocracy.
+
+In the ultimate reduction of analysis it may be seen that what we
+have, through Freud’s teaching, come to recognize as the reaction
+of _resistance_, within the individual personality, resolves itself
+into nothing else than this private prerogative of the personal
+absolute. The assumption of this personal principle of absolutism
+in the subjective sphere embodying the psychology of resistance is
+analogous to the absolute principle of evaluation applied to the
+physical universe--a principle which the physicists have lately
+shown is not competent to meet the test of universal applicability,
+for the reason that, in the absolutism of its own premise, it fails
+to account for data extrinsic to the static absolutism it embodies.
+Correspondingly, in the sphere of consciousness the absolute principle
+of personal evaluation comprising the adaptive basis of the individual
+is inadequate to stand as the universal principle requisite to an
+organismic inclusion of consciousness in its societal totality.
+
+As was pointed out in the last chapter, the social mind interprets its
+objects of perception in the bidimensional aspect of its own pictorial
+and flat reflection of them. Likewise, our individual mentation, in its
+adaptive response to the retributive implications of so-called “right
+and wrong” or “good and bad,” recoils no less upon a two-dimensional
+plane in the affective reaction that is limited to the component of
+self plus the component of pleasure or pain for oneself. This flat,
+static impression of life, comprising the arbitrary systematization
+that is the personal absolute of each, is inadequate to stand as
+a universal principle whereby we may evaluate the phenomena of
+consciousness in the full round of its organic compass.
+
+In substituting the judicial absolute of personal interest for our
+inclusive participation as relative elements in the full-dimensional
+reality of life as a whole, we have unconsciously adopted a basis which
+fails to reckon with our individual selves as contributory elements
+in the more encompassing unit which our individualistic basis now
+mistakenly presumes to include. Our present basis is, therefore, not
+an inclusive one. In so far as the individual rests his theory of
+consciousness upon an individualistic basis, his theory cannot include
+the larger whole wherein the individual is himself but a contributing
+element. The consciousness of the isolated individual cannot encompass
+consciousness in its societal inclusiveness. Only consciousness in
+its societal inclusiveness can encompass the consciousness of the
+individual.
+
+In the measure in which we, as an organic group, come to adopt the
+conception of consciousness that accepts the intrinsic reality of
+our common societal life, we shall learn to repudiate the personal
+absolute that is our individual resistance and, correspondingly, to
+participate in an inclusiveness of consciousness with respect to which
+the individual is but a relative and adaptive component.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE UNCONSCIOUS FACTOR WITHIN THE SOCIAL SYSTEM
+
+
+Whatever is true of the individual singly, is true of the individual
+collectively. Whatever is observable as neurotic process within
+the isolated personality of the hysteric or precoid, is equally
+observable as neurotic process in the collective personality of the
+social mind. The attitude of psychopathology, which ascribes to the
+social consensus, represented in the average-reaction commonly called
+“normality,” a criterion of constructive consciousness and health, and
+which, accordingly, seeks to correct the deflections of the aberrant
+neurotic personality in accordance with this limited outlook, is itself
+an expression of the bidimensional limitation that bases its system
+of consciousness upon an absolute principle of evaluation. After all,
+normality, like gravitation, is a mental abstraction. Our consensual
+normality is but the systematized abstraction embodying the absolute
+of its own unconscious basis, and, in its personal absolutism, stands
+opposed to a principle of relativity in the mental sphere. It is only
+as we abrogate the absolute standards now vested in the prevailing
+social systems about us and measure their dimensions in terms of
+the principle of an organic relativity, that we shall be enabled to
+challenge the element of personal systematization within ourselves
+and so encompass life in the actuality of a universal and inclusive
+consciousness.
+
+Personal survival has been, from the beginning of man’s history, the
+chief concern of his self-interest. Inventing medicine with a view to
+his security here, fabricating religion with a view to his security
+hereafter, he has safeguarded his preservation for the moment through
+recourse to “cure,” and for the future through recourse to “salvation.”
+Even in the interchanges of our casual social relationships, there is
+still preserved within the folk-mind the vestiges of this dualistic
+self-interest. Upon our meeting, it is the accustomed reaction to make
+mutual inquiry into the condition of health of one another. “How are
+you?” or “How-do-you-do?” we ask. Similarly, in parting we commend each
+other to the clemencies of the future with the expression, “Good-bye,”
+that is, “God be with you.” In the obvious apprehensiveness underlying
+this unconscious attitude of the social mind there is in one instance
+the implicit conviction that we are wicked and in the other that we are
+sick! Both these reactions, however, merely betray the state of anxiety
+reflected in the fundamental condition of mind that is our ethnic
+self-consciousness.
+
+In earlier times these two anxiety trends of the folk unconscious were
+duly sponsored through the common rites of medical and religious fetish
+under the combined auspices of a single functionary or guardian who, as
+priest or soothsayer, dispensed the benefits accruing from both. The
+fact is, I suppose, that the tribal medicine-man with his magic potion
+and amulet is psychologically, as well as ethnologically, our true
+progenitor. For to-day we observe the preservation of this concomitance
+of function between the two systems, represented by the science of
+medicine on the one hand and by the philosophy of religion on the
+other, in the current social phenomenon of our widely flourishing
+“sciences of mental healing” with their unescapable unconsciousness
+in metaphysical and theosophical implications. Aside, however, from
+historical analogies, the stupendous influence upon the societal mind
+of ecclesiastical and therapeutic canon cannot be denied.
+
+Because of this preservation in our midst of such ancient repositories
+of human thought and conduct as are represented in the affiliated
+principles contained in the dogmas of church and psychotherapeutic
+system, a consideration of the psychology common to both these forms
+of our social adaptation cannot fail to help us understand the basic
+elements that enter into the making of our social personality. As
+illustration, let us consider on the one hand the Roman Church and on
+the other the system of psychoanalysis. The Roman Church represents
+at one and the same time both traditionally the longest established
+and politically the most compact organization of the many religious
+sects existing throughout our Western civilization. The system of
+psychoanalysis, representing as it does the most modern conception of
+medical psychology, possesses such scientific authority as only the
+ablest students of philosophy and medicine are qualified to bring to
+the substantiation of its principles. An analysis, therefore, of the
+social psychology that equally underlies and actuates the position of
+both these systems will not, I think, be without profit in the present
+study.
+
+Due to the sophistication that was early begotten among the members of
+our human species through the limitation of man’s consciousness to the
+bidimensional alternative of a consensual “good and bad,” it is natural
+that we should find this same tendency to personal systematization
+expanded into the collective or social form we observe in the group
+reaction that is embodied in state or sect. Thus, from an organismic
+viewpoint, we should expect to discover the same resistances within
+the social as within the individual organism. Nor need we be surprised
+if, upon analysis, it should be disclosed that this social resistance
+represents likewise the bidimensional impasse comprised of our personal
+self-reflection.
+
+Throughout the unconscious period of man’s bidimensional arrest
+commonly called ancient times, a period belonging chronologically to
+the past but pertaining psychologically to the present as well as to
+the future for probably an indefinite term, the attitude of the Church
+toward incipient doubt or heresy was, is and for ever shall be to
+apply the remedy of prayer and, failing this recourse, to apply the
+penalty of excommunication.
+
+From the vantage point of the psychoanalyst’s disinterested and
+extrinsic angle of vision, such a policy appears manifestly unsound
+and without warrant. From his position of detached observer, it seems
+to him arbitrary and presumptive. And yet it must be conceded that,
+from the intrinsic viewpoint of a socially consolidated organization
+compact with the autogenous authority of infallibility, such a position
+is by no means inconsistent. A supremacy that is self-originated is
+self-operative. Autocratic prerogative and unimpeachable authority are
+here conterminous. Indeed the solidarity of the Church is unassailable
+precisely in that its premise and its conclusion are mutually
+inclusive. For inasmuch as both premise and conclusion are equally
+based upon the assumption of the personal absolute or the private
+prerogative of the system they embody, all access to it is summarily
+barred. If the Church precludes all question, dismisses all opposition,
+it is wholly within its self-determined rights. For by these same
+tokens all question, all argument, being of its nature extrinsic to
+its autogenic system, savours _de facto_ of the aforesaid heresy of
+doubt and, as such, is automatically driven out of court as connoting
+_a priori_ the presumptive fallacy of trespass. This relegation to
+itself of divine and hence unquestionable authority is the theological
+doctrine of self-actuative truth assumed by the Church to underlie
+its official pronunciamentos when it formally declares them to be _ex
+cathedra_.
+
+I offer this preamble not without advisement. In its intimation of
+the heretical tendency of the present thesis, it will give to those
+to whom such tendency is unwelcome the opportunity to seal their ears
+against it. At the same time it will give to those of more pliant
+sympathies due notice of the undisguised aim of the present inquiry
+toward the adoption of a more comprehensive and open-minded outlook
+among us. For the trend of this thesis is in its intention confessedly
+subversive of the socially authorized version of truth now vested in
+the autogenous systematization that has come to underlie the principle
+of us psychoanalysts.
+
+I do not know to what extent it is humanly possible, but, in so far
+as may be, let us adopt for the moment, at least mentally, a position
+of impersonal disinterestedness toward the social consensus in which
+we ourselves, as psychoanalysts, are also corporate elements. It will
+then become clear, I think, that the socially authenticated system,
+representative of us Freudians, embodies an unconscious attitude
+closely analogous to that of the social system embodied in the attitude
+of autogenous authority underlying the personal absolutism of the Roman
+Church.
+
+To observe this element of social unconsciousness underlying the
+principle of Roman Catholicism has for us all a certain invigorating
+tang. With such a discovery there comes the refreshing release that
+is the spur to renewed investigation. It is the heartening response
+of the organism to its sense of conscious acumen. But, to observe
+the operation of the social unconscious within the autogenous
+systematization of principles which insures social coherence within
+our own consensus, entails a contemplation that is not pleasant. This
+contemplation disturbs the habitual repose of settled conviction that
+is our own security. It is to apply the acid test of self-analysis to
+our own socially systematized assumption of private prerogative and
+authority. Yet an attitude of impersonal disinterestedness presupposes
+that our inquiry shall proceed without regard to personal security.
+This attitude, indeed, is one which we ourselves have demanded of our
+patients as being an analytically basic one. It is, therefore, upon
+this understanding alone that an inquiry, which in its disregard of the
+personal equation is committed to a course equally unflattering to us
+all, may hope to be accorded an unbiased consideration. Surely in any
+other attitude the name of psychoanalyst can become only a term of
+opprobrium among us.
+
+Let us, then, consider this factor of private prerogative or of the
+personal absolute, inseparable from the mental attitude expressed in
+the phenomenon of social systematization which we see in the Church’s
+position of assumed infallibility toward its postulants, and seek to
+discover whether this same tendency to social systematization may not
+lurk within our own psychoanalytic ranks. Let us see whether we, too,
+are not actuated by an unconscious element of personal absolutism that
+obstructs the freer and more adult mode of consciousness such as it is
+our avowed aim to attain.
+
+In mentioning the unconscious element of absolutism constituting the
+closed compartment within a socially organized system of principles, I
+have cited Catholicism merely as a convenient paradigm. Protestantism
+or Mohammedanism are, in their assumption of self-appointed
+prerogative, not less indefensible on the same ground, for the element
+of the personal absolute underlies no less the private assumption
+of each. By reason of its higher degree of organization, however,
+Catholicism more fittingly illustrates the absolutism of its social
+polity in relation to this phenomenon of doubt or defection occurring
+among its members. This is its aptness in affording a convenient
+position of comparison with our own socially organized system of
+psychoanalysis in respect to the phenomenon of defection as envisaged
+by us.
+
+Within the body of precepts comprising our own organization, the
+accepted mark of defection is a _resistance_, and the remedy we apply
+is analysis. For, with ourselves, analysis is explicitly the only
+effective means of overcoming the intractable tendencies which, in the
+determination of our organized principles of adjudication, constitute
+the sole need of our patient. In the event that the patient should
+remain so far recalcitrant as not to embrace the opportunity we offer
+him to accept our socially systematized interpretation of truth as it
+touches his own particular needs, he is automatically excluded from
+participation in the agencies of regeneration such as it is our special
+delegation to dispense. Whence there follows our regrettable but none
+the less inevitable ultimatum of “inferior type of personality” and his
+coincident elimination from the pale.
+
+It is, of course, clear that the actuality of the phenomenon of
+resistance in the patient can no more be denied than the actuality of
+the phenomenon of doubt in the penitent. Moreover, in accordance with
+the ruling of psychoanalysis, our specification of the condition when
+we posit a resistance is as indisputable as is the specification of
+the Church when it posits a doubt as the underlying disorder of the
+individual postulant. In either case there is the position that the
+individual is impervious to the benefits of the system whose principles
+he is, in the judgment of the system, in need of embracing. Indeed,
+it is precisely this factor of doubt in the one case, as it is the
+factor of resistance in the other, that is the whole occasion of the
+individual’s quest of a means of adjusting this division within his
+personality whereof doubt or resistance is the idiopathic index.
+
+The actual fact, then, of a resistance within the personality is
+beyond question. The fact is one that is equally admitted on the
+side of the individual as on the side of the organization, on the
+side of the defendant as on the side of the arraignment. But what
+is to be done about it does not as yet seem to me by far so clearly
+determined. I know, of course, that it is our attitude, based upon the
+repeated experience of us all, that any objection to psychoanalysis
+is invariably traceable to the resistance of the objector. This is a
+psychoanalytic corollary. It is accepted as universal among us all.
+So that a resistance to psychoanalysis is very justly, in the view of
+psychoanalysts, as self-convicting as is a doubt in the view of the
+Church. And from the point of view of psychoanalysis no less than of
+the Church the position of these two systems rests upon an undoubtedly
+sound basis, if we may be guided by the consensus of their several
+adherents as attested by the experience of each.
+
+But the question which has of late come to engross my interest is
+_whether these points of view are sound as embodied in their respective
+systems_--whether, from a broader basis of envisagement, the intrinsic
+attitude of ourselves may not lend itself to an altered interpretation;
+whether there may not exist a criterion that transcends the scope of
+our present analytic outlook when we claim that the only possible
+motive for questioning our psychoanalytic position is found to lie
+in the resistance of the individual; whether, in brief, the socially
+entrenched systematization comprising the psychoanalytic affiliation
+possesses sufficient warrant for impugning the personally entrenched
+systematization comprising the individual. For, if the fallacy of
+the personal absolute underlies the systematization represented in
+the social consensus, in what way does the rigidity of the social
+prerogative differ from the systematized prerogative constituting the
+resistance of the individual?[14]
+
+For the purposes of our inquiry we shall be obliged to dismiss for
+the moment our habitual personalistic criteria of interpretation. We
+shall have to recognize, first of all, that what we call the individual
+is by no means the fresh and native expression of individuality pure
+and simple that we are accustomed to assume, but rather that he is an
+individuation resulting from the repressive forces acting upon him
+from the environmental social aggregate in which he is himself but
+an intrinsic and contributory element. For every individual arising
+amid the influences of the social system is but a special application
+of the social system about him. Whatever the code of the consensus,
+the individual is necessarily but an offprint of it--a new impression
+of the original by-laws. There is, therefore, the need to turn our
+attention not to the individuated excerpt of the system but to the
+original document wherein the system is primarily set forth. There is
+the need to discard the individual form and to occupy ourselves with
+the societal mould whereof the individual form is but the subsequent
+reproduction.
+
+Assuming the broader outlook of this more encompassing sociological
+position, I think we shall come to see that the difference between
+the reaction of doubt, as interpreted by the Church, and the reaction
+of resistance, as interpreted by psychoanalysis, is, after all, only
+apparent--that the difference is by no means an inherent one, but that
+it is due merely to the altered circumstance of shade and light, so to
+speak, in which the two reactions are diversely reflected by reason of
+the contrasting sociological settings amid which the two phenomena have
+appeared among us.
+
+As regards the sociological manifestation embodied in the Church,
+contrary to its age-old contention that doubt or question automatically
+indicated apostasy which reflexly discredited its adherent, it has long
+been shown experientially that such doubt or defection might be very
+logically and honourably entertained. Not only this, but it has been
+further made manifest that it is due precisely to the entertainment of
+such an attitude of debate toward the socially systematized consensus,
+represented in the Church, that there have arisen those far-reaching
+investigations of science out of which has sprung the splendid
+renaissance of modern thought with its accompanying incentive to human
+progress.
+
+Hence the question that presents itself is this: May it not also
+be that, quite beyond the scope of envisagement of those of us who
+are intrinsic to the analytic consensus, there are motives inviting
+question of our position which do not fall within the category of
+resistance? May it not be that, from a position of extrinsic or
+impersonal evaluation, we shall obtain so inclusive a survey of the
+phenomenon of resistance on the one side and of the social phenomenon
+of organized systematization representing the establishment on the
+other, that the two reactions may be included in an encompassment that
+is equally hospitable to both? Surely it cannot be denied that, laying
+aside all consideration of personal involvement, the question of such a
+possibility is not without its vista of interest.
+
+With a view to a fair appraisement of the contrast between the type
+of defection manifesting itself as doubt and the type of defection
+manifesting itself as resistance, there is first the need to take
+account of the widely dissimilar sociological aspect of the period in
+which doubt was originally viewed by the Church, as compared with the
+sociological countenance of the times in which resistance is viewed by
+ourselves, and, accordingly, to consider the difference between the
+two phenomena in the light of the contrasting sociological backgrounds
+surrounding each.
+
+From this sociological angle the factor that immediately attracts our
+notice is the essentially negative, self-deprecatory character of
+the doubt-reaction in respect to the ancient dogmas of the Church.
+We note the sense of personal inadequacy that is its characteristic
+sign. We mark its habitually shamefaced, self-depreciative mien. For
+doubt, be it remembered, first arose as the self-accusing attitude of
+the subservient individual who lived under the social domination of
+monarchical forms of government in a period of man’s history when,
+owing to his subjugation to the unconscious suzerainty of a fanciful
+father-complex, he meekly bowed in servile obedience to the socially
+systematized authority arbitrarily vested in Church and State, as
+personified in the office of Pope and King. Under the prevalent
+domination of this image of indisputable authority, men’s social
+criterion resided in the apparent consensus of the _personal absolute_,
+social and individual, representing the particular individuation of
+a single man, rather than in the common supremacy of our impersonal
+relativity comprising the generic individuality of mankind.[15]
+
+But the social mind has in the last few centuries undergone a
+significant metamorphosis. To-day we have to reckon with this. We have
+to take into account the tremendous expansion of the consciousness
+of man sociologically and, from the point of view of the historical
+record of man’s rapid sociological ascent, mark the characterological
+difference in the temper of the individual’s defection to-day as
+compared with his defection of yesterday. In the implication of the
+rights of individual freedom of thought implied in the defection of
+doubt, the predominant factor was the individual’s acknowledgment
+of his personal remissness, of his unseemly presumptiveness toward
+the social constitution about him. Under the socially systematized
+autocracy of the Church’s absolutism, the individuality of man dared
+not stand erect and maintain the freedom of his individual expression.
+
+But in the present hour the consciousness of man proclaims itself a
+freer manifestation. Under the impetus of our sociological progress,
+man’s individuality has more and more come into its own. And, though
+the socially organized prerogative has still the upper hand in respect
+to individuality, there are signs abroad to-day which are a significant
+advertisement of man’s urge toward an expression of individuality that
+is an earnest of yet wider sociological horizons ahead. I think that
+it is due in no small measure to the advent of this factor of man’s
+sociological rehabilitation that there is seen to-day the completely
+altered character of the individual’s resistance as it recoils before
+the element of personal absolutism embodied in the systematized
+consensus of psychoanalysis.
+
+Despite its undoubted unconsciousness and personal systematization,
+note the essentially ruddier countenance of resistance as compared
+with doubt. A resistance, unlike doubt, is no admission of ineptitude.
+Subsisting under the sponsorship of a new and freer sociological
+order, resistance is fashioned of sterner stuff. It is no personal
+deprecation; it is a sociological affirmation. Far from being an
+abject confession of individual weakness, it is a proud assertion of
+individual strength. For although in the phenomenon of resistance there
+is to be seen the equally unconscious motive that is the protest of the
+individual absolute against the arbitrary domination of the socially
+systematized absolute comprising the popular consensus, there underlies
+this protest something that is more virile than this. There is here,
+I believe, a reaction that demands and that will ultimately have the
+consideration that is its due. Though the Church, while pre-eminent,
+might easily dispose of doubt, in our own democratic day it is doubt
+that has disposed of the Church. It seems to me that, unless we
+psychoanalysts recognize the group-form of unconsciousness underlying
+the social systematization embodied in the position of psychoanalysis
+when it pronounces the resistance of the individual as _de facto_
+anathema, without regard to the possible propriety of its remonstrance,
+we, like our less conscious analogue, the Church, shall ultimately find
+ourselves hoist with our own petard.
+
+While the fact of resistance and of its unconscious motivation is
+admittedly true, yet to meet a patient’s assertion of individual right
+with the mere assertion of the group-right, which is the unconscious
+protectorate of the organized system, is certainly not to answer the
+patient’s need from the point of view of a larger and more encompassing
+mode of consciousness. If the assumption of arbitrary prerogative or
+of the personal absolute represented in the reaction of individual
+systematization is the meaning of resistance, then the private
+prerogative or the personal absolute underlying the systematization
+of the social consensus is no less a manifestation of resistance. For
+the attitude of systematization and of absolutism in the individual
+is necessarily but the reflection of a prior social systematization to
+which the individual’s adaptation is but a secondary response.
+
+Clearly it is not possible for the socially systematized consensus
+embodied in Church, State or psychotherapeutic system to afford the
+requisite condition of release from a resistance thus constituted,
+when its own systematization is itself the social or group embodiment
+of this self-same reaction of resistance. In the nip-and-tuck attitude
+between the resistance of the system comprising the single individual
+and the resistance of the system comprising the social corporation of
+individuals, there stands the organic impasse of two mutually opposed
+absolutes. In the autocratic position of each neither may yield,
+for in the absolutism of both each represents an identical state of
+unconscious impaction. As neither the individual nor the consensus, in
+its enfolded self-systematization, is as yet conscious of the process
+in which it is the blindly contributing element, both factors represent
+but altered aspects of the common delusion of the social adaptation of
+man, single and collective, namely, the delusion of the supremacy of
+the will-to-self or the unconscious autocracy of the personal absolute.
+
+Naturally, I cannot speak of these inadequacies of consciousness from
+a remote or detached position. Needless to say, since I am at this
+moment a contributing part of this social maelstrom comprising the
+system about me, I am no less embroiled than others in its social
+fallacy. So that what is here very inadequately apprehended by me as a
+theory is, I confess, still less adequately accepted by me as a living,
+integral experience. Let it not be thought, then, for a moment that, in
+presenting the social basis of consciousness that is the substance of
+this thesis, I am under any illusion as to my own inaptness to embody
+in myself the personal expression of the conception whereof this essay
+offers the organismic interpretation.
+
+It is, however, only in the measure in which this less personal mode
+of approach becomes actual for me that my work with others grows in
+significance and in constructiveness of purpose. In this light I have
+come to feel more and more that it is only as we regard life from
+the point of view of man’s generic individuality that we shall truly
+encompass the meaning of the neurosis, either individual or social,
+in its true organic assessment. In this more inclusive outlook we
+shall gradually come to realize, I think, that the neurosis, whether
+appearing in the arbitrary systematization of the individual or in
+that of the group consensus, consists essentially in the substitution
+of the personal absolute that is our secondary individuation for the
+impersonal relativity that is our primary individuality. In this
+outlook we shall come to see that it is only in the common inherency of
+life that is comprised the consciousness of man in the fullness of its
+meaning.
+
+Resistance, then, is the personal systematization of men as contrasted
+with the unsponsored individuality of man. The individual unit like
+the social unit is but an arbitrary system, and in the resistance
+of each of us is to be seen the self-determined cosmogony that is
+the individual fallacy of us all. Whether this personal prerogative
+embodied in a resistance has its expression in the single individual or
+in the collection of individuals comprising the social aggregate, the
+factor of systematization holding its guarantee of inalienable rights
+under the syndicate of our common unconscious, is, I believe, the very
+kernel of the world-wide dissociation which we now diagnose as the
+neurosis of the individual.
+
+Thus, through this systematization of each one, there is repudiated the
+individuality of each other. In the personal absolute of the private
+consciousness of each, there is denied the relativity of the common
+consciousness of all. It is this systematization that is the meaning
+of repression. It is this personal prerogative that is the essence of
+resistance. And so, in the _unconscious system_ that is within and
+about us there is summed up, I believe, the entire philosophy of the
+neurosis. Being ourselves intrinsic to the system, both individual
+and social, it is no more possible to deal with it objectively in
+its social than in its individual phase. Our only approach is the
+subjective approach. Only subjectively is it possible for each of us
+to envisage completely the system of repression within him that is
+his individual reflection of the social system of repression outside
+him. In thus relinquishing the absolute principle that is merely
+the autocracy of our privately arbitrated system of personalism and
+unconsciousness, we are in a position to forgo the unconscious absolute
+comprising our own resistance and to accept in its stead the relative
+inclusiveness of our conscious life as a unified and organic whole.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+SOCIOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS OF UNCONSCIOUSNESS FROM A VIEWPOINT OF
+RELATIVITY
+
+
+Oscar Wilde says in one of his plays: “There are in the world two
+tragedies. One is not getting what one wants and the other is getting
+it.” The epigram is peculiarly apt in telling us what appears, on the
+surface, to be true. But what appears on the surface to be true is not
+necessarily true inherently. Unquestionably there are these two fatal
+antitheses in life and in them undoubtedly is summed up whatever there
+is of tragedy in our human lot. But, in reducing life to these two
+issues of getting and of not getting what one wants, we fail to realize
+that these contrasting reactions are secondary to a condition of mind
+artificially induced in ourselves at the expense of a prior state of
+consciousness that is in its essence not antithetic but unitary.
+
+Each of us is born in the midst of an established system whose password
+is conformity to its prescribed norm. Each of us becomes an automatic
+compartment within the systematized consensus that comprises its basis.
+The price of our initiation into this adaptive system is the forfeit of
+our primary individuality, and by the terms of its automatic statutes
+tuition is compulsory. Automatic obedience to traditional authority
+is the retroactive principle of its constitution. “Right” or “wrong”
+is the slogan of its guild. In the autogenous postulate of good or
+bad that is its absolute basis, our adaptive system stands rigidly
+opposed to a conception of truth such as comprises the relative and
+all-inclusive principle of consciousness in its organismic significance.
+
+In the light of this ulterior motive of good or bad--of this adaptive
+response that is the secondary and reflected impression of each--is
+measured the conduct of us all. According as we see ourselves in this
+mirror of the systematized and prescribed norm is conditioned our
+happiness or unhappiness, our comfort or displeasure. But always the
+mirror of each that is the criterion of others stands as a solid wall
+confronting us. Reflected in the features of this one our bearing is
+quite pleasing; mirrored in the reaction of that one our countenance
+is not so prepossessing. And so it happens that, as we go on in life,
+we tend more and more to place ourselves in positions in which we may
+obtain the most flattering “likeness” of ourselves. Correspondingly,
+we tend to avoid those reflectors that distort our features to our
+own discomforting. In this way we come to “like” some people and to
+“dislike” others. So that, according to this account of our adaptation,
+what is called “ourselves” in the vernacular of the system about us is
+merely the reflection of ourselves as reproduced by the system itself.
+
+In truth, because of the system of personal reflections amid which we
+move, our judgments are throughout undependable. We have no opinions,
+we merely reflect opinions. We have no perceptions, we have only
+preperceptions. We do not verify feeling through senses that are
+native to us, we imitate feeling by means of impressions that are
+extraneous to us. Thus there are great gaps within the sphere of our
+supposedly consistent experience--gaps involving wide intervals between
+our feeling and our reason, between processes that are organic and
+processes that are conscious. Our attempts to bridge these intervals
+have constantly led us astray and thus has come to pass the system
+of inconsistencies that is the unconscious. For, in this void of his
+reality man can only substitute the images that are his unreality,
+and no image may substitute for reality, no theory of life replace
+the organic consistency of life itself. Yet in our dissociative
+preferences we continually mistake the _image_ of that which is for
+that which _really_ is. Nor do we at all realize to what extent the
+actual masquerades as real. What is there, for example, more actual
+than illusion, yet what is there less real? An individual actually has
+a delusion but it is not on this account real. The voices he hears are
+actual to him (do they not call him by name?) but we who are outside
+his system know very well that they are not real.[16]
+
+My position is that, in our response to the impressions arising from
+the social system about us, our inferences are no more dependable than
+those arising from the private systems of the insane. Our confusion,
+like theirs, is the unconscious breach between perceptions that are
+true and impressions that are inferred, between life that is function
+and life that is merely enactment. It is again the disparity between
+life as a system or theory, and life itself. All of us are familiar
+with the inconsistency of people who, in order that life may prove
+comfortable in theory, devote their entire energies to making it
+miserable in practice. It is the inconsistency of unconsciousness
+with its inevitable alternation between the opposed extensions of a
+bidimensional image of life in place of the all-inclusiveness of life
+in its functional reality. It is the personal absolute underlying the
+consensual social system within and about us.
+
+If this absolute embodied in the system is, then, a standard that is
+but arbitrary and artificial, each of us, since he is a reflection of
+such a specious criterion, is himself but a personal representation of
+this same absolute. If the individual is but a reflection of the system
+of rules representing the collection of individuals comprising the
+social consensus about him, then the consciousness of man, in both its
+social and individual manifestations, represents an absolute that is
+throughout false and undependable. If, in brief, our standard of truth
+rests upon our own self-reflection in a social system that is itself
+self-reflected, then the evaluation of the individual, as of the social
+organism about us, comprises throughout a merely fictitious image, and
+our criteria of verity are everywhere spurious and without support.
+
+In the artificial pretence of “good and bad” or of “right and wrong”
+that represents the arbitrarily reflected _aspect_ of life based upon
+the personal absolute of each, life, as I have said, is henceforth
+contracted into the opposite alternatives determined by the two
+components that comprise one’s own pleasure or one’s own pain. This
+shifting choice imposed by the contrary issues inseparable from our
+bidimensional outlook confronts us on every hand, and it is this
+limitation of us all to the artificial bidimension of personal loss or
+gain that reduces life to the tragedy of getting or of not getting what
+one wants.
+
+Such a division of personality as this personal bias unconsciously
+entails, amounts to nothing short of a compulsion neurosis, the scope
+of which involves our entire social consciousness. The symptomatology
+of this mental division within the social personality finds its
+projection in such familiar antitheses as heaven or hell, love or
+hate, peace or war, idealist or materialist, Stoic or Hedonist, Jew or
+Gentile, aristocrat or proletarian, and so on _ad infinitum_. For such
+are our ever-shifting alternatives of getting or not getting as they
+are reflected in the assumption of private advantage underlying the
+so-called “good” and “bad” that is the preliminary outfit of us all.
+
+In this eternal whether-or-no that is our superstitious alternation
+between good and bad lies the meaning of the social division
+constituting the reaction unconsciously sponsored under the shifting
+incertitudes of our popular forms and moralities. In our trembling
+vacillations between the ever-pressing issues of personal advantage,
+as apprehended through our superinduced images of “good” or “bad,” is
+the substance of the obsessive oscillations of will commonly saluted
+as man’s conscience, a reaction, however, in whose irresolutions an
+eminent psychologist long ago discovered the element of hesitation that
+tends to make cowards of us all.
+
+This perpetual reflection of the self in the mirror of self-interest so
+operates as to invert completely the natural processes of life. Due to
+this unconscious distortion of reality, our every experience is viewed
+in the light of the fanciful image that is our own self-projection.
+On the basis of the absolute premise of self, that is the result of
+our own recoil upon the image of our own self-interest, everything is
+subordinated to the bidimensional component comprising our own personal
+aspect. For example, this inverted image of self, determining the
+personal absolute of each, underlies the delusion commonly concealed
+under what is popularly known as our “right.” After all, what is
+held most dear within each of us is this private reservation that is
+one’s own “right.” Indeed, it is no other factor than this alleged
+prerogative or “right” of the individual based upon his autogenous
+assumption of personal absolutism that, as already stated, is our
+unconscious “resistance” both individual and social. Taking our
+stand upon the inflexible basis that is the individual resistance or
+personal absolute of each, we approach life wholly from the position
+of this personal bias on the ground that it is our right. It is the
+preservation of this personal right that is the sole propriety of
+the law. But the laws of men as they appertain to personal claim and
+title are the direct antithesis of the law of man as it pertains to
+the organic unity of his life. In truth, what is called the rights of
+private ownership is shown upon analysis to be the ownership of private
+rights.
+
+We do not see--being wholly won over to a policy of unconscious
+self-interest we will not see--that our so-called “right” is not a
+reality inherent in the conditions of life itself, but that it is an
+illusion secondarily derived from our personal reaction to the system
+of autocracy that is the unconscious self-interest of the social
+unconscious everywhere about us. Here we find the psychological
+concomitance between the reaction of resistance and the process of
+inversion, between the bidimensional aspect reflecting one’s own
+image and the unconscious illusion of the personal absolute assumed
+to be the private “right” of every individual. For, in the measure in
+which one’s outlook upon reality is restricted to a bidimensional or
+pictorial aspect of reality, one’s range of perception is necessarily
+confined to alternations of self-advantage or to the issues of good
+and bad such as are determined by the autocratic absolute of one’s own
+personal right. From the fixed background of personal right we can
+look out upon the world about us only from the angle of our personal
+satisfaction. In this outlook the sole test of human experience narrows
+itself to the question as to whether an issue bodes good or ill _for
+me_. My personal right being my standard of measure, every value will
+be weighed by me in accordance with its reading. Here, you see, is the
+very essence of inversion. Here in this element of personal prerogative
+the introversions of unconsciousness are to be traced to their
+biological root. Thus, in this repercussion of consciousness embodied
+in our assumption of personal right, we come upon the very nucleus of
+the neurosis.
+
+I believe that in this bidimensional alternation of our unconscious
+self-reflection existing within the societal personality lies the
+basis of our social mania of competition, as it is the basis of our
+tireless discussions and altercations within the various spheres of
+man’s activity. It is again the obsessive shift of our compulsive
+self-interest, and our social alternations of competition merely
+reflect our own oppositeness. I believe that this delusion of
+self-interest is the sole validity of our vaunted “opinions” as of
+the endless wranglings and disputations and outstrivings that actuate
+our social interests generally. The claim that we go to war because
+our “right” is disputed is not true. We go to war because in the
+fallacy of our personal absolutism our assumed right is held by us to
+be indisputable. Far from possessing warrant for what is called our
+“right” to institute war, it is precisely because of the presumptive
+and illusory nature of our arrogated right that we are driven to this
+alternative of immeasurable wrong. The fact is not that we are right
+because we think such and such to be true, but that in our compulsive
+response to unavoidable alternative we think such and such to be true
+in vindication of our assumed right. In other words, our “rightness”
+is not the natural result of our logic but our logic is the enforced
+result of our “rightness.” By reason of this secret reservation of
+personal prerogative within each of us, everything is made subservient
+to this autocratic absolute of our individual right. If it is true,
+then, that the self-assurance and inflexibility of the personal
+absolute within each presents the true account of the mental and social
+rigidity comprising our resistances, there is here a significant
+commentary upon our so-called adult social consciousness.[17]
+
+This mechanism of unconscious autocracy underlies our sociological
+reactions in a degree that is beyond our suspecting, and it is to the
+social no less than to the individual consciousness that we must turn
+for a solution. If we disregard the individual implications of the
+social neurosis, it is not possible to envisage the social implications
+of the individual neurosis. Due to the subjective concomitance between
+the individual and the social aspects of consciousness, to attempt to
+deal with one and not with the other entails a contradiction that is
+organic. Just as in the individual personality there are alternations
+of will entailing contrarieties of mood that correspond to getting or
+not getting what one wants, so in the social personality there are
+these same alternations of will with their corresponding antitheses of
+mood depending upon our getting and not getting what we want.
+
+The element of failure in Christianity is the element of the
+bidimensional in Christianity. Christ repudiates the consensus and
+the consensus exacts his life in return. Judas betrays Christ and in
+expiation exacts his own life. In the real motto of Christianity “Do
+unto others as ye would have others do unto you” there is betrayed
+the familiar alternative of secret self-interest. It reveals at once
+the mark of arrangement, of bargain, of conduct-with-a-view-to that
+here, as always, is the private guarantee of personal advantage.
+In the note of reciprocity underlying the Lord’s prayer, with its
+“Forgive _us_, as _we_ forgive,” the bidimensional is at a premium.
+Only this bidimensional basis is adequate to account for the constant
+dissensions--religious, national, political and economic--that exist
+throughout the world of Christianity under the name of “right.”
+
+The truth is that the consciousness of man is not secure within itself,
+and our right is the protection of our own insecurity. An insidious
+division underlies the personality of man. Beneath his outer show of
+amity and covenant there resides a restless self-doubt, an anxious
+fear, a divided will. At the heart of his consciousness there is a
+deep-seated uncertainty driving him to temporary appeasements which
+can find issue only in the alternations of getting or of not getting
+what he wants. It is everywhere the aspect of the personal advantage
+under a new and altered guise. It is everywhere the alternation
+of self-interest, with its bilateral illusion of advantage or
+disadvantage, due to our fear-ridden obsession of “good and bad.”
+
+The vacillations of this illusive alternative likewise explain the
+anxious fascination of the shifting incertitudes of “fate.” Here in
+the uncertain eventualities of chance is the irresistible appeal of
+our endless speculations in enterprise and game. In the indispensable
+element of suspense that lends pith to the drama there is again echoed
+this artificial note of self-division. For that which constitutes
+dramatic suspense merely sustains the converse extension inseparable
+from a bidimensional situation, and the interest of the drama, as
+of all art-forms based upon the element of conflict or of periodic
+alternation, is its unconscious projection of the dual issues that
+reflect the shifting bidimensions of our social self-inversions.
+
+With the descent of the curtain upon the bidimensional situation
+with which the accustomed drama invariably closes, there remains,
+in essence unaltered, the same situation upon which it first arose.
+This is why it is always necessary at the end to create an artificial
+situation such as will temporarily satisfy the demands of a _seeming_
+conclusion and bring the episode to a halt. But a conclusion in the
+sense of a resolution of elements is not possible. The drama that is
+built upon the dilemma of the bidimensional is inevitably committed to
+one or the other of its two horns. Thus the end can be designed only
+with reference to one of the two alternatives in accordance with the
+unconscious ambivalence of author as of onlooker. And so the question
+of termination rests always upon the issue as to whether the audience
+shall smile and be pleased with itself (comedy) or weep and feel sorry
+for itself (tragedy) according as it gets or does not get what it wants.
+
+The art of the dramatist is, therefore, in the final accounting always
+constrained. It is this exigency that causes to be perpetrated in the
+name of dramatic precedent the unpardonable affronts to organic verity
+which we are constantly witnessing. In real life a girl, who has had a
+liaison with a man with whom her relationship has been wholly sexual
+or self-interested, does not confide the secret of her inadvertence
+to a subsequent suitor with whom she is now “in love” upon a no less
+self-interested basis. Such a course involves an organic contradiction.
+She knows in her heart that in the unconscious concealment of his
+equally secret self-interest in her it is as intolerable to him to
+have the secret of his illusion disturbed as it is intolerable to her
+to disturb her own. But in the drama the psychological verities are
+thrown to the winds, and the heroine, to the artificial delight of
+a bilaterally disposed audience, tells everything that has been in
+the “past” exactly as she would not tell it, and to the one person
+who hears it exactly as he would not hear it. But with drama that is
+bidimensional we must put an ending somewhere!
+
+Such are the organic discrepancies with which our ablest writers,
+whether in the form of the drama, the novel or the screen, still
+continue to banter us. The reason is to be sought in the unconscious
+and compulsive bondage which they themselves are under with respect to
+the illusion of the alternative that is their own self-reflective basis.
+
+It is this illusion of unconscious self-reflection that explains also
+the greater fascination of the bidimensional _picture_ we see sketched
+upon the wall or presented in the pages of literature as contrasted
+with the inherent _experience_ that is the tridimensional actuality of
+our daily life. It explains our greater pleasure in the surroundings
+which one’s art may contemplate or portray than in the surroundings
+which one’s life may by participation fill and render beautiful.
+For art as image is the portrayal of unreality; art as life is the
+expression of reality. Art to-day is merely the distinction of the
+individual interpreter. It is unrelated to the conscious aims of days
+and dreams that may be shared in common among all people. The truth
+is that in our prepossession with the bidimensional and pictorial our
+interest is centred far more in the distractions of art as image than
+in the inclusiveness of art as life.
+
+This illusion of the pictorial aspect with which we replace the world
+of tridimensional actuality finds nowhere a happier vehicle than in the
+mechanical bidimension afforded through the medium of illusion achieved
+by the motion-picture. There is no device better adapted to reproduce
+the flat, scenic aspect such as gives the real zest to our dreams. For
+through the device of the motion-picture there is reflected the social
+drama that comprises our day, just as through the device of the dream
+there is reflected the individual drama that comprises our night. It
+is in this illusory _bidimension_ of the photo-play that we are so much
+at home. We like its facile reproduction of ourselves. This is why we
+can accept without remonstrance the childishly naïve sequences standing
+for plot as represented in the bidimension of the screen. The same
+narrative would appear too utterly obvious and banal to pass muster
+in the solid perspective of the spoken drama, but presented upon the
+screen it finds ready acceptance, because in the motion-picture there
+is reproduced the pictorial aspect that corresponds to the habitual
+aspect of self-reflection that is our own image. We like moving
+pictures because we are moving pictures.
+
+This element of unconscious dramatization, prompting the activities of
+the normal mind, we need somehow to realize within us. We need somehow
+to realize that in the manifestations of the unconscious comprising
+the collective enactment of the social drama around us there is this
+same reduction of actuality to aspect. _For in the active motor images
+of the social mind with its manifold gestures of a self-reflective
+actuality there is inherently no less unreality than in the passive
+sensory images of the individual mind in the private theatre of its
+self-reflective phantasy-building._ Yet so involved are we now in
+our retroactive processes that in our purblind efforts toward their
+presumably conscious readjustment we still proceed retroactively. Such
+is the futility of our personalistic methods of dream-analysis, as it
+is the futility of our personalistic envisagement of the disorders of
+affect comprising the neuroses.
+
+In view of this central defect of our mental vision, whereby it is
+contracted into the artificial bidimension of the self- or dream-image,
+our outlook is everywhere distorted. Being vitiated throughout with the
+prejudice of the circumscribed and personal, our affective response is
+not spontaneous and true. As our subjective feeling is self-reflective
+or self-interested, our perception is necessarily pictorial and unreal.
+So that in our presumable contemplation of the objective world
+of reality, the experience that reaches us is not reality. On the
+contrary, in the element of the wish or dream that is our bias toward
+actuality, the aspect perceived is merely a foreshortened projection
+of the fanciful image of self. It lacks the tridimensional depth and
+solidarity of an inclusive reality.
+
+This habit of personal dogmatization and autocracy has induced in us
+an autocracy of the mental processes generally. Our representations
+of the aspect have become, throughout, the organic antithesis of our
+participation in the real. From a basis of unreal images we can only
+reproduce unreal images. Out of a mental system of false impressions
+we can only elaborate impressions that are false. It is precisely this
+flat unreality of the pictorial, whether fanciful or actual, that lends
+to all our so-called “art” its obsessive fascination. Not only is there
+a distortion of reality in the flat mental picture we form of it, but
+in the necessarily detached adaptation of the mere onlooker each of us
+becomes unconsciously an arbitrary centre of personal opinionativeness.
+Each one stands as a sort of solar centre within a planetary system
+comprising his own self-determined affects. He thus reflects the
+universe surrounding him, and it is thus by him defined. And there has
+come to be built up in each of us in respect also to the world of art a
+system of personalism or unconsciousness that is well-nigh logic-proof
+in its absolutism.
+
+Thus every stimulus--every impression that reaches our self-conscious
+mental retina falls upon the flat, self-reflecting surface of the wish,
+the dream or the personal _right_ of each. Of such is the supposedly
+cognitive reaction underlying our “beliefs,” of such is the presumably
+affective reaction we express as “love.” But belief and love trace
+their etymology to a common organic root that unhappily betrays the
+equally illusory origin of each. In the Anglo-Saxon _leof_, meaning
+lief or wish or bias, both reactions are reduced to a single motivation
+that is the tell-tale of their phantastic import. And as belief and
+love (inverse cognition and inverse affect) are the very tissue of our
+personalistic consciousness, we may begin to understand to what extent
+the wish or the preconception comprising the bidimensional self-image
+underlies our every perception!
+
+And so, after all, our world of “actuality” is not more real than our
+world of phantasy, our day not less self-reflective and unconscious
+than our night, our waking not less apparitional than our sleep. For
+both alike are motivated by the arbitrary reflection that is the
+inverted process of the will-to-self. As yet we do not realize that
+the personal absolute embodying our so-called “right,” motivated
+as it is by self-reflection and unconsciousness, is as truly the
+product of our day-dream as the wish, motivated by unconscious
+self-reflection, is the product of our night-dream. We do not as
+yet see that the wish or self-satisfaction comprising the sleeping
+dream of our individual unconscious is itself but a reproduction
+of the wish or self-satisfaction comprising the waking dream of
+our social unconscious. We have yet to recognize that here again
+in the oscillations of its unconscious _form_ is to be traced the
+bidimensional alternation of our own self-reflection as determined by
+the “good” or “bad” aspect that is our social as well as our individual
+advantage.
+
+Here, in the contrasting circumstances of its affiliation with the
+social unconscious on the one hand and of its personal isolation within
+the individual unconscious on the other, is doubtless the dynamic
+element determining the vacillation of form that comprises the periodic
+alternations of the sociological bidimension generally. After all,
+what is “good” for me is that which is socially approved, what is
+“bad” for me is that which brings me into disfavour with the social
+consensus composing my environment. If the social unconscious about me
+is willing to connive with my individual unconscious and applaud my
+egoistic self-strivings, all is well. If, on the contrary, it withholds
+acquiescence and repudiates my self-inverted interests, my state is
+a correspondingly unhappy one. This accounts for our artificial
+dependence upon the social give-and-take with which we hedge ourselves
+about and is the basis of the periodic alternations of mood that
+make up our day. Being unconscious, one is a prey to the unconscious
+about him. Being self-reflective, one reacts to the impressions of a
+self-reflective environment. This oscillation of mood, depending upon
+whether our adaptation toward the social consensus is assimilative or
+discordant, explains also the alternations of mood observable in the
+contrasting reactions characteristic of certain pathological states,
+as it is the basis of the daily variation of mood registered in the
+neurotic and in the normal constitution. It is here, too, that is
+found the basis of the pleasure-pain shift represented in our mood
+alternations of elation and depression, whether existing in the diurnal
+variations characterizing our normal mood alternations or in the more
+pronounced reactions characterizing the extremes of affective tone
+presented in manic-depressive insanity.
+
+It cannot be too strongly urged that, however intrinsically opposite
+these extremes of mood may seem, they are in essence identical. For,
+in reality, these seeming antitheses represent but the obverse aspects
+of one and the same bidimensional portrait of personal advantage.
+As regards this intrinsic identity between such seemingly opposite
+mood-tones it is interesting to note the etymological concurrence in
+the Anglo-Saxon root _saed_ (English sot, meaning filled), in which
+we find alike the source of such apparently unrelated derivatives of
+current usage as the words _sad_ and _satisfied_. There is, indeed, an
+unescapable concomitance in the mental attitudes of joy and sorrow, of
+elation and depression, of satisfaction and sadness. This coincidence
+is but an altered form of the common alternative of good and bad, of
+praise and blame, of getting and of not getting, and, as always, its
+presence denotes the conflict involved in our inverted self-interest.
+
+Doubtless to this bidimensional alternation are also traceable such
+sociological antitheses as one may witness in the contrary reactions
+expressed in our various economic and political factions. This
+one, failing to suspect the element of traditional self-reflection
+determining his so-called party affiliation, registers his personal
+allegiance under the socially augmented symbol or principle embodying
+the standard that is _his_ private absolutism or right; that one,
+no less oblivious of the part he is automatically enacting in his
+character of party promoter, assumes the symbolic rôle that tends to
+further the party principle representative of the absolute criterion
+that is _his_ right. So, too, are to be explained the alternations
+of reaction represented in the social antitheses of prohibition
+and anti-prohibition. The anti-prohibitionists are by imputation
+the ultra-liberal, the prohibitionists are by imputation the
+ultra-conservative element, but both are in point of fact equally the
+dupes of the personal reaction that is their own self-reflection. For
+both, in their unconscious response to what is commonly called “early
+training,” equally embody expressions of their original infantile
+reaction to the opposed issues involved in the social pretence of
+“good” and “bad.”
+
+Extending into every phase of our social life, it is this bilateral
+motive that is likewise the failure of the schools. With credit,
+praise or privilege and their opposites (depending upon whether the
+child “succeeds” or “fails” as judged by the bidimensional standard of
+good and bad, of praise or blame constituting the arbitrary _picture_
+of his personal conduct), it happens that, through an unconscious
+substitution of the image of the child’s person for the function of
+the child’s personality, the entire incentive of the schools becomes
+ulterior and artificial. The so-called liberal schools of to-day are
+in no better case. Despite their much ado about advanced methods that
+will give greater freedom to the child they afford mere imitations of
+freedom. But this is freedom in aspect, not in function. It is merely
+the ideal of freedom contemplating its own image. Thus it is futile to
+attempt to alter our situation through recourse to mere progressive
+methods of education. The elimination of formal standards of efficiency
+is likewise unavailing. For the ulterior is present still. We find
+it present in the bidimensional attitude that actuates the entire
+pedagogic system with its underlying idea of _preparation_. Apparently
+it is not realized that this element of the preparatory or ulterior is
+the criterion also of the teachers, being likewise the basis of their
+own promotion as it is the standard of promotion in the world at large.
+But whatever is preparatory is based upon the illusion of the personal
+image. It is commentative, premeditated, moralistic, and substitutes
+a mental impression of life in place of life itself. When we offer an
+image of life for which we seek to “prepare” the child, the very basis
+of our educational programme becomes pictorial and untrue. Life knows
+naught of images in the personal sense. Life is the functioning of
+interests in constructive activities. The rewards of such activities
+flow naturally out of them and consist in a common earning for daily
+needs in common daily pursuits. The child, if given the opportunity,
+will learn to construct useful and beautiful things and his only reward
+will be the natural reward accruing from the intrinsic value, social
+and æsthetic, of the work produced. When schools will have become the
+productive plants of natural childish industry, there will not any
+longer be the absurd invention by the schools of ulterior rewards such
+as now supply the artificial stimulus necessary to lend vitality to
+their essential dullness. It will not be necessary for teachers to
+stimulate the industry of their pupils through resort to extraneous
+“merits” in palliation for their own lack of joy in the natural
+creativeness of spontaneous childhood.
+
+There is, perhaps, no more subtle expression of the bidimensional
+replacement than in the psychological counter-impaction of the marital
+neurosis. In this conjugal vis-à-vis unconscious self-reflection
+is at flood-tide. This is why, in the opposite extensions of the
+conjugal conflict, there are presented concomitantly in husband
+and wife such familiar antitheses as are presented alternately in
+the single individual, as, for example, the opposed reactions of
+mania and depression, the psychasthenic and hysterical extremes,
+as well as the contrasts of homosexuality and paranoia. Where such
+reciprocal conditions exist, the opposite rôles are in every instance
+unconsciously assumed, of course, with entire consistency by the
+opposite parties in question. This explains also the anomaly presented
+in so seemingly contradictory a spectacle as that of a man of outwardly
+serious deportment enjoying vicariously, through the cosmetics and
+extravagances of self-adornment worn by a narcistically inverted wife,
+the satisfactions of an unconscious exhibitionism. It is the law of
+the marital neurosis, as of the balance-scale, that its termini are
+diametrically opposite and that their variation is inverse one to
+another.
+
+The unconscious mechanism described by Freud under the term “psychic
+ambivalence” (Bleuler) is of all reactions perhaps the least
+understood, but, because of its invariable association with neurotic
+processes, it is as important biologically as any of the mechanisms
+that psychoanalysis has disclosed to us. Yet again, in this quality
+of contrast inherent in the manifestations of neurotic states, there
+are represented merely the two opposed extremes of reaction due to the
+division of impulse that is inseparable from the alternation of aspect
+we have traced to the illusion of the bidimensional self-image. This
+replacement, as we have seen, occurs normally as well as neurotically,
+socially as well as individually. It is again the to-and-fro of the
+pendulum of good and bad. It is again but the oscillation that is our
+obsessive reaction to the make-believe of the self-reflective and
+ulterior.
+
+The truth is that we prefer our impressions of life to an understanding
+of life, and in the ambivalence of our response toward others, our
+reaction is friendly or antagonistic only in the degree in which they
+correspond or fail to correspond with our personally preconceived
+impressions. In the present ambivalent scheme of things, the ultimate
+poignancy of one’s grief is the element of secret pleasure it affords
+to others. The daily newspapers, seeking unconsciously to make capital
+of our human frailty in this regard, are ever alert to publish
+under glaringly conspicuous head-lines the most startling crimes
+and calamities. Under captions giving notice of some inexpressible
+“Horror” (a term supposedly conveying a sense of repugnance) they
+attain in fact their most intriguing effects. The newspapers are wise.
+They have read us before giving themselves to us to read and so are
+canny to supply the grim details we love to hear of another’s loss or
+hurt.[18] It is this isolation of sorrow that is its desolation and
+its bitterness. Yet it may be traced wholly to the unconscious tyranny
+of this bidimensional division within us that we find the pleasure we
+do find, however adroitly repressed, in the unhappiness or calamity
+of those about us. It is, of course, not another’s calamity that is
+the real cause of our satisfaction, but in the ambivalence of our
+attitude as we contemplate his misfortune we feel, by contrast, or in
+a _comparative_ count so much _more_ fortunate than he. It is again
+but the projection of the bidimensional division within each of us
+individually as a reflection of the division within all of us socially.
+In this comparison of ourselves with others there is again reflected
+the bidimensional alternative that is the fanciful self-advantage of
+the personal image.
+
+Turn where we will, this same phenomenon of mental alternation based
+on the bidimensional image looms ineffaceably before us. Opposed to
+the _mental image_ “male” we project the _mental image_ “female,”
+in contrast to the _concept_ “religion” we place the _concept_
+“science,” against the _psychological attitude_ of the artist
+stands the _psychological reaction_ of the critic. Because of this
+mentally pictorial outlook among us, we fail to realize that in the
+unconsciously objective approach of the artist there is embodied an
+attitude that is as truly a criticism or evaluation of life as is the
+objective attitude of the critic toward the expression of the artist.
+We do not realize that in our unconscious personal alternation an
+element of criticism or evaluation everywhere substitutes the fallacy
+of a mental state toward life for the conscious reality of a state
+of life itself. Our bidimensional self-reflection is thus equally
+the impediment of art as of life. The insidious element of personal
+self-reflection is the fatal decoy no less of portrayer than of
+participant.
+
+On the other hand, in the spirit of the more subjective artist
+what we sense is his insistent sway toward a self-realization that
+is impersonal. We feel that in the measure in which he yields it
+submission his expression becomes less and less a reproduction of life
+and more and more an actualization of life itself. This is because
+in the thought or feeling expressed through the art-forms of such a
+personality, he is himself not so much the causative or self-conscious
+agent reflecting a state of mind _in relation to_ life as it seems, but
+rather the conscious link in a sequence that _identifies_ him with a
+condition of life as it is. Thus again the truer the artist, the more
+he tends to round the orbit of his personality in a conscious universe
+of relativity; the more imitative the artist, the more he tends to
+oscillate uncertainly between the alternate phases that merely reflect
+the assumed absolute of his own ego.
+
+So it is with our alternations, social and individual, pathological
+and normal, as they exist on every hand. There is the precoid and the
+hysteric, the homosexual and the paranoiac, the religionist and the
+sceptic, the moralist and the voluptuary. It is the world-old tragedy
+of getting and not getting what one wants, and in the self-satisfaction
+of the one as in the self-abnegation of the other the element of
+self-consequence is equal and identical. It is the ineptitude of virtue
+that it is but the bidimensional reverse of vice. Generosity, like
+humility, contains its ambivalent element of pride. Though from time
+to time we may dispense no slight favours, yet always we demand to
+hold the reins of power within our own hands. Let our protégés presume
+for a moment to assert their own individuality and straightway we rein
+them in. Indeed, if we will look into this, we shall realize that it
+is precisely the person toward whom we are most lavish of beneficence
+that is the one of whose native and unsponsored expression we are most
+jealously critical. The fact is that our virtues are really too good
+to be true and that our amenities, after all, reflect only our own
+self-advantage. Thus, from the point of view of good and bad, our lusts
+and our repressions are but interchangeable adaptations of the central
+theme of self, and in the alternations entailed in the popularly
+conceded distinctions assumed as morality and immorality there is
+preserved under merely reversed aspects this identical fetish of one’s
+own self-image.
+
+Even in the sphere of psychology itself there is this same division
+inseparable from the personal absolute or the private arrogation
+that underlies the assumed right of each individual as reflected in
+our social contrasts of good and bad. For example, the propriety
+of studying the “merely motor expressions” of the behaviourists is
+regarded with grave question by the introspectionists, while the
+behaviourists as ardently doubt whether introspective studies are the
+legitimate matter of psychology at all. The futility of dissension is
+again its two-sidedness. What we omit to reckon with when we consider
+the vying of these two schools with one another is the element of the
+personal prerogative within them that unconsciously goads each to an
+intolerance of the other. For all “rights” being mutually opposed to
+and exclusive of one another, the “right,” or opinion, underlying
+any system except the system that is one’s own is, of its nature,
+inadmissible. In the irreconcilable assertions of the multifarious
+opinions of men, whether occurring in group or in single expression,
+there is always to be traced this underlying motive of personal right
+corresponding to the private prerogative of each. By rights I do
+not mean the natural rights that are universal and common, but the
+personal rights that are autocratic and pre-emptive. But whether our
+divisions be national, political, religious, economic, professional
+or familial, their underlying meaning is the same. So that, in this
+antithetical “response” characterizing the periodic alternations of
+our bidimensional self-reflection, there is registered a reaction
+of the organism that invariably escapes the attention of either
+disputant--the reaction, namely, of the will-to-self or of the private
+privilege coincident with an absolute basis of adjudication. As long
+as there remains this element of unconscious alternation due to the
+self-reflective interest that now actuates human motives, students of
+science, also, are as powerless to bring to their problems an attitude
+of disinterestedness as are our national delegates when they attempt to
+consider the problems involving all the subtle self-interest of a peace
+conference.
+
+The really classic division of opinion in the world--the division
+that is of major importance even amid academic fields of thought--is
+the conflict between Science and Religion. That the religionists, in
+claiming the undoubted authenticity of sources confirmatory of the
+truth of revealed religion, have offered indisputable “proof” of the
+validity of their position, cannot be denied. That the scientists’
+assertion of the doctrine of spontaneous evolution as opposed to
+the revealed truths of Theism rests equally upon the evidence of
+incontrovertible “proof” leaves likewise no room for doubt. In both
+instances, however, the proofs of each are acceptable only to the
+advocates of their own particular view and not to the advocates of the
+view that is opposite their own. But of what avail are the proofs of a
+position which are valid only in the minds which have anteriorly set
+out to prove it? What dependence is to be placed in the intellectual
+verifications of truth which are acceptable only to intellects which
+demonstrate them but which, in the view of those of an opposite trend,
+remain for ever inaccessible? These are reflections which necessarily
+force us to question very seriously our objective intellectualizations.
+If, in so wide and vital a division as that between Religion and
+Science, the “logic” on which is based the claim of each is so
+completely without meaning, beyond its facility to flatter established
+prepossessions, it is time that our “reasoning” upon all issues be
+summoned to account on suspicion that our position is, in every
+instance, merely the unconscious alternation due to the bidimensional
+image of gain or loss that is one’s personal self-reflection.
+
+This blindness of the personal restriction within our subjective life
+is the more interesting when one considers the far more impersonal
+outlook that often characterizes man’s consciousness within the
+sphere of his objective interests. With the growing expanse of man’s
+consciousness there has arisen the widely inclusive and impersonal
+field of preventive medicine with its essential preoccupation with
+the communal weal. Through this wider sociological approach we have
+come gradually to realize the incomparably greater significance of
+activities directed toward safeguarding the health of the community
+or of the group-life as contrasted with interests directed to the
+personal cure of the individual as a single element within the social
+group. We have begun to recognize that where, through recourse to
+measures of public hygiene, it is possible to control the general
+sources of disease, conditions are rendered such that there may be no
+need to treat disease-process within the single individual. In Panama,
+for example, where, through a far-reaching programme of civic hygiene,
+the malaria-breeding organism has been almost wholly exterminated,
+the medical and sociological functions of the community have become
+so completely merged that with the appearance of the disease-bearing
+Anopheles it is no longer the physician but the civic authorities who
+are consulted.
+
+Such are the signs of the broadening communal spirit that is coming
+to influence more and more the various measures of improvement amid
+the objective conditions of life about us. But, within the subjective
+sphere of man’s activities, his outlook is no whit more encompassing
+to-day than in the moment of his earliest quickenings of consciousness.
+The reason is not far to seek. Man’s subjective life is throughout
+overlaid and oppressed by his inverted obsession of personal
+acquisition. Viewing everything in the light of the reflection cast by
+his own image, a broad communal programme of life is for him as yet
+subjectively impossible. An outlook that would render his position a
+relative one and reveal it as but contributory to the organic life as a
+whole would straightway menace the illusion of his personal prerogative
+and rob him of what is now for him the basis of all his experience and
+the sum of his personality. He does not see that his “experience,” by
+reason of its inverted absolutism, wholly lacks the support of reality.
+He does not see that what he calls his personality is his successful
+collusion in the collective unconscious about him at the price of his
+habitual concession to impressions not primarily his own. This is why
+the psychopathologist is still futilely endeavouring to understand
+his patients from the static, personal standpoint of his own dogmatic
+absolutism rather than from the position of a relative and inclusive
+interpretation of consciousness. This is why the objective analyst
+remains always outside the real problem of the social disharmony
+represented in the nervous and mental disorders of the individuals
+by whom he is confronted. The truth is, he is himself a part of the
+disorder which in his unconscious absolutism he is presuming to treat
+in others. The tendency is one that exists among us all. For the taint
+of an absolutism within the social personality involves each of us
+equally as a contributing element in its fictitious structure. Hence
+the ultimate futility of our constantly shifting “methods.” Hence the
+ever-recurring therapeutic fads that represent first one and then
+another absolute system of cure. But though each such system may for
+a while claim our support, in due course it fades again and is in
+turn succeeded by another in accordance with the varying phases of
+our social alternations. Our enthusiasm, as well as its decline, must
+after all be reckoned merely as the alternate reverberations of the
+social consciousness in response to the unconscious alternations of the
+bidimensional absolute which has its existence in the individual and of
+which the social manifestation is but a reproduction.
+
+As the neurosis is generic, involving the social system no less than
+the individual element, the system of psychoanalysis, as well as the
+individuals composing it, is equally included under its indictment.
+From Freud, therefore, as from the rest of us there is due the
+acknowledgment of the inevitable part occupied by psychoanalysis in
+the systematization or unconsciousness that is the social neurosis.
+The private assumption of each of us to the contrary notwithstanding,
+we who have followed Freud could not possibly have been inspired in
+our work by a conscious interest in the disorders of personality
+represented in the social anomaly of the neurosis. Being ourselves
+unconsciously involved in the social neurosis about us, we have been
+urged forward through an unconscious or _personal_ interest in
+order to divert our minds from our own implication in its _social_
+significance. To this end it has been unconsciously our endeavour to
+direct assiduous attention only to the specific manifestations of the
+neurosis as it exists in individuals supposedly other than ourselves.
+_In brief, we have been diligently occupied with the objective study
+of the neurosis in its obvious appearance in others as individuals
+presumably separate from ourselves, in order to escape the subjective
+acknowledgment of its actual presence within ourselves as contributory
+and interrelated elements in our common social consciousness_.
+
+With each of us, the real motive has been the unconscious grudge of
+our personal involvement in a world-wide enslavement to an artificial
+precept such as can only oscillate between the alternations resultant
+upon our self-limited bidimension of “good and bad.” When we can
+lay aside the incentives of personal self-defence and view our own
+reactions with impartial self-composure, we shall realize that it
+has been our own unconscious that first quickened the compensative
+defence-reactions which later culminated in the objective system we
+know to-day as psychoanalysis. For, with psychoanalysis as with other
+systems, its real incitement is found in the inevitable “come-back”
+that is the organism’s response to its sense of affront before the
+illusion of the self-image. Again, it is the automatic alternation
+resultant upon a basis of counter-relatedness inseparable from the
+delusion of the personal absolute as contrasted with the relativity of
+the individual in respect to life as an organic whole. Again, it is the
+artificial presupposition of our own “rightness” that is the strongest
+determinative of our conduct, and to this secret autocracy that is our
+own personal absolutism we have rendered everything subservient.
+
+Men like to say that God created them, but in truth it is they who
+have created “God.” We like to employ this anthropomorphic image of
+absolute authority to our personal advantage. Rewarding the good and
+punishing the bad in accordance with the alternations coincident with
+the bidimensional aspect of an absolute Deity, this image of supreme
+authority represents merely the projection of the personal absolute
+based on the alternations of our own self-reflection. I do not doubt
+that beneath this vicarious image of a fanciful father-supremacy there
+ever remains the true and abiding principle that is the underlying
+reality of life. But, in the place of this principle of reality that is
+the unsponsored soul of man, we have timidly substituted such temporary
+cheats as are adapted only to lull our fancies with imperialistic
+dreams of personal empire. Indeed, in the personal projection actuating
+the social anomaly of religious belief the inverted bias comprising
+our own self-image has its strongest lodgment. It is here that the
+collective mind has tricked itself to its collective undoing. For
+in the current expression of our social inversion resident in this
+absolute arbiter of the moral law or of “good and bad” lies the
+very nucleus of our human pathology. And it is my position that
+the pretence, underlying the personal adjustment based upon early
+inculcated issues of self-interest and concealed beneath our specious
+determinants of “good” and “bad,” is no less the underlying fallacy of
+psychoanalysis. For, in its attempt to offset neurotic disharmonies
+due to an unconscious repression of the sexual life of the individual,
+psychoanalysis has recourse to adjustments that are the mere
+_alternative_ of repression--a repression legislated by the dictates
+of an equally unconscious and repressed society, be its expression
+opportunistic, sublimative, or _en règle_.
+
+Thus psychoanalysis, likewise, presents a policy that is but a
+desperate alternation between the only two issues that are available
+on the basis of the absolute criterion such as inevitably obtains
+in our present bidimensional or pictorially constellated scheme of
+consciousness, namely, a policy in which the reaction of the individual
+can only be in the direction of the reverse or opposite extension.
+Hence, however personally displeasing to us, there is the need that
+we who are psychoanalysts somehow recognize that we, also, are
+unconsciously subordinated to the moral dilemma that is the reflection
+of our own self-interest. There is the need that we see clearly that
+psychoanalysis, too, is still under the domination of a falsely imbued
+impression of good and bad with its attendant issue in the alternations
+of an unconscious social resistance.
+
+This illusory antithesis of getting or of not getting what one wants,
+this irreconcilable ache of man’s unconscious is traceable again
+and again to the false assumptions of a self-reflective absolutism
+as arrogated by the individual as a single part or element in
+contradistinction to our organic consciousness as a whole. It is in the
+absolutism of the part that consists the dissociation of the whole;
+it is in the relativity of the part that consists the integrity of
+the whole. Within the sphere of man’s consciousness our fallacies of
+observation lie in the absolutism of the observer. On the other hand,
+in surrendering the bidimensional or pictorial illusion inseparable
+from the fixed position of the observer for the tridimensional
+actuality of our organic participation in life as an inclusive
+totality, we automatically yield it the full-dimensional component
+comprising the extension that is our confluent societal unity and
+which, in abrogating the artificial image of a personal and unconscious
+absolute, constitutes life in the encompassing scheme of the relativity
+of consciousness. In such a scheme there is offered to the dissociated
+personality, single and social, neurotic and normal, a readjustment
+that is fundamental. I believe it is only in the acceptance of the
+societal consciousness of man that there lies the ultimate step for
+each of us. For the principle of the relativity of consciousness is an
+organically unequivocal one. In its individual realization consists our
+societal integrity. In its societal realization consists our individual
+integrity. Only in the co-ordination of the two lies the fulfilment of
+our organic personality.
+
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE NEUROSES
+
+
+  Personally, I am more and more convinced that the cure for
+  sentiment, as for all the weakened forms of strong things, is
+  not to refuse to feel it, but to get to feel _more_ in it. This
+  seems to me to make the whole difference between a true and a
+  false ‘asceticism.’ The false goes for getting rid of what one
+  is afraid of; the true goes for using it and making it serve.
+  The one empties, the other fills; the one abstracts, the other
+  concentrates. Don’t you think half the troubles of life come from
+  being wrongly _afraid_ of things--especially afraid of oneself?
+  (February, 1890.)
+
+  Richard Lewis Nettleship.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+ANALYSIS OF FREUD’S DYNAMIC AND INDIVIDUALISTIC CONCEPTION OF THE
+NEUROSES
+
+
+The following pages are an endeavour to determine the conditions,
+social and individual, that constitute the health of the mental
+organism. What the health of the mental organism is, has not as
+yet been adequately described. On the somatic side, of course, one
+defines health as the harmonious functioning of the parts comprising
+the organism as a whole. But, as regards the constitution of the
+mental life in its totality, we have no such inclusive interpretation
+of the condition requisite to harmonious functioning. Although the
+psychopathologist is constantly engaged in efforts to restore the
+distorted mind to a condition of harmony and health, one finds nowhere
+a satisfactory statement as to just what constitutes the state of
+harmony which it is his avowed purpose to establish. Health, of course,
+is synonymous with the harmony of the whole. But from the point of
+view of consciousness we have not even determined as yet what is the
+organism as a whole or what are the parts constitutive of it. The
+psychiatrist is habitually preoccupied with the outer features of
+mental disharmony which the method of extrinsic observation has brought
+to his personal notice. It is evident, therefore, that his conception
+of consciousness is automatically withheld from a subjective inclusion
+of the organism in its entirety, and that it compasses only the
+particular aspect that falls within the limits of his own particular
+observation. It is this discrepancy which I should like, if possible,
+to isolate from its present personal involvement, with a view to the
+possibility of a clearer understanding of our mental problems. To this
+end my recourse can only be such an objective inquiry as may be the
+more hospitable because of its subjective inclusiveness.
+
+In pre-Freudian days, as is well known, the psychopathologist who
+had to do with a nervous disorder turned quite automatically in the
+direction to which the patient pointed, or to the symptom indicated.
+Whether a paralysis, an obsession, a phobia or what not, this symptom
+or sign constituted for the physician no less than for the patient the
+exclusive focus of interest. Thus in the domain of nervous and mental
+disharmonies the entire field of inquiry occupied itself in earlier
+times with a mere obvious index of disease rather than with the disease
+itself.
+
+With the advent of Freud the situation became wholly changed. Through
+his discovery that the disturbance was neither _what_ nor _where_ it
+appeared to be from the clinical point of view, Freud came to explain
+it upon grounds which led to a fundamentally altered conception of
+the hysterias and their kindred manifestations. Viewing the situation
+as a dynamic one, Freud regarded the symptom in question in the light
+of an unruly element within the central personality, whence, in his
+view, this central personality became, as it were, the controlling seat
+of government. It was Freud’s position that this presiding principle
+must be held amenable for fostering within its domain so discordant
+an element as that whereof the symptom gave notice, and accordingly,
+it was to this central principle that Freud henceforth addressed his
+investigations.
+
+This position of Freud’s, in which he regards the essential mechanism
+of the neurosis as a symptom-substitution representing in substance a
+psychic transposition or a shift of affect from intrinsic source to
+arbitrary aspect, embodies the whole significance of psychoanalysis.
+It is a significance that marks the outset of our understanding of the
+real nature of the neuroses. For it was this conception that first
+posited as the background of consciousness an integral personality,
+from which, as a basis, it was sought to discover the factors operative
+in causing the division within it represented by the neurosis. But just
+as the enduring distinction of Freud’s work lies in this conception of
+a central totality of personality constituting the substrate of the
+conscious life, so its limitation consists precisely in the erroneous
+position to which Freud assigned this totality of consciousness. I
+believe that the many inconsistencies and half-baked deductions of
+psychoanalysis, with the consequent deadlock to a truly comprehensive
+interpretation of the neuroses, are due precisely to this limitation
+of the conception of the neurosis within the bounds of the individual
+consciousness. When we have realized that this conception of a totality
+of personality is biologically tenable only _from the point of view
+of an inclusive societal consciousness and not of the circumscribed
+individual consciousness_, we shall, I believe, have taken the
+essential step toward dispelling the confusion and lack of coherence
+within the psychoanalytic system as it now stands.
+
+As one looks back, it is not difficult to see how Freud’s necessarily
+conventional, clinical point of view--the outgrowth of personal
+inclination and tradition--unconsciously bound him to a conceptual
+outlook that was necessarily circumscribed and limited, and how he was
+thus unwittingly led into a contradiction of the ultimate significance
+of the very conception which he had himself originated.
+
+In the nature of Freud’s postulate that a psychic transposition
+is the basis of the neurosis, his thesis assumes a breach in the
+integrity of consciousness. This breach within consciousness is due
+to the effort of a delimited area within it to establish itself as
+a separate, self-governing unit. His position envisages a conflict
+entailing a dissociation of the personality due to the secession of
+one or more of its integral constituents. Hence the real crux of
+Freud’s thesis was the determination of the essential incompatibility
+between an _independent part_ (dissociation) and the _coherent whole_
+(unification) within the sphere of consciousness--a conception which
+seems to me as beautiful as it is true. But in the bias of Freud’s
+own individualistically circumscribed consciousness, with the
+inevitable separation or dissociation it entailed, Freud failed to
+recognize the implication of his own thesis. He did not see that he
+was himself unconsciously held within a position bearing the essential
+feature of the very disorder which presumably he was regarding from
+a non-partisan, unified point of view. He did not see that his own
+position was precisely that of a separate, delimited unit, within the
+totality of consciousness, represented in the dissociation of his own
+personal bias. There is here a consideration which Freud, and the rest
+of us along with Freud, have permitted to pass by completely unnoticed,
+due to our own unconscious embroilment within the limitations of our
+circumscribed individual consciousness. While theoretically advocating
+unification as the basis of consciousness, Freud was himself actually
+seeking unconsciously to reconcile with it a dissociation within
+himself. It is this self-circumventing illusion of the restricted
+individualistic consciousness which, if one may judge from the degree
+to which it has underlain my own work and that of others, is the
+essential fallacy of psychoanalysis.
+
+In reality, then, Freud set out to account for the seemingly actual
+upon grounds of the seemingly actual. He did not see that the very
+medium of human experience, as _seemingly_ actual and as commonly
+accepted by us to be actual, is in truth already biased by impressions
+that are only virtual. In short, Freud did not realize that our own
+so-called consciousness is unconsciousness. He assumed that the
+analysis or self-examination to which he subjected himself and his
+patients was disinterested and authentic in its inclusiveness of the
+personality as a whole. And all the while he failed to realize that the
+personality as a whole, as embodied in the self-limited consciousness
+of the individual, is itself imbued with all the prejudice of
+self-interest and with all the bias of dissociation constitutive of
+the habitual medium of our collective unconscious. As this habitual
+medium is actuated by individual tradition and separativeness, it is
+necessarily based throughout upon motives of personal preference. With
+an outlook distorted by personal preference (the unconscious wish), it
+is not possible to view the processes of life and its disharmonies with
+freedom and clarity. From a standpoint of private prejudice it is not
+possible to envisage private prejudice. Unconsciousness cannot compass
+unconsciousness. The wish cannot assail the wish. In our present mode
+of personalism and unconsciousness the attainment of consciousness
+is of its nature an impossible task. Thus the bias of Freud renders
+untenable the position of Freud when he assumes the abrogation of bias,
+since his position has itself arisen from the unsuspected bias of his
+own habituated or preferential mode.
+
+It is this unconsciousness within ourselves which we psychoanalysts
+have let escape us and which necessarily gives to our work, for all
+its impressiveness, the conventional curtailment of the vicarious and
+unreal. As an illustration of what I mean, there is somewhere in the
+“Traumdeutung” an amusingly acute psychoanalytic touch in Freud’s
+interpretation of the dream of a patient. This patient had on one day
+stoutly protested that dreams were not invariable wish-fulfilments,
+and on the following day she brought to Freud a dream in which she was
+represented planning a summer outing with her mother-in-law whom she
+cordially disliked. Here, she said, was proof that dreams were not
+necessarily wish-fulfilments, and a superficial glance would seem to
+give her the decisive score. But Freud was alert. “Quite the contrary,”
+he replied with analytic acuity, “you have only furnished additional
+proof that dreams _are_ wish-fulfilments, for it is precisely in
+your wish to prove to me that dreams are not wish-fulfilments that
+you have dreamed that you are going summering with your detested
+mother-in-law--a dream which could not more amply satisfy your wish to
+prove the incorrectness of my theory.” So speaks Freud with triumphant
+naïveté, and, with a complacency that is no less naïve, we who are
+Freudians are still applauding with unstinted assent the subjective
+fallacy of his objective logic.
+
+Like Freud, we have not seen that every dream of our own contains no
+less the identical wish to prove ourselves right. Like Freud, we have
+not seen that it is our wish that the dream shall contain the element
+of a basic and invariable sexual factor in substantiation of the thesis
+of us Freudians. It is the fallacy of the dreamer in the foregoing
+incident that she sets out with the absolutism of the personal premise;
+but so do we--the premise, namely, of personal “rightness.” Thus we are
+in no different case from the patient whom Freud cites as manufacturing
+a dream to prove her position right. But while the wish of this
+dreamer--in its purpose in direct opposition to our own--stands out
+in sharp, unmistakable outline before us, our own wish--in its nature
+identical with hers, namely, the wish to prove ourselves right--remains
+enveloped still in the obfuscating mists of our own unconscious. There
+is here the organic inaccessibility of the wish to the wisher, of the
+dream to the dreamer. There is here the blindness of the unconscious
+preference with its basis in the personal absolute, and it is the need
+of us Freudians to recognize that the blight of its inconsistency is
+upon us all.[19]
+
+How dominant is Freud’s own individuating wish or personal preference
+one may realize who reads his essay on “The History of the
+Psychoanalytic Movement” and witnesses the bitterness of his feeling
+toward any who gainsay him. How strongly we share with Freud the
+influence of personal bias may be seen in our own bitterness when
+others would gainsay us. It is so with us all. It is the morbid
+compulsion of self-vindication that underlies all “rightness.” It is
+the habitual illusion of our own self-centralization, a less wieldy but
+more explicit term for what we have come to know theoretically--that
+is, in other people and as in no way touching our own personal
+feeling--as the unconscious wish-motive. For self-vindication and the
+unconscious wish are one.
+
+And so, objectively, Freud is quite “right” in asserting that a basic
+sexual factor underlies the dream. Do not his own and his patients’
+dreams prove him so? And Jung is, objectively, no less “right” in
+claiming that Freud is mistaken--that dreams are not primarily
+motivated by a sexual wish. Do not his dreams and those of his patients
+equally corroborate _his_ view? And so with Adler and his theory, and
+so with any of us and his theory. For notwithstanding that the theories
+of all of us are severally opposed one to another, yet all of us are
+equally “right,” as may be equally substantiated by the dreams of each.
+The explanation is simple. The “rightness” of each is the wish of each
+and the wish is father to the dream!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+FORMULATION OF AN ORGANIC OR SOCIETAL BASIS OF INTERPRETATION
+
+
+Within the various fields of scientific investigation, there is the
+established precept that we set out from the simplest assignable
+elements as a basis for all future inquiry. Of such, for example, is
+the ground-structure of the chemical and the biological sciences, and
+it is likewise upon ultimately irreducible units that the furthest
+abstractions of mathematics rest their foundation. But in our approach
+to the biological elements of consciousness we have proceeded upon no
+such soundly established principle. Unconsciously presupposing here
+and taking for granted there, we have reasoned from premises that
+have lacked the warrant of elementary support. Hence in the study of
+consciousness we have, in our unconsciousness, unwittingly slurred our
+obligations to the very first principle of scientific method.
+
+This circumstance, however, is not one toward which we need feel
+scornful. Our blunder has been inevitable. In the study of the elements
+of consciousness a factor is introduced into scientific reckoning that
+completely reverses habitual perspectives, and to trace with scientific
+conscientiousness this inexorable reversal of the personal mode
+requires of the student very special laboratory qualification. For, in
+turning to the study of the basis of consciousness, we are ourselves
+the primary elements of our own inquiry. Ourselves unconscious, we have
+attempted to fold back upon ourselves and, from a basis of prejudice,
+to recapture our primary, unprejudiced basis. From a now sophisticated
+personal _adaptation_ of consciousness we have sought to regain the
+native, unsophisticated _principle_ of consciousness of which our
+personal adaptation is the unconscious abrogation. Clearly, this task
+is of its nature self-contradictory. Only in the measure in which we
+realize that unconsciousness is our habitual mode and so allow it
+to cease automatically to dominate our lives may we come to study
+dispassionately the essential structure of consciousness through an
+unbiased examination of the primary elements of which it is composed.
+
+Life has its beginnings in a continuous organic medium. Within this
+common organic medium our original infant organisms constitute
+identical elements. What we later regard as individuals are but
+corpuscles in a homogeneous, societal tissue. Organically, or from
+the point of view of their common and inherent affectivity, there
+exists no discrimination among these elements. Race or national
+separation, social or caste distinction have not entered into them.
+These are divergences that have no place in the organic origins of
+life. As integral members of an original organic matrix, the elements
+representing our primary infant organisms are no more differentiated
+psychically one from another than they are psychically differentiated
+from the life-source or the maternal organisms from which they have
+sprung. The mental life, being as yet wholly subjective and unaware,
+is simple, unitary. It is one with the organism’s inherent feeling.
+Subjective feeling, indeterminate and unqualified, is, in the primary
+organism, the sum of experience, the compass of life. Primarily the
+organism’s subjective feeling is its all. And as with the growing
+perception of outer objects life enlarges, this subjective mode
+is unaltered still. Our primary objective experience merges into
+continuity with inherent feeling. It is added to, included in the
+subjective life. So that in its incipient rapport with the world of
+objectivity, life maintains still a fluid, undifferentiated, confluent
+mode. For life is primarily affective. In the affect consists men’s
+common ground. In the subjective affect lies organic bed-rock. Here in
+the common inherency of native feeling is the primal menstruum of our
+human consciousness.
+
+But there suddenly comes an interruption to this state of unification.
+The parent, as spokesman of a world of unconscious collusion in the
+defence of self or the exploitation of separativeness, strikes in
+sharply upon this unitary mode of being with a wedge of interdiction
+that marks the beginning of a cleavage within the personality which
+the subsequent years tend increasingly to widen and secure.[20] With
+the sudden arrest of this early, unified mode through the entrance of
+the extraneous strictures of command and prohibition (suggestion or
+repression), the personality of the organism becomes automatically
+divided. For with command or reproof there is introduced the element
+of the ulterior. Organic harmony and confluence are no more. Into the
+life of confluence is now thrust the rude encroachment of personal
+motive--of motive based upon the outcome of promise or threat, of
+gain or forfeit. The inherent flow, the organic current of experience
+is now artificially checked. Henceforward expression is no longer
+spontaneous. Instead, a programme of conduct-with-a-view-to takes its
+place and becomes the dominant order of our activities. In the face of
+every summons the question must first be weighed--Will it be well or
+ill with _me?_ Upon the issue of gain or loss depends the response--the
+issue of gain or loss for the now separated, individuated organism.
+An adjustment to the ends of self-interest is demanded. Everything is
+at stake; a fitting policy must be devised and the proper combination
+must be sought. Thus is obtruded self-consciousness, self-interest or
+that separation from its basic continuum that is incidental to the
+interruption of the organism’s essential life, and with it a new mode
+of consciousness embodying a fundamental opposition to the primary
+unity of life now takes its rise.
+
+Is it not clear that the condition here described is nothing other
+than a dissociation of consciousness, that this interpolation of the
+self-motive involves a division of the personality in which there is
+presented the identical reaction that we have come to know as the
+essential mechanism of the neurosis? If so, then life in our present
+mode of adaptation is throughout a dissociation. That such is actually
+the case is the position of the present thesis. For it maintains
+that division of personality, or the neurosis, has its basis in this
+incipient cleavage embodied in the separation of the individual element
+from its original organic continuum through the interdiction of the
+organism’s early unitary mode, while integrity of the personality, on
+the other hand, is represented alone in the preservation throughout the
+growth of the individual element of its primary organic confluence.
+
+Such a postulate is indeed very sweeping. It will be readily protested
+that it is too sweeping--that in effect it claims that the whole
+civilized world is in the grip of a mental dissociation, that it has
+its being, founds its organization upon a basis of unconsciousness. I
+can only answer that, however sweeping such a statement may seem in
+theory, this social implication of the neurosis is amply supported
+in actuality. For the unconscious reactions of the social mind about
+oneself are reflected unconsciously within oneself, the individual
+being but an element in our common consciousness. If one will permit
+himself to be sufficiently subjective in his own life to view with
+objective disinterestedness the reflections within himself of these
+unconscious reactions of the social mind, there will be little ground
+for protest against such an implication.
+
+This indictment of the entire social mind, however, may rest upon
+no scant or uncertain foundation. We may not deal with so broad
+an issue with the personal conclusiveness of a merely dynamic or
+individualistic interpretation. Our approach must needs be genetic
+in its scope. We must take account of those integrations which mark
+the era of man’s first awareness and which reach back to the nebulous
+sources of consciousness itself. For the thoughtful student will
+demand to know the phylogenetic origin of this universal tendency to
+interdiction toward her offspring on the part of the mother. Whence
+_her_ self-consciousness, he will ask. One’s answer must be largely
+intuitional, by which I suppose we mean that it must be gathered from
+sources that are coloured by intimations arising from one’s own organic
+life.
+
+It would appear that in his separativeness man has inadvertently fallen
+a victim to the developmental exigencies of his own consciousness.
+Captivated by the phylogenetically new and unwonted spectacle of his
+own image, it would seem that he has been irresistibly arrested before
+the mirror of his own likeness and that in the present self-conscious
+phase of his mental evolution he is still standing spell-bound
+before it. That such is the case with man is not remarkable. For
+the appearance of the phenomenon of consciousness marked a complete
+severance from all that was his past. Here was broken the chain of
+evolutionary events whose links extended back through the nebulous
+aeons of our remotest ancestry, and in this first moment of his
+consciousness man stood, for the first time, _alone!_ It was in this
+moment that he was “created,” as the legend runs, “in the image and
+likeness of God.” For breaking with the teleological traditions of his
+agelong biology, man now became suddenly _aware_.
+
+That man’s spirit should have quailed before the wonderment of
+so complete an emancipation is not surprising. Sensing his utter
+isolation in the face of so strange, so unwonted a realization, he
+could only cling desperately to the one visible and concrete sign of
+the prenascent world from which he had newly emerged--to the urgent
+and ineradicable actuality of _himself_, the one and only link that
+remained to bind man to the vast and hitherto uninterrupted continuum
+of his primordial past. Yet turn where he would, the organic hiatus
+had now been made and its inexorable breach yawned wide and inevitable
+before him. Unable as yet to endure the contemplation of his new
+freedom and the limitless expanse it spread before him, equally unable
+to recross again the gulf he had lately spanned and recover the paths
+of his original instinctiveness and automatism, the soul of man stood
+divided against itself. For man could now neither venture forth nor
+yet return again. In his division he could only grope blindly amid
+uncertain ways. Before him stretched the stern demands of consciousness
+and reality, behind him lay the fictitious decoys of a phantastic and
+immemorial preconscious. His choice lay between the two, yet he was
+incompetent to follow either. It is, it seems to me, the intermediate
+stage in man’s development, comprised of these two contending issues
+and entailing the irreconcilable conflict of which each individual’s
+experience is a recapitulation, that is the phylogeny of the
+unconscious. This is the experience of us all as it expresses itself in
+the self-consciousness that underlies the personal adaptation of each,
+through our gradually enforced awareness of the self.
+
+Considered also ontogenetically, the development of consciousness,
+contrary to accepted tenets, has by no means proceeded upon a
+fluent and harmonious course.[21] In its very birth consciousness
+embodies a biological recoil--an organic impaction. Its very
+unfolding is an infolding, its begetting a misbegetting. For the
+rudiment of consciousness is self-consciousness. In its origin it
+is self-reflexive, self-relational. That is, consciousness in its
+inception entails the fallacy of _a self as over against other selves_.
+It is in this inevitable _faux pas_ of man’s earliest awareness, of
+his original self-consciousness (original sin), that consists the error
+or lapse in the process of his evolution. In this factor of development
+marked by the recoil of our self-consciousness or by the inference
+of our counter-relatedness is to be traced the momentary decline in
+the progressive curve of man’s organic evolution. Yet such temporary
+recessions embody the operation of laws that are entirely within the
+order of our developmental descent. In the first dawnings of new and
+untried possibilities, it often happens that, as growth proceeds,
+conditions that are later to become assets in the developmental scheme
+are in their rudimentary phase very burdensome liabilities. The infant
+that has not yet learned to walk is wont to crawl with much ease and
+impunity, but with the finer adjustment of walking once acquired he may
+now move about his world in an upright posture with far greater agility
+and comfort than the movement of crawling could ever have afforded
+him. And yet many are the rude impacts and ineptitudes that attend the
+gradual acquisition of his new endowment. And so the developmental
+possibility offered man through his attainment of the stage of
+self-awareness is not less an onward stage in his evolution because in
+his awkward unaccustomedness he employs it to his own undoing. It is
+one of the glories of his growth which he may temporarily dim but not
+permanently extinguish.
+
+With the further unfolding of the consciousness of man, or with his
+increasing awareness, there followed the recognition of the objective
+intervals between his congeners severally and between himself and
+them. His external senses of their very nature apprised him of such
+intervals, as, for example, those in relation to time and to space.
+With growing experience his perception of interval between himself and
+his fellows grew more and more insistent. It became indeed the basis
+of his operations. Besides, there were intervals which were not only
+spatial and temporal but intervals or differences that were attributive
+or circumstantial in their nature, such as vocal and featural
+differences, differences of sex, size, colour and of texture.
+
+With this constantly growing, steadily deepening impression of
+difference, interval or separation in point of external characters,
+with this habitual looking out upon external or objective
+differentiation or _otherness_, something happened to the consciousness
+of man. That which happened was the _faux pas_ in his evolution to
+which I have just alluded. For, through the suggestive influence of
+repeated observation of objective interval or discontinuity, man fell
+a victim to a trick of his own consciousness, and, from implications
+of disparity in the sphere of his peripheral contacts, he erroneously
+_inferred_ differentiations in the sphere of his internal, nuclear,
+organic life. From data of observation in the field of his objective
+relationships he unconsciously drew analogous conclusions in regard to
+the essential continuities of his common, subjective consciousness,
+and so applied to the primary and inherent mode of his experience
+deductions which were warranted only with respect to the mode of his
+outer or objective awareness. From a difference of envelope he assumed
+a difference of content. From a dissimilarity of outer and accidental
+character he implied a disparity in the realm of his organic and
+essential life. _Thus arose the initial confusion accruing from the
+employment of objective method in terms of the subjective mode_.
+
+It is my position that the fallacy involved in confusing the separate
+or objective with the confluent or subjective mode has become the very
+warp and woof of the collective mind, as it is the biological basis
+of the displacements characterizing the pathological references of
+the insane. Dealing cognitively (objectively) with our affects and
+affectively (subjectively) with our cognitions, we fail to envisage
+what is actually before us. Where there are two individuals--oneself,
+let us say, as compared with someone else--because of the dissociated
+_feeling_ content with which each regards the other, our presumably
+objective judgment rests upon a complete subjective misconception.
+It is, of course, perfectly in order that people be demarcated
+by us one from another and from ourselves by characters that are
+external and accidental, and that this discrimination prevail even
+when such distinguishing characteristics are of a mental nature. But
+despite all such accidental differences, the original, inherent,
+organic life that is the underlying essence of any two individuals is
+common and identical. However different spatially, traditionally and
+characterologically, there is between them the essential bond of an
+inherent continuity, of an organic confluence.
+
+It is interesting how the folk mind betrays its need of this underlying
+subjective unity in its effort to offset the objective tendencies of
+differentiation. In its desire to express its feeling of amity, its
+sense of mutual understanding, the habitual mind automatically employs
+the phrase, “It makes no difference.” For example, if one has been
+unintentionally thoughtless of another, he is at once put at ease with
+the reassurance that “it makes no difference”--it being obviously felt
+that difference is the essential condition against which the social
+mind must preserve itself. Similarly we say, “It is no matter” or “It
+is immaterial”--a material or objective basis of relationship being
+evidently likewise sensed as an impediment to unity. There is the same
+implication in the disparaging intimation contained in the phrase,
+“He has an object in view.” And more telling still is the coalescence
+of the two affiliated ideas of matter and disunity in the use of the
+single stem-ending employed in the words “object” and “objection,” the
+evident implication being that _object_ and _obstacle_, or _objection_,
+are subjectively indistinguishable.
+
+It seems to me that even such seemingly trivial etymological evidences
+betray the organic intolerance of differentiation within the sphere
+of the subjective life. However habituated we may have become to the
+subjective inferences of interval due to the objective report of our
+external senses, beneath these outer and accidental demarcations there
+is the persistent assertion of an underlying principle of unification
+and continuity. In our own customary dissociated feeling we lose sight
+of this completely, and, because of the confusion of modes within
+ourselves, our judgment of others as being subjectively different from
+us reaches the point of actual criticism and resentment.
+
+A child early illustrates this tendency to erroneous inference when he
+refers to inanimate objects about him--a toy or household object--a
+disposition to thwart his will. For example, he will grow angry at some
+intractable plaything and strike or abuse it in peevish retaliation.
+And it is the unfortunate habit of unwise parents--that is, of parents
+generally--to encourage the child’s delusive tendency with some such
+corroborative remark as “naughty chair” (or whatever the offending
+instrument may be) and even to carry their complicity to the extent of
+themselves inflicting punishment upon the object in question.[22]
+
+This tendency to erroneous inference in the mental sphere is the
+fallacy of an objective method of psychiatry, as it is the underlying
+misapprehension of the clinical approach of psychopathology
+generally.[23] Indeed, this misconception is responsible for many of
+the inadvertencies of reason that exist throughout our scientific
+ranks. It would seem, after all, that the people who know most are
+precisely those who suspect least. If the psychiatrist is asked what
+is dementia præcox, his answer consists merely in recounting the signs
+or symptoms “indicative” of the disorder. If he is directly confronted
+with the symptoms or indications of the disorder, he will tell you that
+they represent dementia præcox. With such a confusion in the mind of
+the psychiatrist one may well judge the confusion existing in the minds
+of people generally, and with this subjective confusion in ourselves
+one gains readily an idea of the kind of instruction which the student
+of psychiatry is now offered as a preparation for understanding the
+psychology of insanity! It does not occur to the psychopathologist to
+inquire what it is that constitutes the inherent condition whereof
+the specific symptoms as well as the generic term for them are but
+the pathological index. It does not occur to him to ask, in regard
+to this and other disease-processes, what it is that underlies the
+label as well as the appearances labelled. But unconsciously misled by
+the superficial or cognitive _aspect_ of the real disharmony, he can
+only shift uncertainly from sign to countersign. The reason is that,
+lacking a societal encompassment of mental disorders, the psychiatrist
+does not recognize that a subjective condition is to be found alone
+within himself--that the condition for which, in his unconsciousness,
+he is now seeking the objective account is accessible only within
+the subjective processes of his own unconscious, as it is accessible
+subjectively only within the unconscious of mankind at large.
+
+Because of this confusion within ourselves we fail to recognize that
+delusion is essentially of the affective mode, that its cognitive
+expression is but its secondary rationalization--a symbolic picture
+presented in lieu of the corresponding affect denied. It is this
+type of “reasoning” that is responsible for the tendency one sees
+everywhere within philosophical circles to make dark the things that
+are clear. Descartes’ dictum, “I think, therefore I am,” is the keynote
+to this cognitive fallacy. The tendency, as I said, even of us who
+are psychopathologists to evade the recognition of the element of
+unconscious replacement here--confounding cognitive form with affective
+actuality--is due, as always, to the bias of this self-same replacement
+within ourselves. Being social participants in the transposition of
+affect that is the societal neurosis, it cannot be otherwise. Hence
+this confusion between our perceptual and our affective modes is
+throughout a basic one, and as it is general in its origin it is
+necessarily general in its results.
+
+We commonly accept the assumption that mysticism is an emanation of the
+Hindoo consciousness, when in point of fact the Hindoo consciousness
+is an emanation of mysticism. In truth, mysticism is a replacement
+that is not more endemic to India than to England or to America. For
+in mysticism there is expressed merely this underlying fallacy of
+reference that is habitual to unconsciousness generally. Mysticism
+is thus as symptomatic of our matter-of-fact normality as of the
+most occult form of transcendentalism. Psychologically, the normal
+mind is synonymous with the mystical mind. Such a replacement is,
+then, no isolated eventuality signalized in some sporadic neurosis or
+psychosis but, by reason of its ethnic scope, it underlies no less the
+genial illusion of the collective social mind presented in the form
+of amalgamated unconsciousness habitually disguised under the social
+symptomatology of our so-called “normality.” Because of the automatic
+and unconscious transposition of modes that characterizes our mental
+processes at their present stage of development, the situation is one
+that obtains among us all. In the organismic sense we are none of
+us thinking clearly because we are none of us feeling clearly. This
+fallacy of implied subjective differentiation is the whole meaning of
+unconsciousness and the basis of all delusion. I believe that it is
+upon this deep-seated fallacy of affect incident to the development in
+man of consciousness or of self-awareness that rests the foundation of
+the social as of the individual neurosis.
+
+The situation with us is indeed a serious one. Except for one’s
+faith in the ultimate triumph of the forces of integration over
+the disintegrative tendencies of our evolution, the mind could
+only despair at the contemplation of the vicious circle of mutual
+self-destructiveness in which our present attitude of unconsciousness
+involves us. As difference or discrepancy in the subjective or organic
+mode is, from the point of view of the continuity and cohesion of the
+species, self-destructive, the maintenance of such separateness entails
+for each individual a desperate loss of his sense of organic integrity.
+Under the blindness of the retroactive self-defence to which his
+erroneously assumed separateness inevitably drives him, he fights the
+more desperately to maintain his artificial individualistic oneness,
+and, the more desperately he contends, the further he defeats the
+acceptance of his true organic oneness. It is the inevitable fallacy of
+our disparate modes.
+
+Freud, then, is right when in seeking to solve the riddle of the
+neuroses he addresses himself to the personality as a whole. But
+he is wrong in positing a personal or preferential localization of
+this central personality as he does when he places this integral
+consciousness within the bounds of the separative individual.
+This is to frustrate at the outset the aim of understanding the
+processes of consciousness through succumbing oneself to the very
+mode of unconsciousness which supposedly it is one’s purpose to
+comprehend. It is an instance of one’s intentionally honest effort
+toward self-understanding failing to escape the pitfall of personal
+preference in its very outreaching toward the unprejudiced and true.
+The separative or the personal _is_ unconsciousness. Discontinuity
+and unconsciousness are conterminous. Thus we are again and again
+brought back to the impasse which is our refusal to realize that the
+individual, as a self-appointed, unconscious unit, is but a separate
+and dissociated _part_, that only as the individual accepts his place
+as an integral, confluent part in the common, societal personality does
+he become a conscious, unified _whole_.
+
+There is, then, the need to clear our vision through adopting the
+larger, more organismic viewpoint. There is the need to stand apart
+from the self and view it as the element that it is within the larger
+organism of mankind. From the organismic point of view the individual
+is as truly an element in the larger co-ordinated total comprising the
+ethnic organism of man, as the manifold cells comprising the individual
+body are elements in the larger whole constituting his individual
+organism. We have not as yet reckoned with the consolidated unity of
+this common societal entity. We have not reckoned with its organic urge
+in its influence upon human destiny. In our preoccupation with the
+dynamic or individualistic conception of the libido or of individual
+aggression, we have not reckoned with the genetic or organic urge that
+actuates the unitary race consciousness in its societal cohesion.
+
+It is commonly taught by the schoolmen that self-preservation is
+the first law of nature. I do not believe it. I believe that the
+instinct of tribal preservation is by far the dominant urge among us.
+I believe that this instinct takes precedence over the impulse of
+self-maintenance to a degree that renders individual life insignificant
+in comparison. In face of the reflex assertion of the impulse of
+race-preservation the individual is brushed heedlessly aside. A
+group of miners will without thought descend one after another into
+a gas-filled chamber to rescue a fellow-workman from death and one
+after another share the fate of their comrade. We all know countless
+instances of this rescue-impulse as a response to the organic instinct
+of race unity.[24] Nor is it confined to these more sensational
+expressions of the impulse. The scientist in his laboratory toiling
+daily with indefatigable energy, receiving usually a remuneration
+that is not adequate to his actual needs and too often without even
+the sympathetic appreciation on the part of his environment of the
+significance of his quest, as it relates to the communal need he
+would serve, expresses equally this same organic instinct of racial
+solidarity. Yet I do not lose sight of the secret unconsciousness
+and separativeness that actuate also the unconscious and adaptive
+reactions of even the most earnest and gifted of these thoughtful,
+patient investigators. I am not unaware of the delusions of competition
+and petty jealousy existing even among the ranks of the scientific
+student. I am not blinking the facts of his personal vanity, of his
+pride of place and distinction. I will not deny how like a child
+he is when, on the day of college commencement, he is afforded the
+opportunity to parade to music in cap and gown and vari-coloured
+academic emblems in order that, having assembled with his colleagues,
+he may unite in praise of an archaic deity in thanksgiving for His
+all-wise discrimination in having personally called him to the best of
+conceivable institutions in the best of conceivable lands, etc., etc.
+But, notwithstanding the obviously disparate regression observable in
+these vestiges of obsolete nursery rudiments, there is yet, extending
+beneath it all, the surge of an earnest, unifying purpose that embraces
+the confluent needs of human growth as offered in interests pursuant of
+common, social ends.
+
+It is the inherent urge actuating this common societal impulse, as
+contrasted with the narrower motives of separateness and self, that
+is envisaged in an organismic point of view. I believe that through
+this organismic outlook alone we shall come to embody the meaning of
+the neurosis in its true, impartial significance. In this conception
+we shall be in a position to view differentiation, under whatsoever
+form it manifests itself, as the fallacy of self-sufficiency, as the
+delusion of separateness that it is. Whether presented in the more
+restricted, individualistic expression of an hysterical hemiplegia,
+for example, or under the wider social aspect, let us say, of national
+militarism, we shall no longer study the mere manifest content embodied
+in the obvious symptom or signal--a focal hemiplegia or a focal
+militarism--but we shall address ourselves, in each instance, to the
+societal personality as a whole that underlies each and that comprises
+for both the organic totality of consciousness. We shall realize that
+in that totality lies the responsibility for the division among its
+elements expressed alike in both manifestations. We shall see that in
+these two seemingly widely dissimilar instances, one expressing itself
+within the individual man, the other within the nations of men, the
+situation is the same. In one, differentiation is caused by a breach
+in the neural continuity of the organism as symbolized by the inert,
+functionally disaffected segment within the individual; in the other,
+by a breach in the societal continuity of the organism represented
+in the functional anomaly of manic self-assertion and segmentation
+within the social body as symbolized in the separative reaction that
+has lately so disorganized the Western World. However different in
+outer form, in both reactions there is alike expressed an unconscious
+assertion of autocracy or the will-to-self as opposed to the confluent
+life of the organism as a whole. And it is only as we view these
+expressions, one individual, the other social, as identical reactions
+and study them in an identical spirit of interpretation, that we shall
+recognize the essential principle of our biology exemplified in them,
+namely, the inherent inviolability of the confluent life of the
+organism, both individual and societal. Only in this organismic outlook
+shall we come to understand the true significance of the neuroses in
+the sense of really encompassing the disharmony embodied in them.
+
+_It should be clearly understood that in the view of this thesis it is
+not a question of discrimination between the social and the individual,
+but between the societal and the individual societally conceived on
+the one hand and the social and the individual individualistically
+conceived on the other._
+
+From this position we have yet to encompass clearly the neurotic
+disharmony, individual or societal. We have yet to encompass in its
+real significance what is the most blatant expression of its societal
+embodiment. Because of our dissociative, individualistic outlook we
+have yet to consider the psychopathology underlying the phenomenon
+of war. We have failed to interpret its psychology in the light of
+the mental attitude that underlies and actuates it. We do not realize
+that the settlement of war is properly the concern not of politics
+but of psychiatry. Here, as elsewhere, we shrink from unearthing the
+actuality of the interred affect, preferring to preserve its image
+in the fanciful balm of our own illusions. Our horror of war is thus
+centred solely upon the façade it presents and not upon the inherent
+significance of war. Accordingly, our concern is merely to alter
+the aspect, the cognitive form, the mental picture, and, under this
+altered semblance due to our bidimensional alternation, we still retain
+the same affect submerged in the unconscious grievance of national
+separateness and antagonism. There is here the subjective fallacy of
+the transposed affect and the ancient metonymy of all unconsciousness.
+
+A conspicuous symptom of our societal pathology is the subjective
+illusion underlying the latent “belief” that diplomatic overtures
+between nations are competent to cope with the essential disharmonies
+which, from time to time, tend to issue in the social symptomatology
+of war, but which are, in reality, due to causative factors deeply
+rooted in the psychopathology of man’s societal disunity. While not
+questioning the outstanding objective advantage of such superficial
+covenants as may secure to the social confederacies of nations at least
+a temporary cessation of their outward expressions of hostility, these
+surface amenities touch in no way the essential disorder. The real
+cause lies deeper and the real remedy must penetrate deeper. For the
+delusion of difference between nations, like the delusion of difference
+between individuals, is but the objective reflection of the subjective
+differentiation existing within the nation itself--a differentiation
+that is comparable to this same objective reflection existing within
+the individual as a subjective component of the national organism.
+
+Just as the conflict underlying the neurosis of the individual is truly
+understood only through an analysis in the individual of the vicarious
+reactions that underlie it, so an understanding of the conflict
+underlying the neurosis that is societal may be attained only through
+an appreciation of the substitutive reactions of the group-mind as
+disclosed through an analysis of the group-consciousness.
+
+Seen clearly, man’s restlessness to-day is, after all, the restlessness
+of intercepted growth. The tremors we are experiencing at this moment
+throughout the political and economic world undoubtedly owe their
+impulse to the awakening of a new order of consciousness. In the
+seething undercurrent of discontent throughout the social organism at
+the present time there is seen the symptom of a repression that is no
+longer reconcilable with the growing consciousness of that organism. As
+in the individual personality a condition of repression that has become
+too long pent must inevitably break forth in an ultimate overthrow of
+reason, so in the collection of individuals comprising the societal
+organism the ultimate response to a too long sustained repression can
+issue only in a correspondingly overwhelming disruption of the social
+personality.
+
+In what has just been experienced sociologically as the World War, man
+is afforded an organic warning of the impending disintegration which
+lurks unseen beneath the surface crust of immediate and temporary
+social adaptations within the depths of his unconscious. In that
+far-sweeping manifestation there are felt the first rumblings of a
+sociological disturbance that bodes the utter destruction of our old
+order of habituations, and in that desperate expression of man’s
+social unconscious there is evident the need in which he stands of an
+earnest and far-searching self-analysis. For as overwhelming as is the
+catastrophe of the present war--and present it is--this catastrophe is
+but the detonator preceding the crash that is to come--a crash that
+has been gathering momentum within the unconscious of the race through
+centuries past and that will descend upon the world with inevitable
+fatality in the absence of a more societal and inclusive reckoning
+among us.
+
+Without the recognition of the meaning of our disaffection,
+sociological as well as personal, without a more conscious realization
+of the social involvement of our personal separateness, it will not
+be possible for the creative forces resident within the personality
+of man to come into their natural fruition. But thus to encompass
+the organic disaffection that actuates the neurosis is _to include
+it within ourselves_. Thus to realize discrepancy is to make real
+within ourselves, where they exist in all their completeness, the
+division and antagonism of the disparate consciousness, be its
+countenance individualistic or social. Such a realization--such a
+comprehension of life in its manifold unconsciousness is a subjective,
+organic experience. The process is one that entails the slow divorce
+of self from the long habituations of our narrow domesticities,
+personal, familial and national. It involves the gradual sundering
+of the artificial sophistications of self-consciousness with which
+our childhood has been enclosed and in which were early laid the
+foundations of the dissociation that has now become automatic in the
+overwhelming impetus of its social involvement. The essence, then,
+of an understanding that truly encompasses the neurosis, consists
+in the recognition of our collective unconsciousness through the
+realization of a disaffection within and among ourselves as elements of
+a dissociated body-social.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE ORGANIC SIGNIFICANCE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS
+
+
+In submitting a thesis which takes the position that the significance
+of the neurosis is its societal implication, and which lays the burden
+of its adjustment upon the societal mind at large, I fully realize
+that I am offering no welcome thought. The illusion of the separate
+self as all-sufficient and omnipotent is too obdurate not to regard
+with suspicion any attempt to dislodge it. Whatever the postulate,
+belief or argument, there lurks beneath it, in the mind of each of us,
+the unconscious determination to preserve intact the secret illusion
+of his own separateness. As long, however, as this affective fallacy
+underlies the reactions of our collective mentality, all efforts toward
+a reconstruction of society upon grounds of a more conscious and adult
+adaptation are futile. The adaptive and compensatory nature of the
+normal or collective mind occasions dissociation in all the activities
+arising out of it. With our mental outlook based upon illusion, our
+reactions are illusory. No matter how imposing in their manifest
+content, they are fundamentally spurious and undependable. For having
+been organically dissociated through the interdiction of the parent,
+normality is necessarily self-conscious and vicarious. This accounts
+for the ease with which the normal mind resorts to the replacements
+represented in mysticism. In the manifold expressions of mysticism
+the social mind finds its ulterior placations. This accounts for the
+habitual self-propitiations underlying its cherished superstitions
+and “beliefs,” and explains the whole meaning of the man-made
+immanence represented in the vicariously projected image of invincible
+omnipotence we call “God”--an image with which we childishly seek
+to ally ourselves in order to sustain our impotent separateness. Men
+are tenacious of the substitution that is their “God” in a degree far
+beyond their suspecting. It is in vain that they pretend to throw Him
+off in the mere insolence of their reactionary “disbelief.” In their
+very challenge is His sovereignty reaffirmed. For wherever there is
+dogmatism there is doubt, and beliefs that are denied are unconsciously
+not less fixed and ineradicable than beliefs that are affirmed. As
+long as there is unconsciousness so long will men be a prey to its
+tyrannical alternatives. Though they break or kiss the rod, it is upon
+them still.
+
+Man will be slow to relinquish this symbol of God popularly employed
+by him as a defence against the free, unsponsored growth of his own
+spirit. It is a symbol, as are all symbols of the unconscious, that
+has been erected by us as a protection for the disparate self against
+the confluent life of our common organism. Indeed it is precisely in
+this collective illusion that is man’s most desperate recourse. Yet,
+in our very extremity and in the very tenacity with which we cling to
+this illusion, there is to be seen, as always, a symbol for which the
+only warrant is the profound reality that underlies it. In so far as
+the organically true is denied, there inevitably ensues the vicariously
+false, and the insistence of the substituted equivalent is invariably
+the more intense in proportion to the urge of the organic need
+withheld. It is organic law.
+
+Recalling the past, it is interesting to consider how conscientiously
+we have carried the biological method of research into the various
+objective fields of scientific inquiry. Yet, in regard to the
+subjective sphere wherein our own reality resides, we have persistently
+befuddled our perceptions through an unconscious adherence to the
+childish tenets of fear and superstition, instead of studying the
+phylogenetic account of our inherent mental descent in the spirit
+of objective disinterestedness. For, unconsciously yielding
+habitual perceptions the supreme place even in the laboratories of
+consciousness, as embodied in the researches of analysis itself, we
+have continued to preserve the unconscious image of self habitually
+disguised under our personal interpretation of God. Restoring the
+form of the idol from time to time by covering the rent with a
+temporarily stouter fabric whenever the straw has appeared, we have
+continued to maintain the self-flattering programme of our vicarious
+and self-protected image-worship. Men apparently do not yet begin
+to recognize that the socially consolidated aberration constituting
+their image of God is an illusion that is identical with the
+individual expression long recognized by psychiatry under the clinical
+characterization of “ideas of reference.” Still seriously discoursing
+of the symbol called “God,” they assume that their _image_ possesses an
+actuality apart from their own imagining.
+
+More significant still, however, is the fact that psychiatry too has
+its God. Objectively defining ideas of reference in others, we have
+failed to reckon with the subjective presence of this same replacement
+within ourselves. While we psychiatrists would carefully note the
+tendency to transposed affects within the arbitrary systems of the
+insane, we have wholly missed count of this same tendency within our
+own autocratic system. Among psychiatrists the favoured Deity is
+Dementia Præcox. The symptoms, reactions and prognostications assigned
+to the image implied in this arbitrary superscription attain with us
+to a quite endless category. And such is the subtlety with which the
+insidious tendency to the vicarious (affective displacement) secretly
+insinuates itself even into the courts of the elect, that individual
+personality is again and again led into the unsuspected trap that is
+our habitual confusion of the symbol for the reality that underlies it.
+
+In truth “Dementia Præcox,” the disease, is but the symbolic
+projection of dementia præcox, the actuality, ever resident in our
+generic unconsciousness. As it is the primary state of the infant
+psyche, its rudiment is preserved in the unconscious of us all.[25]
+The understanding and acceptance of this biological substrate of
+consciousness within oneself offers the only condition of its solution.
+In this subjective course lies the whole significance of a really
+organic analysis. To hold a theoretical, objective attitude toward the
+insanities is to remain under the thrall of the social unconscious. To
+preserve our own repressions by attempting to deny this preconscious
+factor within ourselves is merely to perpetuate this regressive trend
+under its present symbolic guise. Theoretical substitution is the
+big-stick of normality of which an objective analysis is the butt-end.
+To maintain the normal, psychiatric, adaptive outlook is to be
+repressed, vicarious, theoretical. And by our attitude of aloofness we
+merely preserve in unconscious form in ourselves the symptom-complex
+we stigmatize as dementia præcox in others. But we cannot alleviate a
+mental disorder from which we stand apart. It is only as we accept the
+testimony of its rudimentary presence within our own consciousness that
+its significance in the consciousness of others may become clear.
+
+Of dementia præcox, the disease, psychiatry is in fact more a cause
+than a cure, just as mothers and doctors who habitually hold to a
+mental attitude of personal ministration and concern, however handy
+they may be in untoward emergency, are more an occasion than a remedy
+for disease in general. And so the real disorder, after all, is not
+dementia præcox but psychiatry. When the psychiatrist will have come
+to understand dementia præcox or the preconscious within himself,
+this objective figment of his own disordered consciousness will
+spontaneously vanish.
+
+To-day, the symbol of the social mind that is called “God”--the symbol
+under which man has worshipped himself so confidingly throughout the
+ages--is gradually losing its symbolic adequacy and, as is typical when
+the foothold of man’s unconscious threatens to be dislodged, he is
+hastily replacing his shattered idol with an image that bears a new,
+a subtler and a more plausible disguise. Even in schools representing
+developments of the Freudian psychology and presumably devoted to
+impartial analytic inquiry into man’s unconscious, we find this same
+unconscious self-worship shifted from the broken image of “God” to a
+merely revarnished symbol set up upon the same altar and called by
+the newer name of “Love.” Though the form is altered, the substance
+remains the same. It is again man’s self-love projected into the
+spurious objective that best lends to it the flattering security of the
+seemingly real.
+
+I do not say that there is not in life an essential unity or love. I do
+not say that there is not for man an answer to the need he feels in his
+relentless but misguided pursuit of such an underlying reality. What I
+do say is that the unity he may find is the substance whereof the unity
+he is seeking is but the shadow; that in his unconsciousness he has
+not yet begun to seek the reality that is the need of his essential,
+organic life; and that, failing the reality which resides alone in
+the confluent, unified life of our common consciousness, he has
+pursued the temporary and personal satisfactions whereof such fanciful
+image-projections as “God” and “Love” are but hysterical replacements.
+
+What is significant is the fact that, under however subtle a guise
+he may clothe it, every individual in the great confederacy of
+“normality” entertains and is actuated by some form of “belief”--a
+“belief” either in “God” or “Love” or in some other concept that is
+the emotional equivalent of these more general fabrications of our
+collective unconscious.[26] But in the image fashioned of belief
+there is seen the inevitable process of compensation vicariously
+exacted of us by virtue of our denying the fulfilment of the organic
+reality of life. The dissociated mind can of necessity observe only
+dissociatively. In its repudiation of reality it resorts perforce to
+vicarious images of reality. It is for this reason that the normal mind
+is the mystical mind. In its organic disunity it cannot be otherwise.
+Although it seek under manifold signs and symptoms to conceal the
+tell-tale of its stigma, its blight is betrayed by countless evidences
+of its dissociation from the societal or organic personality. And it
+is not in the nature of the _object_ that consists the element of
+the mystical in our human pathology but in the _mode_ in which the
+object is regarded.[27] The objects of man’s mystical devotion offer
+an infinitely varied range. They may readily be presented by a host
+of images expressing the widest discrepancy in manifest content--for
+example, one’s conception of the cosmogony, “the true artist,” a
+scientific discovery, the “error of mortal mind,” one’s exchequer,
+“to-morrow” with its ever receding illusion of postponement, or a
+cult of mental healing with texts setting forth the ultimate solution
+of life; or, on the other hand, an autogenic sexual fetish, as one’s
+body, the unreal image one causes to stand for one’s mother, a
+favourite offspring, “God,” or “the superlative woman.” Among certain
+people a very popular vehicle for the mystical mode is one’s “voice.”
+To-day, too, there are people who talk in subdued whispers of the
+spiritual virtues of raw foods and who dilate by the hour upon the
+merits of lettuce--as though it were the millennium. Then there is
+to be noted the high place in mystical sanctuaries which the family
+escutcheon occupies among its votaries. There are people extant (I
+confess I am one of them) who still tend to entertain the belief that
+a reality underlies the social concept “good family.” And--comedy of
+comedies!--such is the subtlety with which the element of the mystical
+or of vicarious self-worship evades the reality of consciousness that
+the very “sincerity” with which one comes to “relinquish” such objects
+of infantile illusion may itself actually rank among the spurious
+images of this identical category! Seriously fancying herself well
+on toward the goal of her analysis, if not quite arrived, one of my
+patients remarked to another: “I want nothing.” It was spoken very
+gently, almost imperceptibly, so in keeping was the rendering with the
+spirit of its author. But it is evident that at least she wanted to
+be regarded as _not_ wanting anything, else she would have felt no
+occasion to remark her detached state. But how exquisite the subtlety
+here! Another says: “I want to get rid of _things_, that I may be
+more free.” Getting rid of things or husbanding them may equally
+fall within the mystical or dissociated mode. As for one’s “freedom”
+there is no object, unless it be one’s “truth,” that constitutes a
+more popular idol under which to hide the mystical fetish of one’s
+secret self-worship. But whatever the vehicle, that which gives
+to it the hall-mark of the mystical is its quality of an inner,
+esoteric experience possessing an indefinable, transcendental meaning
+revealed alone to the peculiarly favoured possessor. Observe here the
+characteristic element of distinction, the factor of favouritism, the
+inseparable paranoid element of special delegation. For the object,
+after all, as every object of the unconscious, is no other than the
+self or the parent from the point of view respectively of the parent
+or the self, and our civilized world of boasted normality becomes upon
+investigation but a nursery of ungrown childhood, filled to overflowing
+with bogus Gods and goblins!
+
+As the child lost in the street anxiously scans the face of every
+passer-by in the hope of discovering the features of his mother, so
+the grown-up, who has lost the quiet continuity of his organic life
+and flounders amid a world of dissociative habituations and ulterior
+ends, eagerly searches the countenances of all whom he meets, in the
+driving urge to incarnate anew the cherished image of _his_ mother.
+The difference is that everywhere and in every one he finds her. And
+not his mother alone but his father, his brothers, his sisters, uncles
+and aunts, and with them (such is the magic of unconsciousness) the
+whole array of traditional furnishings reminiscent of his childhood’s
+scenery. For as his images are born of his fancy, his fancy may create
+them at his will. Thus the world at large is but the family at large
+and the social _genre_ but the mother.
+
+In contemplating this identification of “the world” with one’s mother
+we come to sense more intimately the real significance in normality
+of the widely featured phenomenon of suggestibility. As suggestion is
+the affirmative expression whereof repression is the negative form,
+suggestion, like repression, is but the operation upon the individual
+of the will of the consensus, of which we all, of course, are the only
+too willing dupes. For just as our succumbing to repression is the
+individual’s rejection of the consensual mind, so our succumbing to
+suggestion is the individual’s acquiescence in the consensual mind. So
+that, whether the impetus be the factor of suggestion or of repression,
+whether it be offered in the positive inducements to “good” behaviour
+or in the negative disparagements to “bad” behaviour, in either case
+one is but fancifully subjecting himself to the domination of the
+parental will in the expanded guise of the consensual unconscious.
+Contrary to popular belief, suggestion is no clinical specific; it is a
+social pandemic. The doctor does not wield it, it wields him. So that
+as suggestion and repression, or the will of normality (normality means
+“accepted rule” by the way), are but the will of the parent, it is the
+will of the parent that is really the “power” of suggestion. And as
+the influence exerted by suggestion, like the influence exerted by the
+parent, is based upon the mental precept of good and bad, suggestion
+like repression is necessarily separative in its effect. For its
+self-reflective tendency necessarily induces in us the inversion of
+self-worship. Again it is the discontinuity of the dissociative self in
+the separatism of its own unconsciously induced image.
+
+When we come to contemplate this childishness in ourselves, we are
+naturally loath to admit that all our beliefs are but make-beliefs, and
+our privately cherished convictions of certitude but the compensatory
+assumptions of mysticism and dissociation. To the man who entertains
+the inner conviction that the girl of his heart is just the one
+woman in the whole world for him, it were futile to point out his
+inconsistency by recalling an identical “belief” maintained no less
+stoutly by him a few months ago in regard to his last year’s beloved.
+It were as futile as to attempt to expound to a paranoiac, who has
+proof that he is descended from Napoleon, that he is the unconscious
+prey to unwarranted ideas of grandeur. Both of these esoterists will
+only look you blandly in the face and explain to you compassionately
+that “you just do not understand.”
+
+Truly, of the tissue of illusion is the fabric of unconsciousness,
+whether presented under the form of hysteria, mysticism or suggestion.
+All being alike dissociative, all are alike inaccessible to the
+arguments of an organic logic. And more and more it seems to me that
+when we who are psychoanalysts consider _our_ unconscious preoccupation
+with the concept, the symbolic equivalent, the theory of consciousness
+as a substitute for the daily lived actuality of man’s organic life
+in its totality, there is due the admission that psychoanalysis too,
+as it now exists among us, is itself no less an equivocation, a
+“belief,” an hysterical replacement for the common, organic confluence
+of our societal life. Indeed, precisely because of its high claim as
+representing the court of ultimate conscious appeal, psychoanalysis
+requires to be brought to book more than any other of the manifold
+dissociative reactions coming under an indictment that envisages our
+collective, social unconscious. We who are psychoanalysts talk of the
+joyous enfranchisement of consciousness and growth as compared with
+the palsying limitations of unconsciousness and regression, when all
+the while we neglect to impeach the unconsciousness of our own lives
+and the narrow interests of personalism and self that govern them.
+Because in our own normality we are ourselves so comfortably ensconced
+in the social security of the collective unconscious about us, we fail
+to recognize our own embroilment in it. And so, in the impregnable
+solidarity of mere mass supremacy, our own assumed validity passes
+unchallenged by us.
+
+To cite an example that is closest to me: I have repeatedly held
+forth to patients concerning the potential joy inherent in adult love
+regarded in the light of the unifying principle of life, as though
+I myself participated in its subjective actuality in the simple,
+undifferentiated mode of my own daily living, when in fact I was only
+unconsciously exploiting the vicarious concept or symbol or theory of
+love, such as can only stand in the way of and obstruct the organic
+significance of love in its actuality. Thus, in spite of ourselves,
+unconsciousness makes disparate elements of us all. Indeed, it may
+more truly be said “because of ourselves” rather than “in spite of
+ourselves,” for, in an organic sense, self (the separative entity) and
+disparity are synonymous.
+
+But, however serious a situation that involves a world-wide neurosis,
+we may not take it tragically. The tragedy of it, after all, is only
+the unconsciousness of it. When we shall have truly analyzed the drama
+of the unconscious which now we but enact, there can be no tragedy, for
+the fabric of tragedy is woven merely of the elements of human “fate”
+in its embodiment of the unconscious. There is the need, however, to
+view our situation thoughtfully. Consciousness, in the sense of a true
+comprehension of life, will come into its own only when we have learned
+to look upon the humiliating spectacle of our dissociated selves with
+what enforced forbearance we can temporarily command. Our present
+attitude will continue to endure until more and more the disheartening
+sense of our disparities becomes accepted by us in an outlook that,
+having grown inclusive, has become our automatic and habitual mode.
+
+Paradoxical as it may sound, consciousness has turned the heads of us
+all! As it has turned them in a direction that has been inward upon
+our own image, each of us, as a result, has built of his individual
+organism a little separate entity unto himself--an entity which in
+its organic dissociation from life as a whole is necessarily wrought
+of a spurious fibre. Developmentally man is the biological snob
+_par excellence_. Scorning the slower accretions of growth that
+can alone imbue him with true biological culture, in his effort “to
+attain” he has attempted to pass too hastily from his humble category
+of vertebrate to the more socially elevated plane of “cerebrate.”
+The result is that what he assumes to be cerebration is really but
+a fictitious brain-state that has become entirely withdrawn from
+continuity with his organic life. So that from the point of view of
+consciousness in the sense of an integral mental life--the especial
+mark whereby we claim prerogative over all other species--man is, by
+this very token, the least integrant of them all!
+
+And yet, when we think of it, our predicament is really no shame to
+us. Consciousness is, after all, a very recent asset among us. That
+we should treasure it narrowly, personally, is but the inevitable
+entail of its slow, laborious evolution. It is as if, in our societal
+separativeness, our race had grown grey before its childhood had
+begun and we were now out of breath keeping pace with ourselves. For
+it is only our separativeness that has prematurely burdened us with
+the crushing weight of self-imposed responsibilities such as are
+the concomitant toll of our hallucinated self-sufficiency. Unlike
+the adult, the spontaneous joy of children is their whole-hearted
+participation in the free, impersonal radiation of life. Unlike
+ourselves, their personal importance has not yet defeated their
+impersonal significance. As yet they do not live under the curse of
+a dogma of conduct. Theirs is no creed of behaviour that is of one
+cloth with an enforced pretence of “goodness.” Their lives are not
+a daily concession to fanciful needs of self-protection against an
+arbitrarily predicated world of “evil.” Adult vigilance, however, early
+inculcates its delusion of separateness--of a self to be defended
+against other selves--and its dissociative influence is slowly imparted
+to the confiding mind of childhood. In a world of dissociation this
+universal suggestion acts with powerful effectiveness, and the child
+of yesterday, having once been inducted into the general guild of
+secret mistrust and compensatory behaviourism and grown to parenthood,
+may be safely trusted to pass on without question the secret code of
+differentiation, self-distinction and disharmony to the offspring by
+which he is in turn succeeded.
+
+When God called Adam and took him to task for going about naked (for
+eating of “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil”), asking him
+if he felt no sense of shame, Adam’s prompt response was to betake
+himself to the bushes overcome with embarrassment. Whereas obviously
+the logical response on Adam’s part would have been: “By no means. I
+am the outcome of your own handicraft and if there is any flaw in the
+product it is not for me to feel chagrin.” As a matter of fact, Adam
+was in nowise different from the rest of us. But there he crouched,
+submissively answerable for the work of his creator and there he has
+got us all crouching ever since! God, of course, employed the familiar
+parental recourse and intimidated Adam, calling from afar to him in
+his place of hiding. As was calculated, the strategy was completely
+effective and promptly brought Adam to his knees. All of which legend
+is but the allegorical statement of the simple organic truth that shame
+has first to be artificially induced in us before it can be experienced
+by us. Division or shame having been put into us, of course we feel
+division or shame.[28]
+
+If we have become aware of ourselves and of our unprotectedness, it has
+been quite in the order of our evolution. But by the same process it is
+now high time for us to realize that there is no need of protection,
+and accordingly to come out of hiding and recognize that our fear and
+our self-protection, being alike identical with the myth of Adam’s
+indiscretion, are alike induced in us by the identical process of an
+external word of repression or command thrust in upon an essentially
+inherent and consonant mode.
+
+In the absence of our realization of this blunder into which we have
+fallen, from generation to generation we unconsciously repudiate the
+natural unity of our common life in favour of a life prompted by
+sophistication and disparity. Ourselves begotten of alien affects,
+our feelings in turn breed diverse cross-strains which can issue
+only in equally hybrid reactions. We refuse to see that the “evil,”
+alike with the “good,” is naught but the delusion of separateness
+extraneously induced in us through our artificial self-consciousness.
+This subjective division within us is the essential meaning of
+the all-pervasive bogey of our so-called incest-awe. As I see it,
+incest-awe is the organic inconsistency of this division within the
+organically indivisible sphere of man’s essential feeling. Normality
+is unconsciously under its thrall because, through its organic
+disunity, normality has unconsciously placed itself under its sentence.
+Psychically normality _is_ incestuous and hence its awe. The degree
+of its awe or guilt-revulsion is precisely the measure of its psychic
+inbreeding. The more organically unwelcome the infolding, the more
+organically outraged or neurotic the personality, and, accordingly,
+the greater the awe or feeling-conflict resultant upon our unconscious
+intimations of organic “guilt.” Our sexual self-consciousness is the
+perennial fig-leaf of early tradition foliating anew in our critical
+Twentieth Century. It is the division of the self of behaviour from
+the self of spontaneity, of the self as disparate entity from the self
+as an integral element in our common organic life that is the meaning
+of the incest-awe as of the neurosis, in its social as well as in its
+individual expression.
+
+When once we have assumed the broader organismic outlook, we shall see
+that, beyond a more extended compass of vision, there is really nothing
+of an innovation in this societal mode of envisagement. In respect to
+all systems coming under scientific observation, we have habitually
+entertained a biological conception of the relation _inter se_ of the
+elements to their aggregate that is identical with the conception
+offered in the present theme. Hitherto the area generally considered
+has merely been circumscribed within narrower limits, that is all. When
+we shall have learned to move aside from our personal involvement in
+it, we shall see presented an organic phenomenon which upon examination
+consists of a dissociation within the societal organism. We shall see
+that this dissociation involves disharmony in respect to the mental
+and social relationships of the unit-elements or individuals that
+comprise ourselves and constitute _inter se_ the larger biological
+aggregate of our common consciousness. Maintaining our impersonal
+angle of envisagement and turning to the idea of the sum of the more
+circumscribed biological aggregate constituting the individual, we see
+that this dissociation is, in reality, identical with the dissociation
+within the individual organism that manifests itself as impairment of
+harmony in respect to the physiological or functional relationships of
+the units or cells comprising _its_ ultimate elements. When we lose
+sight of our place as common elements within the organic aggregate of
+mankind--as in the absence of an encompassing organismic point of view
+we must--we tend to separate arbitrarily the biological continuity of
+the two spheres, the individual and the societal. Because of our own
+subjective involvement we fail to recognize that the societal sphere,
+in the more inclusive sense, is the aggregate whereof the individual is
+the unit, precisely as in the more circumscribed physiological view
+the body cells are the units of which the individual is himself the
+aggregate. Between the two spheres there is a progressive continuity.
+There is no interruption of the organic transition from one to the
+other. For the psychological or the societal and the functional or
+physiological are continuous.[29]
+
+It is evident that every bodily lesion consists of a _separation_ among
+the elements of the impaired part. If among the cells of the liver,
+for example, there is produced the condition of disharmony or disease
+represented by a state of inflammation, there inevitably occurs some
+partition, some breach in or interruption of their concerted function,
+or of the function of the organism as a whole. The unfailing signal
+wherewith the individual is apprised of the destructive process is the
+reaction subjectively registered as _pain_ or a sympathetic awareness
+on the part of the aggregate organism of the disordered condition of
+these elements constituting a part of itself. Such a disordered state
+or lesion being thus reported to the central system, as it were, the
+immediate response is an outcry of pain and a prompt recourse to
+remedial aids. The organism as a whole, experiencing pain, reflexly
+demands relief, for the reason that impairment of the organism in
+any of its parts is a menace to its integrity as a whole. That is to
+say, when any one of us as an aggregate experiences pain in any part
+whereof he is the whole--when he experiences some local inflammation or
+separation within the elements of a part or organ within himself, he
+promptly directs his efforts toward its alleviation. But in the organic
+whole comprising the societal aggregate whereof he, as an individual,
+is the contributive element or part, the situation, as we shall in a
+moment see, is wholly altered. As related parts or elements within the
+larger organic aggregate, it is we ourselves who are the separative
+process--the circumscribed area of inflammation.
+
+It is essential to bear in mind that the organic pathology of this
+biological lesion or separation that is the individual’s dissociation
+from the inherent continuum of his organic, racial congeners is a
+condition that is conterminous with the individual’s division or
+separation within himself. For organically there is no difference
+between himself and his congeners. Thus in respect to this societal
+lesion the individual element bears a twofold relation, an intrinsic
+and an extrinsic one. The element as an _individual_ within the
+societal organism on the one hand is the _source_ of the lesion. And
+on the other hand, as an organic _participant_ in the confluent race
+consciousness, this same element or individual _experiences_ the lesion
+as a menace to the integrity of his own organic consciousness or of his
+confluent life as a whole. The individual is thus the contained and the
+container, the stimulus and the response. Herein lies the unassuageable
+poignancy of the neurotic conflict. It is a conflict between the part
+and the whole, wherein the individual is the embodiment of both.
+Since he is unconsciously the part while inherently the whole, his
+conflict is one that is concomitantly individual and societal, for the
+individual and the societal factors are organically inseparable.
+
+Just as in a comprehensive inquiry into the structural development
+of the organism it is necessary to consider not only the biological
+characters occurring in the development of the individual but also the
+corresponding characters observable in the development of the race,
+so in an organismic study of consciousness it is necessary that we
+keep in mind the essential parallelism between its individual and its
+phyletic trends. Analogous to what we know of the facts of comparative
+biology in the structural sphere, the organic consciousness of man,
+which we see expressed ontogenetically in the essential continuity
+of the individual personality, finds its phylogenetic expression in
+the inherent continuity of the societal organism. Accordingly, as the
+miscarriage of this primary continuity of consciousness is to be seen
+in the dissociation of the single personality, so the miscarriage
+of man’s societal personality is correspondingly to be seen in the
+social dissociation of the collective unconscious. After all, the
+consciousness of the individual is but the consciousness of the race
+in miniature, and the personal dissociation within the individual is,
+therefore, only the miniature expression of the social dissociation
+within our societal consciousness. In other words, as one’s individual
+organism is a replica of the social organism, the dissociation of
+the social mind is identical with the dissociation of the individual
+mind. For, since the societal and the individual factors of evolution
+are identical in their course, the social and the personal factors
+of dissociation are also identical. Hence the dissociation that is
+personal is necessarily social; the neurosis we study in the individual
+is necessarily concomitant to a neurosis within the wider social polity.
+
+Let us now compare the difference in the subjective reaction of the
+individual according as he is himself the aggregate experiencing pain
+in any part of _his_ organism, or as he is himself a part unconsciously
+contributing to the lesion within the organism comprising our common
+societal aggregate. As central system presiding over his own
+individual organism we have seen his prompt recourse to agencies of
+relief at the least trespass upon the integrity of any organ or part
+within himself. But observe the total reversal of reaction when he
+himself, as a single individual element, is the pathological instance
+threatening the integrity of the organic aggregate that encompasses
+him as a single individual element. Mark how he struggles _in blind
+collusion with_ the disruptive process he unconsciously or separatively
+embodies. Such is precisely the behaviour of the neurotic individual
+and such is precisely the meaning of his “resistance.” For in such a
+situation he seeks recourse to every conceivable avenue of evasion and
+of symbolic disguise in order to escape the protests of pain in the
+central inherent system resident in the common societal consciousness
+and experienced by him in its continuum with his own essential life. In
+the spirit of his behaviour he is exactly comparable to an individual
+who, on succumbing to a local disease-process, would seek to stifle
+the organism’s premonitory pain in order to aid the toxic invasion
+and further its ravage within his own tissues! Such, however, in our
+unconsciousness is precisely the case with each of us. Each of us, in
+his misguided, ingrown self-interest, constituting in himself the pain
+and impairment that operate within and against the organic societal
+aggregate, contends in his self-protection not against but in favour
+of the disease-process which, from the point of view of the societal,
+organic life, is his own destruction. He seeks not its interruption but
+its continuance, not its remedy but its aggravation, precisely as the
+inflammatory process in any organ within the body seeks to maintain its
+separateness and prolong to a fatal issue the destructive process in
+the individual.
+
+It is characteristic of separateness that it fights desperately for
+its own separative ends. Separateness, being destructive, must operate
+destructively. It would even seem that this self-destructive tendency
+on the part of the isolated component is the penalty imposed by the
+societal organism to safeguard itself against the tendency--among any
+of its elements as parts--to infringe upon the integral sum of elements
+constituting the organic whole. But if the separateness of the part
+is its own destruction, concomitantly the confluence of the whole is
+its own conservation. If the neurotic regarded individually, or as the
+embodiment within himself of a societal lesion, is an expression of
+separatism and pathology, the neurotic viewed organically, or as the
+embodiment within himself of the societal continuum, is no less an
+expression of confluence and health. If, in the first instance, he is
+himself the disorder that is his own separatism and unconsciousness,
+in the second he is the integration that is his own confluence and
+consciousness. It is this constructive aspect of the neuroses of
+which we have not yet taken account and of which we may take due
+cognizance only upon the basis of a wider, organismic interpretation of
+these disorders of the personality. It is the understanding of these
+disharmonies in the light of their congeneric significance, and their
+encompassment as morbid processes operating within the separative
+individual organism to obstruct the function of the societal organism
+as a whole, that is the significance of an organismic formulation of
+the neuroses.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+ORGANIC ANALYSIS OF REPRESSION AND OF THE FACTOR OF RESISTANCE FROM THE
+SOCIETAL VIEWPOINT
+
+
+The psychic phenomenon with which Freud was confronted in the very
+inception of his work was the element of repression and its concomitant
+reflection in the objective reaction of resistance. The resolution of
+this factor of repression or resistance Freud came very early to regard
+as the essential problem of psychoanalysis. But, as we have seen,
+Freud’s conception of resistance was inevitably coloured by his own
+individualistic monocular, and in consequence it was not possible for
+him to view the neurosis of the individual in its societal implication.
+Lacking a societal basis of interpretation, he could not see that
+the resentment toward one’s fellows comprising the individual’s
+social resistance is merely the individual’s objective evasion of the
+subjective disaffection within his own essential organism. Mistaking
+the mere symbol of the individual for the inherent continuity of
+individuality, Freud could not see the biology of resistance as the
+breach it is in the individual’s continuity with life as a confluent,
+organic whole.
+
+From an organismic viewpoint, the individual’s reaction of resistance
+or his effort to project upon his fellows the pain of his subjective
+curtailment and repression only illustrates further the essential
+_sociology of the neuroses_. In the fuller light of a societal basis
+it may be seen that the mechanism of social replacement embodying
+resistance is purely symptomatic of the individual’s constraint
+toward a surface rationalization of his own inherent grievance. His
+grudge is not personal, it is societal. It is not logical, it is
+biological. Residing wholly within himself, it involves only himself.
+His tendency to _refer_ his grievance to the attitude of others is
+due to his own separative habituation and to his consequent effort to
+escape the _seeming_ isolation of his biological responsibility toward
+it. And so the problem of resistance is central, not peripheral. Like
+its close kin charity (if not its very self in the garb of religious
+sentimentalism) the relinquishment of resistance is a benison that
+begins at home. It may not be inculcated through theoretical precept
+nor through the subtlest refinement of a technique based upon a
+system of analysis, but only through our actual participation in the
+societal confluence that is its underlying biology. Our very theory
+of resistance as an impediment to life is itself a resistance. For no
+formulation of life can function as life. It is only life itself in
+its organic confluence that may abrogate the separateness that is the
+essence of resistance. Whether in the societal or in the individual
+sphere, whether in the sphere we arbitrarily designate as psychological
+(mental) or in that we call functional (physiological), the question
+of health or disease hangs solely upon the issue as to whether the
+element--cell or system--functions integrally or separatively,
+congruently or resistantly. Under the limitations of a dissociative
+reaction toward the confluent, societal organism as a whole, such
+as constitutes our present socially affective mode, the individual
+organism cannot but react disaffectedly, and hence further the
+disruptive tendencies that breed disharmony within its own life. The
+dissociated organism can function only dissociatively.
+
+If it is true of the world at large that each is against each,
+if throughout the tissue of the societal fabric every element is
+maintaining its own separateness against every other element, where
+may there be found a way to restore the condition of societal
+confluence that is the basis of man’s inherent life? Clearly, if this
+separation from the organic life takes place within the individual, its
+reconcilement must take place also within the individual. As, however,
+the individual is but a replica of every other individual--an organic
+world in miniature in the complex of sensations and emotions comprising
+his own personality--the reconcilement of the organic conflict within
+himself, or his own unification of personality as an integral part
+of the continuum uniting the whole, is also the reconcilement and
+the unification of himself with his congeners. Naturally, such a
+reconcilement cannot be the achievement of the individual as a separate
+social unit, but only of the individual as an integral element in the
+organic unit of our common life.
+
+It is just here that there needs to be unearthed the essential fallacy
+of Freud, as of us all--a fallacy that has been the inevitable outcome
+of a habit of reasoning that is inseparable from the disparate
+social unit and its dissociative mode. Precluding within himself a
+participation in the organic societal mode, it was, of course, not
+possible that Freud should take account, in any inclusive organismic
+sense, of causative elements lying within this mode. Reasoning from
+the biased premises of an unconscious separatism, he could reckon only
+with elements falling within the scope of the separative mode, that is,
+he could only reckon personally--I mean in the sense of dissociatively
+rather than integrally.
+
+In Freud’s conception of the neurosis the condition embodies a
+repression of sexuality. That is, sexuality, regarded as synonymous
+with the sexual instinct, is posited as the primary factor of which
+the attitude of repression is a subsequent issue. In other words,
+sexuality or the “libido,” as commonly understood (the separative
+will-to-self[30] in the view of the present interpretation) is in
+Freud’s formulation the basic, antecedent element, and repression
+(whatever the occasion--lack of adequate outlet perhaps or the
+inadmissible character of the sexual impulse) is the organism’s
+automatic recourse operating as a result. So that Freud assigns the
+cause of a mental disharmony to the subject’s repressed sexuality,
+and the basis of his analytic procedure has been very logically the
+endeavour to remedy the situation through an adjustment of the sexual
+life. Accordingly, it is the essence of the individualistic position
+of Freud that the neurosis is represented in life’s repression of
+sexuality; while it is the essence of the organismic attitude here
+defined that the neurosis consists in sexuality’s repression of life.
+In brief, according to the dynamic conception of Freud, the basis
+from which individual life takes its origin is represented in a
+heterogeneous substrate that is biologically discrete and “polymorph
+perverse”; whereas in the genetic conception of the present formulation
+life traces its source to a homogeneous matrix that is organically
+confluent and unitary.[31]
+
+In the light of a conception which assumed that the integrity of
+consciousness resides within the personality of the individual,
+Freud’s confusion was inevitable. Yet viewed even from the standpoint
+of the individual, the factors of repression and sexuality can be
+regarded only in the light of organic concomitants. Under whichever of
+these alternate forms of reaction it may appear, both forms are the
+inevitable extremes of the dilemma due to the conflict that has been
+artificially created within the organism. Both are the individual’s
+restless evasion and substitution following inevitably upon its
+separation from its primary organic source. Although repression and
+sexuality are organic concomitants, being simultaneous in their
+occurrence and in their efficacy equal and contrary, the factor of
+repression is dynamically the prior instance. This is true precisely in
+the sense that the pressure of my hand as I lay it upon the table is
+dynamically the prior stimulus, though the two elements involved--my
+hand and the table--are from the point of view of the respective
+pressures exerted by each, mutually coincident and equal. Considered
+in the light of individualistic consciousness (unconsciousness),
+repression with its actuation in the alternative of infantile fear
+or “goodness” and sexuality with its compensatory reaction in the
+alternative of infantile defiance or “badness” are inseparable and
+conterminous. For repression and sexuality are equally the _result_
+in the individual of the factor of organic disunity in the societal
+consciousness. There is the need to emphasize the fact that the
+reaction of sexuality as it abounds among us is currently confused with
+the basic instinct of sex. In point of fact sexuality is the direct
+antithesis of this organic expression.
+
+The vast mass of the literature of sexuality embraced under sexology,
+with its voluminous representation of man’s symbolic relation to life,
+will some day undoubtedly appear comparable in value to the equally
+formidable array of literary compilations that discourse of God and of
+man’s extraordinarily complex relationship to Him included in a no less
+voluminous theology. As articulate in form, as sympathetic in treatment
+and as logical in development as both these themes undoubtedly are,
+it will ultimately be seen, I believe, that both are equally open
+to serious criticism and both on identical grounds, namely, that
+in respect to the matter of each, there is no matter there. I mean
+literally that, in default of the objective reality of the subjects
+treated under the two discussions by their respective authors, both
+treatises are in their nature utterly spurious. In Ellis as in Calvin,
+in Freud as in Aquinas, the sexuality envisaged in one system no less
+than the divinity envisaged in the other lacks a basis of reality. Both
+are vicarious rationalizations of the collective unconscious due to the
+effort to compensate its repression of the organic integrity of our
+common, societal consciousness. The concept “God” in the one instance,
+and its counterpart, obsessive sexuality in the other, are in the
+meantime made to serve the expedience of temporary symbols.
+
+It is noteworthy that man is the only species of the animal world whose
+communal life requires for its regulation a system either of sexology
+or of theology. Concomitantly, one cannot but remark the far stronger
+co-operative instinct existing among the animals and the consequently
+incalculably greater societal solidarity of our less “conscious”
+kinsfolk as compared with our own![32]
+
+Approaching the problem of the neurosis anew from the vantage coign
+of a more inclusive, integral background, I have come to regard the
+factors of sexuality and repression as standing to each other in a
+relationship that is the exact reverse of that assumed by Freud--the
+factor of repression being from this altered viewpoint the primary
+_cause_ and sexuality the incidental _result_ entailed by it.
+
+To make clear what I mean, it is necessary to view the societal
+aggregate, with its basis in our organic consciousness, as an entity
+distinct from that of the separative individual unit with its basis
+in our dissociated unconscious. The element of repression is incident
+to the interruption of our functional participation in the unitary
+race consciousness. The separative, dissociated attitude of mind that
+precipitates the obsessive, dissociated and resistant individual is a
+development consequent upon this interruption. So that it is only as
+we come to recognize our need to include the sphere of man’s integral
+organic life that the conception of repression as a factor anterior to
+sexuality may be understood in its biological import. To this end our
+conception of the organic societal consciousness needs to acquire the
+coherency of clearer form and definition. We need to take account of
+the original, racial solidarity of man’s consciousness and to consider
+the interpenetrations of common instincts and habits that originally
+ramified throughout the undifferentiated mental tissue of our common
+species, knitting its contributing elements into a unitary, homogeneous
+organism.[33] We need to form a clearer image of the uniform,
+co-ordinated _one-mindedness_ of this primordial, “multi-cellular”
+organism that was man. In brief, we need to recognize the _individual_
+that was originally the aggregate consciousness of the race. For,
+to consider man’s phylogeny at this period of his evolution is to
+consider a unitary organism. It is to break through the prejudice of
+the separative mode of individual men and reckon immediately with the
+unified principle of consciousness as a whole, from which only later
+there diverged the separative elements represented in the dissociated
+units we ourselves now comprise, but which unified principle survives
+to-day unaltered in the common unity of our confluent societal
+personality.[34]
+
+Such is the parent organism from which we trace the course of our
+psychobiological descent. Such is the parent organism from which we
+trace as well our psychobiological dissent! For it is evident that
+at a certain stage in the growth of this nuclear, racial organism
+there must have arisen those first faint stirrings which subsequently
+entailed man’s earliest reckonings with the nebulous beginnings of
+his self-awareness. This reaction whereby mind for the first time
+grew aware of itself was thus a societal reaction. It involved the
+aggregate, not the element. Its scope was ethnic, not individual.
+It was the primal awareness of man’s organic consciousness. In our
+unconsciousness we deny the reality of this biological phylum embodied
+in our organic consciousness and underlying the processes of our
+individual mentation. For this reason we seek perforce to appease our
+organic need through the imaginary solaces of a fanciful immanence
+that is but the unconscious _symbol_ of the immanent and encompassing
+actuality of this common consciousness. In our unconsciousness we deny
+the collateral immediacy of our societal inclusiveness and for this
+reason we project the lineal image of indefinite extension composing
+man’s dream of a personal life eternal. Denying our organic unity of
+compass, we compensate in a fanciful unity of duration. Denied his
+societal participation in a communal earth, man’s need can only vent
+itself in the private illusion of a sectarian heaven. After all, life
+in its reality is immediate. Philosophy _ad infinitum_ to the contrary
+notwithstanding, there is no “time” like the present! When we can enter
+heartily into the realization of the “pseudo” quality of our mental
+unctions, we may begin to sense more closely the organic inevitableness
+of such symbolic equivalents as the generic folk-image of “God” and
+the infinite corps of His understudies, impressed one after another
+into the service of man’s inverted narcism. We may, then, realize that
+nowhere is nature’s abhorrence of a vacuum more vigorously asserted
+than in the organic intolerance of consciousness toward the voids of
+unreality. We may, then, understand how, upon the slightest suspension
+of reality in the sphere of consciousness, a symbolic surrogate will
+inevitably fill the rift with a punctuality that is automatic. This
+is reality’s ultimate test of reality. It is the unfailing standard
+of the organism in its measure of the actual. Here is truth’s organic
+criterion.
+
+In their original organic commonness, individuals were complete and
+sufficient. They were undisturbed by the separative attitude of mind
+that mars our present development with competition and dissension.
+They did not spend their days in self-interested comparison. They had
+not yet come into the conflict of a self-conscious image-worship.
+In this sense--that the mental tissue of our common species was
+then undifferentiated--the aggregate consciousness of the race was
+synonymous with the consciousness of the individual. It was an
+organically unified consciousness.
+
+Through the organic violation on the other hand, involved in the primal
+recoil of self-consciousness within this societal organism, there is to
+be traced the biological history of our mental and social disharmonies.
+Here, I believe, is to be traced the inception of man’s collective
+unconscious and the phylogeny of the societal neurosis. Under the
+authority of this long-standing and consolidated system of repression
+the individual is born, and still under its shadow he enters upon the
+course of his development as an individual. It is this organized Mafia
+of societal repression, with its enormous weight of traditional and
+conventional authority--this repression within the collective societal
+unconscious, with its ready initiation of each new subject--that is
+the causative factor in the secondary reaction which we observe in
+the individual as “repression of sexuality.” In our own unconscious
+fealty to the system about us we fail utterly to comprehend that _the
+repression which we observe in the individual is the result of a prior
+cause lying outside of the individual and that it consists of the
+repression within the collective, racial unconscious acting concertedly
+from without upon the now detached individual unit_.
+
+It is important to distinguish between the social prohibition
+operating upon the discrete element or individual as a response to
+popular covenant, and the societal prohibition that operates within
+the confluent aggregate and is coincident with our organic separation
+from man’s primary societal consciousness. The former is the result
+collectively of the latter, just as the neurotic repression is the
+result of it individually. For the societal repression is primary and
+the social reaction is a repression subsidiary to it.
+
+To understand aright the essential conception of this thesis, it is
+necessary to have clearly in mind the basis upon which it rests. This
+basis is the distinction between the element that is societal and the
+element that is social, between the factor that is sex and the factor
+that is sexuality. It should be remembered that sexuality, whether
+in its social or in its individual manifestation, is here throughout
+regarded as an egoistic and infantile expression resultant upon the
+alternatives of secret self-interest secondarily induced in the
+individual in response to this same substitution and repression in the
+mind of the consensus about him. It is here held that the neurosis is a
+condition which indicts not the individual alone but society in general
+and that it consists in the substitution of this obsessive reaction
+of sexuality for the basic and inherent instinct of sex--that sex is
+an instinct that pertains not only to mating but to the unity of our
+congeneric life which, when unintercepted, is the function confluently
+of man’s conscious and organic life.
+
+If it is true that the societal repression resident within the race
+is the factor that is the cause of the individual’s sexuality, it
+is evident that no amount of preoccupation with the individual
+factor or with the element of sexuality will avail to release a
+neurosis the source of which resides in the societal repression. The
+causative factor, then, that resides within the societal unconscious
+is the subjective factor to which the individual’s sexuality (or its
+counterpart, the individual’s repression) is the resulting objective
+response. As repression or sexuality of their nature constitute
+division, clearly they can have no place in the confluent subjective
+life. And as the neurosis is primarily a disharmony of the confluent
+subjective sphere, it is upon the continuities of this sphere alone
+that we must depend for the efficacy of an analysis that retains as its
+aim--the only logical aim of analysis--the recomposition or synthesis
+of the scattered elements of the personality into the organic unit of
+their original aggregate.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+ORGANIC ANALYSIS OF REPRESSION AND OF THE FACTOR OF RESISTANCE FROM THE
+INDIVIDUAL VIEWPOINT
+
+
+As the causative element in the neuroses is societal or subjective,
+an analysis that proceeds upon the objective tack of uncovering a
+patient’s complexes is futile. If I am objectively interested in a
+patient’s separative, dissociative expressions--in the infinite variety
+of his sexualities or infantilisms, it is traceable alone to the
+retention of this same unconscious mode within my own personality. In
+this situation the analytic procedure is such as bids fair to extend to
+an indefinite duration. But if, on the contrary, my own mode is organic
+and inclusive, my interest in the patient and my whole relationship to
+him will rest upon an organic, confluent basis. I shall be interested
+not in the dark secrets of sexuality which he may bring himself to
+divulge but in the delusion of separateness that leads him to suppose
+that my own sexuality or the desperate recourses of separatism and
+repression within myself are less dark than his own. Indeed, arguing
+merely from presumptive evidence, my absorbing interest in the subject
+of the neurosis would of itself make it a safe conjecture that my
+own reaction to the societal repression or my own sexual conflicts
+must have been by far the greater of the two. But neither is this the
+point. The point is that our sins are common because our lives are not
+common, and that the patient’s sole need is his understanding of the
+causative factor in the reaction of separation and repression of the
+collective mind as it may be realized by him in the relationship of his
+personality to my own. My sole endeavour, then, will be directed to an
+understanding on his part of the cause of his neurotic separatism or of
+the societal repression which, in dissociating him from the congeneric
+consciousness common to us both, artificially creates his illusion of
+difference between us.
+
+Lacking this realization of the societal involvement of the neurosis,
+there necessarily ensues a personal involvement in the analysis that
+invites situations which not infrequently attain to an acute crisis.
+The only remedy is the realization through one’s own analysis of one’s
+own societal disaffection. The only recourse is the complete reversal
+of one’s own pictorial or introverted habits of experience. It will
+not be easy. To accept voluntary subjection to conditions involving
+involuntary pain will not become a popular pastime. But it is the only
+way in which we may be made aware of our social involvement in the
+societal neurosis about us. It is the only way by which we may come
+to take a conscious part _in_ and not be an unconscious part _of_ the
+analysis.
+
+Never in the drama of human vicissitude has there been staged anything
+more ironical than the spectacle of an analyst’s perplexity when the
+patient, having become by implication a “cure,” fails to acquiesce
+in the principle she is now understood to illustrate. For presumably
+the time has arrived at which she (for the sake of dramatic interest
+let us say “she”) should naturally wish to withdraw from treatment.
+Unhappily, however, she entertains no such intention. On the contrary,
+in implacable defiance of analytical canons, she still stoutly
+maintains the unabated actuality of her neurosis and offers forthwith
+irrefutable vindication of her position in the sudden recrudescence
+of her incipient symptoms. In face of the undeniable testimony, the
+situation is untoward in the extreme. For at this point the patient’s
+attitude toward the analyst is such as can be only adequately expressed
+by her in the language of the poet who wrote: “All the current of my
+being sets to thee,” and in the interest of a busy practice, if to
+no other end, it is urgent that a channel be promptly provided into
+which to divert the stream! This is the real climax of the situation.
+Its tenseness is further heightened at this point by the introduction
+of that most delicate and difficult process in the technique called
+“analyzing the transference”! The fact is the transference will not
+analyze. It never does. That is the difficulty of this very delicate
+phase. At this juncture we cast frantically about for an “interest” for
+the patient, that is, an interest other than ourselves--marriage, art,
+social service, something, anything! The truth is, our analysis has
+failed of its aim, and in our extremity we are driven to seek shelter
+under the cover of a subterfuge. It is this subterfuge which consists
+in an effort toward what is called, in scientific phraseology, “the
+sublimation of the patient’s sexuality” and is the closing act of our
+little comedy. As the curtain is finally rung down (the management
+is fortunate if it drops without a hitch), it descends upon a much
+perplexed psychoanalyst. He feels distinctly that something went wrong.
+He is not certain just what it was, but knows that, whatever it was,
+the fault lay entirely with the patient. But the circumambient gods,
+as one’s fancy pictures, who from their remote recesses have witnessed
+until now with unsubdued mirth the transient episode of our unconscious
+charade, observing the wretched fate of the patient in her unanswered
+need, suddenly alter their mood from levity to grave concern as they
+thoughtfully remark one to another in their own wise way that the
+essential catastrophe, after all, is the unconscious of the analyst and
+that the real drama has but just begun.
+
+However unpalatable the admission, here is the whole crux of the
+matter. We have dealt objectively with an inherently subjective
+situation. Our approach has been cognitive, not affective. It has been
+personal, not inclusive. Again we have merely looked out, not in. Again
+it is the illusion of the organic interval, and our problem has eluded
+us in the common fallacy of objective reference.
+
+In a list of precepts for psychoanalysts (“precepts” for the
+elimination of repressions scarcely requires comment!) there is offered
+this naïve word of admonition: “Don’t forget that the neurotic’s chief
+dictum is: ‘I am not as other men are.’” But here again the analyst
+characteristically fails to recognize that such a dictum is by no means
+the private monopoly of the “neurotic.” He overlooks the fact that it
+is equally the tendency of us all and (what is of crucial importance)
+most especially of the analyst himself in the very utterance of
+his dictum. For in imputing to others this unconscious fallacy of
+self-distinction, he is in the same breath necessarily assuming the
+same distinction for himself--the distinction, namely, that he is
+himself in so far “not like other men” as to be privileged to tell
+them of the presence of this fallacy within themselves. Of course the
+analyst will say: “Well with me, you see, it is different.” But this
+is precisely what the patient says, as it is what every one says. And
+here we come once more to the heart of the matter, namely, that as the
+neurosis is societal the self-distinction underlying it is necessarily
+the particular claim of every individual within the societal body. In
+this situation the analyst inevitably regards only the disparity of
+“the other fellow,” a result which I feel to be typical of the error
+of the Freudian analysis.[35] But “who decries the loved decries the
+lover.” In the true sense--in the sense of our organic life--there is
+no other fellow. Our interpretation of his apparent differentiation
+from us is but our own projection of the differentiation within
+ourselves, just as his interpretation of our apparent differentiation
+from him is but his projection of the division within himself. It
+is this unadmitted division within each of us that has created the
+illusion of our organic separateness from one another. For this reason
+it is only as we accept the subjective task of realizing the spurious
+fabric of our own separateness and self-sufficiency that we may come to
+realize it within our patient by virtue of our inherent identification
+with him. Thus, to realize our division through participation with
+another is to pierce the delusion of our mutual separateness and
+unconsciousness and so to become mutually united again through the
+acceptance of our common organic life.
+
+Based upon the organismic conception here outlined, clearly this
+subjective recourse can be the only logical position of the analyst.
+For, in the light of this conception, the neurosis or the separate mode
+was originally induced in the immature organism through the external
+suggestion of the individual in closest contact with it operating to
+dissociate it from its primary, organic mode. In consequence, the
+dissociated consciousness thus artificially induced can be restored to
+the mode of unification and confluence only by substituting for the
+superimposed suggestive contact--the predominant social repression
+embodied in the parent--the presence of a personality whose tendency
+is preponderantly of the confluent, societal mode. It is clear that
+in this conception the analysis of a patient, in the sense of his
+realization and acceptance of life, presupposes as a rigid organic
+condition the prior analysis and acceptance of life on the part of the
+analyst. In impaling the cause of this separatism, delusionally assumed
+by the patient to reside within himself alone but in reality having its
+residence in our common social repression, the analyst’s preoccupation
+can only be with this same delusional arrogation of separateness as it
+occurs within himself. This means nothing less than that the life of
+the analyst must in its consciousness completely encompass the life of
+the analysand in its unconsciousness. This, I know, is a large demand.
+It is to realize in oneself a breadth of consciousness that embraces
+in its scope nothing less than the totality of unconsciousness in its
+entire social aspect. It is to include within oneself the collective
+unconscious or the far span of normality in all its separateness
+and sexuality. In brief, it is to open the way to a reversal of the
+unconscious situation now prevailing in which societal men encompass
+individual man, and to achieve the mode of consciousness in which
+societal man encompasses individual men.
+
+I remember a young woman journalist coming one day into my study on
+the pretext of illness but in reality to look me over. She had been
+the rounds of the New York analysts, she said, having been “analyzed”
+by first one and then another, though I doubt whether any of the able
+physicians cited by her would have dignified the interviews in any
+such terms. But while herself unconscious, indeed quite paranoid,
+she made a remark which has since seemed to me highly significant.
+She said that we psychoanalysts appear actuated by an unconscious
+attitude of antagonism toward our patients, that we seem motivated by
+a determination “to get even.” In the spirit in which it was made, the
+remark was obviously a projection and not a judgment, but I think the
+criticism is in general true--certainly it has proved true in my own
+case. For the analyst is either unconsciously pleased with the patient
+who gives him his confidence or he is unconsciously displeased at his
+withholding it. In other words, the attitude of the analyst is not
+uninfluenced by personal or egoistic predilection.[36] Here, then, is
+straightway the factor of unconsciousness, of separation and hence
+antagonism in the analyst.
+
+But if the analyst consciously senses the patient’s situation, he sees
+without bias that the patient--being of a separative, unconscious
+mode--will, and inevitably must, act in every instance from motives of
+unconsciousness. If he confides in the analyst, he does so solely in
+the hope of winning for himself the good-will of the analyst (positive
+infantile affect or suggestion); if he is silent or evasive, it is
+because he doubts the advantage to himself of sharing his confidence
+(negative infantile affect or repression). The psychoanalyst who would
+reckon consciously with a patient’s life may be moved by neither one
+nor the other manifestation. Both are outside the mode of reality.
+Both are expressions of dissociation. Neither attitude will touch
+the analyst affectively if he is truly within his own life. If,
+on the other hand, he is himself dissociated, whether normally or
+neurotically--in the collusion of the group-expression or in single
+isolation--and is ever seeking to reinstate in the present moment
+the mother-comfort of his own childhood, he will necessarily either
+receive the unconsciously motivated confidence of his patient with
+the unconscious satisfaction of self-interest (infantile egotism) or
+he will respond to his patient’s unconsciously withheld confidence
+with the no less unconscious dissatisfaction of self-interest
+defeated (infantile egotism thwarted). In one case he manifests the
+sentimentality of unconscious sympathy and approbation, in the other
+the equally sentimental reaction of unconscious resentment and hate. In
+either case it is to be partisan, separative, personal, unconscious.
+This unsuspected personalism or unconsciousness within ourselves makes
+it easier for us to condone the personalism or unconsciousness in
+another, rather than understand it. Because of the greater significance
+to us of our own personal grievance as compared with our understanding
+of the impersonal needs of life as a unitary experience, our sympathy
+is automatically enlisted on the side of the patient’s personal
+grievance. In brief, we prefer to sympathize with the suffering
+of an organism rather than with the organism that suffers. This
+characterological weakness in our analytic system renders the analyst
+an easy mark for the sentimentalizing reveries of the neurotic patient.
+It is thus a far cry from “Freud,” the psychological conception as it
+tends toward the more unitary formulation and co-ordination of the
+problem of neurotic disharmonies, to “Freud” the father-complex as it
+tends unconsciously to dominate the consciousness of patient as of
+follower.
+
+_The admission that has eventually to be made without qualifying
+reservation is that the transference upon which we have laid such
+stress as an objective scientific phenomenon is in truth a state of
+mind subjectively induced in the patient in direct response to the
+attitude of unconsciousness on the part of the analyst himself_.
+It is just here, in the dissociated attitude of analyst toward
+analysand, that there stands the inevitable impasse to the personal
+or individualistic analysis of Freud. Here is the futile revolution
+within a vicious circle that is the fallacy of its individualistic
+viewpoint. It needs to be repeated that the sexual or the personal,
+in the sense of the separative, is itself unconscious. Its primary
+source is the reaction originally induced in the organism by the
+disunity of the social unconscious as voiced by the parent. We shall be
+helped if we keep in mind that much of the confusion of psychoanalysis
+is due to the failure of psychoanalysts to realize that there is a
+distinction between the mother-image and the mother-organism. We must
+ultimately come to see that, due to the dissociative or bidimensional
+attitude on the part of the mother, the child automatically replaces
+the biological reality of the parent organism with the artificial
+_image_ of the parent[37] induced by the parental command. Following
+the investigations of the last years it has come to be my definite
+conviction that it is this element of the pictorial and statutory,
+as reflected in the parent-image, that is the real impediment to
+consciousness and the sole meaning of “unconsciousness.”
+
+The suggestive instance (image) of the parental organism, due to
+the early influence of separatism operating upon it, savours wholly
+of a repressive, non-confluent attitude. It necessarily tends,
+therefore, through the gradual inculcation of the ulterior, separative,
+behaviouristic mode, to dissociate more and more from its original
+biology, the immature organism within its range. As the neurotic
+diathesis is induced through the surface diversifications of external
+suggestion infringing upon the original consonance of the organism,
+as unconsciousness is diversity of outer aspect in contrast with
+the concentration of consciousness and personality in its inner
+confluence, the resolving of the neurotic conflict lies in recalling
+the personality from its precipitation into the manifold quests of
+external compensations to the original integrity of its essential
+unitary life. In this process of rehabilitation there is abrogated
+the ceaseless urge toward the unconscious fulfilment of the _wish_,
+through the restoration of the native impetus of life in a conscious
+fulfilment of _function_. It cannot be too strongly emphasized that
+the original incitement to the neurosis is, from an individualistic
+basis, external. This reaction within the individual to a prohibition
+acting from without constitutes the whole significance of the attitude
+of separatism, of self-seeking and of self-defence that are synonymous
+with the repressed sexuality of the neurotic personality. But there is
+the need to recognize that this same attitude is also synonymous with
+the released sexuality which is “normally” regarded at the present
+time as a true expression of life. This so-called normal expression,
+however, in its obsessive self-seeking and in its obvious kinship with
+secondary dissociative reactions, stands at the very opposite pole to
+sex as the instinct of life in its organic significance.
+
+The automatic release of the reaction of self-defence that is the
+reflex response to the irritant of organic prohibition is biologically
+significant. For with the extraneous interception of the organic
+mode or at the instance of prohibition, the individual is reflexly
+stimulated to a compensatory effort to replace this mode with the
+vicarious mode of self-defence. There is here the psychological
+concomitance between organic interdiction and organic recoil, between
+repression or curtailment of personality and sexuality or the
+retroactive impulse to individual aggression. In this connection it is
+interesting to note the etymological agreement of the ideas of defence
+and prohibition in the French word _défense_ meaning prohibition. There
+is psychological warrant for assuming that the relation between these
+two words is more innate than accidental.
+
+This psychological parallelism between repression or self-love and
+sexuality or self-defence, between the egoistic wish and the suspicion
+of interference with its fulfilment, underlies the identity of
+the phenomenon of homosexuality and that of paranoia. Students of
+psychoanalysis have tended to regard the reflections of these reactions
+as distinct manifestations, viewing them as contradictions rather than
+as concomitants, as opposites rather than as alternatives, as different
+phases of reaction rather than as different aspects of the same phase.
+Freud, for example, lays emphasis upon the factor of sexuality, giving
+it the place of dominant importance in the neurotic conflict, while
+Adler asserts that it is the factor of the individual’s egotism that
+is of central importance in the causation of the disharmony. These
+seemingly opposed views are, in reality, the same. One envisages
+the somatic, the other the psychic aspect of a condition that is
+nuclear and common. Their seeming difference is merely the inevitable
+limitation of an objective and absolute mode of approach. In either
+case it is the symbolic manifestation that is confronted. Whether
+the reaction is represented in lust of body (homosexuality) or in
+pride of mind (paranoia), in both conditions the aspect contemplated
+is again the mere symptomatic index. In each is expressed but the
+secondary response to a deeper, more encompassing factor that has its
+substrate in our common consciousness. In each it is the semblance of
+the individual personality replacing the actuality of the societal
+personality. Each is the objective resultant of a subjective impediment
+to the confluent, organic life. In both there is represented but the
+superficial aspect, one expressing itself clinically in the symbolic
+anomaly of homosexuality, the other, in the symbolic anomaly of
+paranoia.
+
+Thus far the interest of these anomalies, as far as psychoanalysts are
+concerned, has been their implication as it touches the psychopathology
+of the isolated or neurotic personality. Far more significant, however,
+is the bearing of these manifestations upon the psychobiology of the
+social organism as a whole. That these distortions of personality
+exist in a larval stage in the group-neurosis of “normality” is a
+circumstance with which the psychopathologist needs yet to reckon
+in his wider office of clinical sociologist. Naturally we have not
+yet begun to suspect the presence of these unsavoury elements,
+homosexuality and paranoia, in the unconscious of “normality,” and as
+normality enjoys the security of mutual protective agreement among its
+constituents, the existence of these unseemly maladjustments within
+its ranks will long be treated by us with stolid disavowal. It is the
+distinguishing feature of the naïve countenance of normality that it
+experiences no need of self-questioning. A delusion that has become
+socially buttressed in the mutual reciprocities of its unconscious
+adherents is indeed impregnable.
+
+Human consciousness, however, will not be understood nor a clearer,
+saner life opened to man until he has repudiated the unconscious,
+vicarious or separative as it exists in its securest, most widespread
+and most aggressive form, that is, in the _socially systematized
+delusion comprising the collective unconscious of our vaunted
+“normality.”_ For if normality, so-called, is in reality a dissociation
+existing under the protective mask of society, how can we who are
+normal or collectively dissociated comprehend dissociation in the
+neurotic personality? How can the actor be at the same time onlooker?
+How can subject and object co-exist in the selfsame content? How, in
+brief, is it possible for unawareness to envisage unawareness? Surely
+it is clear that the dreamer is of necessity partisan to his dream, and
+that the contemplation of a dream from within a dream is subversive of
+the very principle of consciousness. For knowledge being awareness _of_
+or _in regard to_, demands as its condition the two contrasting factors
+of a subject looking upon and an object looked upon. If normality is
+mere collective unconsciousness and therefore itself an artificially
+induced neurosis--if it is a condition of unconsciousness produced
+through the influence of external suggestion and therefore represents
+in itself a secondary dissociative state, how is it possible to fulfil
+the requisite condition of consciousness in respect to the two factors
+of subject and object in the matter of our consideration of the dreams
+of our patients? As my own work has in the last years come to adopt a
+more and more inclusive organismic viewpoint, I have become convinced
+that what we psychoanalysts _in our present personal and objective
+interpretation_ consider “dream-analysis,” and in regard to which we
+have taken ourselves and our patients so seriously, is utterly futile
+and invalid. I am convinced that, in the mood in which dream-analysis
+is now applied, it is itself the expression of an hysterical symptom--a
+cognitive replacement within the social unconscious comprising the
+arbitrarily assumed group-differentiation “psychoanalyst.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE DREAM AND ITS ANALYSIS IN AN ORGANISMIC INTERPRETATION OF THE
+NEUROSES
+
+
+The dream of the individual together with the individualistic
+analysis of the dream presents a most difficult and as yet untried
+field. There is here required a technique that is as elusive as it
+is unprecedented. For such a technique must include the unconscious
+complicity of the analyst in the social or image basis from which he
+analyzes. For it is only impersonally and confluently that we may
+understand what is personal and separative in another. To approach the
+dreamer’s separative attitude of repression and self-defence toward
+the elements of his dream, in an attitude of our own that is socially
+no less separative and repressed, is to invite a situation in which
+we merely exchange the dissociative symbols of the sleep state for
+analogous symbols in the waking state. It is to replace refraction
+and distortion as they occur in the individual repression, with its
+symbolic wish-fulfilment in dreams, for refraction and distortion as
+they occur in the social repression, with its symbolic wish-fulfilment
+in “beliefs.” For this reason, having come to view the unconscious in
+its waking and in its sleeping expression from the point of view of the
+common, organic mode, I have reached the conviction that the conception
+of dream-analysis as it has been entertained by us is throughout a
+misconception, that to speak at all of dream “analysis” from the
+personal or separative viewpoint is self-delusive. For our so-called
+dreams of the night are but the unaccepted realities of the day, the
+so-called realities of our day but the unaccepted dreams of the night.
+The night’s reaction is individualistic, the day’s reaction is social.
+Both are identical in their method as in their aim. Both represent the
+endeavour, through futile recourse to symbolic or “would-be” measures
+of recommunication, to adjust vicariously and upon a separative basis
+the organic outrage to life’s inherent unity. It is the self-determined
+illusion of our societal disaffection. It is the lure of the symbolic
+in its mock pursuits of the personal and separative. It is the vicious
+circle of all unconsciousness vainly rotating upon the phantom axis of
+its own unreality.
+
+In view of the repercussion of consciousness that is the essence of
+man’s unconsciousness, the attitude that will best liberate us from our
+infolding tendencies of mentation lies in a conception that regards
+unconsciousness as a self-reflexive mode throughout. Such an attitude
+will clearly demarcate our tendency toward the peripheral or social
+distribution of the mental images comprising our _mirrored_ affects
+as contrasted with the societal conservation of our _real_ affects
+in the conscious fulfilment of our common personality. As long as we
+fail to realize this generic basis we shall continue to suffer from
+the delusion of our own organic disunity, and there will necessarily
+persist the vicarious shunting of affect into the distributive
+expressions of anger, duplicity and antagonism constitutive of
+resistance. Since our affects are organically common, if we do not
+permit them expression in universal confluence, they must inevitably
+seek an expression that is scattered and random. And so we need to
+recognize that we may not adjust our affective or subjective life
+through the study of the objective mechanism of the images or dreams
+that merely reflect it, but only through the subjective (conscious)
+reabsorption within us of the displaced and socially distributed
+affects to whose suggestion the dream, by day or by night, is the
+mirrored reaction.[38]
+
+In an organismic view _differentiation is unconsciousness_. That is,
+the dissociated self or the separative element is, by reason of its
+organic anomalousness, necessarily at odds with self. For this reason
+there is inevitably entailed the universal conflict of unconsciousness,
+collective and single, that is man’s disunity, social as well as
+individualistic, “normal” as well as “neurotic.” Such is the disparity
+that is reflected in his dreams, sleeping and waking. The diversity
+of our fabrications, social and individual, is the diversity of our
+_selves_. Our complex is our complexity. In very truth “_our_ little
+life is rounded with a sleep.” We waken only to alter the form of our
+dream. Throughout the diurnal cycle the dream-state remains unbroken,
+and all efforts of analysis in our unconscious, separative mode are
+helpful only in accentuating the powerlessness of consciousness in its
+present state of differentiation. In the separative mode the elements
+of the personality are unassembled, and the result is an absence of
+organic coherence, of an essential unity such as may alone be the
+basis of a truthful inquiry into the unconscious processes of man’s
+inversion. In my own case (the only case upon which any of us may
+occupy himself profitably is one’s own) it has become clear that my
+attitude toward the night is predetermined by my attitude toward the
+day. If I have kept personal and repressed my real feeling during the
+day, the secret of my dissociation will be kept faithfully throughout
+the night, and upon waking in the morning such camouflage as will
+successfully hide my separativeness will have been already established
+by my own order prior to the waking moment.
+
+It would seem that sleep is the beneficent leveller, that mentally as
+well as physically its function is restorative, that it is the solvent
+and the dissolvent of our fancied differentiations, of our artificial,
+fear-begotten defences against one another. It would seem that it is
+for man the opportunity of organic rehabilitation, that in this period
+of withdrawal and quiescence after the restless day of self-seeking and
+antagonism there is a palliative and conciliatory process at work.[39]
+After all, diplomacy and lying are wearying in their exactions, and
+in this period marked by an absence of social pretences and of the
+strain of our separative adjustments, consciousness undoubtedly tends
+to reassert its common, primal mode with images that promote and do not
+impede organic function--joyous images, expressive of common need, of
+organic participation, of concerted, confluent function. After all, our
+dreams are but the shadows our lives cast behind them when we stand in
+the light of our own personality.
+
+It is only as we become one with this inherent personality through
+an acceptance of the unity of life in its entirety that the shadows
+comprising our dreams, sleeping and waking, may be truly resolved.
+Since our dreams of the night only tend to restore the equilibrium
+which the day has destroyed, our dreams are only in so far distorted
+as our day is distorted. In so far as the day is an evasion of the
+recognition of the infantile wish, with its corresponding entail of
+over-compensation and atonement, in so far does the dream reproduce
+again the identical wish of the day after having recourse to the
+extravagance and distortion requisite to its disguise. When in our
+day’s reactions we shall have entered upon an organic, confluent mode
+of consciousness, our dreams will be one with the organic confluence
+of the day, furthering in their harmonious imagery the quiet process
+of the day’s constructiveness. It will then be realized that sleep is
+but the day’s diastole, that just as the period of diastolic relax
+following the rhythmic contraction of the heart has a function that
+is reciprocal and harmonious in relation to the systolic impulse, so
+in the rhythmic cycle of our day its period of rest is reciprocal and
+continuous with, not contradictory and opposed to, the constructive
+function of the day’s activities. The dreams of the separative mode,
+on the other hand, only occlude and congest the avenues of our
+sleep-consciousness. These obstructive travesties effect a complete
+deadlock due to the confluent organism’s ineffectual effort to arrest
+and clarify these separative trends that are reflections even in
+sleep of the unlived, fear-ridden, organically discordant experience
+comprising the day.
+
+With our present habitually tutored day, the very approach of our
+awaking automatically prompts us to don a costume of disguise before
+we rise to move again amid the tedious maze of masked players who,
+like ourselves, have lost the reality of life’s organic meaning. As
+long as one’s feeling is thus resolutely set against the surrender of
+his artificial defences, as long as one fears to remove the mask of
+pretence covering his personality, no amount of intellectualization,
+of mental analysis, of theoretical “truths” (I have tried them all!)
+will avail to lift his repression and admit him to the simple reality
+of his common, organic feeling. It is in vain that we seek the truth.
+Truth, as it is customarily conceived, is but the theory whereof life,
+as it may be lived, is the reality. To seek the truth is again to
+pursue the phantom of our own mental imagery. For reality disappoints
+all formulation. No symbol may stand for equivalence but only for
+equivocation. The lesson the psychoanalyst has yet to learn is that
+reality has no substitutes, that no _seeming_, however plausible, may
+replace that which _is_. It is this lesson--the very lesson we presume
+to teach our patients--of which all our work is as yet but an empty
+recitation. Accordingly, no amount of intuitional or theoretical acumen
+on the part of the analyst can do other than thwart a patient’s need of
+self-realization. Such intellectualism on the part of the analyst is
+the substitution that is _his_ neurosis. Recourse to intellectuality
+is his concession to the socially current repression and substitution
+which in our collective unconsciousness we credit as normality, never
+once suspecting, in the strength of our numerical security, that
+_normality is but the collective dream-state of man’s waking life_.
+
+Because of the psychological identity between the dream that is
+our day, with its dramatization in the objective furniture of
+cubic actuality, and the dream that is our night, with its scenic
+reproduction in flat, pictorial outline, an individualistic analysis
+in the sense of an encompassing realization is of its nature precluded.
+Only as we can come to stand apart from both, and view them in their
+proper light as symbolic phenomena divorced from life, may they be
+assessed in their true relation and thus analyzed in the only sense
+that gives meaning to the term. But this is not a merely mental
+process. This is to actualize organic life in our daily experience
+with such sincerity as to realize within ourselves the spuriousness
+of our habitual, dissociated mode. It is so to include the dream
+outside the dream, constituted of the separative day with which the
+separative night is enclosed, that we shall have automatically entered
+upon the mode of self-unification which is one with a societally
+unified, confluent consciousness. The essential mark of such a mode of
+consciousness is that, in its subjective consonance, it regards with an
+equally objective clarity the vicarious processes of the day and of the
+night.
+
+Our attitude of the day is amply illustrated by our attitude toward
+our dramas. As our lives are based upon unconsciousness, our dramas as
+well as our dreams are also necessarily based upon unconsciousness.
+Since the logic of the dream is inverted, it is essential to reverse
+the dream’s unconscious motive in order to understand its fallacious
+sequences. The drama equally represents the interplay of unconscious
+motives. Based thus upon the inverse processes of unconsciousness, its
+logic is also necessarily inverse. And so in order to understand the
+drama, its motive must likewise be observed in its reverse trend. In
+other words, the drama and the dream are identical in their essential
+mechanism. When the psychopathologist is confronted with the drama of
+_actual life_--the inverse process represented in the neurosis--his
+immediate recourse should be to intercept as far as possible the
+inharmonious development of the patient’s life history and, having
+completely reversed its underlying motive in the light of conscious
+perspectives, to unravel its meaning through carefully retracing
+discoverable inadvertencies of development to their logical source.
+
+In this function the analyst’s attitude toward the human drama
+presented in the neurosis of his patient becomes identical with his
+attitude toward the dreams of his patient. One would naturally expect
+that his attitude toward the drama of the stage would be equally
+logical. But a societal analysis fails to justify this expectation. For
+such is the elusive tenacity of the seemingly actual, as it appears in
+the dissociative recourses of the social mind, that the psychoanalyst,
+too, continues to regard the bidimensional _aspect_ of life presented
+in the drama as a conscious form of art. In consequence it comes to
+pass that a train of unconsciously destructive events which he deplores
+as an expression of life in the clinic is applauded by him as an
+expression of art in the theatre. The same untoward sequences, which in
+clinical retrospect are _viewed_ with compassion, are in the process of
+their theatrical portrayal _experienced_ with delight.
+
+I do not see how such inconsistencies between our collective and our
+individual reactions to unconsciousness are separable from the present
+confusion that exists between the objective and the subjective spheres
+of consciousness. Because of this confusion, in our dissociation we
+take pleasure in participating in the dramatic representation of the
+identical processes of unconsciousness which, subsequently contemplated
+as actuality, we interpret only as pain. This inconsistency between
+our subjective and objective reactions accounts also for the many
+discrepancies in the psychiatrist’s personal attitude toward the dramas
+of the clinic and the drama within his own home. It explains how it
+happens that we, who are seemingly competent to trace an individual’s
+neurosis directly to the influences that have unconsciously surrounded
+him as a child, will yet unconsciously surround our own children with
+these selfsame influences. Surely never was the “other fellow” so
+abused and ourselves so tricked as in our psychiatric clinics when, in
+our self-conscious formulation of the occasion of his confusion, we
+deem ourselves less unconscious than he.
+
+As it is the especial métier of the unconscious to convert the actual
+into the seeming, its subtlest attainment is the conversion of what
+is most actual into what is most seeming. If of realization itself it
+may effect a semblance, it is the ultimate achievement in unconscious
+ventriloquy. If of analysis itself it may make a pseudo-analysis, it
+has secured its entrenchment through a technical recourse that is
+wellnigh impregnable. Through such a strategic manœuvre one often
+attains a quite faultless analysis of a dream, when all the while
+the realization is but seeming. As the dream is but the reflected
+image or “negative” of yesterday’s duplicities and introversions, an
+attempt to capture and “analyze” it from the retrospective standpoint
+of the replacement and introversion of the day, is but to retain
+unaltered and unalterable the unconscious embroilment of one’s
+self-delusive introversion. Yet, with the practised dexterity of our
+habitual sleight-of-hand methods of analysis, we still pursue the
+futile industry of our objective dream-trapping, idly endeavouring
+to drag the travesty of the day’s distortions embodied in the dream
+into the self-conscious analytic dissecting-room. In truth, the
+real need is that we surrender the analytic dissecting-room and all
+its paraphernalia of symbolic technique to the common reality which
+underlies it, realizing that its artificial displacements constitute
+the sole function of the dream parody. For set what snare we will, a
+dream cannot be taken alive. The chasing of dreams is like the chasing
+of rainbows. One may no more behold his _real_ self in the mirror of
+the dream than in any other reflecting surface. The image reproduced
+may be never so lifelike but it is not life. As with birds on the wing,
+so with our dreams; we cannot capture them except we destroy them. The
+attempt to do so is to repeat without end our habitual offence against
+the organic grammar of life constitutive of the double negative of all
+unconsciousness. Again it is unconsciousness within unconsciousness,
+personal preference within personal preference, unconsciousness
+_unconscious_ that is the baffling complicity in our self-dissociation.
+
+This self-involvement of the neurosis, this _unconsciousness of the
+totality of self_ makes of our individual enfoldment a wellnigh
+inscrutable situation. In such a situation the individual’s efforts
+of self-help--the recourses of personal rather than of societal
+outlooks--become comparable to the efforts of a man who would attempt
+to lift himself by his own boot-straps. This it is that comprises the
+dream within the dream of all individuation--of all separateness. Of
+course, it quite naturally seems to us, in our now differentiated
+mode, that the attainment of a position of relative inclusiveness is a
+humanly impossible task. Yet, if we are to attain to a true recognition
+of our _societal dissociation_, we may do so only through the
+acceptance of the basic actuality of our common, organic confluence.
+Such alone is the essential recourse of a fully awakened consciousness.
+
+Whether we will or no, we are thus brought back again and again to
+the essential fallacy of our day’s dreams as of our night’s--to the
+illusion of personal causation or of individual sponsorship that is
+at the heart of man’s dissociation, both neurotic and normal. In the
+presumption of his self-determined hypothesis of good and bad, of hope
+and fear, the individual is assuming unconsciously the supervision of
+the universe, and the constant endeavour of his thoughts as of his
+dreams is to keep secret the traces of his personal presumption through
+the subtle projections of the disguised image. Some call it God, some
+call it evolution, but no matter what the collective title under which
+our private prerogative is symbolized, it is in reality but the cheat
+that is the personal illusion of a central causality resident within
+ourselves.
+
+I know that in this subjective statement of the disharmony of
+consciousness there is presented a trend that is wholly unacceptable
+to the symbolic or absolute logician; but, on the other hand,
+the objective statements of the absolute logician are with equal
+validity unacceptable to the relativist. According to the objective
+logic of the mental absolutist the fact of our very existence is
+theoretically untenable. In the unconscious determinism of men’s
+personal prerogative, the postulate, as is generally known, is that
+the universe in which we have our being was either created by some
+agency existing outside itself or it was self-creative. Of the two
+alternatives either is impossible, but the vital fact remains that
+here we are! The logical untenability of a position that limits itself
+to these commonly accepted alternatives may some day offer sobering
+consideration to our unconscious absolutism. For the present there is
+grave need that our absolute or theoretical logic yield place to the
+relative logic of a more organismic point of view. In the world of
+physical phenomena prior to Einstein it was impossible for physicists
+to proceed with further creative extensions because of the limitation
+of their underlying conception. So in the sphere of human activities
+around us, as long as we continue in our present objective fixity of
+thought, it will not be possible for life to unfold because of the set
+limitations of unessential attitudes of mind that block all essential
+creative expression.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE BIOLOGICAL SUBSTRATE OF THE NEUROTIC CONFLICT IN ITS ORGANIC
+SIGNIFICANCE
+
+
+In studying the neurotic diathesis one recognizes the existence of two
+marked reaction-types more or less clearly delineated one from another
+in mood and _tempo_, though they equally sustain the same central
+_motif_. The vicarious method of dream-analysis described in the last
+chapter as having all the appearance of adequacy, when inherently it
+is invalid, is especially characteristic of one of these two types
+of personality. The two types may be distinguished by the contrast
+between their specific reactions to the original repressive incident
+occasioning the organism’s primary dissociation.
+
+I am not in sympathy, however, with the _implication_ in the
+discrimination of types demarcated as “introvert” and “extravert.”
+These terms imply, as they are meant to imply, an essential difference
+of type rather than a circumstantial difference of reaction. In general
+the extravert is rather approvingly regarded in the light of a “jolly
+good fellow,” as contrasted with the introvert whose disaffectivity,
+on the contrary, tends to be regarded with an undisguised slant.
+As if the jolly good-fellowship of the hysterical type, with all
+its aggressiveness and ebullience, were not as truly a substitutive
+alternative resultant upon repression as is the reaction of his more
+silent, ingrown confrère of the opposite type! As if the affable,
+effervescent type were not as truly “shut-out” as his psychological
+vis-à-vis is “shut-in”! Psychiatry has a great deal to say about
+the shut-in type of personality but it has nothing to say about the
+shut-out type of personality. Yet of the two the latter is by no means
+a less serious form of dissociation, and certainly it is by far the
+more widespread in its results.
+
+There are, then, two types of reaction to be discriminated. There is
+the type of individual who upon the initial stimulus to defence has
+recourse to a tactic of unconditional retreat. He simply withdraws
+_in toto_, and his attitude toward his congeners is thenceforward
+completely negative. He no longer sees nor is seen by them. They
+are so far outside his ken that their existence is not for a moment
+admitted by him. Excluded from the range of his actualities he does not
+even concede them an hypothetical status. Such is the _autocentric_
+individual. This personality is the subsequent precoid, if in his
+withdrawal he does not even so much as pretend acknowledgment of
+the external world; he is the later psychasthenic, or normal of the
+socially detached type, if he adopts the more temperate policy of a
+seeming _rapprochement_. In either case, enclosed within a system all
+his own, he lives entirely apart from the world of actuality, ruling
+alone (and of course supreme) over his self-determined cosmogony.
+
+Then there is the type of personality whose course is the exact
+opposite of that just described, the difference of reaction being due
+to the modifying conditions, “constitutional” for aught I know, that
+attend the repressive occasion. With this type of personality, due
+to the fact that the arresting instance overtakes him, as it were,
+in the open, retreat is automatically barred. He is surprised in
+the act, discovered with the goods in his possession. Detection and
+apprehension are here simultaneous. Unable to deny the actuality of the
+situation, his instinctive recourse is in the direction of a desperate
+effort to palliate the attending circumstances. Resort to an alibi
+being out of the question, he seeks to exculpate himself by adopting
+a policy of a more or less truckling servility. He would atone his
+offence by propitiating his accusers and so winning a recommendation
+of leniency. Such is the _allocentric_ type of personality. This type
+may be seen either in the so-called normal individual of the socially
+adaptive reaction or in the definitely efflorescent or hysterical
+neurotic, according respectively as he succeeds in conniving in the
+social pretence and unconsciousness about him and thus saves his
+own neck, or as he fails in his effort at social compromise--the
+process flatteringly known to-day as “sublimation.” In this event his
+failure of adaptation is due to the stronger urge within him of the
+factors that are allied with the underlying communism of his organic
+consciousness but which in his mental dissociation he is unable to
+co-ordinate with his innate experience.
+
+Viewed biologically these two types represent, as I see them, a
+functional over-emphasis _in the individual_ of the reactions
+pertaining to one or the other of the two fundamental co-ordinated
+systems underlying the biology of man’s confluent life and determining,
+when in balanced relation to one another, the integral health of the
+organism. I refer to the cerebro-spinal and the sympathetic nervous
+systems. The opposite recourses of behaviour, manifested in the two
+psychological types just cited, represent, I believe, the two extremes
+of reaction resultant upon the disturbed balance between these two
+systems coincident with the factor of repression.
+
+In the preconscious form of life[40] preserved among the animals, there
+has occurred no break between these two fundamental systems. In the
+feline series, for example, one observes the same graceful, organic
+undulations in the movements actuated by the voluntary muscles or in
+the reactions presided over by the cerebro-spinal system, as occur
+in the rhythmic and harmonious co-ordinations that characterize the
+function of the internal viscera controlled by the sympathetic ganglia.
+With man the picture is a very different one. Upon the introduction
+of suggestion or repression and their concomitant interdiction to
+his inherent feeling, there resulted an organic cleavage within his
+personality. Coincident with this artificial summons to an adaptive
+and ulterior response, the spheres of reaction corresponding to these
+two systems within the organism of man were henceforth divided.
+Affective responses within the organism’s subjective nuclear life, with
+its physiological substrate in the vasomotor and visceral reactions
+(sympathetic system), were no longer correlated with affective
+responses which, having their substrate in the nuclei of the brain and
+spinal cord (cerebro-spinal system), pertain to the objective, external
+adaptations observable in the organism’s voluntary activities. Hence,
+from this moment forward the co-ordination between the two systems
+became automatically impaired, and there could no longer be the smooth,
+uninterrupted confluence of function that originally united the two
+systems into a single co-ordinated unit.
+
+The disintegrating effect of this artificial cleavage between these
+two reciprocal systems occurs only in the constituent that marks the
+adaptive cerebral reactions or in the segment or terminal mediating
+the relationships _socially_ of the individual elements _inter
+se_. In the central or visceral system the organic unities remain
+intact. Here in the depths of man’s organic being, actuated by his
+involuntary, instinctive life, the disparity of separateness cannot
+enter. Here is unbroken continuum. Here the organism is susceptible
+to no interstitial flaw. In this central, involuntary system which is
+organically common and confluent throughout the species, the extraneous
+element of repression with its reaction in disparate, ulterior quests
+is automatically excluded, for in its native inherency the organism
+is one and indivisible. It is the peripheral portion of our organisms
+with its specialization into the external sense-organs, through which
+is mediated our recognition of objective difference or interval and
+through which occurs, as has been said, our consequent inference of
+intrinsic differentiation. In the peripheral system, therefore, the
+fallacy of separateness due to this biological fission may be enforced
+with seeming success. In a word, it is only in our social and external
+relations that the fallacy of organic differentiation works havoc in
+any positive or active sense.
+
+In this generic schema is probably represented the physiological
+substrate of the schism within the organism caused by the impact from
+without of the trauma of repression, and there is represented as well
+the basis of the resultant contrast of reaction-types in accordance as
+the repression tends more strongly toward one or the other side of the
+divided reaction.
+
+Replacing essential continuity with mere contiguity, or the unity of
+our organic life with the superficial gestures of an outer code, the
+_normal_ of the hysterical type may rub surfaces, as it were, and play
+desperately at the game of vicarious unity. We see this everywhere
+exemplified among the devotees of normality in reactions that are
+apparently confluent but that are, in reality, determined cerebrally or
+peripherally in response to the division within the unitary organism
+of man. Such are the expressions to be seen, for example, in our
+religious hobnobbings, our spurious social covenants, our ingenious
+political and economic affiliations, and in the superficial flatteries
+and connivances common to normality generally. How definitely such
+vicarious reactions are an infringement upon man’s organic life is
+readily seen in the unfailing equalization that follows swiftly upon
+them, exacting their inevitable toll in the ultimate retributive
+penalties of national and industrial wars, of social and political
+dissension and in the world-wide expression of disaffection that marks
+the social periphery of our self-plumed “civilization.”
+
+On the other hand the _neurotic_ of the hysterical type, by reason
+of the greater sensitiveness of his organism, is held within the
+grip of this organic conflict. It permits him neither to fawn nor to
+defy whole-heartedly, but because of the irreconcilable urge of this
+inner conflict it keeps him ever torn between its two extremes. As an
+expression of the allocentric reaction he lives within a system that
+is divided against itself, sensing throughout life, only intuitively,
+the unassuageable pain of his division.
+
+In direct contrast with this reaction the autocentric type lives within
+a system that is completely dissociated from the common, congeneric
+life. But, though the system is in itself uniform throughout, he
+suffers no less the affliction of his life’s incompleted cycle
+because of his organic separation from the socially reciprocal,
+peripheral system. The allocentric seeks in vain to atone to
+himself for his extradition from the co-ordinated organism in the
+spurious compensations of a peripherally (socially) separative
+system. The autocentric would annul the pain of his separation from
+the co-ordinated organism in the futile appeasements of a central
+(individual) system which, in its insulation, represents no less his
+complete dissociation from the world of actuality. The one would repair
+the organic breach within him through recourse to conciliations that
+lie exclusively within the social sphere (peripheral dissociation).
+The other would resort to reparations, which, being wholly enclosed
+within the _ego_, embody exclusively the individual factor (central
+dissociation). In brief, the allocentric sees himself as _picture_
+in the world outside of him. The autocentric sees the world outside
+of him as picture _within_ himself. If the conduct of the latter
+personifies the smoke-screen, the conduct of the former is typical of
+the red-herring!
+
+Here again we witness the vacillations between the social consensus and
+our personal resistance to its behests, between the opposed factors of
+suggestion and of repression, of personal advantage and of personal
+disadvantage, due to our unconscious alternatives of good and bad. In
+the disorganization pertaining to these two reciprocally dissociated
+spheres--the cerebral and the visceral--our unconsciousness consists,
+in either case, in the individual’s inability to realize a unification
+of personality comprised of the balanced inclusion of the two through
+the co-ordination of the organic and the conscious spheres of his
+experience.
+
+It is my view that in the phenomena of repression or of sexuality
+artificial symbols are substituted for the natural gestures represented
+in the innate feelings of life and sex. In substituting the manifold
+symbols of expression for the natural gestures of spontaneous feeling,
+there is manifested a dissociation of the consciousness of man of which
+the union of his nuclear and peripheral fields of feeling (affectivity)
+is the biological basis. Just as the gesture is the motor expression of
+its concomitant sensory reaction, so is the symbol the motor expression
+of the sensory _repression_ concomitant to it. As the gesture is
+the organic accompaniment of reality, the symbol is the vicarious
+barrier against reality. We find the sponsorship for the symbol in
+unconsciousness or in a mode that is personal, systematized, repressed,
+while the gesture has its sponsorship in a mode of consciousness or in
+a confluence of feeling that is impersonal, societal, organic.
+
+If one may speak of ethnic modes, it may be said that in what is called
+the period of Greek thought--with its preference for form to substance,
+for “the good” conceived rather as beauty than as truth, for life felt
+more in its outward line than in its inner meaning--there is ethnically
+reflected the allocentric or peripheral type of reaction. A close
+sympathy with all that pertains to this early period of Greek culture
+is certainly characteristic of the strongly marked types of this
+reaction.
+
+On the other hand, the era of Christ and of the psychasthenic reaction
+of Christianity, with its lugubrious reversal of the Greek _motif_,
+is a mode one finds pre-eminently adapted to the autocentric type
+of character, with its apotheosis of the symbols of love, of truth
+and of the spirit. Said Christ: “The spirit is more than flesh,”
+thus controverting the tendency of the Greek ideal, and an ascetic
+Christianity has flocked to him. But in the eidolon of Greek as of
+Christian there is offered again but the symbol. In the organic
+incompleteness of each there is presented only the inadequacy of the
+letter, of that which serves as a sign. In the first it is form,
+colour, substance; in the second it is the word, the concept, the
+spirit. To-day there are not wanting indications that there awaits
+man a period that is confluent of the two in which these symbolic or
+separative racial modes shall become absorbed in a unification of word
+and of substance. This moment of man’s organic realization within
+himself of the integrity of life in its totality will usher in a
+sociological renascence when man’s life will embody a mode in which the
+spirit _is_ flesh.[41]
+
+The contrasting systems here denoted as allocentric and autocentric,
+corresponding to the contrast between the cerebral, peripheral or
+social mode of reaction on the one hand and the visceral, central
+or nuclear reaction-type on the other, merely mark anew a very old
+and commonly recognized division. Here in this more physiological
+envisagement of it there is offered merely a different conceptual
+basis. There is an analogous division in the experimental
+psychologists’ discrimination between motor and sensory. Doubtless also
+in the contrast more rhetorically defined as romantic and classical
+there is contemplated the same division of types, not to mention
+the contrasted reaction-types popularly known as temperamental and
+phlegmatic.[42]
+
+It is needful to remember that the allocentric type of individual
+is, within the peripheral division of his cerebro-social system, as
+truly self-centred as is the autocentric type within the central,
+visceral division of his sympathetic system. The difference is that
+the allocentric embodies dissociation in his seeming adaptation toward
+the social dream that is his day, and the autocentric in his seeming
+adaptation toward the individual dream that is his night. Every
+psychiatrist is familiar with the facility with which the dementia
+præcox patient may analyze his own dreams. But what avails his
+facility? He is by very virtue of it not less but rather more shut in,
+for his “analysis” is but the trick through which he subtly evades the
+social demands existing outside his own centrally dissociated mode. At
+all times he holds the stage of his self-determined drama, viewing the
+spectacle of it not as onlooker but as producer. What he permits you
+to see is but a play within a play, conceived and enacted within the
+theatre of his own mind. And so in the autocentric type embodied in
+the psychasthenic personality--the reaction of the type of normal or
+neurotic that is related to the precoid in its extreme expression--one
+may be led quite far from the touchstone of reality by reason of the
+very simplicity and quite genuine correctness of his “analysis.” And
+so no less with the allocentric type and the equally plausible decoys
+of _his_ illusory system. What is needed is our realization that in
+the projections of one as in the _intrajections_ of the other there
+is equally embodied the identical purpose of self-withdrawal from the
+common medium of reality.
+
+Most significant of all is the need that the psychoanalyst realize,
+on the one hand, the peripherally determined tendencies of his own
+socially compensative reactions or of his own allocentric normality,
+and, on the other, the centrally biased trends of his own insularly
+compensative adjustments or of his own autocentric adaptation. Failing
+to accept, through his own analysis, the possibility of the completely
+theatrical or symbolic nature of the so-called actualities of his own
+day as they tend to be expressed in the immediate moment at hand, he
+may himself easily succumb to the fallacy of a too ready credence
+(analyst’s wish-fulfilment) in judging the validity of a patient’s
+presumable self-envisagement. This unconscious alternative which we
+trace again and again throughout the varying manifestations of the
+mind of man, whether in its single or in its collective expression,
+whether in the immediate reaction of the individual or in the remoter
+adaptations of the race mind, is equally the unconscious actuation
+underlying the system of psychoanalysis.
+
+It would seem to mark some strange miscarriage in our sociological
+progress that a dualistic system, such as psychoanalysis, should have
+arisen as an emanation of Jewish thought, when one considers the
+essentially monotheistic tradition of the Hebrew consciousness. In this
+sense the sociological reaction of the Hebrew mind manifested in the
+dualistic principle of Freud, as exemplified in his basic theory of
+psychic ambivalence, would seem to denote some inadvertence in racial
+perception. Monotheism with its principle of a universal immanence
+of good is clearly a sublimation of the unitary preconscious mode
+(autocentric), just as the dualistic theism of the Gentiles, with its
+basis in the alternatives of good and evil, is the sublimation of an
+irreconcilable unconscious mode (allocentric). May it not be that
+unconsciously psychoanalysis is a Semitic repudiation of the basal law
+of Moses and of its preconscious principle of an underlying unity,
+precisely as Christianity is an unconscious repudiation of the same
+unitary precept as exemplified preconsciously in the teachings of
+Christ? May it not be, too, that these unconscious alternatives now
+actuating the dualistic systems of Jew and Gentile will ultimately
+resolve themselves into an organic monism of accord which, in the
+societal encompassment of each, will become equally understanding and
+inclusive through the united consciousness of both?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN SEXUALITY AND SEX IN RELATION TO UNIFICATION
+AND ORGANIC MATING
+
+
+In the impatience of the industrial laboratory to meet the public
+need, it happens not infrequently that, through an omission of
+adequate qualitative tests due to the unusual haste of production,
+an inferior grade of material is distributed such as would not have
+been produced under more temperate circumstances. The time has come to
+acknowledge that through a like inadvertence many of the products of
+psychoanalysis are seriously open to criticism upon the same grounds.
+Owing to overhasty construction and to a lack of requisite tests of
+their genuineness, an appreciable deficiency has occurred in the
+quality of the material produced. Due to this occasion psychoanalysis
+is answerable for engendering in the public mind certain conceptions
+which are utterly without a basis in fact. Coupled with this want of
+moderation, certain publicity experts have disseminated a wide range
+of literature embodying a mass of disastrous misapprehension. In mere
+zeal for a market they have circulated it broadcast amid all manner
+of suggestible, because unconscious, individuals and communities.
+Unconscious doctrines, however, cannot be promulgated except from
+unconscious sources. When psychoanalysis has achieved a sufficiently
+impersonal and far-reaching outlook to apply to itself in reality
+the same tests which it is now applying to others in theory, it
+will realize the need of recalling, as far as is possible, the many
+conceptual products of its overhasty output and of offering instead a
+more scientifically controlled and a more adequately tested summation
+of views such as are suited to serve as an ultimate interpretation of
+human consciousness.[43]
+
+There is a characterological aspect of human consciousness which
+psychoanalysis has yet to consider. By character I do not mean the
+habituations of personal bigotry. I have in mind a characterology
+that is racial and that furthers the conscious integrations of man
+as expressive of his societal life as a whole. Thus far, instead of
+regarding the personality of man as a societal aggregate assembled of
+the elements comprising individual men, psychoanalysis has tended to
+create artificial divisions within this organic unity. Unconsciously
+influenced by a division based upon the bias of its own arbitrary
+alternatives, psychoanalysis has assumed contrasts of behaviour which
+completely lack the foundations of an organismic inclusiveness.
+
+Perhaps the most unwarranted of such conceptual contrasts, because
+most harmful and far-reaching in the confusion it entails, is the
+artificial discrimination connoted under the terms homosexuality
+and heterosexuality. From an organismic viewpoint the alternatives
+presupposed in such a distinction are traceable alone to the
+unconscious ambivalence within the psychoanalytic system itself. From
+an inclusive position it will be seen that in the systematization
+underlying the contrasting concepts homo- and heterosexuality, the
+psychoanalyst himself has fallen a prey to the contrasting images of
+hope and fear, “good” and “bad,” underlying the alternatives of his own
+absolute system.
+
+In a situation that is organically false, an organically false reaction
+is the inevitable response. As long as sentimentality--the unconscious
+projection of the flattering likeness of one’s own ego--dominates,
+as now, all clinical procedure, the tendency to inversion or
+image-substitution that underlies the psychoanalytic system itself will
+necessarily render what is now the purely fanciful isolation of the
+so-called homosexual complex inaccessible to consciousness.
+
+It is the tacit assumption among psychoanalysts as among sexologists
+generally that the condition described by Freud as unconscious
+“homosexuality” deserves recognition as a true biological phenomenon,
+and accordingly they tend to concede it place in the social scheme.
+Since the analytic approach is not societal, the analyst necessarily
+gives to the homosexual inversion a position that is positive and
+static. Whether the case is regarded as “curable” or “incurable” it
+is customarily treated as an objective disease-entity. Many instances
+of so-called “analysis” that I have known have consisted in nothing
+else than overcoming through suggestion (consensual assurance) a
+patient’s social resistance to this type of adaptation, notwithstanding
+that to this end there were pressed into clinical service the
+external adjustments of active heterosexuality. This conception is as
+unfortunate as it is unnecessary. The adaptation of the homosexual
+disorientation within the societal consciousness is organically as
+impossible as is the adaptation of the disorientations of paranoia in
+the organically societal aggregate. “Normally” the adaptation of both
+phases of inversion are a commonplace, but that it is so is but an
+added commentary on normality and its collective unconsciousness.
+
+That the natural expression of sex is the union between man and woman
+is indisputable. The concomitance between the sex of man and the sex of
+woman is self-evident. Being organic, this reproductive convergence of
+the male and female of a species is a process that occurs spontaneously
+and without intervention. No dissertation is required to establish
+this view. There is, however, the need to set forth clearly a factor
+entering into human behaviour that is not spontaneous and to render
+conscious the conditions now obtaining unconsciously among us through
+the artificial intervention of this extraneous factor. When we spoke
+of the reactions of the child to the early influences of inducement
+and prohibition (suggestion and repression) corresponding respectively
+to the mental images of good and bad, we saw that “good” coincides
+with the individual’s personal advantage as reflected in the social
+approval about him, and that “bad” represents his personal disadvantage
+as likewise reflected in his social surroundings. In the presumptive
+absolute of our arbitrary images of good and bad, the system of
+behaviour thus unconsciously begotten in us assumes sponsorship even of
+the primary and organic instinct of mating. Not even this fundamental
+impulse of our human behaviour is safe from the infringements of our
+self-reflective alternatives of good and bad with their attendant
+measures of individual advantage. Accordingly, the organic and inherent
+impulse of mating is henceforward seen from the point of view of
+personal self-interest. A common, societal instinct of reproduction
+experiences thus the inversion of a secret, personal aim.
+
+This secret element of personal advantage and acquisitiveness that has
+come to mar the free and natural expression of man’s mating impulse
+is fully attested in the covert self-consciousness that characterizes
+his “in-love” attitude. In the alternative attitude of good and bad
+that necessarily limits him to the issues of advantage or disadvantage
+for himself, man no longer approaches the essentially unitary instinct
+of love with unity in himself. Either there is the response in the
+individual that is “good” in that it concedes the social exaction
+(positive suggestion of self-advantage), or the response that is
+“bad” in that it repudiates the social consensus (negative suggestion
+of self-disadvantage, i.e., repression). In the first instance the
+individual accepts the alternative of the socially approved adaptation
+of heterosexuality, in the second the individual’s reaction issues in
+the alternative of the socially repudiated adaptation of homosexuality.
+In either alternative the factor of psychic inversion and self-interest
+is equally decisive. In the first it is presented in the form that is
+the individual’s response to the consensual suggestion, in the second
+it is presented in the form that is his response to the consensual
+repression. What is significant is the fact that, as each type of
+response is an alternation on the basis of the social suggestion or the
+social repression answering, in the first instance, to the desire of
+personal gain or approval and, in the second, to the fear of personal
+loss or disfavour, both types of response, in returning upon self and
+self-interest for their satisfaction, are equally _ego-sexual_.
+
+As is universally the case with reactions based on the unconscious
+contrasts of good and bad, in the choice of either alternative there
+are preserved the elements actuating both. In the heterosexual
+alternative there is the unconscious presence of the homosexual
+component, in the homosexual alternative there is the unconscious
+presence of the heterosexual component. The reason is that the
+underlying factor that equally determines each of these seemingly
+opposed reactions is the deeper unconscious inversion of man’s
+ego-sexuality with its inevitable alternatives of self-advantage based
+upon our artificial differentiations of good and bad.
+
+The conclusion is unavoidable that we shall have to reconstruct
+entirely our conception of the interrelationship of man and woman
+in respect to the instinct of sex. As has been said before, hetero-
+and homosexuality are purely fictitious discriminations. Like the
+distinctions presumably expressed by the conception extravert and
+introvert, they embody no discrimination _in kind_ whatever, but are
+terms for the alternative aspects of one and the same thing. As the
+concept connoted by these terms may with advantage be replaced by the
+concept connoted by the terms allocentric and autocentric, so the
+concept expressed by the terms heterosexuality and homosexuality may
+with propriety give way to a concept such as we may correspondingly
+express by the terms _allosexual_ and _autosexual_--terms which do not
+indicate a difference of content between two reactions but merely an
+alternation of aspect in one and the same reaction. With a view, then,
+to what I feel will afford a clearer and more encompassing outlook
+upon the problems of our human adjustment, both individual and social,
+I shall, wherever convenient, dispense with the term “homosexuality,”
+because of the needlessly misleading stigma it imposes upon the
+individual, and use instead of _homosexual_ the term _autosexual_;
+correspondingly, instead of the term _heterosexual_, with its equally
+misleading social implication of “right” comportment, the expression
+_allosexual_ will be used, it being understood that by these contrasts
+I mean the dual alternations of self-love due to man’s unconscious
+repudiation of the organic instinct of sex in favour of the personal
+inversions of sexuality.
+
+Sexuality is the _effort_ of conjunction of peripheral and visceral
+spheres, but because of the interposition of the personal or
+self-reflexive element, with its necessarily inverse aim, there results
+on the one hand (socially) the mere apposition of periphery with
+periphery, entailing an inverse erotism or autosexuality in the form
+of narcism (self-reflection), or unconscious homosexuality proper;
+and on the other (centrally) the mere (psychic) enfolding of visceral
+with visceral, entailing an inverse erotism in the form of autoerotism
+or ego-sexuality proper. Sex, on the contrary, is the spontaneous,
+effortless and non-personal conjugation of the organismic poles
+comprising male and female. This distinction between sexuality and sex
+explains the ulterior quality of a sophisticated and self-conscious
+“in-love” state representing _contrast_, in replacement for the
+organismic love-state representing _identification_. Hence sexuality is
+but the temporary self-appeasement of a reciprocal adjustment, whereas
+sex is the permanent self-realization of a mutual co-ordination.[44]
+
+A consideration that cannot fail to be of interest to the psychoanalyst
+is the obviously complementary relation of the two types, the
+allocentric and the autocentric, in respect to one another, and its
+undoubted significance as regards the instinct of mating among the more
+conscious personalities such as we should expect to follow the unifying
+process of analysis. The marked unconscious affinities observable
+between the two types I take to be a fact of general recognition
+among psychoanalysts if not among the laity itself. But unconscious
+affinities, being infantile or adaptive in character, are obviously
+attachments of an ego-sexual nature. It is an organic corollary,
+however, which in its social implication is unconsciously blinked by
+psychopathologists, that an individual who is infantile or unweaned
+or ego-sexual is in his objective sexual interest also _de facto_
+ego-sexual--ego-sexuality here being nothing else than the extension
+of the ego-sexual or autoerotic mode into the sexual objective of
+another individual. If, as would appear, normality is the expression of
+the unweaned and unconscious mode of society generally, it is not to
+be wondered at that the admission of this fact has been so generally
+suppressed, since there follows logically the distasteful conclusion
+that, unconsciously, normality or society in general, which includes us
+all, is ego-sexually constellated.
+
+Accustomed as we are to think so much more readily in objective than in
+subjective terms, the conception of ego-sexuality as the determinant of
+the relationship between persons of the opposite sex, or the conception
+of our supposedly “normal” or “heterosexual” society as being in
+essence ego-sexual, has not yet entered the analytic consciousness, nor
+is it likely to do so without a violent storm of social protest and
+“resistance.” But the typical expression of sexual union, as it exists
+among “normals,” is redolent of this inverted bias. The folk-reaction
+of the social mind represented in the custom of marriage, if clearly
+confronted, reveals throughout the unmistakable signs of this
+alternative. If we note carefully the countenance of this social
+reaction, we cannot fail to observe that its instigation is based upon
+the mutual desire to mollify, to “please.”
+
+Hence, marriage is for the most part a process of mutual adjustment
+of the ego-sexual claims upon one another of the two parties
+involved. After all, the “oneness” of marriage is an achievement
+due to the pooling of the private unconscious of the two parties to
+the arrangement. It is the permanent coalition of the unconscious
+of both, collectively, with a view to the temporary guarantees of
+each, severally. For marriage is an arrangement in accordance with
+the terms of which each party to the covenant secretly withdraws
+from his organic place as a societal element, in exchange for his
+fanciful sovereignty as a circumscribed domestic aggregate! That
+is, in marriage two unconscious elements have merged into a single
+unconscious entity. Through the self-reflection one achieves in his
+unconscious mate, through the self-reduplication he achieves in his
+unconsciously begotten offspring, one’s family is again but the
+unconscious of the individual freshly reinforced through a subtle
+recourse to symbolic replacement. It is the substitution of the single,
+self-limited social group for the all-inclusive, organic consonance
+of the societal aggregate. Thus the social cluster comprising the
+family is but the _symbol_ of the societal unity comprising one’s own
+confluent life. The transaction is, in reality, nothing else than the
+unconscious reinstatement of the early childish mode of separateness,
+fear and dependence, such as actuated the mental bias of one’s own
+domestic traditions. In the marriage and homemaking of each of us
+there is but the unconscious transmission of the marriage and home
+of our parents.[45] For as the child is nurtured amid a codified
+system of opinionativeness, this self-reflective (suggestive) habit
+about him engenders a self-reflective habit within him. Having early
+formed an image of himself in the social reflection with which he is
+surrounded, he begins early to examine his own reactions from the
+sector of this habitual self-reflection. It is in this reflection of
+the self that consists the repercussion of consciousness constitutive
+of self-consciousness or the manifestation we unconsciously personify
+as _behaviour_--an off-hand term for a reaction which we have not yet
+begun half adequately to analyze.
+
+As self-consciousness is of its nature personal and adaptive, it
+does not lend itself to analysis on the static basis of a merely
+adaptive and personal premise. Its true analysis is the realization
+on an inclusive basis of a genetic and relativistic principle of
+consciousness. In the mere match-making of our pictorial affects, human
+relationship has become throughout artificial. It is this private
+impersonation of affects which we have substituted for the common
+unity of our real affects. In this mutual comparison of reflected
+impressions our relation to one another becomes a superficial and
+meaningless balancing of one affect against another. This artificial
+substitutive quality has entered even into the expression of man’s
+mating and reproductive impulse, and it is blindly venting itself
+to-day in the merely mutual attritions of our so-called sexual life.
+But this suggestive, substitutive image-systematization of sexuality
+is the direct antithesis to the unification and spontaneity of sex.
+Where there is unity of spirit, the symbol of unity expressed in
+bodily congress assumes a totally different significance. Sexuality is
+the mere apposition of bodies in place of a unity of spirit. In this
+apposition of the personal is the very abrogation of personality. It
+is the mark of sexuality that it is autocratic and exclusive; it is
+the mark of sex that it is relative and inclusive. This bidimension or
+image-substitution of sexuality is the psychological mechanism of our
+sexual resistances. For resistances, after all, are but the irksome
+oppression of our habitually enforced adjacencies. For this reason
+marriage is habituative, suggestive, inverted.
+
+Wherever conditions require the isolation together of any two normal
+individuals though of the same sex, over a protracted period, there
+appear very unexpected phenomena in the mental reactions of the two
+with respect to one another. These reactions may be noted not only
+where their isolation is due to the accidents of circumstance, but also
+where it is due to voluntary withdrawal from habitual associations
+in the mutual interest of a common pursuit. The observation is
+noteworthy that, in such instances, the dreams of each individual show
+a persistently autosexual trend whose invariable object is the other,
+while, on the other hand, the fancies of their days’ dreams disclose a
+no less persistent criticism and repugnance on the part of each toward
+the other. It is the more interesting that this identical ego-sexual
+reaction (secret antagonism) is found also in two persons of unlike
+sex under the mental conditions of isolation involved in the mutual
+pursuance of self-interests represented in the bilateral attitude of
+marriage.
+
+It is not inevitable that marriage should be the expression of
+inversion we make of it at present. Marriage is inverted or ego-centred
+not because of an organic necessity but because, in its mistakenness of
+form or its violation of the organic inherencies, marriage, like all
+mere external forms, is not biological but symbolic. In the present
+stage of society’s arrested growth marriage is not the outcome of a
+mode of societal confluence but of a mode of personal preference.
+It is the unconscious enforcement of a self-predicated want, not
+the conscious acceptance of an organically determined need. When I
+speak of marriage, I have not in mind the permanent union of man and
+woman that is biological and true and that is the natural basis of
+our human society. I refer to the _mental attitude_ toward marriage
+that we have come to substitute unconsciously for marriage itself. In
+place of the bipolar position of man and woman, we have substituted
+the bidimensional attitude of male and female. Because of this mental
+attitude of “marriage,” people whose lives might be mutually necessary
+become, on the contrary, merely inevitable to one another. It is again
+our paramount image of self with its resultant reflection in the
+bidimensional picture. But whatever is pictorial is personal, whatever
+is personal is factional, and wherever there lurks the unconscious
+element of the factional or separative, union is organically
+interdicted.
+
+Glancing even superficially at the obvious aim toward the mutual
+exchange of egoistic satisfactions and at the give-and-take of
+superficial coquetries and accommodations generally characterizing
+the marriage relationship, there is ample evidence of the completely
+infantile, undeveloped, ego-sexual nature of the motives determining
+such unions. If one considers the large number of women who are
+supported by men in the capacity of sexual partners, and observes their
+obsessive self-ornamentation, their voluptuous exaggerations of dress
+and manner, their liberal use of perfume and cosmetics with which to
+enhance their personal appeal, and considers correspondingly the large
+sums of money contributed annually by their votaries in maintenance
+of such sexual commodities, the ego-sexual character of such mutual
+arrangements is not far to seek.
+
+In contrast with this state of affairs in the sexual life of “normals,”
+it has for some time interested me to observe the unconscious
+autosexuality invariably presented by neurotic individuals. The
+unconscious character of it, whether latent or actual, always manifests
+itself in a privately repressed, unsatisfactory form or in a form
+that invariably entails conflict. It has long seemed to me that this
+repressed and tormenting expression of the tendency to the enfolded
+satisfactions of autosexuality, or to the unconscious extension of
+one’s ego-sexuality to others of one’s own sex, is but the aim of
+the personality toward an organic unification deflected into the
+symbolic form represented in _bodily_ identification or in objective
+likeness.[46] It has further seemed to me that such a symbolically
+distorted urge, if converted into its true meaning, would issue in
+an organic identification representing a completer, more conscious
+order of union. I am not unmindful that in the fixity of our own
+symbolic substitutions our tendency is to make such organic conceptions
+needlessly difficult of assimilation. In a paper read before a
+psychoanalytic meeting several years ago[47] I gave expression to this
+same view, and my meaning was so completely misconceived that I was
+actually quoted subsequently as having said that I considered neurotic
+autosexuality (I then suggested the use of the term homo-phyllism)
+to embody a “higher expression of love” than that represented in
+allosexuality. Such a statement could not be otherwise interpreted
+than as an outspoken advocacy of homosexuality! It is, of course, not
+to be denied that the union _typified_ in the allosexual relationship
+is alone an adequate expression of sex-unity. But it is adequate only
+as organic unity or conscious love, not as sexuality or self-love, the
+basis on which at present it very generally rests.
+
+Biologically, autosexuality cannot be other than essentially infantile
+and regressive in character and as such it runs counter to the basic
+aims of analysis. But emphasis should be placed upon our need of
+recognizing to what a very large extent actual autosexuality exists
+under the objective symbols of allosexuality. Marriage, I repeat, as
+it largely obtains in the present stage of society, fairly teems with
+this infantile mode of sexuality. As the dominant impulse between
+“lovers” with their coy, infantile aim of secret self-satisfaction
+amply attests, the relationship, under whatever guise of exterior
+circumstance it may be concealed, is necessarily egoistic or autosexual.
+
+I feel sure that sooner or later it will be recognized that
+allosexuality and autosexuality are synonymous, that these seemingly
+contrary adaptations are really but alternate aspects of one and
+the same thing. Sooner or later it will be seen that, while the
+neurosis entails in every instance an autosexual undercurrent, it
+is an expression of autosexuality that is organically intolerable,
+and that the social adaptation underlying normality is equally
+the unconscious expression of a collectively assimilated ego- or
+autosexuality. Thus our pseudo-normality is an unconsciously conceded
+(socially assimilated) inversion to this infantile mode of sexuality in
+substitution for the original organic instinct of sex. This is why it
+has seemed to me that in the neurotic reaction, for all its distortion,
+there is presented a progressive urge of evolution--that in the very
+distortion of the neurotic personality there is the premonition of a
+type of a clearer, more conscious social order. In his distorted effort
+to assimilate to himself a vicarious, objective (bodily) likeness,
+the neurotic expresses symbolically, unconsciously, an inherent urge
+toward a subjective, organic identification. In this view normality
+with its allosexual reaction is psychologically more autosexual than
+the reaction we recognize as unconscious or neurotic autosexuality.
+Although this repressed expression is symbolically the more infantile
+and regressive of the two, yet, of the two, it is potentially far the
+more competent to the truly complemental relationship whose fulfilment
+is merely symbolized in the allosexual adaptation as it commonly exists
+among us. What really underlies the conflict of the neurotic or the
+unconsciously autosexual is his organic urge toward a completer oneness
+of life. His autosexuality is but symbolic. It is a disposition the
+essence of which is what I have elsewhere called “homophyllic”[48]
+and the organic culmination of which can be realized only in the
+unification of the complementary systems embodied in a corresponding
+monophyllic union.
+
+In the beginning of my analytic work I fully believed with other
+psychoanalysts that there was a condition of neurotic or “unconscious
+homosexuality” distinguishable from what I then believed to exist
+conversely as “heterosexuality.” I was too theoretical, habituative,
+academic, too limited in the freedom of unsystematized observation to
+recognize that sexuality, as it now exists socially, is everywhere
+of one cloth, that all sexuality being narcistic is “homosexuality,”
+that it is of its nature an expression of the infantile desire of
+self-supremacy, of self-seeking, of self-gratification, that, in a
+word, sexuality is synonymous with autosexuality or ego-erotism. As
+homosexuality is but the projection socially of what is ego-sexuality
+individually, sexuality or ego-erotism is the very essence of
+homosexuality or homo-erotism. But, like the rest of my confrères, it
+was my habit to refer the question of health or disorder of adaptation
+to the artificial distinction between heterosexuality and “unconscious
+homosexuality” respectively. In other words, my criterion of health
+and growth was formerly the merely unconscious conventionalization of
+sex, the mere procuring for it, as it were, the external formality of
+the social blessing. It is only in the last years that I have seen in
+its fuller clarity that health is essentially unity and identity of
+personality as contrasted with the introversions of an unconsciously
+alternative adaptation. Only in the last years have I seen that as
+life and sex are one, so are self-worship and sexuality one, and that
+the real contrast as seen in the light of the health and growth of
+the organism, whether individual or societal, is the contrast between
+the organic instinct of sex on the one hand and the introversions of
+sexuality on the other.[49]
+
+It is the unerring test of unconscious autosexuality that the quest
+that manifestly registers itself under this artificial form of
+expression can find its answer only in a realization which, in its
+true sex determination (love), is latently the precise reverse of this
+expression. In the attitude of lust and autosexuality toward the male
+there is presaged love or sex toward the woman; in the attitude of lust
+or autosexuality toward the female is the earnest of love or sex toward
+the man. On the contrary, it is the unfailing test of the delusionally
+systematized autosexuality (ego-sexuality), which is social or
+“normal,” that the quest thus recorded in its manifest content can
+find its satisfaction only in the no less manifest “reliefs” of a
+_seemingly_ opposite sexual determination (allosexuality). In the
+self-lusts (autosexuality) of the male, his objective is the body of
+the female with her autosexuality or self-lusts; in the self-lusts
+(autosexuality) of the female, her objective is the body of the male
+and his self-lusts or autosexuality. In the satisfactions of these
+objective conquests lies the whole meaning of sexuality, as in the
+inclusiveness of a subjective unification lies the meaning of love.
+
+The type of union biologically natural and fitting is that between
+man and woman as unified personalities. But in the present repressed,
+vicarious, infantile state of the individual and society, such a union
+is as yet in very large measure merely a type. To make of the union
+of personalities something more than a type--to make of it an organic
+reality--there is needed some such unification within each through
+the personality of the other as would be realized in a relationship
+representing the union of the two complementary systems, the peripheral
+and central, the societal and individual. The separation of these
+two systems we have seen to be the response to external repression
+from without, and in the re-uniting of these artificially separated
+complements there would be re-established the originally confluent
+organism, individual and societal, such as alone embodies the free and
+unified personality.
+
+Union is not a thing of body in the contrasts of male and female with
+their artificial dissociation from life. The female in her rôle of
+costly _objet d’art_ and the male as collector of such wares do not
+approach in this mere surface affinity a consummation even remotely
+akin to any such organic reality. No man or woman ever understood the
+other’s body who has not understood the other’s mind; no man or woman
+ever understood the other’s mind, who has not understood the body of
+the other. It is only in an organic identification such as is inclusive
+of both that there is fulfilled the united understanding, in both,
+of the mind and body of each. Union is of personality as realized in
+man and woman through the fulfilment in each of their identification
+with life in its totality, the one (male or female) embodying the
+peripheral, societal, allocentric complement, the other (male or
+female) the internal, central, autocentric complement, the two divided
+personalities realizing in the welding of each with each the organic
+unity of both.
+
+In saying “male or female” I am advisedly avoiding assigning
+specifically either sex element to either organic rôle. In general the
+societal or peripheral rôle and the visceral or central rôle would
+seem analogous to the respective rôles of male and female, in the
+fact that the former is more fittingly adapted biologically to the
+external demands of life as hunter and provider and the latter to the
+more retired, enclosed conditions of life pertaining to the functions
+of conservation and maternity. There is the further parallel that in
+the female the reproductive organs are organs of receptivity, lying
+deeper, more centrally within her organism, while those of the male
+are more contiguous to the external skeletal tissues and are invasive
+in function. Nevertheless, because of the frequent transposition
+between the two sexes of the traits supposedly specific of each--a far
+more frequent transposition than the conventional division between
+the sexes affords opportunity to observe, the woman being often the
+more aggressive, the man the more retired of the two--to assign
+forehandedly one or the other complement to one or the other sex is
+arbitrary and without warrant. This is true particularly in respect to
+the distinction between the neurotic exaggerations of type described
+as auto- and allocentric, in which the conventional psychosexual
+differentiations are practically indeterminable.
+
+These and kindred reflections lead me to feel that the term
+“opposite” sex is subjectively an unfortunate misnomer. To the
+neurotic especially, whose life has been crippled through repression
+in response to external opposition, all “oppositeness” is felt as
+a menace. Consider the inhibiting intimidations to the subjective
+child, resulting from the implied oppositeness between teacher and
+pupil, that characterizes the attitude of our prevailing pedagogical
+systems. Consider to what extent our systems of education are really
+barriers to education. In the very idea of oppositeness the child is
+instinctively revolted. His organism shrinks from it as from a blow.
+It is under such circumstances that, in his sense of the oppositeness
+of the sexes, the individual’s unconscious recourse is to the sex that
+is not opposite his own. Yet here too, as we have seen, he has only
+turned to the objective symbol of unity, and the inherent opposition
+remains. For the symbol of unity or that which stands instead of unity
+is itself opposition. Thus in the neurotic’s unconscious recourse to
+this symbolic or autosexual form of identification the opposition or
+separation is only accented anew.
+
+Organically, or from the point of view of personality, woman is not
+opposite to man but each is the complement of the other. As in a
+current of electricity the flow between its two termini is dependent
+not upon their opposition but upon the functional confluence between
+its positive and negative poles, each being incomplete in the absence
+of the other, so is the relationship of sex between two organisms; it
+is confluent and not opposite, it is of the nature of complement and
+not of contrast. And so the need of the neurotic, as of the normal
+individual, is such a completion of his personality in the organic
+complement of his mate as is co-extensive with his unification with
+life in its organic compass.
+
+In the symbolic unification or unconscious autosexuality represented
+in an objective likeness or bodily identification there is but
+the short-circuiting of a true organic unification. Where it has
+occurred in personalities of a high intellectual or social order,
+the phenomenon has tended to be accounted for through recourse to
+a conceptual accommodation that is more generous than scientific.
+A plea has been advanced for the acceptance of the comrade-love of
+such individuals on grounds of the high character of the expression
+of their inverted tendency. To this end there has been invoked the
+conception of an “intermediate sex.” But in this undoubtedly hospitable
+envisagement there is to be seen the sentimentality that is as always
+but inverted sentiment. The conception of an intermediate sex is
+the creation of an intermediate imagination. An intermediate sex is
+a biological solecism. It represents the attempt of a divided mind
+to reconcile a divided state of feeling that is prior to it. It is
+again the arbitrary assumption of opposition and the vicious circle
+of separateness and unconsciousness. As for the high order of many
+of its representatives, there is no high order of infantilism or
+autosexuality. The existence of a high order, moral and intellectual,
+of this type only imposes upon its representatives the greater societal
+obligation to understand and encompass its meaning. Their need is to
+relinquish the infantile distortion of life symbolized in this inverted
+bias of their unconscious autosexuality, and concurrently to enter into
+the organic realization of their innate consonance. It is only when
+this organic inherency has become disturbed, whether neurotically or
+normally, singly or societally, that there occurs the reflex effort
+toward vicarious restitution, resulting either in the exaggerations
+of self-assertiveness or in an over-emphasized self-derogation
+representing respectively the spurious bravadoes of an alternative
+maleness on the one hand and the artificial propitiations of an
+alternative femaleness on the other.
+
+As has been said, because of our objective, perceptual attitude toward
+one another, our contacts, whether mediated through visual, auditory,
+tactile or other stimuli, are necessarily superficial and attributive.
+This superficial registry of stimuli includes also the sphere of our
+sexological responses. Thus in civilized man the sexual reaction, in
+both male and female, is restricted to the superficial sexual zones.
+Because of man’s repression of this essential sphere of his feeling,
+the natural flow of the sexual impulse is artificially intercepted.
+Hence the genital stimulus in man is limited to the superficial
+tactile organs. It does not radiate to the deeper visceral structures
+constituting its nuclear terminus--in the male the rectal, prostatic
+and crural zones, in the female the rectal, the deeper vaginal zones
+and the cervix uteri (the homologue in the female of the prostate in
+the male). It is because of this intercepted radiation of the natural
+sexual response that there has arisen the necessity for the formulation
+of an “anal complex”--a complex that is regarded by psychoanalysts as
+existing quite sporadically in certain neurotic individuals and that is
+by no means recognized as a condition common to the race of civilized
+man! For naturally with the interception of the sexual impulse at its
+nuclear pole, or with repression of the visceral sex zone, there can
+only result in its stead a “complex” and along with it such artificial
+sexual adaptations as have been described as intermediate. In addition
+to this repression of our organic sex feeling there has occurred a
+corresponding compensation in the sphere of the mental and social
+life, which in the woman has led to the social adoption of the rôle
+corresponding to the _mental image_ female and in the man to the
+_mental image_ male.
+
+Among the lower orders of animals the distinction between male and
+female entails no organic opposition. In one and the same organism this
+bipolar condition is undifferentiated and self-contained. On the other
+hand, with the mental sophistication connoted under the distinction
+man and woman we have come to assume the presence of an artificial
+opposition between the male and female organism. With the male element
+or organism we demand the mental and physical attributes we arbitrarily
+posit as “man,” with the female element or organism we demand the
+mental and physical attributes we arbitrarily posit as “woman.” Thus
+we repudiate the polarity that is confluent of the two elements male
+and female and exact of the organism we discriminate as man that it
+repudiate the characteristics we discriminate as woman, and of the
+organism we discriminate as woman that it repudiate the characteristics
+we distinguish as man.
+
+This arbitrary, unbiological dictum necessitates that a “man” shall
+repress the female component within him notwithstanding that his
+organism is compounded of it along with the male element. Conversely,
+it makes obligatory upon the woman that she repress the male element
+within her notwithstanding that it is a no less constituent factor than
+the female element in composing the bipolar quality essential to the
+unity of her organism.
+
+With this artificial condition and its edict of enforced repression
+there often occurs such a one-sided development within the organism
+that the result is the exaggerated reaction we see in the bilateral
+extremes we have described as good and bad, as saint and sinner. It is
+interesting to observe, though, that upon analysis one discovers within
+the repressed sphere of the sinner’s personality all the factors that
+constitute the personality of the saint, and that within the repressed
+sphere of the saint’s personality, there are disclosed all the elements
+that constitute the personality of the sinner.
+
+Such findings as we owe to our deeper penetration into individual
+psychology make clearer the superficiality of our normal, social
+distinctions. They afford us reason to believe that when psychiatry
+has loosed itself of its superficial acceptations we shall find
+that wherever the bipolar life of the organism, male or female, is
+permitted to fulfil its natural expression there will be no longer the
+repressed or unconscious instigation to such exaggerated distortions or
+over-compensations as now issue as a result of the organic repression
+of these artificially dual phases. We shall then recognize that the
+“intermediate sex” is a fallacy due to discriminations that arise from
+a disregard of the inclusive nature of sex. What is really apprehended
+by the term intermediate sex is the _composite sex_ whereof the
+unification of personality within every individual, normal as well as
+neurotic, is the inherent embodiment. It is in this concomitance of the
+social and nuclear systems that consists the organic co-ordination
+of the individual element. Without it there is lacking the organic
+correlation of the societal aggregate such as is the essential biology
+of man.
+
+The organismic postulate here proposed sets out from the conception of
+a _principle of primary identification_ within the original psychic
+organism as the biological basis of consciousness.[50] Upon this
+principle rests the biological significance of the unity of personality
+that comprises the consonance of life, individual and societal. The
+essence of the neurotic diathesis, socially and singly, is merely the
+reflection within the individual of these surface diversifications of
+external suggestion or repression, as more and more they infringe upon
+this original consonance of the organism. This gradual replacement
+of our original unity and inherency by the external inducements
+of the extraneous and alternative is the whole significance of
+unconsciousness. This, in reality, is the meaning of the manifold
+dissimilitudes of men as compared with the unified personality of man.
+
+If, in the androgynous personalities represented in such autocentric
+types as Buddha, Plato or Christ, there is manifested this unifying
+urge of the inherent organism of man, so the allocentric personalities
+of Socrates, of Napoleon and of Nietzsche are equally expressive of
+this same composite urge. If this unifying urge of man’s common sex
+incited the genius of an Hypatia in centuries past, it has directed
+no less in our own times the creative impulse underlying the genius
+of George Eliot or of Olive Schreiner. In the contemplation of such
+genius we see presented the unity and concentration of personality that
+is the real meaning of the artist as contrasted with the extraneous
+dissipations and diversities of the average reaction-type. It is this
+unity of personality that is the source of the artist’s creativeness
+as it is the inspiration of his genius. This composite quality of
+the sex life explains the gentler intuitions we often find in the
+personality of a man. There is undoubtedly the feminine in man though
+as yet he stands in fear of it. It does not wrangle or contend. It
+does not calculate success. The feminine in man is the artist in man.
+It is because of this that there can be in the societal unity of the
+artist’s intuitive instinct no place for the illusion that is called
+“the public.” To him “the public” is but the collective repudiation
+of the common soul of man--a repudiation that corresponds to this
+same disavowal within the private soul of each of us. Unmoved by its
+clamorous demands, the artist feels within these manifestations of the
+public mind the common soul that underlies it, and senses within it
+the pain of denied needs identical with his own. This is the unfailing
+intuition of the artist. It is because of this sense of the unity of
+life that no artist was ever yet successful, that his triumph or his
+failure are above all public concern.
+
+And so by “the artist” I mean the quality of personality that is
+enticed by no external advantage, that entertains no indirection, is
+unmoved by the inverse compensations of egoism and the unconscious
+wish. Such a quality is organically, societally self-contained and
+subsists without object. It does not sue for favour nor seek to
+please. In this confluence of the personality of the artist as of the
+neurotic, in this creative concentration of man’s genius, whether
+articulate or denied, is embodied the societal instinct that is the
+composite life of the race. This organic integrity of personality that
+is the composite life of man and that is organically inseparable from
+the unifying urge embodied in the impulse of mating has its clearest
+intimations in the affirmations of the artist as in the frustrations of
+the neurotic. In the unifying urge represented in these two opposite
+extremes of reaction--an urge which shall neither impose nor accept an
+adjustment extraneous to the inherent personality--is expressed the
+demand for a self-realization in a unification which, being organic,
+is all-inclusive.[51]
+
+Only in such a conjunction will man realize his original mode of
+societal confluence. When such a conjunction will enable him truly
+to realize in the instinct of mating the deepest need of his being,
+union will no longer as now be _represented_ through juxtaposition in
+the mere physical symbol of bodily interpenetration, but it will _be_
+through unification the societal reality of an organic intussusception.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+ULTIMATE RESOLUTION OF THE SOCIETAL NEUROSIS IN ITS SOCIAL IMPLICATION
+
+
+The first demand of our organic completion through a unification with
+another is a unification within oneself. From a basis of a divided self
+one can look out only dividedly. From a separative mode one can judge
+only separatively. If the individual embodies a symbolic replacement
+within himself, others about him appear to him necessarily also as
+symbolic replacements, and the degree of his resentment toward his own
+separateness is the measure of his resentment toward theirs. After all,
+the only implacable enemy of man is his own unconsciousness, and the
+reconcilement of himself to himself the severest test of his essential
+personality. Its realization is born of a patience that is not virtue
+but encompassment.
+
+Man, in his unconsciousness, stands ever by himself and for himself.
+In the separateness of his personal resistances toward the societal
+organism as a whole, the individual has become marooned within his
+own insular habituations. But this isolated attitude of mind is a
+condition which, in our interpretation, is societally anomalous. Though
+originally imposed, this condition now automatically imposes itself
+upon the social personality. Thus far this organic disaffection of man
+has sought alleviation in the social convivialities that are but the
+syndicate of men’s collective unconscious. Men have sought to appease
+their personal isolation through the accommodations of mere objective
+agreement. They have substituted the symbols of social fraternization
+for the actuality of man’s organic consonance. Within the unconscious
+of man his secret disaffection has remained unaltered still.
+
+So often this statement that every man is for himself alone has
+brought the rejoinder: “But why may he not be? Surely such selfishness
+is natural to man.” But is it? I do not think so. Of course I
+have not in mind the individual’s effort of preservation in the
+interests of his natural life and growth. I have in mind the private
+differentiations due to man’s _mental attitude of self-distinction_.
+In the conservation of interests incident to the individual’s instinct
+of physical preservation, man’s native experience entails no secret
+_self-conscious_ design. But it is the tell-tale of man’s mental
+attitude of personal separatism that he is constantly under the
+necessity to _pretend_ that he is not separative or for himself. This
+universal pretence reveals a biologically specious condition of life
+for which we feel a universal need of concealment. For whatsoever
+attitude of mind is not openly compatible with the personality imposes
+a division of the personality. A socially divided personality is a
+socially insecure personality. Back of the social mind that pretends
+it is not concerned exclusively for self lies a basis of social fear
+and distrust. Pretence is division of personality, and division of
+personality is fear. If the pretence and the division are social, the
+fear is social. The effort of numbers or of the social consensus to
+combine in support of their mutual fear is unavailing, for a consensus
+begotten of fear is an organically spurious consensus. At the heart of
+it lies a secret division. This is the travesty of normality with its
+secret soviet of fear.
+
+The analyst or the psychiatrist whose outlook is objective fails
+to regard this consensual fallacy in its social as in its personal
+implication. Being of the social unconscious he cannot contemplate
+the social unconscious. Being himself divided he cannot realize his
+own division. We all prefer the satisfaction of seeming together
+socially to the reality of being together organically. We like the
+seeming integrity of the social unconscious because it conceals
+our own disaffection. It is only this seeming security of numerical
+preponderance, however, that affords us comfortable protection
+against the aberrations of the isolated, non-conformable or neurotic
+personality. Nowhere is the autocracy of unconsciousness more blindly
+cruel than in the mass impetus of our social consolidation. We are not
+unaware of the resistance of the individual to the social consensus,
+but we have yet to discover the resistance of the social consensus
+to the individual. The psychopathologist has offered interesting
+formulations regarding delusions of persecution, but none whatever
+regarding delusions that persecute.
+
+The group work that has been gradually developing among my students
+and myself has consisted essentially in a reversal of this habitually
+objective course of the psychiatrist. Instead of studying ideas of
+reference objectively as expressed in the individual, we have studied
+ideas of reference subjectively as they occur socially among ourselves.
+Our experience as a group has led us inevitably to the conclusion that
+the personal analysis is a self-contradictory process, that only as
+the individual realizes through his societal experience the futility
+of the personal or private basis is it biologically possible to be
+truly in harmony with a healthy and constructive environment. If our
+position has any value and significance it is because it has come to
+us through the daily test of an actual living experience, and because
+as a societal experience it cannot fail to extend itself societally to
+others also.
+
+Let it not be thought, however, that our efforts toward a social
+analysis have proceeded upon a smooth and untroubled course. If
+the individual has his “ups and downs” in the effort to unify his
+consciousness on the basis of a personal analysis, he meets no less
+with alternations of satisfaction and depression according as his
+resistances surge or ebb in his efforts toward a social unification of
+consciousness. If the individual analysis presents a situation that is
+unconscious and bidimensional, a group analysis presents a condition
+that is equally unconscious and bidimensional. In the bidimensional
+reaction of the individual toward the personal analysis, he tends, as
+we have seen, toward a permanent fixation upon the analyst which shows
+itself alternately in the mental reaction of “love” or of “hate.” But
+in either the personal or social situation he tends to hold tenaciously
+to this new object of his infantile affect in the secret hope of
+ultimately reconciling and amalgamating it with the love that underlies
+still the original mother-image. Unhappily, it is the invariable
+failure of the personal analysis that the patient carries his secret
+purpose to a successful issue. For either he remains fastened between
+the old and the new love-objects in a consolidated image-fixation upon
+the analyst, or else he returns to the original love-image afforded by
+the parent or to its surrogates, with or without the collateral aids of
+sublimation.
+
+In the actual experience of our group analysis the tendency was
+essentially no different. But there was an additional recourse in the
+group analysis that is precluded in the personal analysis. In the
+personal analysis there is a bidimensional attitude toward the analyst
+that alternates constantly between infantile docility and infantile
+resentment, between sentimental approbation at one time and outraged
+disillusionment at another. But this alternation always occurs, of
+course, within one and the same individual. In the social analysis
+the situation is expressed quite differently. It was my experience
+that this diversity of reaction within the group led at first to the
+formation of reaction-clusters within the group, so that one unit
+became consistently docile toward the analyst and resentful among
+themselves, while the other unit became hostile toward the analyst and
+docile toward one another. Both alternations (resentment or docility)
+were, of course, equally spurious within each group of reactions.
+
+The practical outcome in each sub-group was very different however. In
+the cluster that united against the analyst, a confederacy was formed
+that presented all the features of unconsciousness we have seen to
+characterize the collective reactions occurring everywhere throughout
+the domain of our normal adaptation. The psychology of this reaction,
+as we know, is the collective pooling of the unconscious of its members
+severally, with a view to the mass support afforded each individual
+within the unit separately. The result as it occurred in this cluster
+was a temporary deadlock and a corresponding re-adoption of the normal
+level of bidimensional standards, personal and social.
+
+In the cluster in which the sense of resentment was limited to
+inter-reactions among its own members, while as a unit all held an
+attitude of friendliness toward the analyst, there was offered a form
+of group-unconsciousness that at least lent itself to progressive
+analysis and resolution. But here again there was discoverable the
+secret pooling of unconscious motives of personal interest and
+self-protection that in no way differentiated this group division from
+the former, that did not separate the “faithful” from the “unfaithful,”
+nor absolve the “docile” any more than the “resentful” from a secret
+complicity in the collective reaction that is the mass neurosis of
+normality.
+
+It should be remembered that the plan of group analysis was adopted
+not because I had _a priori_ found in it the logical solution of
+the neurosis. Not by any means. Neither had I inductively reached
+conclusions that led to any such logical determination. Not even
+theoretically was there at hand anything of the nature of a _logical_
+solution. A dissociation is not logical and its solution could
+not be logical. The neurosis is not a matter of the intellect and
+the process of its unravelling could not have been intellectually
+predetermined. As thought and affect are processes that occupy
+essentially different spheres, to _think out_ a solution for a disorder
+of affect is self-contradictory. To attempt to do so is beyond the
+range of organic possibility. All that I had in mind in our group
+undertaking was _to obtain affective conditions shared in common that
+might afford a basis for the observation of affective conditions
+withheld separately_. It seemed to offer the opportunity to secure a
+relative and societal background against which the individual would be
+enabled to view in impersonal perspective his own hitherto absolute
+and personal evaluations. Up to this time I had for years worked on
+the group conception in the absence of any tangible background of
+experimentation. There was now needed the practical substantiation
+of this group conception in the actual assembling of “analyzed”
+individuals into an organized social aggregate. While the programme
+of group analysis entered upon by my students and myself came into an
+intensive application with the beginning of the year 1923,[52] it was
+actually the summer of that year that marked the active inception of
+our experiment as an organized unit, our group having then its first
+opportunity of a practical test in the daily contact of its members;
+so that we were still at this time only feeling our way toward the
+ultimate outcome of an analysis involving more than two or three
+individuals.
+
+In my view the really significant finding that has resulted from
+our close mental association as a group has been the opportunity of
+demonstrating through group experience the practical significance of
+the very unexpected disclosure upon which I chanced some years ago in
+my conception of the bidimensional image and its influence upon the
+reactions of consciousness at large. It is this conception which has
+proved to be the real foundation of our work. I am convinced that an
+adjustment of consciousness, whether analytic or conventional, whether
+of the laboratory or of the street, will ultimately demand that we
+bring to book the very origins of our mental and social systems of
+“thinking,” that we challenge our customary values of mental adaptation
+at their very foundation. Our problem resolves itself into one that
+shall challenge in every detail the fixed basis of an arbitrary and
+unconscious position of absolutism as contrasted with the fluent
+evaluations that alone pertain to a basis of conscious relativity.
+
+Upon the basis of our prevailing personal criterion first inculcated
+through the alternative precept of good and bad, the mind of every
+individual existing under our present social system is disposed
+toward a dualism of outlook that renders every affective judgment of
+the individual irreconcilable and self-contradictory. For a basis
+that rests upon a mental _standard_ or criterion of evaluations is
+necessarily moralistic and divided. A moralistic command entails a
+moralistic interdiction. Every affirmation contains _in itself_ a
+negation that is equal and contrary. That is, every criterion _of its
+nature_ entertains its opposite. Whatsoever I must be or think or feel,
+I must at the same time also not be or think or feel. Whatsoever I
+believe, to that precise degree I likewise disbelieve.[53]
+
+This is not so simple. It is not by any means so simple as we tend to
+make it. It does not merely mean, as we would like to think, that if
+I love good people I do not love bad people. Not at all. That would
+be obvious and a matter of fact. It would leave our absolutism quite
+intact and our criteria quite unchallenged in their fallacy. It means
+something far subtler than this. It means that if I love good people I
+_do not_ love good people. It means that in the measure in which I love
+an object, in that measure I hate that object. It means, in sum, that,
+within a system of absolute measures, my concept “love” as my concept
+“good” is throughout fanciful and artificial, that, in disturbing the
+natural equilibrium of the organism, my mental criterion is resisted
+by a counter-judgment, which, being fanciful and artificial, tends
+in a precisely reverse direction at one and the same time. It means
+that every mental image, arising on the basis of our present absolute
+criterion, possesses unconsciously an ambivalent value. _Stating the
+proposition in psycho-dynamic terms, every affective mental image is
+counterbalanced by an opposite image having an attractive force that
+possesses the quality of all bidimensional (or pendular) motion and
+accordingly it acts with a momentum the direction of which is at every
+moment precisely equal and reverse to its own impulse._
+
+After many years in which I have been delving into the processes of
+the unconscious and striving to unearth its intricate mechanisms,
+I have come upon no phenomenon that has seemed to me of such basic
+significance as this illusory mechanism of unconscious dualism and
+conflict that underlies our absolute criteria of values, individual
+and social. Through Freud we have learned that a psychic ambivalence
+underlies the neurotic processes of the individual, but we have not yet
+learned that an equal ambivalence underlies the processes of the social
+unconscious. Furthermore, while Freud has shown that there is this
+ambivalence of motive underlying the individual process represented
+by the neurotic conflict, it remains to be seen that each term within
+this ambivalent outlook is itself likewise ambivalent--that psychic
+ambivalence necessarily presupposes at all times an essential condition
+of ambivalence that repeatedly doubles upon itself. For, if we will
+examine either term of our ambivalent proposition, we shall find that
+it too is based on opposed valences. That is, on our present absolute
+basis of evaluation, every term of our subjective judgment necessarily
+divides and re-divides with its very inception. Not only does the
+contrast between love and hate represent ambivalence, but love contains
+in itself an ambivalent motive, and hate contains in itself a motive
+that is equally ambivalent. And so, to whatever subjective determinant
+we may turn, there is inevitably this inseparable element of contrast
+due to our own subjectively bidimensional basis.
+
+As regards the neurosis of the individual, we have learned through
+Freud that an unconscious system of images, operating to inhibit
+spontaneous thought and action, is the essential meaning of this
+disorder. Of course, Freud attributes such disorders of development
+to an associative inadequacy resident in the individual organism. But
+in the study of the social unconscious upon the inclusive basis of
+a relative method of approach, we shall recognize that an identical
+system of images operates to hinder the spontaneous expression of the
+social organism; that as there exists a neurosis of the individual that
+is due to an unconscious system of personal images, so there exists a
+neurosis of the social mind due to an equally unconscious system of
+social images; and finally that the latter condition within the social
+consciousness as a whole is the primary and essential disorder of
+which the individual manifestation is but a subsequent and secondary
+symptom.[54]
+
+It is not possible to speak of the group basis of analysis that has
+become the central feature of my own work without calling attention to
+a bidimensional situation that has made itself felt within the ranks
+of psychoanalysts themselves. Moreover, this situation has forced into
+prominence a hitherto unrecognized impasse within our psychoanalytic
+interpretations, precisely because of the inevitable conditions of an
+individualistic basis of analysis. The outstanding theoretical feature
+of Freud’s position toward his patients has always been a policy of
+“hands off.” With the inception of psychoanalysis it has been the
+signal position of Freud, and subsequently of us all, that the patient
+shall be left free of all domination or direction or suggestion, that
+in order that he come into a sense of adult responsibility toward his
+social environment generally he must come into a responsibility toward
+his own mental processes as they relate directly to the analyst. This
+policy of non-interference is one which those of us who have attempted
+to follow the psychoanalytic programme have adhered to with strict
+conformity. But it is clear that the analyst becomes automatically the
+all-engrossing criterion (transference) of the patient’s unconscious
+and that unconsciously the analyst assumes toward his patient a
+corresponding position of personal criterion. So that, however sincere
+our intention, there has resulted what is perhaps the weakest point
+in our psychoanalytic technique, a point that has warranted the most
+severe criticism of our work, namely, that treatment by psychoanalysis
+continues for a far too long and indefinite term.
+
+To offset this embarrassment recourse is now had to a procedure whereby
+the analysis is brought to a conclusion at a certain definitely
+assigned period--a period to be determined by the analyst according
+to the circumstances in each case. The change proposed, then, is
+from a course of indefinite to a course of definite duration; from
+a procedure that, at least theoretically, places upon the patient
+the responsibility of terminating the analysis to a procedure that
+definitely takes this responsibility from him and places it in the
+hands of the analyst. But, in proposing that the analyst shall at
+an assignable moment in the analysis peremptorily determine upon a
+definite period at which the analysis shall cease, and in formally
+pronouncing that from this moment on the patient shall be cured,
+we are confronted again with the deadlock of the bidimensional and
+alternative. In this recourse we are merely resorting again to the
+legislation of suggestion and, unconsciously falling a victim to the
+pictorial concept “cure,” we are in no sense meeting the issue. For
+in the criterion of the suddenly achieved “cure” we are not less the
+unconscious victims of an illusory and absolute criterion than we
+were victims of a criterion that is illusory and absolute when we
+presumed the position that the patient must at all hazards be left in a
+position of freedom toward the analysis.[55] In my view, this proposal
+of psychoanalysts themselves that we no longer assume a policy of
+non-interference but that we offer instead the arbitrary suggestion of
+spontaneous “cure,” there is sounded the death-knell of psychoanalysis
+as administered on the basis of the personal analysis. This does not
+mean, however, the death-knell of the basic position of psychoanalysis
+as deducible from the principle first enunciated by Freud. On the
+contrary, if we would enlarge the application of psychoanalysis to
+include the wider scope of our societal personality, there would be
+realized the necessary advance toward the full significance of Freud’s
+essential principle.
+
+It is admittedly a part of the purpose of the present thesis to show
+that there do exist conditions which make treatment through the method
+of psychoanalysis, as it is at present, needlessly long. But to reduce
+the length of treatment calculated to adjust the distorted mind would
+seem as unreasonable as to curtail the length of treatment intended to
+adjust the distorted limb. As Freud remarked long ago, no one would
+question the validity of the orthopaedist’s method because of the
+length of time it requires. Why then all the outcry because of the
+length of time often required by the psychoanalyst’s method? It is
+my own feeling that if there are conditions which make the method of
+psychoanalysis needlessly long, what is required is the analysis of
+these conditions. I believe that under these circumstances the method
+will automatically adjust itself. But to shorten a course of treatment
+because it is long seems unintelligent to me. It seems merely shifting
+from one unconscious condition to its equally unconscious alternative.
+
+Let us examine more closely the real alternative here. The fact
+is that by reason of the dualistic basis existing in the personal
+analysis, the analyst necessarily invites the indefinite continuation
+of the analysis on the part of the patient, no matter what he may
+theoretically say or do to the contrary. For the analyst is himself
+the victim of an unconscious criterion represented in his personal
+standard of “cure.” That is, he entertains for the patient an image
+of self-dependence obtainable alone through psychoanalysis. But
+in this standard of “cure” he entertains a wish-motive that is
+self-contradictory. For, in wishing to cure a patient through a
+process of self-dependence, the analyst, because of the involvement of
+his personal wish toward the patient, necessarily presents his cure
+through processes that interfere with self-dependence. It is again
+the bidimensional dilemma of the absolute or personal criterion, and
+an absolute criterion necessarily involves a wish-motive of two terms
+either of which unconsciously invites its opposite. In his personal
+criterion the analyst would both release a patient with a view to
+the patient’s self-dependence and at the same time retain a patient
+in order to make sure that his self-dependence is complete. With one
+gesture he would detain him while with the other he would set him free.
+This is undoubtedly an awkward deadlock. This is the very contrary
+of a cure that aims at self-dependence. For the analyst, whether in
+detaining or dismissing a patient, is acting for him. But, on the
+basis of the criterion of the personal image, there is inevitably this
+alternative. It is unescapable.
+
+This solicitous attitude of mind, I concede, has undoubtedly tended to
+extend the course of the analysis to an indefinite duration. But does
+the alternative--the arbitrary manifesto that a certain time limit
+shall peremptorily conclude the analysis--really settle the issue? Does
+it not rather sustain than remove the dilemma? Of course, a theoretical
+assumption has been invoked that is calculated to warrant this
+procedure upon psychological premises--the premises, namely, that the
+analysis consists in the fanciful reproduction of the birth experience,
+that the trauma in which the birth culminates physiologically must
+be psychically reproduced through the trauma of sudden separation of
+the personality of the patient from that of the analyst. But does
+corroborating the illusory and symbolic dramatization occurring within
+the neurotic mind assist such a patient in disabusing his mind of
+the fallacy of the illusory and symbolic? In this alternative of a
+predetermined period for a patient’s withdrawal from analysis are we
+not merely having recourse to the more decisive position of the father
+as contrasted with the more lenient and compromising attitude of the
+mother-image? Further, in what we call the mother-father alternation
+are we not again merely projecting the dualistic criterion that is our
+own personal and contrasting basis of evaluation?
+
+In my own work I have had an opportunity to realize convincingly the
+completely illusory and arbitrary character of this mother-father
+alternation. This has been shown in the fact that patients undergoing
+analysis with me have turned to my assistant, Mr. Shields, in the
+thought that they would find in him a less severe analyst than in
+myself, while patients who were being analyzed by Mr. Shields have
+turned to me in a similar hope. Needless to say, in either case, the
+patients were equally disappointed in their quest. Yet this alternation
+would have continued indefinitely had not a solution been found
+elsewhere, namely, under conditions of a social analysis in which
+a personal attachment is not permitted the conditions of lodgment
+necessary for completing the personal illusion of permanence and
+fixation.
+
+I have come to the definite conclusion that in the individual analysis
+the neurotic patient pulls the wool over the eyes of the analyst and
+inevitably comes out the victor, because unconsciously the analyst is
+inevitably on the patient’s side. Besides, to show sufficient interest
+in an individual to sit with him in personal conference daily or three
+times weekly (whatever the routine may be) is to indicate to the very
+susceptible emotions of the neurotic patient that his presence is
+personally desirable. The situation is only interpretable on the part
+of the neurotic patient, with his unfulfilled personal emotions, as
+the implication that those emotions are fully reciprocated personally
+on the part of the analyst. For with whomsoever we enter into a
+personal situation of mutual secrecy we are in a situation of mutual
+complicity. In the secrecy and confidence of the individual analysis,
+in which there is the close, private, specialized relationship of one
+individual to another, there is the tacit disavowal in each of the
+commonness of the socially prevalent quality of all unconsciousness.
+As long as there is a private and personal system resident within the
+analyst, he necessarily corroborates the private and personal system
+resident within the patient in front of him. The fallacy of the private
+system is the illusion of personal secrecy. Clinically, it is the
+secrecy of unconsciousness that is the backbone of unconsciousness.
+Though a patient divulge in minutest detail all the data entering into
+his unconscious experience, he yet retains his unconsciousness if he
+retains a sense of secrecy toward it.
+
+In our group activity, as we have seen, there were several, who in
+refusing to meet the organic demand for a social amalgamation of
+their personality, were forced unconsciously to seek the protective
+regression afforded either in family, in friends, or in some form of
+defence-reaction that led to the isolated activities of mere social
+or normal connivance. On the other hand, others, with no less motive
+of personal defence-reaction, sought protection in the alternative
+of family union which they contrived to secure among themselves, and
+unconsciously assumed collectively that I, as the analyst, could be
+arbitrarily delegated by them to the rôle of _pater-mater noster!_ As
+I have said, there was thus formed once more an unconscious cluster,
+a cluster, however, that was no less an unconscious form of social
+encapsulation than the first.
+
+Biologically it is the natural process that with the growth of their
+strength offspring become less and less attached or dependent upon
+the parent and that concomitantly there is more and more aptitude for
+equal give-and-take activities or play with their fellows, at first
+with brothers and sisters and later with those of their congeners with
+whom chance affords association. Of course, though, if the parent has a
+mental background that attaches the child artificially to him through
+the image-suggestion of omnipotence, then, on the basis of our present
+individual and social adaptation, the child cannot find in any of his
+contacts a natural medium of association. Although the child may leave
+his natural parent and associate objectively with his congeners, he
+carries with him the image of the parent, and naturally he foists this
+image upon all with whom he comes in contact. At the same time all who
+come in contact with him equally foist upon him the image of _their_
+omnipotent parent. Our position is that _as this image is not personal
+but social it cannot be personally but only socially resolved_.
+
+The point would seem to be that the child cannot look for companionship
+in the mother or father as long as he holds the mother or father in
+the light of an image or criterion. Neither can he come into simpler
+relationships with his fellows on the basis of this criterion of the
+mother-image without investing the personalities of his associates with
+an equal image or criterion. The difficulty of the personal analysis
+is the preservation of an image-situation the while one endeavours
+theoretically to dispel the image. But in the natural give-and-take
+of human beings in their work and play activities under conditions of
+social analysis, there is afforded the reality of a social equalization
+that renders untenable the secret and obsessive fixation with which we
+merely _look on_ one another from the background of the bidimensional
+picture.
+
+The result of our group affiliation, to express it symbolically, has
+been a family of “good” and “bad” children, of whom some desired to
+run away from home while others were content to remain beside the
+family hearth. Socially, the result was a bidimensional division or
+alternative that exactly parallels the division or alternative within
+the individual. But there is this significant difference between the
+personal and the social analysis. In the individual the component that
+is unwelcome may be permanently repressed, while in the alternatives
+represented socially it is possible to stimulate these components into
+repeated recognition through the constant clashing resultant upon
+placing the opposed elements, represented by the alternate issues,
+under conditions of socially irritating contrast or competition.
+In the social analysis there is no letting sleeping dogs lie. Once
+the unconscious of one alternative reaction has been set upon the
+other, the fight is to the finish. There is not the private recess
+of personal secrecy into which one may retreat. There is not the
+recourse to self-partiality that allows a smoothing over of unpleasant
+reminiscences and a successful substituting of more flattering
+condolences.
+
+According to our group or social conception of the neurosis it is
+assumed that the causative element in the production of these disorders
+is social or phyletic and that the correction of these disorders must
+proceed upon a social or phyletic basis. Our position is that the
+individual cannot be healthy whose consciousness is the outgrowth of
+an unhealthy social mind about him. It, therefore, becomes the essence
+of our group conception that the disorder of the individual presented
+_manifestly_ in the individual’s “symptoms” may only be corrected
+through the analysis of the social processes constituting _latently_
+the individual’s collective medium.[56]
+
+As we first learned from Freud and as has been corroborated through
+researches in psychoanalysis made independently of Freud, the neurosis
+is synonymous with the repression of the instinctive life of man, and
+in the prevailing interpretation of psychoanalysis the remedy lies in
+the successful adaptation of the personal satisfaction of sexuality
+expressed both in direct physiological release and in the equivalents
+of sublimation. It is our position that this interpretation is far
+too narrow, that in interpreting the neurosis as due primarily to
+disorders within the sphere of man’s reproductive instinct, there is
+left out of account the disorders of instinct due to the obstruction
+of man’s tribal or congeneric life and to the consequent interruption
+of the creative expression of his personality as a societal unit.
+Our feeling is that sexuality, as it now exists, is very generally
+of an over-stimulated or obsessive character, owing to the undue
+and greatly aggravated insistence that has been vicariously brought
+to bear upon this sphere. In the absence of the natural outlets of
+man’s societally instinctive expressions through the common avenues
+of concerted work and play, the function natural to the physiological
+process of reproduction has been overburdened and inflated out of all
+proportion to its primary significance. While, as a consonant part of
+the congeneric instinct of man, sex is an undoubtedly powerful urge, in
+the self-interested and bidimensional bias of its autosexual, personal
+quest, this manifestation has become but a symbolic exaggeration of the
+natural instinct of sex. This exaggerated condition is due secondarily,
+however, to a repression of the reproductive faculty of man as
+naturally expressed in the creative interests of his common societal
+activities. As our give-and-take expressions among our fellows develop
+into activities that are reciprocally creative, in the same measure
+our obsessive drive toward the satisfactions of sexuality, whether
+repressed or indulged, will cease to dominate human personality in its
+present completely unconscious and bidimensional image insistence.[57]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+ULTIMATE RESOLUTION OF THE SOCIETAL NEUROSIS IN ITS PERSONAL IMPLICATION
+
+
+I well recognize that in its matter this essay offers little that is
+new. What I have sought to do is rather to speak of our human reactions
+in the large from the basis of the altered consciousness of the handful
+of men and women whose group experience, as gradually it has grown
+and gathered strength and cohesion among us, has permitted the more
+subjective or societal realization of these reactions. But though it
+is true that there is little that is new in the matter of this essay,
+yet, in so far as the collective differences existing among us as a
+group have been allowed slowly to diffuse themselves gradually into the
+solution of our common acceptance of one another, it seems to me that
+in its mode at least our position offers an approach that brings us a
+step closer to the increasingly urgent problem of our human adjustment.
+
+After all, the intrinsic mode underlying our conception is the real
+significance of our conception. To understand our position the
+reader’s only recourse is to repudiate the bidimensional alternatives
+of extrinsic moralities based upon precepts of a personalistic or
+self-restricted behaviourism. For the position of this thesis will be
+little understood in the light of the accustomed interpretations of
+the conventional social mind. Because of the unconscious bias of its
+own mental absolute it will appear to the social polity that, in the
+altered attitude here outlined, the social polity is threatened at its
+very foundations. In its tenacious hold upon habitual prepossessions
+the organized consensus does not realize that these foundations are
+already tottering. It will not see that in order to further the
+replacement of the already disintegrating structures of our present
+social system, a more widely envisioning concept of the organized
+consciousness of man must needs be invoked. In some way, though, there
+must first be brought home to each of us the realization that there
+can be no true unity within the societal organism as long as we are a
+prey to impressions that are but the give-and-take reflection of mental
+attitudes existing mutually in one another. As long as we fail to
+identify the tyranny of mental attitudes within the social unconscious
+with the reflection of similar tyrannical mental attitudes within the
+personalism and defection of each of us, man cannot rise to the reality
+of an organized social consciousness. As long, for example, as we fail
+to understand that when a mental attitude in others pleases or incenses
+us, it is necessarily but the reflection of a corresponding mental
+attitude in ourselves, we shall continue to praise or punish such
+mental attitudes, together with the acts resulting from them, with the
+mere retaliative measures of personal reward or redress. So that our
+attitude will continue to be, as now, the mere pro-and-con reaction to
+impressions determined by the unconscious self-reflection of our own
+“good and bad.”
+
+It is precisely this illusion of mental oppositeness that we need
+to dispel. Harmony will follow automatically once we have accepted
+in its societal significance the affective unity of life. With this
+realization there will be no further need of the restraints of
+an alternative principle of morality which, in its bidimensional
+legislation, aims to establish merely a temporary balance between
+essential opposites. With the elimination of the individual hope-fear
+alternation the whole incitement to personal infringement will have
+been removed. What inducement will I have to cheat a man if he is
+myself? Or betray a woman if she is I? To what purpose will I seek
+to enslave another to my whim (call it love, marriage or what you
+will) if between us there is the acceptance of an organic compliance
+that allows the realization in each of the common unity of both? Why
+would I seek to outdo anyone in the invidious competitions of what is
+called “success,” if I know clearly that success comprises only the
+self-reflective distinctions existing within the unconscious of the
+social mind in response to the spurious incentives of the personal
+alternative as it exists within the unconscious of the individual mind?
+
+Our prevailing personalistic basis is not applicable to an organismic
+viewpoint, because a policy that is self-reflective in the unconscious
+is self-contradictory in consciousness. Unity or consciousness of
+personality is organically preclusive of whatever is personal or
+unconscious in the personality. For every wish that is attained an
+equal disappointment is incurred. For every satisfaction that is
+secured a corresponding denial is imposed. To fulfil one’s wish
+is to abjure one’s reality. Asking is its own postponement, as
+striving is its own defeat. This inner homology between desire and
+its non-attainment is alike the hope and the despair of atoning to
+oneself unconsciously or personally for what is one’s need consciously
+or societally. As with compulsion-replacements elsewhere, the real
+occasion of prayer is one’s unanswerable attitude of mind in prayer.
+In the self-compensation of man’s want as an individual organism, he
+necessarily repudiates his inherent consonance as a societal organism.
+Thus our personal dearth and our personal plenty are organically the
+same. As the part embodied in one’s personal wish (unconsciousness)
+is intrinsically opposed to the whole embodied in one’s societal
+unity (consciousness), to desire is at the same time to fail of
+attainment as well as to covet. This is the paradox of our personalism
+and unconsciousness, as it is the impasse of the personal absolute
+underlying it. In the personal opportunism of the unconscious wish we
+would fancifully summon the processes of life to ourselves in place
+of contributing our individual function as common participants in
+the reality of these processes. Our contradiction, after all, is the
+division within ourselves, and the real impasse as always is the
+self-image embodied in the delusive alternative of good and bad.
+
+I know, of course, that much that I have tried to set down in these
+pages has been said many times before and by those more competent
+of expression than I. Indeed, in its objective envisagement,
+the recognition among us of differences, personal, national and
+international, has become a commonplace. Even in the columns of our
+daily news items, these conditions of societal defection are mentioned
+time and again in the casual tone of the matter of course. Among
+the current comments one reads, for example: “The task of saving
+civilization seems rather hopeless when it doesn’t promise an immediate
+and private profit”; “When a statesman says he despairs of the world
+he means that he despairs of getting what he wants”; “All nations seem
+agreed that chaos may result unless other nations forsake their evil
+ways”; “Civilization is just a slow process of envisioning more rights
+to fight for”; and so on without end.
+
+But no amount of objective observation, however astute, will
+avail in clearing personal outlooks. Too easily is one’s mere
+observation, however right and seemingly true, the embodiment of
+secret self-satisfaction and detachment. Personalistic observation,
+far from resolving the affective illusion of the onlooker, serves
+only to accentuate it. Dissociation within another individual that
+is observed by us but that does not quicken us to a realization of
+our own implication, automatically embeds us still deeper in the
+fixity of our own unconscious personalism. There is need to withdraw
+from our accustomed observations and to include within ourselves the
+dissociation that seems to lie outside of us but that is, in fact,
+the unconscious projection of our own dissociation. In this affective
+illusion of the onlooker, we are ever hoping merely to convince others
+of the disinterestedness of our interference with them. A disinterested
+interference is biologically impossible. To wish to convince others is
+to be unconvinced ourselves. True disinterestedness consists alone in
+our own self-realization.
+
+The familiar French saying, “Tout comprendre est tout pardonner” is,
+like so much that is proverbial, _almost_ true. It has assembled the
+right elements but in the wrong order. It gives to the letter dynamic
+priority over the spirit.[58] It is hysterical replacement refurbished
+in the condensation of the epigram. It is but the literature of the
+neurosis. If we transpose the equation in such manner as to convert
+intellectual values into their organic terms, the proposition
+resolves itself into a form that is, I believe, much nearer the
+answer to the problem of our human pathology: To forgive all is to
+understand all. I have only this in mind in saying that the neurosis
+is societal, that it is common. This is what I mean in saying that
+differentiation is unconsciousness and that the factor of societal
+repression or the societal factor of separatism is anterior to the
+separatism of sexuality or to the factor of our individual repression.
+As the societal and the individual are organically one in mode, the
+unification of the individual is at least a step toward the unification
+of our societal consciousness. This is all I have in mind in speaking
+of consciousness as the encompassment of life. It is a mode of
+consciousness that is inclusive and that reconciles within itself the
+disparity that is social.
+
+All this I had at first “in mind” only. It was, I confess, a theory
+with me and, like all such substitutive replacements, the theory
+held for me only an unconscious or symbolic significance. There was
+lacking in myself the recognition that the theoretical is identical
+with the symbolic. And so my position in stating that the theory
+of analysis is the neurosis of the analyst has lacked its personal
+acknowledgment within my own consciousness. Truly, unconsciousness
+cannot envisage unconsciousness. Secret separateness cannot encompass
+secret separateness. The division of each of us is the division within
+himself. The real grudge is one’s own grudge. After all, there is only
+one vice and that, paradoxically, is the virtue of being better than
+other people. Yet so tenacious are we of this our solitary shortcoming,
+that we will acknowledge all other “faults” rather than disclaim this
+one. But the task of ourselves as the task of our patients is the
+recognition of our own personalism and resentment. It is to forgive all
+_within ourselves_, that we may understand all within others who are
+societally no less ourselves. It is to realize that the whole intricate
+problem of our “understanding” is but the retributive fabrication of
+our own unforgiveness.
+
+It is just here that the repressed and isolated individual resolutely
+balks. Such a solution, he declares, offers nothing for him. He does
+not discover in it an advantage for himself. Quite true. In his
+unconscious sense, there is nothing for him. His self-seeking is itself
+the very kernel of his delusion. It is only in the disparate bias of
+his arbitrary individualism (I do not say individuality) that he can
+apprehend anything so dissociative as an advantage for himself as a
+separate individual. It is only as the wilful, defiant, separative
+child that he is, that he would seek the treasure of life for himself,
+that he comes demanding a governmental form embodying a system of
+monarchical autocracy whereof he is to be the supreme ruler, when,
+in truth, life is of its very essence an organic democracy and the
+individual an element in its societal confluence. In the quandary of
+his organic involution the neurotic, if one might so crudely express
+it, is literally “hell-bent” on attaining heaven. He does not see,
+for he will not see, that life and self are irreconcilable. On the
+contrary, with every available device, with every recourse of subtlety
+and with ever more enticing symbols, he seeks to decoy the common, free
+gift of life into the circumscribed and artificial confines of his own
+self-bias.
+
+In this deflection of his mental outlook he is far from the basis from
+which his experience originally set out--the organic basis in which
+the secret of life is its commonness and in which the commonness and
+the joy of it are one. As the analysis proceeds, synchronous with the
+gradual acceptance on the part of the patient of his mistakenness and
+of his growing responsibility toward this mistakenness through the
+widening of his societal outlook, there comes his automatic awakening
+to the realization of the inherent confluence of life in its utmost
+fulfilment. It is a slow process this that demands our reversal from an
+habitual attitude of disparity and separation to one of participation
+and confluence, from self and unconsciousness to consciousness and
+life, but it is the inevitable task of an analysis that bases its
+procedure upon an organismic conception of consciousness in its
+relative inclusiveness.
+
+I am under no illusion as to the futility of reckoning upon any
+far-reaching assent to such a thesis as this. I know well that a
+thesis which confronts the securely entrenched ranks of the social
+unconscious is, in general, predetermined to defeat. In this
+unpromising outlook, however, I am not dismayed. Were I guided solely
+by personal inclination I would endeavour at least to narrow the scope
+of a challenge such as this. I would, for instance, absolve myself from
+the obligation of recording so sweeping and unwelcome an indictment as
+that which lays to the door of normality in the large the imputation
+of autosexuality and infantilism. To many, such a statement will seem
+extravagant, bizarre, unwarranted. So that, if I would propitiate my
+readers through the presentation of a more acceptable thesis, I should
+naturally wish, if I may not wholly withdraw this statement, at least
+to palliate its implications.
+
+But as this statement seems to me essentially true, as it is the very
+crux of this thesis that unconsciousness is social and not individual,
+that the collective unconscious is the anterior factor to which the
+individual factor involving the neurosis is but the reflex response;
+as the central issue upon which my entire position must stand or fall
+is the conviction that the _responsibility for the neurosis rests
+upon the societal consciousness in its ontogenetic phase within each
+of us_; and above all, since my indictment of the social unconscious
+is one from which I am no more exempted than others, to withhold such
+a statement would be nothing other than the hesitation to affirm my
+real conviction and so retain the servility and introversion of my own
+social unconsciousness. This position is precisely the expression of
+what I believe to be the essential embodiment of the neurosis, and my
+wish to keep silent would be nothing else than my own unconscious wish
+not to relinquish the neurosis in which I share as a social element
+within it. Upon closer view, my unconscious fear becomes merely my wish
+to save my own individuation and unconsciousness at the expense of the
+participatory, societal confluence that alone constitutes consciousness.
+
+This, as I think of it, is interesting, for upon reflection it grows
+still clearer that my reluctance would be again the neurosis within
+myself or the retention of the very separateness I am presumably
+undertaking to observe. After all, my irresolution would amount to
+my withholding not the statement but myself. It would represent my
+preference (as always it is my preference unconsciously) to withhold
+myself from my organic place as a confluent part in the societal
+aggregate. Instead of being one, therefore, with every other element
+comprising it, it would mean that I preferred to retain the illusion
+of my own disparateness, phantastically hoping in my dissociative mode
+thus to comprise in my individual self the self-possession that alone
+pertains to the acceptance of one’s share in our common, societal
+aggregate.
+
+And so I have come to believe that, however unwelcome the imputation,
+it is only the societal indictment as it applies to oneself personally
+that affords the real opportunity of release from the neurosis of
+society. It is the illusion of differentiation that is the essence
+of the neurosis. It is the fallacy of our personal separateness that
+is the meaning of our societal discord. Through our mutual analyses
+and also in the contacts of our daily living as a subjectively
+organized group, we have come to realize that this subtle attitude of
+disaffection is extraneous to the essential life of man. Affective
+conditions recognized as results outside of us are affective conditions
+unrecognized as causes within us. Subjectively, societally, they are
+the same. From a relative or organismic basis there is no difference.
+Just as cosmically or in the objective universe there is no absolute
+time and space, so organically or in the subjective universe there
+is no absolute cause and effect. As objectively time and space are
+“relative to moving systems,” so subjectively cause and effect are
+relative to organic sequences. Accordingly, our need is to recognize
+the implication of the unconscious not as directed against others
+nor against oneself, but as including oneself equally with others in
+constituting together in our common life a single, societal unit.
+
+There will, I know, be much misunderstanding in regard to what has
+been set down in these pages. If, by chance, the conventional artist
+should read this thesis, he will tell you that he understands and that
+he accepts it fully, on the ground that he finds its full realization
+within his own intuitions. But the artist will be mistaken. Should
+the conventional scientist read it, he will tell you that it is not
+possible to find substantiation for such a thesis within the scope of
+his authenticated formulations and that therefore he cannot understand
+or accept it. But the scientist will also be mistaken. Both will be
+quite right objectively, but this is, in itself, to miss the meaning of
+a conception that is essentially subjective.[59] This thesis has been
+felt and written from an intrinsically relative mode, and it is only
+from an intrinsically relative mode that it can be felt and understood.
+As yet the artist knows feeling only in the absolute form of the images
+that exist within himself; as yet the scientist knows feeling only in
+the absolute form of the images that exist outside himself. The one
+lives within the dreams (fanciful formulations) arising within the
+personal system that is individual; the other lives within the concepts
+(theoretical formulations) transmitted to him from the personal
+system that is social. Yet I do not doubt that among both artists and
+scientists, as well as among many people who are technically neither
+artist nor scientist, there will be those who will partake more or
+less consciously of what is here more or less consciously partaken of.
+In the form of its presentation it is inevitably restricted to the
+objective symbol of the written word; nevertheless, in the subjective
+encompassment of each that is its common inclusion of both, it may
+equally reach and unite the basic personalities of poet and craftsman,
+of male and female, of artist and scientist.
+
+In this sense and in this spirit of a common involvement in the
+unconscious of my fellows, I feel that to some, at least, my meaning
+will seem clear and my motive not untoward. For there are those
+who, like myself, are only “normal” under duress and who secretly
+revolt against the compromising yoke of the social as well as of the
+individual unconscious. It is for these that I have written. To speak
+fearlessly and with freedom to the few, who are fearless and free
+enough to understand, means far more to me and will, I believe, prove
+ultimately far more fruitful in making clear the real meaning of our
+human need than half-hearted statements muttered with bated breath and
+trimmed to suit the fear-ridden prepossessions of the collective mind
+as it tends in its blind autocracy to dominate the clearer vision of us
+all.
+
+The more I consider the factor of one’s personal hesitancy to entrust
+himself unreservedly to the societal aggregate through unbosoming
+his own unconscious wish to repress his share in its collective
+dissociation, the more it is clear to me that in this very symptom of
+one’s own--for such it is--lies the strongest corroboration of the
+impersonal or societal interpretation of the neurosis. For, as I have
+said, it is the acceptance of the oneness of each of us individually
+within the encompassing societal organism as an aggregate that alone
+points the way to our release from the fear or separateness that is the
+neurosis of the societal organism.
+
+To consider the instinct of the societal bond without mentioning its
+influence in the development of the formulations that have resulted
+from the conceptions of Freud, would be to waive acknowledgment of
+the very determinants which have made possible the present societal
+interpretation. Abstract truths are the personal relics of genius;
+their vindication in the concrete text of experience is the heritage of
+our common consciousness. If the significance of personality lies in
+the organismic consciousness of man, the springs of all creative genius
+are to be traced to this common source. This organic consanguinity is
+the very essence of genius. Holding its incisive course against all
+obstacle, this societal urge makes of genius the socially solitary
+expression that it is. The source of genius is nuclear, original,
+essential. Moving amid the surface crusts of “types” which in their
+restriction of outer contact may only absorb or reflect the impressions
+about them, genius eradiates from the common centre of our societal
+organism sustained by an impulse that is cosmic. For this reason, it is
+the unalterable sentence of genius that it break with every accustomed
+adherence. It is its law that it raise itself out of habitual inertias
+and see straight and clear, beyond all temporary immediacies, into the
+unfurbished truth of things. In this wise, in face of the personal
+criticism and resentment of the very world whose progress it was the
+all-engrossing effort of his genius to further, Sigmund Freud saw and
+reported what he saw, fearless, determined and alone. There is no more
+isolated appointment than this to which genius is summoned. It is in
+this appointment and in the societal implication of it, that lies
+the real significance of Freud. Should we fail to realize this, we
+would ourselves be overlooking the societal urge that is phyletically
+inherent in Freud’s psychology.
+
+In the course of our development the period of men’s substitutive
+image-production was first interrupted through the return to reality
+inaugurated by Darwin’s theory of evolution. What still remained over
+in man’s mental life has been further threatened by Freud’s theory of
+the evolutionary processes of the unconscious. When the evolutionary
+theories of Darwin and Freud are carried to their ultimate social
+conclusion, the result will be the entire repudiation of man’s
+image-production and a re-uniting of his organic and conscious life
+into a single constructive whole.
+
+In an essentially psychological study of this kind in which the effort
+has been made to trace the mechanisms of unconscious processes in their
+social application, there is not place for discussing the practical
+outcome, political, economic and industrial, that must follow through
+the very altered position of man’s conscious outlook as a result of
+a more inclusive interpretation of our societal background. It is
+impossible to conjecture the influence upon man’s behaviour socially
+and nationally that would result from a complete dispelling from his
+mind of the images that now occupy the place of his organic reality.
+How much the reaction that is ostensibly the most disastrous in our
+social life--the reaction of war--is due to the obsession of the social
+mind with mere images having no reality, it would only be extravagant
+to attempt to surmise. But these are practical considerations that must
+occupy us in subsequent discussions if the basis here outlined in its
+fundamental biology shall be found of value amid the growing processes
+of man’s thought.
+
+There is a further statement I wish to make. In this statement I should
+like to be understood as speaking in the fullest sincerity of which
+I am capable, my feeling being uninfluenced either by sentimental
+modesty or by any deprecatory wish to refer to extraneous agencies
+the sponsorship for this record. This thesis in a very true sense is
+not my thesis--it represents no intellectual achievement of mine.
+On consideration it will readily be seen that of its very nature it
+could not be my thesis. The outgrowth of automatic conditions stoutly
+resisted by me, it is the product of environmental circumstances over
+which I had no control. It was exacted under pain of repudiating
+in actuality the theoretical interpretations for which my work has
+stood. It is the outcome of inevitable concession to the ordeal of
+facing in its grim detail the fabric of substitution and disparity
+composing the structure of my own daily living. Convictions have been
+wrung from me against my own personal will, against every tradition
+about me and in spite of every effort of subtlety on my part to escape
+their exactions. Through many months I have fought their acceptance
+over every step of the way. As, little by little, a more relative and
+societal conviction has been borne in upon me, it has proved that the
+realization I have so long and so resolutely resisted has been the
+actuality of my own separatism and unconsciousness, as contrasted
+with the undifferentiated, organic life of which my personal work has
+been but the theory. It is because this work in its actuality is the
+expression of an urge common to life, sweeping aside in the strength of
+its organic tide every claim to personal consideration, that there is
+due the acknowledgment that it has come to expression unbeholden to me,
+that its motive has been, as far as humanly possible, not personal but
+societal.
+
+The organic theory here offered has been advanced by me hitherto on
+grounds of mere conceptual intuitions. Its present form embodies
+in its spirit of an impersonal, affective participation, however
+imperfectly fulfilled, the subjective record of an organic experience.
+In its plea for a wider acceptance of the common fellowship of man’s
+native consciousness, I well realize that it is only with the years
+that we may hope to yield it fuller accord.
+
+I shall be glad if this embodiment of whatever societal acceptance may
+have found expression in these pages may bring a clearer meaning, a
+quieter understanding to any whose need has been deep and unfulfilled.
+For my own part, this expression is the response to what is the
+deepest demand of my own life--the need for the organic unification of
+personality that I feel resides alone in the common consciousness of
+man.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+  Absolutism--
+    in affects, 39, 227
+    in present system of consciousness, 33, 43, 63, 104, 227
+    in psychoanalysis, 67, 68, 73, 101
+    in the Church, 66-68, 73
+    _see also_ Personal absolute
+
+  Adler, 113, 174
+
+  Affects, 115, 121, 130, 178, 205, 227
+
+  Affective life, 115, 125
+    components, 57, 58, 62
+
+  Allocentric and autocentric--
+    complementary, 203, 213
+    definition, 188
+    reactions, 191-196, 218
+
+  Allosexuality--
+    and autosexuality, 207, 208, 211
+    definition, 201, 202
+    identical basis, 209
+    _see also_ Sex
+
+  Alternative--
+    bidimensional, 80-85, 93, 96, 97, 226-228, 239
+    in art and drama, 85-87, 96
+    in psychoanalysis, psychology, and psychopathology, 97, 100-103,
+        229-233
+    individual expressions of, 88-91
+    occurrence in group analysis, 223, 224, 236
+    social expressions of, 85, 92-95, 99, 102, 207
+    _see also_ “Good and bad”
+
+  Ambivalence, 86, 94, 196, 228
+    _see also_ Alternative
+
+  “Anal complex,” 216
+
+  Analysis--
+    aim of, 26, 137, 164, 165, 166
+    _see also_ Dream; Group analysis; Psychoanalysis
+
+  Aquinas, 158
+
+  Art, 87, 96, 183
+
+  Artist, 96, 218, 219
+
+  Autocentric--
+    _see_ Allocentric
+
+  Autosexuality, 206, 215, 244
+    _see also_ Allosexuality
+
+
+  Besant, Annie, 139
+
+  Belief, 47, 143
+
+  Bidimensional plane, 41, 42, 58, 60, 62, 104
+    _see also_ Alternative; Relativity of consciousness
+
+  Bleuler, 94
+
+  Buddha, 218
+
+
+  Calvin, 158
+
+  Cerebro-spinal nervous system, 189-192, 194
+
+  Childhood--
+    consciousness of, 22, 23, 145
+    imposition of social images upon, 52-55, 58, 59, 92, 93, 116, 123,
+        132, 145, 213
+
+  Christ, 218
+
+  Christianity, 85, 193, 196
+
+  Church--
+    as social systematization, 65-75
+
+  Claparède, 156
+
+  Collective unconscious--
+    _see_ Social unconscious
+
+  Complexes, 47, 72
+
+  Compulsion neurosis, 81
+
+  Consciousness--
+    absolutism of present system, 43, 44
+    as unconsciousness, 24, 110, 111, 114, 115, 119, 143
+    definition, 119
+    individualistic compared with societal, 51, 62, 109, 144
+    ontogenesis, 119-121
+    phylogenesis, 118, 160, 162
+    relativity of, 32-40, 48
+    unification of, 122, 126, 169, 173, 212, 218, 242
+    _see also_ Dissociation; Self-consciousness; Societal concept of
+        consciousness
+
+
+  Darwin, 249
+
+  Dementia præcox, 124, 136, 137, 195, 203
+
+  Depression, 91, 94
+
+  Descartes, 124
+
+  Differentiation, 129, 169, 178, 242
+    delusion of, 120-122, 125, 131
+
+  Dissociation--
+    individual and social, 45-47, 76, 109, 110, 132, 144, 148-153, 155,
+        176, 185, 241
+
+  Division of personality, 81, 85, 95, 147, 222
+    genesis of, 116-119
+    physiological substrate, 189-191
+    _see also_ Dissociation; Neurosis; Repression
+
+  Doubt--
+    attitude of Church toward, 65, 66, 68, 69, 71
+    compared with resistance, 71-74
+
+  Drama, 85-88, 182, 183
+
+  Dream, 178-183, 185, 195
+    analysis, 88, 176, 177, 184
+    and personal absolute, 90, 111-113
+    and wish, 89
+
+
+  Eddington, A. S., 32
+
+  Education, 92, 93, 214
+    _see also_ Childhood
+
+  Ego-sexuality, 201-203, 206-208
+    _see also_ Sex
+
+  Einstein, 32, 36, 37, 38, 186
+
+  Eliot, George, 218
+
+  Ellis, Havelock, 158
+
+  Extravert, 187, 201
+
+
+  Family, 204, 234, 235
+
+  Feeling--
+    as subjective experience, 20, 21, 115
+
+  Freud, 1, 4, 5, 9, 14, 38, 47, 101, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113,
+        126, 154, 156, 157, 158, 159, 174, 199, 204, 236, 248, 249
+
+  Freudian analysis, 1-5, 38, 47, 138, 168, 172, 231
+
+  Freud’s theory--
+    of the neuroses, 12, 14, 37, 94, 108, 109, 126, 156, 157, 196,
+        228, 229, 236, 237
+    of resistance, 61, 154
+
+
+  “Good and bad”--
+    as image of personal advantage, 55, 59, 62, 81, 85, 90, 192, 200
+    bidimensional alternative, 53, 58, 62, 65, 78, 81, 91, 102, 103,
+        201, 227, 239
+    pretence underlying, 54-56, 58, 92
+    _see also_ Image
+
+  Group analysis, 131, 223-226, 234-238, 246
+
+
+  Heterosexuality--
+    _see_ Allosexuality; Homosexuality; Sex
+
+  Homophyllic, 208, 210
+
+  Homosexuality, 94, 97, 199, 211
+    and heterosexuality, 198, 200-202, 210
+    and paranoia, 174, 175
+    _see also_ Sex
+
+  Hysteria, 63, 97, 143, 189, 191
+    social, 16
+
+
+  Ideas of reference, 136, 223
+
+  Image, 40-42
+    as substitution, 16
+    basis of marriage, 207
+    basis of sexuality, 14, 15
+    bidimensional, 53, 57-59, 226-228
+    contrasted with reality, 41, 79
+    of male and female, 96, 216
+    of parent, 55, 103, 173, 235
+    _see also_ “Good and bad”; Mother-image; Social images
+
+  Incest-Awe, 147, 148
+
+  Individual--
+    as systematization, 70, 76
+    as separative element, 126, 150, 152, 153, 160, 243
+    as societal element, 115, 117, 127, 130, 148, 156
+
+  Infantilism, 215, 244
+
+  Insanity, 23, 24, 91, 124, 137
+    _see also_ Neurosis; Social neurosis
+
+  Instinct, 60, 127
+    common societal, 200
+    organic instinct of sex, 202
+
+  Introvert, 187, 201
+
+
+  Jung, 113, 156, 204, 205
+
+
+  Kropotkin, P., 159
+
+
+  Libido, 156
+
+
+  Mania, 91, 94
+
+  Marriage, 93, 94, 204, 206-209
+
+  Masturbation, 211
+
+  Meyer, Adolf, xx
+
+  Mood-alternation, 91, 94
+
+  Mother-image, 141, 172, 234
+
+  Mysticism, 125, 134, 139-142
+
+
+  Napoleon, 218
+
+  Narcism, 157, 202
+
+  Nettleship, Richard Lewis, 106
+
+  Neurosis, 15, 76, 77, 83, 102, 117
+    and sexuality, 157, 173, 174, 209, 237
+    marital, 93, 94
+    source, 53, 125, 169, 173
+    _see also_ Normality; Social neurosis
+
+  Neurotic personality, 13-16, 24, 44, 168, 191, 214, 243, 244
+    and organic consciousness, 11, 12, 23, 153, 209
+
+  Newton, 35, 36
+    Newtonian system, 32, 33, 35, 37, 38
+
+  Nietzsche, 23, 130, 218, 247
+
+  Normality--
+    and personal absolute, 47, 63
+    and sexuality, 173, 203, 209, 244
+    as criterion, 11, 27, 30
+    as neurotic manifestation, 12-16, 175, 176, 191
+    mysticism in, 125, 134, 139-141
+    unconsciousness of, 26, 27, 147, 179, 181, 203
+
+
+  Objective observation, 18
+    within subjective sphere, 19-21, 51, 121-124, 167, 176, 178
+
+  Organismic--
+    definition, 3
+    _see also_ Societal concept of consciousness
+
+
+  Paranoia--
+    and homosexuality, 174, 175
+
+  Paranoiac, 94, 97, 143, 199
+
+  Personal absolute, 102, 103
+    and war, 83
+    as resistance, 61, 62, 76, 82, 84
+    as right, 82, 83, 90, 92, 98, 112
+    in psychoanalysis, 73, 101, 102
+    underlying social system, 45-48, 63, 70, 72-76, 80-84, 240
+    _see also_ Absolutism; Resistance; Will-to-self
+
+  Personal equation, 4
+
+  Plato, 218
+
+  Precoid, 63, 97, 195
+
+  Preconscious mode, 10, 119, 137, 189, 196
+
+  Primary identification, 115, 116
+    principle of, 218
+
+  Psychasthenic, 94, 193, 195
+
+  Psychiatrist, 107, 124, 136, 223
+
+  Psychiatry, 123, 136, 137, 183, 187
+
+  Psychoanalysis--
+    alternative in, 103, 196, 198, 229-233
+    as social systematization, 65, 67-76, 101
+    as theory, 17-19, 21, 25
+    duration of treatment, 230-233
+    impasse in, 109, 172, 223, 224
+    misconceptions, 2, 197
+    personal absolute in, 3, 73, 101, 102
+    position of, 9, 10, 229
+    unconscious element in, 3, 143, 167, 234
+    _see also_ Analysis; Group analysis
+
+  Psychoanalyst--
+    attitude toward patient, 24, 166-172, 181, 183, 195, 229, 230,
+        232-234
+    involvement in social unconscious, 110, 111, 183, 184, 222, 223
+    qualifications of, 28, 29
+
+  Psychology, 5, 33, 36, 38, 65, 97
+
+  Psychopathology, 63, 100, 101, 123, 124, 223
+    of war, 130
+
+  Ptolemaic system, 38
+
+
+  Relativity of consciousness, 32-40, 43, 45, 48, 51, 57-62, 104, 246
+
+  Religion, 64, 96, 98, 99
+
+  Repression--
+    and bipolarity, 216, 217
+    and sexuality, 156-159, 162, 163, 174, 193, 215, 242
+    and suggestion, 55, 142, 189, 192, 200, 201, 218
+    individual and social, 7, 13, 15, 30, 76, 77, 131, 154, 162, 163
+    physiological substrate, 189-193
+
+  Resistance--
+    as personal absolute, 61, 62, 76, 82, 84, 230
+    attitude of psychoanalysis toward, 69-76
+    compared with doubt, 71-74
+    individual and social, 43-45, 65, 75, 76, 152, 154, 155
+
+
+  Schreiner, Olive, 218
+
+  Self--
+    and sexuality, 15, 173, 200, 201, 210, 211
+    image of, 16, 58-61, 79, 82, 83, 141
+    preservation and race-preservation, 127
+
+  Self-consciousness, 116, 118-120, 125, 132, 147, 161, 162, 205
+
+  Sex--
+    and sexuality, 11, 156-159, 163, 193, 200-217, 237
+    as organic unity, 11, 163, 199, 208-212, 220
+    intermediate, 214, 215, 217
+    oppositeness in, 211, 213, 214, 216
+
+  Sexuality, 15
+    as replacement, 10, 163
+    _see also_ Repression; Sex
+
+  Shields, Clarence, xix, 233
+
+  Social images, 96, 102, 135-138, 161, 229
+    and childhood, 51-55, 58, 59, 92, 93
+    as distortion of reality, 87-90
+    _see also_ Image; Mother-image
+
+  Social neurosis, 101, 125, 130-133, 162, 245
+    and images, 229
+    individual implication, 84, 246
+
+  Social unconscious, 117, 133, 162, 222, 223, 228, 245
+    as basis of normality, 11-14, 26, 27, 44, 47, 176
+    _see also_ Unconsciousness
+
+  Societal concept of consciousness, 31, 45, 46, 127-131, 148, 149,
+        160-163
+    _see also_ Relativity of consciousness
+
+  Socrates, 218
+
+  Subjective sphere--
+    _see_ Feeling; Objective observation
+
+  Sublimation, 189
+
+  Suggestion--
+    _see_ Repression
+
+  Sympathetic nervous system, 189-192, 194
+
+
+  Transference, 167, 172, 230
+
+
+  Unconsciousness, 5, 15, 111, 126, 135, 144, 173, 178, 183-185, 192,
+        193, 204, 234
+    as resistance, 34, 76
+    underlying normality, 47, 125
+    _see also_ Consciousness; Dissociation; Social unconscious
+
+
+  War, 14, 16, 34, 35, 83, 129-132, 249
+
+  Wilde, Oscar, 78
+
+  Will-to-self, 13, 75, 90, 98, 129, 156
+
+  Wish, 89, 111-113, 173, 180, 195, 232
+
+
+                       PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY
+          THE EDINBURGH PRESS, 9 AND 11 YOUNG STREET, EDINBURGH
+
+
+
+
+FOOTNOTES
+
+
+[1] The word “organismic” refers to the feelings and reactions common
+to the social body regarded as a coherent, integral organism. The term
+organismic, as I use it in its social application, is identical with
+the term organic in its individual application. The difference is that
+the term organismic is employed in a more generic sense. But in general
+the usages, organic and organismic, are interchangeable.
+
+[2] “The Preconscious or the Nest Instinct,” a thesis presented in
+outline at the Seventh Annual Meeting of the American Psychoanalytic
+Association, Boston, Mass., May 25, 1917.
+
+[3] “Social Images versus Reality,” _The Journal of Abnormal Psychology
+and Social Psychology_, Vol. XIX, No. 3, Oct.-Dec., 1924.
+
+[4] “Our Social Evasion,” _Medical Journal and Record_, Vol. CXXIII,
+No. 12, June 16, 1926.
+
+[5] “Giebt es vielleicht--eine Frage für Irrenärzte--Neurosen der
+Gesundheit?”--Nietzsche’s _Werke_. Erste Abt., Band I. _Die Geburt der
+Tragödie._ Leipzig, 1903.
+
+[6] An instance of this inversion of natural expression is seen in
+the system of technique that is the obsession _par excellence_ of
+singers. In the art of singing, as correspondingly in any art of life,
+technique is applicable only to the theory of vocalization but not to
+the actuality of spontaneous musical expression.
+
+[7] I realize that a patient should have the protection of the medical
+expert’s knowledge. This means that the analyst, if not himself
+a physician, should be directly associated with the office of a
+physician. We know, of course, that charlatanry exists no less within
+the medical profession than elsewhere; yet while a medical degree is in
+no sense a certificate of personal sincerity, it is a social surety of
+professional responsibility. On the other hand, I have yet to hear the
+suggestion offered that a physician who is not himself a psychoanalyst
+should be closely associated with the office of a psychoanalyst. It
+seems odd, as one thinks of it, that this provision should not have
+been offered by those who have been conscientious enough to recognize
+the reverse need. As a matter of fact, the number of instances in which
+mental disorders are mistaken for somatic conditions is incomparably
+greater than those in which there is failure to recognize the existence
+of the somatic component. If it is important that the analyst should
+be competent to trace the source of structural diseases, the internist
+should be equally competent to trace the source of mental disharmonies.
+
+[8] “To free our thought from the fetters of space and time is an
+aspiration of the poet and the mystic, viewed somewhat coldly by
+the scientist who has too good reason to fear the confusion of
+loose ideas likely to ensue. If others have had a suspicion of the
+end to be desired it has been left to Einstein to show the way to
+rid ourselves of these ‘terrestrial adhesions to thought.’ And in
+removing our fetters he leaves us, not (as might have been feared)
+vague generalities for the ecstatic contemplation of the mystic,
+but a precise scheme of world-structure to engage the mathematical
+physicist.”--A. S. Eddington, F.R.S., “The Theory of Relativity and its
+Influence on Scientific Thought,” _The Scientific Monthly_, Vol. XVI,
+No. 1, Jan. 1923.
+
+[9] It is, of course, not possible to trace through mathematical
+intricacies a detailed analogy between the cosmic theory of relativity,
+as it bears upon the objective data of an abstruse calculus, and the
+organic theory of relativity, as it bears upon the subjective data of
+the all-inclusive principle of psychology here regarded as the basis of
+a universally comprehensive scheme of consciousness. The comparison has
+significance for me merely in the aptness of its theoretical alignment
+with a conception of consciousness which includes data extrinsic to our
+habitual psychological system, i.e. the system intrinsic to ourselves
+and commonly accepted as the totality of consciousness.
+
+[10] Newton observed the universe from the point of view of his fixed
+position upon the earth. Einstein observes the universe from the point
+of view of all possible positions within the universe. Likewise our
+present-day systems of psychology regard the conditions of life from
+the position of observation that is one’s individual point of view
+toward them. In the conception here advanced these conditions, on the
+contrary, are regarded from points of view that are socially relative
+to and inclusive of all possible positions of observation.
+
+The reader will recall that the conceptions of the physicists first
+led them to a theory of special relativity through their calculations
+of uniform motion, while their deductions came only later to embrace
+data pertaining to difform motion, or to motion that is not uniform,
+as contained under the conception of general relativity. With regard
+to the theory of relativity in the subjective sphere, it was upon
+noting the habitual deflections from a predictable organic constant,
+observable in the erratic reactions of the neurotic personality,
+that the conception of relativity in the sphere of consciousness
+first occurred to me. It was only subsequently that the relativity of
+consciousness as applied to the uniform reactions characteristic of
+the collective social mind came to shape itself into the organismic
+conception of relativity here outlined as the underlying principle of
+consciousness.
+
+While representing in no sense a detailed correlation between them,
+there is nevertheless a certain analogy, not only in the manner of
+inception of the objective and subjective theories with respect to
+the observation first of difform or abnormal deviation, and later
+of discrepancies of normal or uniform reactions; but there is also
+this further concomitance between the two aspects of the principle.
+The Newtonian hypothesis takes account of motion or reaction in the
+planetary system only in the large, while the theory of Einstein is
+adequate in contemplating the motion of planets both in the large
+and in the small. Conversely, our present Freudian theory of the
+unconscious takes care of the reactions of the personality in the
+small or in an individual or particular sense, while the theory of the
+relativity of consciousness regards personality not only individually
+or particularly (whether regarded singly or in its collective social
+expression) but also societally or in the sense of consciousness in its
+universal or organismic meaning.
+
+[11] This psychobiological misconception is doubtless also aided
+in large measure by the physiological conditions of our visual
+organs of perception and by the bidimensional surface upon which
+our impressions of objects are received. Because of the disposition
+of the nerve terminals of the retina upon a flat or bidimensional
+area, our visual perception of objects is limited to impressions of a
+flat or bidimensional plane. If by means of binocular accommodation
+objects present to us the appearance of “depth,” it is of course not
+to direct visual perception that we owe our sense of perspective but
+to stereoscopic inference, seconded by our stereognostic experience
+of tridimensional solidity. Hence, what is actually “perceived” upon
+looking at an object of three dimensions is a visual facet, as it
+were, due to our own mentally flattened “cross-section” of the solid
+object before us as determined by the particular aspect of it that
+is momentarily presented to view. I think it cannot be doubted that
+this mechanism of our visual perception is a contributing factor in
+influencing our tendency to “see” mentally. One says “I see” when he
+means “I understand.” There is the same implication in saying that one
+“sees” the logic of such and such a statement. So, too, we speak of
+a “mental point of view” or of “intellectual vision.” This illusory
+character of our mental percepts probably owes its explanation also in
+part to the fact that our visual sense is the sense that best permits a
+distant and detached observation _of_ rather than a contact _with_ the
+surrounding world.
+
+[12] “Our Mass Neurosis,” _The Psychological Bulletin_, Vol. 23, No. 6,
+June, 1926.
+
+[13] “The Reabsorbed Affect and Its Elimination,” _British Journal of
+Medical Psychology_, Vol. VI, Part 3.
+
+[14] “Speaking of Resistances,” address before the Sixteenth Annual
+Meeting of the American Psychoanalytic Association, New York City, June
+10, 1926. _Psyche_, No. 27, January, 1927.
+
+[15] “The Heroic Rôle--An Historical Retrospect,” _Psyche_, No. 25,
+July, 1926.
+
+[16] Needless to say the distinction here made between “actual” and
+“real” is used very specifically.
+
+[17] “Insanity a Social Problem,” _The American Journal of Sociology_,
+Vol. XXXII, No. I, Part I, July, 1926.
+
+[18] I recall an incident that occurred several years ago in the office
+of a prominent newspaper that well illustrates this point. A member of
+the staff was called to the phone to receive the details of a drowning,
+word of which had just been reported. One can picture the professional
+zeal with which he turned to the phone, alert with the eagerness of
+expectant acquisition. If a moment later he dropped the receiver
+and drew back with a sudden cry of horror, his whole face gradually
+altering to a look of dejection and pain, it was not because he had
+been disappointed in the expectation of a thrilling item of news. Not
+at all. The item was as tragic in its details as one could wish. The
+disappointment lay only in the fact that, on inquiring the name of
+the boy who had been drowned, he learned that it was his own son. It
+was only this circumstance, then, that explained why his countenance
+suddenly changed from satisfaction to pain. A matter of information
+which was to have been sold to his readers as a delectable item of
+news concerning the drowning of another man’s son became a poignant
+sorrow when the self-same news related to his own son. And so, upon
+examination, it may be seen that what really happened was an unexpected
+shift of affect due to the sudden alternation of the personal motive
+through the reversal of the bidimensional vantage.
+
+[19] “Psychoanalytic Improvisations and the Personal Equation,” _The
+Psychoanalytic Review_, Vol. XIII, No. 2, April, 1926.
+
+[20] Consider the legend of the origin of the life of man as symbolized
+through the intuitions of the folk unconscious recorded in the Book of
+Genesis. For its discussion see “The Origin of the Incest-Awe,” _The
+Psychoanalytic Review_, Vol. V, No. 3, July, 1918.
+
+[21] The term “consciousness” is used by the writer in two different
+senses, the one having to do with the mental sophistication of
+individual awareness, the other with consciousness regarded as an
+inclusive racial principle. The reader must rely upon the context for
+the distinction between the restricted individualistic interpretation
+on the one hand and the organismic interpretation on the other.
+
+[22] This mistaken tendency of inference has so far laid hold upon us
+as to mislead our perceptions even in respect to judgments concerning
+data which lie altogether within the objective mode. To cite an
+instance of homely type quite remote from the present argument:--when
+we speak of two buckets of water, drawn from a common source, in
+reality our concept is buckets of two waters. For the accident of their
+separation in space and of the demarcation of the bulk of each by the
+outline of its container leads the mind, habituated to the fallacy of
+subjective inference, to posit a difference or a _twoness of essence_
+where there is but a difference or twoness of outer circumstance or
+accidental condition. Hence there results a concept not of two buckets
+but of two waters, whereas the apparently two waters dipped from the
+same source are essentially one.
+
+[23] “The Need of an Analytic Psychiatry,” _The American Journal of
+Psychiatry_, Vol. VI, No. 3, January, 1927.
+
+[24] An example of the blindly impulsive character of this instinct
+often recurs to me. I was standing with a lady on the shore of Lake
+Zürich. A sudden storm arose and we could see plainly that two young
+men in a sail-boat well out in the middle of the lake had lost complete
+control of their craft. To the crowd that had gathered on the quays it
+was evident from the way the sail was jibing from side to side that the
+boat would overturn. A number of launches began hurrying toward it.
+As the boat capsized, throwing the men into the lake, my companion,
+suddenly tearing off her gloves, dashed toward the water. I managed to
+seize her just as she reached the water’s edge. On my rallying her and
+inquiring just what might be her plans with reference to two men a full
+quarter of a mile out in the lake and closely surrounded by competent
+rescue parties, she was unable to account for her impulsive reaction
+beyond declaring that she “just couldn’t let them drown like that!”
+Here was an individual with as goodly a share of unconscious egotism
+as the rest of us, but in whom at the sight of danger to others the
+self-instinct was completely subordinated to the organic behests of our
+common societal instinct.
+
+[25] “Character and the Neuroses,” _The Psychoanalytic Review_, Vol. I,
+No. 2, February, 1914.
+
+[26] We overlook the fact that it is not the content of a belief but
+rather the mere condition of believing that determines its errancy or
+truth. The word _belief_, as has been said, is a derivative of the
+Anglo-Saxon _leof_, meaning _preference_, but we do not recognize that
+what one “believes” is merely what one _wants to think_. There are
+undoubtedly as many devout believers among the devotees of Science
+as of Religion, and upon inquiry we should probably find that the
+pet _beliefs_ of the scientist rest upon as unreasoning an attitude
+of mind as those of the religionist. The point is that whatever is
+thus believed in response to personal preference is arbitrary and
+doctrinaire, be it evolution, relativity, or God.
+
+[27] It is really the element of secret emotionalism that constitutes
+mysticism. It is again a phase of the private alternative whereby
+we get what we want. What is called “intellectual mysticism” is but
+a secondary rationalization of this emotional element. But there is
+need of discrimination. While it is true that conceptions arising
+from intuitional inference may readily be begotten of emotionalism,
+yet the same inferences when based upon biological analogy cease to
+be mystical. Nietzsche’s “primordial unity,” because biologically
+inferred, seems to me a quite unemotional and inclusive conception. In
+the biological consistency that unites the most highly differentiated
+species with the lowest single unicellular organism, the mind
+straightway finds substantiation for Nietzsche’s conception. Whereas
+the “metaphysical unity” of the religionists is, on the contrary,
+a wholly mystical conception. Through this postulate the mind is
+immediately involved in such vagaries as one connects with the doctrine
+of transubstantiation or with the flights of Annie Besant and her
+astral bodies!
+
+But one can perhaps still more aptly illustrate the distinction
+in question by considering the totally opposed meanings--the one
+intellectual, the other emotional--contained in the word “vibrations”
+according as it is used by the scientist in regard to mathematically
+mensurable physical wave-lengths or as it is employed by the
+“hypersensitive personality” to describe certain sensations presumably
+recorded somewhere in the region of the epigastrium in response to
+subtle but invisible “psychic communications.” In defining the term
+mystical one must not fail to include the attitude of mind that leads
+one scientist, who has failed to understand the investigations of
+another, to refer to those investigations as mystical. I am inclined
+to feel somewhat strongly on this point because of the fact that my
+conception of the primary biological unity of the organism and its
+influence upon the subsequent development of the personality has
+tended to be regarded quite arbitrarily in the light of a mystical
+interpretation. (See note 1, page 10.)
+
+[28] There is a story reminiscent of juvenile days in my own home that
+is to the point. An older brother, then between four and five years of
+age, was being given his bath in the nursery as was customary in those
+days. Hanging above the mantel was a picture of the Sistine Madonna.
+The youngster being freed of his clothing ran skipping about the room.
+His governess happened to be present, and being duly horrified or,
+what is more probable as I remember her, acting in response to a sense
+of duty, she gently chid him for his lack of modesty, saying “Jesus
+doesn’t love little boys who go about that way.” The child looked up
+at the picture of the nude infant with doubtless a more discerning
+sympathy with Jesus’ views than grown-ups are wont to attribute to the
+wisdom of childhood, and looking his would-be instructress quietly in
+the eyes he replied incontrovertibly: “He does it hisse’f!”
+
+If the story of my brother’s life should ever be fully told, as some
+day I hope it may, it will help us realize the unerring fatality of an
+early enforced system of repression and its logical effect upon the
+individual’s subsequent life as upon its close.
+
+[29] The biological (organic) continuity between the societal
+or psychological and the functional or physiological spheres is
+interesting in view of their obvious homologies as shown in the
+marked suggestive influences which we see passing over from the
+psychological sphere and affecting the processes pertaining to the
+functional or physiological sphere and doubtless operating no less in
+the reverse direction. One wonders without undue presumption how many
+so-called “organic” diseases are not primarily functional and hence
+functionally modifiable through the integral, societal agency of an
+organic analysis, provided, of course, that the separative process
+has not already crystallized into the static condition of structural
+alteration. At least it is clear that many so-called physical
+derangements need to be frankly regarded in the light of sheer somatic
+hysterias. See “The Psychological Analysis of So-called Neurasthenic
+and Allied States,” _The Journal of Abnormal Psychology_, Vol. VIII,
+1913-14, page 246, note 1.
+
+An analogous condition is demonstrable in the physical universe in the
+fact that the phenomena of gravitation (such as planetary motion) and
+the phenomena of electricity (including the motion of light) have been
+proved to be so intimately related to one another as to be regarded now
+by the physicists “as parts of one vast system embracing all Nature.”
+
+[30] The Southern negro has a definition of libido that is biologically
+truer than that of either Freud, Jung or Claparède. He refers to
+inadequacy of the sexual life as a lack of “ambition.”
+
+[31] It should be recalled that in the view of the present thesis
+sexuality as it exists socially among us is, in essence, narcistic
+throughout and that hence sexuality, including so-called _normal_
+sexuality, is, in my conception, a repression, and must be definitely
+discriminated from the spontaneous and biological expression embodied
+in the native instinct of sex. (See p. 10.)
+
+[32] One may find the objective evidence of this statement amply set
+forth in P. Kropotkin’s _Mutual Aid, a Factor of Evolution_. Here
+Kropotkin traces in a very conclusive way the presence of the societal
+instinct in the lower animals and in primitive man. Kropotkin errs,
+however, when he reaches the levels of development expressed in the
+social organizations of man. For he fails to discriminate between the
+instinct of societal solidarity that is the natural cohesion of a
+species and the quite premeditated and ulterior expressions of social
+accord represented in the mutual self-interests of man’s collective
+adaptations.
+
+[33] “An Ethnic Aspect of Consciousness,” _The Sociological Review_,
+Vol. XIX, No. 1, January, 1927.
+
+[34] If, in the flash of so brief an interval of time (speaking
+ethnologically) as fifty years or so, a plan were effected involving
+the complete segregation from one another of all the individuals
+comprising the societal organism of the species, the result,
+notwithstanding the many millions of years required for the gradual
+evolution of the race up to the present time, would be its complete
+extermination! Such a consideration allows us to realize, at least
+objectively, how closely interwoven are the elements comprising our
+societal organism and how dependent is the integrity of the whole upon
+the organic participation of its parts.
+
+[35] A striking instance of psychoanalytic unconsciousness may be
+seen in the analyst’s quite naïve attitude toward his own unconscious
+need for such infantile pacifiers as he finds in the obsessive use of
+tobacco. That such diversions are no more adult than the use of the
+rubber ring or nipple of his infancy he does not for a moment suspect,
+the concomitance of such practices with the oral eroticism of his
+childhood having only a _theoretical_ significance for him. The truth
+is, the psychoanalyst _wants to smoke_. Of course, it is not consistent
+with his teaching and if he is to have his way in the matter some
+process must be devised that will make it consistent. And so in his
+authoritarian suzerainty he forthwith decrees that the patient who
+objects to a smoke-filled room is a prey to unseemly resistances, and
+that his or her attitude of mind, not the analyst’s, must be promptly
+looked into with a view to summary treatment.
+
+[36] Let me say at once that this nomadic young lady did me the
+honour to remark that she sensed immediately upon meeting me that
+_my_ attitude was entirely different from that of other analysts. Of
+this she made haste to assure me at the outset. In thinking of it, a
+wince gives place to a smile as I recall the trustful complacency with
+which I benignly accepted as a statement of fact the cunning decoys of
+this seraphically unconscious individual, her flattering reassurances
+seeming to me at the time clearly to indicate the very rare perceptions
+of this unusually discerning young person! The aftermath as it has come
+to pass in the brief succeeding years enables me unhesitatingly to aver
+that my severely reproved colleagues were at least not more unconscious
+than I.
+
+[37] See note 1, page 15.
+
+[38] See note 1, page 56.
+
+[39] See note 1, page 10.
+
+[40] See note 1, page 10.
+
+[41] Perhaps this distinction of type has its societal counterpart
+also in the opposite psychological reactions embodied in the esoteric
+tendencies of Catholicism with its markedly autocentric organization,
+as compared with Protestantism’s more allocentric trends. The
+difference between the two types of reaction is also seen in the broad
+geographical contrast that separates the consciousness of Asia from
+that of Europe.
+
+[42] See discussion of opposed reaction-types independently determined
+by M. Geiger, “Neue Complicationsversuche,” _Philos. Studien_,
+XVIII, 1903, pp. 347-436 and also by myself, _The Determination of
+the Position of a Momentary Impression in the Temporal Course of a
+Moving Visual Impression_, The Johns Hopkins Studies in Philosophy and
+Psychology, No. 3, The Psychological Review, Psychological Monographs,
+Vol. XI, No. 4, September, 1909.
+
+[43] “Psychiatry as an Objective Science,” _British Journal of Medical
+Psychology_, Vol. V, Part 4.
+
+[44] Narcism (homo-erotism) is a reversion of interest representing
+a sexual reaction to the pictorial affect or to the personal image.
+Autoerotism (ego-erotism) represents an arrest of the individual’s
+sexuality due to its impact with the personal image or with the social
+self-reflection about him. Narcism embodies the reflection of the
+individual’s erotism in its social phase. Autoerotism is the absorption
+of the individual’s erotism in its personal phase. Autoerotism is
+thus central and represents the retroversion or interception by the
+organism of its efferent interests. This occurs in the individual
+inversion expressed in the sensory images of dementia præcox. Narcism
+is peripheral and is expressed in the social inversion pertaining
+equally to the motor images of homosexuality as to the sensory images
+of paranoia.
+
+[45] While a student of Jung’s in the early days of psychoanalysis,
+at the time when Jung was the very organ of Freud’s genius, the clear
+emanation of his spirit, I remarked to him one day that I had come to
+the conclusion that the neurotic individual inevitably married his
+mother. Jung’s reply, alert as a flash, was characteristic of his
+brilliant, inclusive scope of vision. “I have come to the conclusion,”
+he said, “that _every_ individual inevitably marries his mother.”
+
+[46] The word _like_ is from Anglo-Saxon _gelic_, compounded of _ge_,
+meaning together, and _lic_, meaning body.
+
+[47] “Convention in Psychoanalysis and Its Interpretative Inhibitions,”
+a paper read at the Eighth Annual Meeting of the American
+Psychoanalytic Association, Atlantic City, May 10, 1918.
+
+[48] See note 2, page 208.
+
+[49] In a recent meeting of psychopathologists a paper was presented
+which described the results of a questionnaire that had been
+distributed among the students of one of our prominent American
+universities, the object of which was to learn the nature of the sexual
+life of the college students. The figures compiled from the answers
+submitted showed in the author’s view a surprisingly high percentage
+of masturbation and homosexuality. But what is of interest is the fact
+that in the interpretation of the author of the paper, as well as in
+that of every member who participated in the discussion, the concept
+of masturbation was restricted solely to personal practices on the
+part of the single individual, while the concept of homosexuality
+was confined entirely to the manifestation of sexual interests or
+activities occurring between persons of the same sex! Apparently it
+was not suspected that these manifest expressions of autoerotism or
+homosexuality are the least widespread or significant forms of its
+occurrence, that the really important and far-reaching expression of
+these disorders of instinct occurs in the latent form represented in
+the symbolic substitutions of heterosexuality as commonly practised,
+for example, in houses of prostitution. Yet these latter expressions
+were avowedly regarded as real expressions of heterosexuality and,
+accordingly, its devotees were naïvely interpreted as presenting a
+psychological adaptation which showed a frank contrast to that of
+their “homosexual” confrères! It is hopeless to expect any scientific
+understanding of anomalies of reaction that pertain to our subjective
+life as long as scientists themselves persist in confusing the
+objective appearances under which these anomalies are disguised for the
+subjective actuality of these anomalies themselves.
+
+[50] “The Genesis and Meaning of ‘Homosexuality’”--a development of
+_the principle of identification or the primary subjective phase of
+consciousness_. See _The Psychoanalytic Review_, Vol. IV, No. 3, July,
+1917.
+
+[51] It is not by accident but by some inner, intuitive design that
+man has adopted the symbol he employs as the sign of infinity. In
+the mark of the mathematicians--consisting of two circles that are
+one, one circle that is two, wherein is neither beginning nor end--is
+expressed the character of the infinite and all-inclusive in a form of
+conjunction so complete as not to be susceptible of possible increment.
+
+[52] The reader is reminded that this book was outlined in 1923. From
+that time to the time of publication (1927), the group analysis,
+proceeding along the lines indicated in this chapter, has further
+substantiated the thesis here stated.
+
+[53] See note 1, page 53.
+
+[54] See note 1, page 15.
+
+[55] We are warned, of course, that this new shift of technique will
+arouse in us unprecedented resistances. But let us be wary lest we
+capitulate too easily to this ready-to-hand ogre of “resistances”; for
+by the same token we have been warned throughout these analytic years
+that we must expect unprecedented resistances to the former dictum of
+psychoanalysis--a dictum which imposed without parley or mitigation a
+rigid analytic policy of non-interference. Our inconsistency is but
+another instance of the automatic illogic of the alternative, of the
+inevitable compulsion of the personal criterion.
+
+[56] “The Group Method of Analysis,” _The Psychoanalytic Review_, Vol.
+XIV, 1927, “The Laboratory Method in Psychoanalysis,” _The American
+Journal of Psychiatry_, Vol. V, No. 3, January, 1926.
+
+[57] It should be clearly explained that _group analysis is not my
+analysis of the group but that it is the group’s analysis of me or
+of any other individual_. In our laboratory usage, “group” does not
+mean a collection of individuals. It means a phyletic principle of
+observation. This phyletic principle of observation as applied to the
+individual and to the aggregate is the whole significance of group
+analysis.
+
+[58] I hold that the word “spirit” employed in its biological
+connotation belongs to the legitimate equipment of the laboratory.
+Because the religionists have carried it off and perverted it to
+sentimental uses, I shall not surrender the claim of the scientist upon
+it. And so by “spirit” I do not wish to indicate anything akin to the
+ghostly itinerants reputed to stalk o’ nights, nor to that beneficent
+impulse that moves people to cheer the afternoon of life by “doing
+good” when the infelicities of age or infirmity have dulled the edge of
+less salutary proclivities. Neither have I in mind any philosophical
+concept whatever, nor least of all a conception savouring of a
+religious purport, all of which seem to me equally apparitional. I mean
+merely man’s innate, unprompted or unchecked feeling as expressive of
+his organic life. That which in man responds to natural beauty, actual
+or inferred, is of the sphere of the spirit as I use the term.
+
+[59] “There are ages, when the rational and the intuitive man stand
+side by side, the one full of fear of the intuition, the other full of
+scorn for the abstraction; the latter just as irrational as the former
+is inartistic.” Nietzsche, _Early Greek Philosophy and Other Essays_.
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78616 ***
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+
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+
+/* Poetry */
+
+/* uncomment the next line for centered poetry */
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+
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+    </style>
+</head>
+
+<body>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78616 ***</div>
+
+
+
+<h1>
+The Social Basis of<br>
+Consciousness
+</h1>
+
+<p class="center">
+A Study in Organic Psychology<br>
+Based upon a Synthetic and Societal<br>
+Concept of the Neuroses<br>
+<br>
+<span class="smaller">BY</span><br>
+<span class="xlarge">TRIGANT BURROW</span><br>
+<span class="smcap">M.D., Ph.D.</span><br>
+<br>
+<br>
+NEW YORK<br>
+HARCOURT, BRACE &amp; COMPANY, INC.<br>
+LONDON: KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER &amp; CO., LTD.<br>
+1927
+</p>
+
+<hr class="front">
+
+<blockquote class="constrain">
+<p class="center"><i>THE SOCIAL BASIS OF CONSCIOUSNESS</i></p>
+
+<p class="noindent">Chapter I, Part I, was first published in <i>The Journal
+of Nervous and Mental Disease</i>, and Chapter II,
+Part I, in <i>The Psychoanalytic Review</i>. Acknowledgment
+is made to the Editors for permission to include
+these papers in the present volume.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p class="center smaller" style="margin-top:3em;">
+PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY<br>
+THE EDINBURGH PRESS, 9 AND 11 YOUNG STREET, EDINBURGH
+</p>
+
+<hr class="front">
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent8"><i>I am that which began;</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent10"><i>Out of me the years roll;</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent8"><i>Out of me God and man;</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent10"><i>I am equal and whole;</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>God changes, and man, and the form of them bodily;</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent8"><i>I am the soul.</i></div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0 right">“Hertha.”—<span class="smcap">Swinburne.</span></div>
+    </div>
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_vii">[vii]</span>  </div>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="front">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CONTENTS">
+    CONTENTS
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+<table>
+  <tr><td colspan="2" class="smaller tdr">PAGE</td></tr>
+  <tr><td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Preface</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#p_xv">xv</a></td></tr>
+
+  <tr><td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Introduction</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#p_1">1</a></td></tr>
+
+  <tr><td colspan="2" class="chapdesc">Significance of Freud’s basic conception—Misconceptions
+in psychoanalysis due to present personalistic basis—Psychoanalysis
+entails the element of personal differentiation and
+sponsorship presented in other therapeutic systems—Need for
+abrogation of personal equation—Societal concept an outgrowth
+of essential objective findings of Freud—This thesis
+an initial presentation of an organismic interpretation of
+human consciousness.</td></tr>
+
+  <tr><td colspan="2" class="center larger">PART I<br>
+THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE NEUROSES</td></tr>
+
+  <tr><td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Chapter I</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#p_9">9</a></td></tr>
+
+  <tr><td colspan="2" class="chapdesc">
+<div class="center">PSYCHOANALYSIS IN THEORY AND IN LIFE</div>
+
+Theory of psychoanalysis rests upon conception that
+nervous disorders are substitutive manifestation of repressed
+sexual life—Sexuality itself, however, as now existing,
+symptomatic of repression and quite preclusive of the organic
+instinct of sex—Popular analytic view places a premium upon
+the reaction embodied in normality but substitution and
+repression in this collective reaction identical with the unconscious
+of neurotic individuals—Substitution of self-image
+for reality, present in reactions of normal, is not as yet
+recognized by psychoanalysis—Psychoanalysis remains in so
+far a theory only—In truth, the neurotic personality is index
+of the urge toward an essential organic mode of consciousness—Continuity
+with organic processes registered as subjective
+feeling cannot be approached by objective methods—The
+insanity of the individual not to be cured as long as there is the
+insanity of the social mind about him.</td></tr>
+
+  <tr><td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Chapter II</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#p_32">32</a></td></tr>
+  <tr><td colspan="2" class="chapdesc"><div class="center">A RELATIVE CONCEPT OF CONSCIOUSNESS: AN
+ANALYSIS OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN ITS ETHNIC ORIGIN</div>
+
+The Newtonian system assumes an unqualified absolute
+and fails to take account of factors operating within the larger
+system in which it is itself an element—In the sphere of
+psychic phenomena a similar system of absolutism dominates
+our presumably conscious world—Analysis of our
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_viii">[viii]</span>judgments reveals the assumption that the position intrinsic
+to the observer is all-inclusive and authentic—But our
+world of impressions is artificial and reflects the artificial
+systematization that fails to include our own organisms—This
+autocratic interpretation of life is based on a bidimensional
+or image system which in its arbitrary and personal
+evaluation distorts the universe of reality—Normality is
+consensus comprising the personal absolute vested in the
+unconscious of the collective mind—Need to replace pictorial
+mode by organic coalescence in common affectivity—Personal
+systems of men, single and collective, are but relative with
+respect to an organic societal consciousness—Concept of
+relativity of consciousness abrogates absolute standard
+and embraces dimensional element of the system, individual
+and social, of which we ourselves are a component part—Transition
+from bidimensional (contemplation of aspect) to tridimensional
+(participation in function) affords basis for
+measuring deflections of personality, socially as well as
+individually.</td></tr>
+
+  <tr><td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Chapter III</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#p_50">50</a></td></tr>
+
+  <tr><td colspan="2" class="chapdesc"><div class="center">THE ORIGIN OF OUR INDIVIDUAL UNCONSCIOUS</div>
+
+Organic societal consciousness can be comprehended only
+through subjective identification with it—Discussion of the
+tridimensional reality of human consciousness with its three
+determinants—Present phase of consciousness admits only
+the bidimensional image—The position of the bidimensional
+elements “right and wrong” as incorporated in the life of
+the child—Advantage of the parent the real motive underlying
+this moral bidimension—Long-continued experiments
+with personal mood reactions as substantiation of view that
+induced image of right and wrong is at the root of human
+psychopathology—Non-inclusiveness of others is meaning
+of unconsciousness, individual and social—Present social
+adaptation is merely collective response, not societal extension
+of consciousness—Substitution of the absolute of personal
+interest for inclusive participation as relative elements affords
+no basis for inclusion of larger whole in which the individual
+is a contributing element.</td></tr>
+
+  <tr><td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Chapter IV</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#p_63">63</a></td></tr>
+
+  <tr><td colspan="2" class="chapdesc"><div class="center">THE UNCONSCIOUS FACTOR WITHIN THE SOCIAL SYSTEM</div>
+
+Daily reactions betray state of anxiety in the social mind—These
+anxieties, sponsored in earlier times by medical and
+religious fetish, still substantiated by the systems of medicine
+and religion—Organic analysis of the element of social
+authority—The systems of psychoanalysis and the Roman
+Church as paradigms—Factor of resistance in psychoanalysis
+analogous to factor of doubt in religion—The systematization
+comprising the social corporation of individuals as much an
+aspect of the unconscious autocracy of the personal absolute
+as the systematization of the individual—In the conflict
+between these two mutually opposed absolutes (socially
+systematized authority and the resistance of the individual)
+there is an organic impasse.
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="p_ix">[ix]</span></p></td></tr>
+
+  <tr><td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Chapter V</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#p_78">78</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="chapdesc"><div class="center">
+SOCIOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS OF UNCONSCIOUSNESS FROM A VIEWPOINT OF RELATIVITY</div>
+
+The established system demands conformity to its prescribed
+norm—The limitation of life to a bidimensional
+alternative of one’s own pleasure or one’s own pain results in
+division of personality and in compulsion neurosis involving
+the entire social consciousness—Bidimensional replacements
+in social system found in art, science, education, marriage,
+etc.—The mood alternations of the individual are but
+obverse aspects of the same bidimensional portrait of personal
+advantage—This element of unconscious alternation bars
+unbiased observation of the personal absolute—In the field
+of preventive medicine the personal cure of the individual
+subordinated to safeguarding of community health—But
+within the subjective sphere there is resistance to an
+approach that would consider the individual’s position as part
+of a societal unity because such an approach would menace
+the illusion of personal prerogative—Psychopathologists
+equally involved unconsciously in the social neurosis—In an
+objective study of the neurosis the psychopathologist escapes
+the subjective acknowledgment of its presence within
+himself—Possibility of fundamental readjustment for dissociated
+personality lies only in surrender socially of bidimensional
+or pictorial illusion in favour of tridimensional
+actuality.</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="center larger">PART II<br>
+
+THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE NEUROSES</td></tr>
+
+  <tr><td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Chapter I</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#p_107">107</a></td></tr>
+
+  <tr><td colspan="2" class="chapdesc"><div class="center">ANALYSIS OF FREUD’S DYNAMIC AND INDIVIDUALISTIC CONCEPTION OF THE NEUROSES</div>
+
+Freud’s theory assumes breach in integrity of consciousness
+due to effort of delimited area to establish itself as a separate
+self-governing unit—Distinction of Freud’s work lies in
+conception of central totality of consciousness; limitation
+of Freud’s work consists in assigning totality of consciousness
+to single individual—Conception of totality of personality
+tenable only from point of view of inclusive societal consciousness.</td></tr>
+
+  <tr><td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Chapter II</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#p_114">114</a></td></tr>
+
+  <tr><td colspan="2" class="chapdesc"><div class="center">FORMULATION OF AN ORGANIC OR SOCIETAL BASIS OF INTERPRETATION</div>
+
+The mental life of the infant organism is wholly subjective
+and is one with the organism’s inherent feeling—With entrance
+of the ulterior motive appearing in the command and prohibition
+of the parent there is the issue of personal gain or
+loss (suggestion and repression)—Appearance of self-consciousness
+and self-interest forces interruption of the organism’s
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_x">[x]</span>societal life and a separation from its basic continuum—Maintenance
+of separativeness of individual destroys organic
+integrity—There is need to stand apart from self and view
+it as element within the larger organism of mankind—Instinct
+of tribal preservation and not self-preservation is the dominant
+urge among us.</td></tr>
+
+  <tr><td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Chapter III</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#p_134">134</a></td></tr>
+
+  <tr><td colspan="2" class="chapdesc"><div class="center">THE ORGANIC SIGNIFICANCE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS</div>
+
+Development of the idea of the parallel between individual
+and phyletic trends in unconscious manifestations—Unconscious
+worship of self-image source of suggestion and
+repression—Because of this self-image what man assumes to
+be cerebration is fictitious brain-state withdrawn from
+continuity with organic life—Where there is individual lesion,
+separation among elements is followed by pain and recourse
+to remedial aids, i.e. the organism as a whole demands relief—In
+the organic societal whole the individual as separated
+element is source of lesion but seeks to escape through
+symbolic disguise the pain of his societal separation—Conflict
+is between part and whole wherein individual is
+embodiment of both.</td></tr>
+
+  <tr><td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Chapter IV</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#p_154">154</a></td></tr>
+
+  <tr><td colspan="2" class="chapdesc"><div class="center">ORGANIC ANALYSIS OF REPRESSION AND OF THE
+FACTOR OF RESISTANCE FROM THE SOCIETAL VIEWPOINT</div>
+
+The resolution of repression or resistance is regarded by
+Freud as the essential problem of psychoanalysis—Neurosis,
+according to Freud, is life’s repression of sexuality—According
+to an organismic attitude repression and sexuality are
+concomitant and are equally the results in the individual
+of organic disunity and interruption of function—The biology
+of resistance is found in the breach in individual’s continuity
+with life as confluent, organic whole—Health or disease,
+psychologically or physiologically, depends upon whether the
+cell functions integrally or separatively, congruently or
+resistantly—In social fabric each element is against each—In
+our unconsciousness we deny the reality of this biological
+phylum embodied in our organic consciousness and underlying
+the processes of our individual mentation—Sexuality, currently
+confused with sex, is egoistic, infantile expression and
+antithesis of organic expression of sex—Only continuity
+of the confluent subjective sphere can make possible an
+analysis that will synthesize the scattered elements of personality.</td></tr>
+
+  <tr><td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Chapter V</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#p_165">165</a></td></tr>
+
+  <tr><td colspan="2" class="chapdesc"><div class="center">ORGANIC ANALYSIS OF REPRESSION AND OF THE FACTOR OF RESISTANCE
+FROM THE INDIVIDUAL VIEWPOINT</div>
+
+Transference is an unconscious condition which involves as
+much the analyst as the analysand—Resistance and repression
+are the factors in this mutual situation—Under
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_xi">[xi]</span>present personalistic procedure in psychoanalysis the analyst
+deals objectively with an inherently subjective situation—He
+regards only the disparity of the patient and so preserves
+the apparent differentiation which is the underlying cause
+of the patient’s disorder—There is a confusion in psychoanalysis
+due to the failure to discriminate between the
+mother-image and the mother-organism—The analyst, being
+socially dissociated, seeks to reinstate the comfort of his own
+childhood through an unconscious self-interested response
+(pleasure or displeasure) to the analysand—The transference
+which is thus introduced by the unconscious attitude of the
+analyst cannot be analyzed because of the analyst’s own
+involvement—This is the impasse of the individualistic
+analysis—From a societal viewpoint the analyst can be
+interested only in the patient’s delusion of separateness and
+will direct his endeavour to an understanding of the social
+repression which dissociates them both from the common,
+generic consciousness.</td></tr>
+
+  <tr><td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Chapter VI</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#p_177">177</a></td></tr>
+
+  <tr><td colspan="2" class="chapdesc"><div class="center">THE DREAM AND ITS ANALYSIS IN AN ORGANISMIC
+INTERPRETATION OF THE NEUROSES</div>
+
+To analyze the dream from a basis that is equally separative
+and repressed is to exchange the symbols of the individual’s
+repression for analogous symbols of the social repression—The
+night’s reaction, being individual, and the day’s reaction,
+being social, both represent an endeavour to adjust vicariously
+man’s societal disunity—The affective or subjective
+life cannot be adjusted through the study of the objective
+mechanisms that merely reflect it but only through the
+subjective (conscious) reabsorption within us of the affects
+to whose suggestion the dream is the mirrored reaction—The
+drama and the dream are identical in mechanism—An organic
+mode of consciousness can regard with equally objective
+clarity the vicarious processes of the day and of the night.</td></tr>
+
+  <tr><td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Chapter VII</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#p_187">187</a></td></tr>
+
+  <tr><td colspan="2" class="chapdesc"><div class="center">THE BIOLOGICAL SUBSTRATE OF THE NEUROTIC
+CONFLICT IN ITS ORGANIC SIGNIFICANCE</div>
+
+Two types of reaction: the <i>autocentric</i> who withdraws <i>in
+toto</i> and has completely negative attitude toward his congeners,
+and the <i>allocentric</i> who makes effort at social compromise
+or adaptation (“sublimation”)—Both reactions equally self-centered:
+autocentric (precoid, psychasthenic) showing adaptation
+through individual dream; allocentric (hysteric,
+hypomanic) through social dream—Biological substrate of
+these reactions lies in lack of balance between cerebro-spinal
+and sympathetic systems—In the preconscious form preserved
+among animals no break between the two systems; there is
+maintained rhythmic and harmonious co-ordination of response—Period
+of Greek thought essentially allocentric;
+Christianity essentially autocentric.
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="p_xii">[xii]</span></p></td></tr>
+
+  <tr><td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Chapter VIII</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#p_197">197</a></td></tr>
+
+  <tr><td colspan="2" class="chapdesc"><div class="center">THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN SEXUALITY AND
+SEX IN RELATION TO UNIFICATION AND ORGANIC MATING</div>
+
+Psychoanalysis, unconsciously influenced by a division
+based on the bias of its own arbitrary alternatives, has
+assumed contrasts of behaviour not warrantable from an
+organismic conception—Such alternatives are “homosexuality”
+and “heterosexuality”—The organic instinct of
+mating has become distorted by the image system of “good”
+(conceding social consensus) and “bad” (repudiating social
+consensus)—Both types are response to social consensus and
+are ego-sexual—Sexuality is effort of conjunction of peripheral
+and visceral spheres while sex is effortless and non-personal
+conjugation of organismic poles comprising male and female—Union
+is of personality as realized in man and woman through
+identification with life, the one embodying the peripheral,
+allocentric component, the other the internal, autocentric
+component—Organically, man is not opposite woman but
+each is complement of other—Concept of intermediate
+sex is misnomer for composite sex—Social demand of
+oppositeness necessitates repression in male of female
+component and in female of male component—In present
+stage of society’s development marriage is mutual adjustment
+of ego-sexual claims, a pooling of the private unconscious of
+each where each withdraws from an organic place as a societal
+element—Biological significance of unity of personality is
+conception of <i>principle of primary identification</i>—Autocentric
+types as Buddha, Plato, Christ, and allocentric personalities
+of Socrates, Napoleon and Nietzsche equally manifest this
+urge of the inherent organism of man—In organic integrity of
+personality is societal instinct that is the composite life of
+the race.</td></tr>
+
+  <tr><td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Chapter IX</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#p_221">221</a></td></tr>
+
+  <tr><td colspan="2" class="chapdesc"><div class="center">ULTIMATE RESOLUTION OF THE SOCIETAL
+NEUROSIS IN ITS SOCIAL IMPLICATION</div>
+
+Back of the pretence of the social mind lies a basis of social
+fear and mistrust—The mutual accommodations of external
+agreement used to cloak the introversion of the individual—The
+development of group analysis permits study of the
+resistance of the social consensus with respect to the individual
+as well as the resistance of the individual with respect to the
+social consensus—Group analysis, like individual analysis,
+presents an unconscious and bidimensional situation involving
+reaction clusters which constitute a pooling of the unconscious
+of the several members—This group situation offers opportunity
+to secure relative and societal background against which
+the individual may view in impersonal perspective his habitual
+arbitrary and personal evaluations—According to the group
+or relative conception the causative element of the neurosis
+is societal or phyletic and correction must proceed upon a
+societal or phyletic basis.
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="p_xiii">[xiii]</span></p></td></tr>
+
+  <tr><td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Chapter X</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#p_238">238</a></td></tr>
+
+  <tr><td colspan="2" class="chapdesc"><div class="center">
+ULTIMATE RESOLUTION OF THE SOCIETAL NEUROSIS IN ITS PERSONAL IMPLICATION</div>
+
+Demand for wider concept of organized consciousness of
+man in order to replace disintegrating structures of present
+social system—Need to dispel illusion of mental oppositeness
+and the restraints of an alternative system of morality which
+aims merely to establish temporary balance between its
+opposites—Experimental basis for group conception here
+formulated in practical experience of a few students—As the
+societal and the individual are organically one in mode, the
+unification of the individual is a step toward the unification
+of the societal consciousness—Organismic (societal) group
+differentiated from collective (social) cluster—The period of
+man’s substitutive image-production first interrupted by
+Darwin’s theory of evolution and further threatened by
+Freud’s theory of the evolutionary processes of the unconscious—The
+social basis of consciousness, however inadequately
+formulated, invites an analytic approach to social
+or mass reactions, exemplified in our national, political,
+industrial and religious life.</td></tr>
+
+  <tr><td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Index</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#p_253">253</a></td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="p_xiv"></a><a id="p_xv"></a>[xv]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="PREFACE">
+    PREFACE
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>I do not know whether I can make clear in what manner
+the conception embodied in the following pages first
+arose. Conceptions derived from data of reason and
+observation necessarily proceed from a mental basis.
+Scientific and philosophical treatises are the outcome
+primarily of scientific or philosophical ideas. With both
+inductive and deductive methods of reasoning the conclusions
+that flow from the assumptions are our accepted
+basis of procedure. With the method of the present
+study, however, we are upon other ground, for the
+inception of this work was in no such wise; and yet to
+say that it is based upon no conceptual premise would,
+of course, not be true. The difference is that what follows
+here has been the outgrowth of events that were prior to
+and independent of any conceptual formulation of them.
+Biological necessity preceded and argument followed
+after. My meaning may for the moment be best understood
+when it is considered that these events are the
+processes of personal experience inseparable from the
+sequences here embodied. While this is not the place for
+detailing personal history, the presentation of a thesis as
+intimate as this would not be complete without some
+concrete account of its origin.</p>
+
+<p>Having years ago been “analyzed” in preparation for
+my work in psychopathology, I had been for years duly
+“analyzing” others. It unexpectedly happened one
+day, however, that while I was interpreting a dream of a
+student-assistant, he made bold to challenge the honesty
+of my analytic position, insisting that, as far as he was
+concerned, the test of my sincerity would be met only
+when I should myself be willing to accept from him the
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_xvi">[xvi]</span>same analytic exactions I was now imposing upon others.
+As may be readily judged, such a proposition seemed to
+me nothing short of absurd. Had I not been “analyzed”?
+Needless to say I had heard this proposal from patients
+many times before, but while my reaction to the suggestion
+in the present instance was chiefly one of amusement,
+my pride was not a little piqued at the intimation
+it conveyed. So with the thought that in the interest of
+experiment it could at least do no harm to humour for a
+time the waywardness of inexperience, I conceded the
+arrangement.</p>
+
+<p>Not many weeks after I had taken the patient’s chair
+and yielded him mine I realized that a situation to which
+I had agreed with more or less levity had assumed an
+aspect of the profoundest seriousness. My “resistances”
+to my self-appointed analyst, far from being negligible,
+were plainly insuperable, but there was now no turning
+back. The analysis proceeded on its course from day to
+day and with it my resistances took tighter hold upon me.
+The agreement to which I had voluntarily lent myself
+was becoming painful beyond words. Whatever empirical
+interest the situation may have held for me at the outset
+was now wholly subordinated to the indignation and pain
+of the position to which I had been brought.</p>
+
+<p>It is possible to indicate only in their broadest lines the
+progressive events of these trying months. I need hardly
+record the growing sense of self-limitation and defeat
+that went hand in hand with this daily advancing personal
+challenge, nor the corresponding efforts of concealment in
+unconscious symbolizations and distortions on my part.
+What calls for more vital emphasis, however, is the fact
+that along with the deepening, if reluctant, realization of
+my intolerance of self-defeat, there came gradually to me
+the realization that my analyst, in changing places with
+me, had merely shifted to the authoritarian vantage-ground
+I had myself relinquished and that the situation
+had remained essentially unaltered still.</p>
+
+<p>This was significant. It marked at once the opening of
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_xvii">[xvii]</span>wholly new vistas of experience. In the light of its discovery
+I began to sense for the first time what had all
+along underlain my own analysis and what, as I now see
+it, really underlies every analysis. I began to see that
+the student before me, notwithstanding his undoubted
+sincerity of purpose, presented a no less personal and
+proprietary attitude toward me than I had held toward
+him and that all that had been needed was the authoritarian
+background to bring this attitude to expression.
+With the consciousness of this condition I saw what has
+been for me the crucial revelation of the many years of
+my analytic work—that, in its individualistic application,
+the attitude of the psychoanalyst and the attitude of the
+authoritarian are inseparable.</p>
+
+<p>As from day to day this realization came more closely
+home to me, and with it the growing acceptance of the
+limitation and one-sidedness of the personalistic critique
+in psychoanalysis, my personal self-vindication and
+resistances began in the same measure to abate. At
+the same time the analyst too, Mr. Clarence Shields, came
+at last into a position to sense the personalism and
+resistance that had unconsciously all along actuated his
+own reaction. From now forward the direction of the
+inquiry was completely altered. The analysis henceforth
+consisted in the reciprocal effort of each of us to
+recognize within himself his attitude of authoritarianism
+and autocracy toward the other. With this automatic
+relinquishment of the personalistic or private basis and
+its replacement by a more inclusive attitude toward the
+problems of human consciousness, there has been not
+alone for myself but also for students and patients a
+gradual clearing of our entire analytic horizon.</p>
+
+<p>It will later become clearer how this newer formulation
+of psychoanalysis on the wider basis of its more inclusive
+impersonal meaning has occurred entirely apart from
+the commonly predicable processes of logic. Only the
+accidental circumstance of a student’s protest against my
+own personal bias, and my subsequent observation of an
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_xviii">[xviii]</span>identical personalism in himself, as empirically disclosed
+upon our interchanging places, are answerable for the
+altered insight into psychoanalysis that the recent years
+have afforded me—an insight which the investigations of
+the small group of students working along analytic lines
+identical with my own have more and more substantiated.
+It was due, then, entirely to this unexpected turn of the
+tables, which placed me in the rôle of the patient and
+the patient in the analytic rôle, that I was fortuitously
+launched into six years of social experimentation upon
+the discrepancies of an individualistic analysis. If the
+outcome of the process has been the retraction of my
+earlier analytic outlook, it has not been the expression of
+any personal acumen or distinctive asset on my part.</p>
+
+<p>The chance eventuality I have mentioned is alone responsible
+for enforcing the relinquishment of my habitual
+personalistic basis in psychoanalysis and bringing me to
+feel the need of a more comprehensive interpretation of
+the unconscious. Coming to sense, through a wider recognition
+of the unconscious, the correspondingly larger
+meaning of the consciousness of man, I have come to feel
+the need of its more adequate interpretation in such an
+organismic view as I have here attempted to outline
+under the theme of “The Social Basis of Consciousness.”</p>
+
+<p>I cannot consistently cite authoritative reference in
+support of this work. There is none. It is sponsored
+alone in the spirit of common endeavour actuating the
+group of students who have united in its common realization.
+But if I am loath to shift to others the responsibility
+for my own venturesomeness, I need not forgo the
+pleasure of acknowledging—as I do with whole-heartedness—the
+impetus that was given me in the beginning of
+my psychoanalytic work through the sympathy and
+encouragement of Dr. Adolf Meyer.</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+  TRIGANT BURROW.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+  <span class="smcap"><span style="margin-left: 1.0em;">The Tuscany,</span><br>
+  Baltimore, Maryland.</span>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="p_1">[1]</span></p>
+
+
+  <div class="center xlarge nobreak" id="THE_SOCIAL_BASIS_OF_CONSCIOUSNESS">
+    THE SOCIAL BASIS OF CONSCIOUSNESS
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="INTRODUCTION">
+    INTRODUCTION
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>After sixteen years devoted to psychoanalytic work
+based on the principles of Freud, I have come to a
+position which differs so essentially from the followers
+of Freud as well as from his dissenters, that I am
+impelled to set down some account of the development
+through which my conceptions have passed, and to
+state as clearly as I can the position to which they
+have led.</p>
+
+<p>The conceptions which Freud has brought to the study
+of abnormal and individual psychology have been of
+incalculable significance in aiding us to understand the
+causes and mechanisms underlying mental disharmonies.
+The personalistic basis, however, on which psychoanalysis
+rests has not in my experience proved sufficiently broad
+to meet the demands of a more inclusive societal psychology
+in its application to the needs of human life. While,
+in reconstructing the mechanics of the unconscious,
+psychoanalysis has given the impetus to a truer comprehension
+of the many distorted expressions of
+individual mentation, it has not as yet really uncovered
+the essential meaning of our human problems as
+they touch the consciousness of man in its organic
+reality.</p>
+
+<p>To speak, however, of the organic reality of life is to
+enter upon a new universe of consciousness. It is to
+acquire a wholly altered concept of the inherent consciousness
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_2">[2]</span>of man. This concept is not one that is interpretable
+upon our accustomed individualistic basis. As
+its envisagement is societal, its realization must necessarily
+be societal also.</p>
+
+<p>To-day it is not possible to contemplate the significance
+of psychoanalysis without realizing the arbitrarily
+constricted point of view that has come to characterize
+the popularizations of psychoanalysis in their various
+phases. Psychoanalysis possesses as yet no specific
+definition. Personalistic in conception, it is personalistically
+interpreted, and its variations are to-day as
+whimsical as they are many. By one process of handling,
+psychoanalysis has become closely allied with Mysticism
+and New Thought, by another with propagandist measures
+for scientific birth-control, by a third with an authenticated
+programme of sexual licence, and with all it is
+but a new form of application of the old programme of
+palliative medication.</p>
+
+<p>If, however, the essential truth of Freudian psychology,
+like all vital scientific movements, has been attended by
+personalistic misconception and even by the cruder aims
+of individual exploitation, it has been equally attended
+by a genuine scientific concurrence of spirit such as alone
+animates the disinterested conscience of the laboratory
+investigator. In the midst of the cheap and shifting
+divagations of a day, there have remained the sounder
+interpretations of at least a few outstanding investigators.
+While neither Freudian nor anti-Freudian, there are those
+to whom I, as well as others, owe the inspiration of those
+more thoughtful evaluations that are based upon a
+steadfast fidelity to the inclusive spirit of an evolutionary
+interpretation of human pathology, sociological as well as
+biological. It is these few students who, I feel, will
+welcome an interpretation of our human processes that
+offers a more inclusive, organic comprehension of our
+mental life.</p>
+
+<p>But before undertaking the study of the organic psychology
+of man, it will be necessary first to establish a position
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_3">[3]</span>that is based upon an organismic&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_1_1" href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> or societal viewpoint
+as contrasted with a position based upon a viewpoint that
+is systematized and personal. Many years of psychoanalytic
+practice have led me to the conviction that the
+basis of Freud’s psychology is inadequate to render completely
+conscious those disorders of the personality the
+essential meaning of which is their unconsciousness.
+The following essay, therefore, is an attempt to offer a
+more adequate concept of the essential consciousness of
+man than I feel has been attained through the interpretations
+of the unconscious patterns embodied in the present
+system of psychoanalysis. I have come to feel that what
+we have called analysis in the sense of our present personalistic
+systems is just another application of the
+method of suggestion, and that with us analysts, as with
+others, the method involves a situation in which we are
+as truly the unconscious dupes of the suggestive process
+we employ as are the unconscious subjects upon whom
+we employ it.</p>
+
+<p>After all, it is the fallacy of personalism and of differentiation
+in our human relations which is the essential
+element in our unconscious agencies of suggestion, and I
+cannot doubt that this same fallacy underlies no less the
+constructions upon which we rest our analytic procedure.
+In the work of psychoanalysis as in our human endeavours
+everywhere, there enters unavoidably the personal bias
+that is inseparable from the position of observation concomitant
+to the observer. It is to abrogate this prejudice
+of personal partisanship and differentiation besetting the
+intrinsic system of psychoanalysis as well as of our
+private dogmatizations elsewhere, that I have undertaken
+the investigations of which this study is in part
+the outcome.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="p_4">[4]</span></p>
+
+<p>With the growth of my experience in psychoanalysis,
+the factor that has exerted the deepest influence in
+altering my outlook upon the problems of the neuroses as
+upon the processes of life generally has been the gradual,
+if reluctant, elimination of the personal equation in
+relation to those problems. By the personal equation I
+mean the unconscious and arbitrary tendency within us
+all to adopt <i>a personally systematized mental attitude</i>
+toward life in substitution for the physiological reality of
+life itself. The technical procedure of Freud necessarily
+rests upon this extrinsic mental attitude, whereas in the
+work of my students and myself during the past several
+years our position has tended increasingly toward the
+more inclusive fulfilment of the personality as a whole.
+Only in an inclusive analysis are our affects experienced
+upon a basis that is common and organic. Accidental
+diversity cannot issue out of organic unity. When the
+elements of consciousness will be truly unified, an association
+of conscious personalities will be unified also. The
+reason why there are to-day as many systems of psychoanalysis
+as there are psychoanalysts, is that our assumed
+principle of conscious unity is in reality but a personal
+principle of differentiation and unconsciousness.</p>
+
+<p>Let me say at once, however, to anyone who may have
+lacked the opportunity or the candour to verify within
+himself the essential objective findings of Freud, and who
+is disposed to read into this thesis a vindication of his
+personal reaction against Freud’s formulations, that he
+will find this study in nowise adapted to assuage his
+sense of outrage to injured sensibilities. Whatever may
+be the value of this work, in the spirit of its presentation
+it is in no sense a personal discrimination against the
+teaching of Freud but rather it is the acknowledged outgrowth
+of that teaching. If in our widened outlook we
+have outgrown the personal interpretations of psychoanalysis,
+there is due our full acknowledgment that it is
+to those interpretations that our position owes its rise.
+Far, then, from representing an antagonistic exclusion of
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_5">[5]</span>Freud’s theory of the unconscious, our position embodies
+the wider inclusion of it in what I feel is its more comprehensive
+interpretation on the basis of a societal concept of
+consciousness.</p>
+
+<p>In psychoanalysis as in the social systems amid which,
+unconsciously, we are continually moving, we tend to
+gravitate toward an assumed static centre or toward a
+so-called personal cause that is coincident with our
+assumption of an absolute universe of consciousness.
+This gravitation toward a personal centre of consciousness
+embodies, in reality, a system that represents but
+the unconscious projection of our own ego. We substitute
+this delusion of an artificial world of causality for the
+reality of a universe of spontaneous sequence, not realizing
+that we ourselves are the subjective expression of the
+same organic sequence which we observe objectively in
+the world about us. When we have learned to accept
+inherent sequence as organically necessary, we shall no
+longer enforce unconscious causality as presumably
+inevitable.</p>
+
+<p>It is this very general fallacy of personal sponsorship
+which constitutes the intricate disguise of our social unconscious
+and which in our personalistic outlook we have
+not yet begun to grasp. Ourselves unwitting participants
+in this illusion of personal determinism, we have
+not yet begun to compass the <i>system of unconsciousness</i>
+that lurks beneath its gratuitous assumption of personal
+agency.</p>
+
+<p>With a view to the analysis and replacement of this
+absolute or self-determined attitude among us I have
+here offered what I conceive to be the more universal
+and encompassing interpretation of the common and
+organic consciousness of man. As, however, the field of
+Organic Psychology has yet to take a recognized place
+among us, and as it is a conception that is circumscribed
+only by the limits of life itself, naturally this initial step
+toward its establishment offers but a tentative view as to
+its real scope and meaning. Representing scarcely more
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_6">[6]</span>than a preliminary outline, this work will be seen to
+embody but the merest syllabus in relation to further
+works based upon an organismic theory of consciousness,
+that doubtless will gradually be contributed to the
+increase of our understanding of life, both individual
+and social. In its present form the thesis here developed
+was first outlined in 1923.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="p_7">[7]</span></p>
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="PART_I">
+    PART I
+    <br>
+    THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE NEUROSES
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="p_8"></a><a id="p_9"></a>[9]</span></p>
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_I">
+    CHAPTER I
+    <br>
+    PSYCHOANALYSIS IN THEORY AND IN LIFE
+  </h3>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Now that the excitement following the inundation of
+psychoanalysis has died down and the clinical territories
+most affected have been once more built up and restocked,
+it is interesting to witness the changes wrought in different
+quarters as a result of the general havoc to habitual prepossessions.
+As we stand amid the debris of past conceptions
+there is no question but that the sudden descent
+upon us of Freud’s postulates has destroyed many old
+landmarks that shall not be restored and that it has
+brought in a wealth of new material that has altered no
+little the configuration of the old.</p>
+
+<p>As I happen to have been of those who were carried in
+upon the current of the general onsweep of new interpretations
+ushered in by Freud, my experience forms the
+record of a reaction to that movement that is internal
+because it is from the vantage-ground of a participant
+in it. Many of these interpretations are of epoch-making
+significance in their approach to mental disharmonies,
+but many, being immature and unsound, only obstruct
+the passage that psychoanalysis has contributed so
+splendidly to open. And so my position may be of interest
+to others who, like myself, have earnestly tried to bring
+order and a permanent coherence out of the large mass of
+conceptions that cluster about Freud’s dynamic idea.</p>
+
+<p>The theory of psychoanalysis rests on the conception
+that nervous disorders are the substitutive manifestation
+of a repressed sexual life; its basic position is that this
+substitutive factor is responsible for neurotic processes
+and that it is the sexual impulse for which recourse is
+sought in the process of substitution. This position of
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_10">[10]</span>psychoanalysis is, in its essential significance, now generally
+accepted—the position, namely, which affirms the
+factor of replacement as the essential account of nervous
+manifestations and assumes the urge of the sexual
+instinct as the element replaced.</p>
+
+<p>While, with other psychoanalysts, I am in full accord
+with this thesis, my finding in regard to the relation of
+these two propositions to one another is so entirely at
+variance with the prevailing psychoanalytic view, and
+alters so fundamentally for me the ultimate interpretation
+of psychoanalysis in its bearing upon the problems
+of consciousness, that I shall make clearer the ideas
+expressed in this work if, at the outset, I may state
+briefly in what manner my interpretation of this relation
+differs from the accepted conception.</p>
+
+<p>The difference lies in the fact that I do not regard this
+replacement as <i>primarily</i> a replacement for sexuality as
+we now know it. On the contrary, sexuality, as manifested
+to-day amid the sophistications of civilization, is
+itself a replacement for the organic unity of personality
+arising naturally from the harmony of function that
+pertains biologically to the primary infant psyche. This
+original mode I have referred to in a previous work as
+the preconscious, and this preconscious mode&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_2_2" href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> I regard as
+the matrix of the mental life. The spontaneous process
+of the organism’s unhindered growth through the gradual
+development of experience or awareness from this unitary
+mode as a basis is, in my interpretation, the meaning of
+consciousness. The whole meaning of sexuality on the
+other hand is substitution, compensation, repression. In
+a word, sexuality, as it has come to exist socially to-day,
+is identical with the unconscious, while a unification of
+personality is alone to be found through eliminating the
+recourses of substitution and sexuality and thus reuniting
+the elements of the conscious and organic modes now
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_11">[11]</span>kept asunder through the interposition of the unconscious.</p>
+
+<p>Hence the modern substitutions existing under the
+name of sexuality, whether repressed or indulged, are
+but a symptom of this denial of man’s organic affective
+life. Sexuality, as it now exists, is not only utterly unrelated
+to sex but it is intrinsically exclusive of sex. Sex
+is life. It is life in its deepest significance. Sex is the
+spontaneous expression of a natural hunger. In the
+instinct of sex there is felt a yearning from the depths
+of man’s organism for mating and reproduction, while
+sexuality is the personal coveting of momentary satisfaction
+in mere superficial sensation. By sexuality, then,
+I mean something very different from sex. I mean the
+restless, obsessive, over-stimulated quest for temporary
+self-gratification that everywhere masquerades as sex
+and is everywhere substituted for the strong, simple,
+quiet flow of feeling that unites the organic and the conscious
+life in a single stream and is the expression of
+personality in its native inherency.</p>
+
+<p>With this altered conception other modifications have
+followed which necessarily entail a distinct departure
+from certain accepted psychoanalytic formulations. The
+organic denial and the restless compensations and substitutions
+comprising the unconscious are, in essence, the
+psychology of the mental reaction-average known as
+normality. The popular analytic view places a premium
+upon this manifestation of the collective unconscious and
+assigns the criterion of normality as the desired goal of
+adaptation for the neurotically repressed personality.</p>
+
+<p>I cannot accept this view. For an analysis of the social
+unconscious shows that the collective reaction embodied
+in the adaptations commonly accepted as normal betrays
+a tendency to repression and replacement that is no less
+an indication of disease-process than is the reaction presented
+in the individual neurosis. Indeed, from the point
+of view of constructive consciousness and health, our so-called
+normality is, of the two, the less progressive type
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_12">[12]</span>of reaction. In truth, normality, in evading the issues of
+the unconscious, envisages less the processes of growth
+and a larger consciousness than the neurotic type of
+reaction, which, however blind its motivation, at least
+comes to grips with the actualities of the unconscious.</p>
+
+<p>It is the hall-mark of normality that, suspecting nothing,
+it takes itself completely for granted. In the spirit of
+true conformity, it accepts its expressions of the vicarious
+at their face value and assumes the burden of its self-inflicted
+compensations with entire complacency. The
+neurotic, on the other hand, at least senses the inherent
+discrepancy in his life. He at least demurs in so far as
+to withhold assent from the mass-compromise embodied
+in the substitutions and connivances of the social unconscious.
+In a word, it is the distinction of the neurotic
+personality that he is at least consciously and confessedly
+“nervous.”</p>
+
+<p>This, as far as I can see, is the chief distinction between
+the condition represented in normal adaptations and that
+represented in the neurosis. The distinction lies merely
+in the greater weight of numbers. Normality, in its
+numerical strength, concedes acceptance to the average-reaction
+and so yields it right of way. In normality the
+unconscious carries the day, while in the neurosis it is
+pushed to the wall. The distinction psychologically lies
+in the successful compromise of the one as contrasted with
+the enforced doubt and self-questioning of the other.
+On the one hand there is the compact security of the
+social polity; on the other, there is the more sensitive
+isolation and uncertainty of the individual unit.</p>
+
+<p>From the point of view of life, therefore, many of our
+normal reactions are psychologically as truly a manifestation
+of the distorted and substitutive as are those
+more isolated manifestations we commonly stigmatize
+as neurotic disharmonies. I cannot see but that the
+element of the repressed and substitutive on which is
+based Freud’s theory of the neuroses is an element that
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_13">[13]</span>underlies the expression of consciousness in all phases of
+its manifestation and that hence underlies also the phase
+represented in normality. In brief, normality too is
+nervous. Normality too, since it is actuated no less
+from motives of the ulterior and vicarious, even though
+it supposedly represents the criterion of adult consciousness,
+is no less an expression of the distorted and symbolic.
+This distortion is to be seen upon every hand in the
+restless greed and obsessive self-seeking that underlie the
+national, industrial, political, social and religious possessivism
+and competition which are the typical psychology
+of the normal mind, notwithstanding its plausible exterior
+of human progress and universal goodwill. Universality
+and goodwill are not there. These are but the manifest
+symptoms embodied by the social personality after it
+has undergone the distortion represented in the substitutive
+reactions characteristic of the social neurosis,
+that is, after it has been subjected to the mechanism of
+diplomatic repression and modification. What is there,
+in reality, is the will-to-self and the particular aim which
+best serves the narcistic advantages of the individuals
+comprising the social unit in question. The mechanism
+is identical with that which underlies the individual
+neurosis, namely, the covert aim toward the satisfactions
+of self which constitute unconsciousness.</p>
+
+<p>Normality too, then, is neurotic. Normality too has
+its repressions and its substitutions, its secret symbols
+and equivocations. The difference is that as normality
+possesses the warrant of the institutionalized and current,
+it enjoys the protection of the consensus. And just as
+the neurotic fails to comprehend the meaning of this
+vicarious manifestation in its individual expression within
+himself and is a prey to the inscrutable symptoms in
+which his organism finds its compensations, so we, who
+are accounted normal, as little suspect the meaning of
+this same symptomatology existing in its social expression
+within ourselves. The neurotic resolutely defends his
+unconscious duplicity behind an ingenious charade of
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_14">[14]</span>unconscious symbolism, and we no less resolutely defend
+ours through recourse to an identical device. But if we
+will look beyond the narrower confine of the clinic and
+face squarely the logical issue of Freud’s thesis, we cannot
+avoid the conclusion that it is an indictment of man’s
+consciousness in its entirety. Hence normality too must
+make answer for its complicity in the unconscious ruse
+of substitution and evasion which we observe in its
+more intense reaction as the introversions of personality
+presented in the obviously arrested expression we call
+neurotic.</p>
+
+<p>If anyone is disposed to question this view, let him
+consider but one symptomatic reaction recently manifested
+throughout the social organism. Could there be
+anywhere imagined an unconscious reaction more wasteful
+and destructive or one of wider scope or severer intensity
+than the symptom-reaction represented by the war
+that has recently convulsed the world? Or consider the
+equally unconscious expression presented in the tendency
+to religious emotionalism that has followed in the wake of
+this world-war, with the corresponding effort towards
+compensation and self-propitiation through recourse to
+the sentimental and spiritualistic. Yet all the while the
+existence and the significance of the unconscious motives
+that are latent in the two extremes of emotional reaction
+underlying these manifest expressions have not yet begun
+to be suspected and reckoned with on any clear, conscious,
+analytic basis.</p>
+
+<p>What, then, is the meaning of this tendency to substitution
+as shown in the reaction of the social as well as
+of the individual organism? If sexuality is the element
+substituted for, what is the psychology of this factor
+called sexuality? What is its meaning? In analyzing
+the unconscious of the neurotic personality it has become
+gradually clearer to me that the factor underlying and
+actuating the conflict Freud describes as repressed
+sexuality is nothing else than the personal desire of
+ascendancy or the lust of acquisition <i>concomitant with
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_15">[15]</span>the organism’s unconscious reversion upon its own
+image</i>.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_3_3" href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a></p>
+
+<p>Sexuality, then, is but a larger word for self. Sexuality
+is the effort to limit life to the ends of personal aggrandizement.
+It is the greed of the self-limited personality to
+compass the whole, as contrasted with the societal personality
+that is encompassed by the whole. But, since
+the unconscious is the same under all forms, self or
+sexuality, with its pride of possession, its lust of gain, is
+no less the unconscious element underlying the psychology
+of the normal reaction-average. And precisely as in the
+individual reaction these unconscious wishes are manifested
+only in the disguised symbols and substitutive
+equivalents portrayed in neurotic symptoms, so too in
+the social organism these egocentric interests antagonistic
+to consciousness and growth venture to express themselves
+only in the corresponding substitutions of the mass
+unconscious.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the unconscious represented in the social reaction
+we call normality is no whit different from the unconscious
+represented in the individual reaction observable
+as the neurosis. We are habitually deceived by the
+give-and-take policy of normal adaptation with its secret
+covenant of good manners and outward forms. But the
+apparent difference between the social and the individual
+neurosis consists merely in the fact that the poignancy of
+the conflict underlying the symptomatology of the social
+personality is largely mitigated and condoned by reason
+of the wider numerical distribution of the social organism
+and the consequent freer dissemination of the elements
+involved.</p>
+
+<p>But, though of wider distribution, there underlies the
+expressions of normality no less of conflict and repression
+than exists in the acuter expression seen in the individual
+neurosis. In the personality of the more sensitive or
+feeling type we think of as neurotic, this tendency to self-acquisitiveness
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_16">[16]</span>or sexuality and its organic incompatibility
+with the physiological inherency of life become, as
+it were, stalled and impacted within him; while in the
+social organism the discrepancy of personality, occasioned
+by its sexuality or pride of ascendancy, apparently entails
+no such organic blocking as that occurring in the individual.
+But the pain and impaction are present nevertheless,
+and are betrayed no less in the recourse to the substitutive
+and symbolic manifestations, characteristic of our prevalent
+social hysterias, not to mention the more violent
+disorders that crash upon the world in the reactions of
+political and industrial dissension and in the fiercer
+paroxysms of war.</p>
+
+<p>Such is the meaning of our so-called normality. To a
+degree that is quite unsuspected by us its psychology is
+unconsciousness, and the psychology of unconsciousness
+is the psychology of the self-image secretly worshipped
+under the habitual guises of symbolism and replacement.
+It is time we should recognize that this recourse to the
+vicarious image is the psychology of many of the reactions
+of the normal as well as of the neurotic, that in ourselves,
+no less than in the neurotic, there is the putting forward
+of that which <i>stands for</i>—the exploitation, under countless
+different aspects, of that which may be adroitly put
+<i>instead of</i> rather than the simple acceptance of that
+which <i>is</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Part of the purpose of the present study, however, is to
+try to bring into clearer light a substitutive reaction that
+is much nearer home. As psychoanalysts we need to take
+into account a distortive process that has a much closer
+bearing upon ourselves and our responsibility toward the
+problems of our common social consciousness. For, of
+all the forms of substitution to which normality has
+recourse, the form that seems to me of deepest significance
+for us and that presents the most vital need of analysis
+and understanding within ourselves, is the vicarious
+expression growing out of the tendency to an extrinsic
+approach to the problems of consciousness that has come
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_17">[17]</span>to be embodied in the formulated <i>system</i> of psychoanalysis.</p>
+
+<p>In the whole symptomatology of normality with its
+social expression of the vicarious there is no symptom-complex
+that is of greater significance than that embodied
+in the attempt to apply to the reality of human life the
+<i>system</i> of human life offered in psychoanalysis as it is
+to-day interpreted and applied. For a system of psychoanalysis
+is itself but a substitution for life, a theory of
+life in place of life itself. The theory of psychoanalysis
+sets out with a premise; life does not. Psychoanalysis
+offers a solution; life is its own solution.</p>
+
+<p>It is not theory as theory at which I demur; it is theory
+as application to the needs of human growth. From the
+point of view of the theory of psychoanalysis this therapeutic
+recourse in the treatment of nervous disorders
+seems to me completely adequate and true; but from the
+point of view of life I have come to regard the application
+of the system or theory of psychoanalysis to the problems
+of individual needs as an utterly futile procedure. I have
+come to feel that what is here of value in the text-book is
+utterly worthless in our daily relation to human personality.</p>
+
+<p>I would not, of course, be understood as repudiating
+theory as such. Seen clearly as the extrinsic expression
+it is, theory undoubtedly has its place, but its place is
+not in the earnest relationship of one human being to
+another such as obtains in the confidence and communication
+offered in the actuality of psychoanalysis. It has
+not yet been recognized, however, that we who are
+psychoanalysts are ourselves theorists, that we also are
+very largely misled by an unconscious that is social, that
+we too are neurotic, in so far as every expression but that
+of life in its native simplicity is neurotic. Our disharmony,
+however, is a phase of that widely diffused neurosis that
+exists under the prevailing social consensus represented
+in the normal adaptation.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_4_4" href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="p_18">[18]</span></p>
+
+<p>And so, as I now see it, there is no more subtle form of
+substitution or one that is more successful in its capacity
+to evade the censor of consciousness and obtain the stamp
+of genuineness than the symptom represented in the
+<i>theory</i> of the reactions of human beings as a replacement
+for the reality of these reactions in life itself. Personal
+experience compels me to concede that it is such a symptom
+that is comprised in the theory of psychoanalysis as it is
+widely operative in the consultation rooms of psychoanalysts
+to-day.</p>
+
+<p>We have assumed that, in envisaging the unconscious,
+psychoanalysis presupposes a more inclusive position
+than is generally characteristic of the theoretical or
+systematized clinician. But it is a far-reaching commentary
+upon the analyst’s capacity of discrimination
+that he still presumes to analyze another on the basis of
+a system or theory, as though a neurosis which is an
+essentially subjective condition were of the nature of an
+objective bodily lesion. A dissociation within the personality
+may find its analogy in a bodily lesion but never
+its understanding. In the field of objective phenomena,
+theory is entirely commensurate with its application.
+After all, the theory of a mechanism is but the description
+of the principle of its operation. In the objective world
+such an objective description presents no discrepancy.
+It is the application of the objective method to an
+objective principle. The theory of the hydraulic press is
+perfectly consistent with its application. Between theory
+and application there is here complete conjunction. No
+disparate element intervenes to mar the transition from
+the descriptive to the practical.</p>
+
+<p>So too with the theory of psychoanalysis as long as it
+pertains to the objective viewpoint of the text-book.
+But in the subjective sphere a totally different situation
+is presented. In dealing with life in its actuality, we are
+not dealing with the descriptive and objective. Human
+life is subjective. It is something experienced, something
+felt. Life is not theoretical; it is actual. It is
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_19">[19]</span>not descriptive; it is dynamic. Human life <i>is</i>; it is
+not a <i>theory</i> of what is. Life, as it is felt, is our ultimate
+subjective actuality. Subjectivity or intrinsic feeling is
+the very basis of life. As such, feeling is life’s reality
+and no theory of feeling is an adequate substitute for this
+reality. And so the objective theory of psychoanalysis
+or the objective theory of the motives of human life is
+wholly inapplicable to the subjective experience or to
+the actuality of human life as it is felt in individual
+personality.</p>
+
+<p>We have not begun to reckon in the least understandingly
+with the nature of the subjective as contrasted with
+the objective sphere of life. We are, in fact, quite naïve
+in our attitude toward the whole subjective field, preferring
+to adopt toward it either a mood of beatific
+reverence and mysticism, in which we conjure unwarranted
+images of “psychic phenomena” that are
+allied with man’s pseudo-religious vagaries, or we adopt
+a pseudo-scientific attitude which repudiates as nonexistent
+or regards as unworthy of serious thought any
+phenomena that do not lend themselves to objective
+observation. Neither position seems to me tenable.
+We may dismiss at once the attitude of the occultists, for
+mysticism entertains no argument. But there is the
+need to consider very seriously the subjective field of
+scientific reasoning and to keep clearly before us the
+distinctive and impassable interval between the subjective
+and objective domains of scientific inquiry.</p>
+
+<p>It is most true that objective observation is the sole
+method whereby we may obtain knowledge concerning
+the phenomenal world. This is true whether the knowledge
+concern substances themselves or the manner of
+their interaction. But we forget that knowledge thus
+gained is always knowledge <i>concerning</i>. If I consider
+any object—a book, a flower, or a stone—all that my
+knowledge will ever yield me is restricted to the attributes
+that pertain to the substance in hand. I observe that
+the stone is smooth, hard, ovoid. Submitting it to
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_20">[20]</span>certain physical and chemical tests I learn still further
+about its qualities, and so, little by little, bring myself
+into ever closer touch with the object in question. But
+always my data furnish only <i>closer touch with</i>. The
+essential matter informing the substance we recognize as
+stone remains as inaccessible at the conclusion of an
+ultimate analysis as in the beginning. It is still knowledge
+<i>concerning</i> and my facts, however widely accumulated,
+are but attributive. Thus the <i>essential</i> nature of
+the objects about us is not to be approached by a method
+that is <i>unessential</i> or attributive.</p>
+
+<p>The same circumstance confronts us in dealing with the
+phenomenal world of our own experience. Here too we
+proceed upon the method of objective inquiry—a perfectly
+legitimate field of “observation.” We posit and
+collate all manner of phenomena and note no end of
+“reactions.” But always we are restricted to a knowledge
+<i>concerning</i>, to data <i>in regard to</i>. In brief, we remain
+apart from—are ever outside of the reaction observed.
+Not that we may hold the attitude of the philosophers
+and assume the “existence” of a “metaphysical essence”
+that is inaccessible to us. We need rather to recognize
+that the alleged essence is merely that organic condition
+of matter with which our conscious processes are not
+organically continuous. There are, however, organic
+conditions or processes with which our consciousness is
+continuous—namely, the organic processes occurring
+within our own bodies and registering themselves within
+us as feeling. It is this continuity registered within us
+as feeling that is an essentially subjective state of mind
+and that must not be confused with the objective state
+of mind that merely registers impressions of the observable
+action or outer condition of such feeling processes. This
+subjective continuity is organic and inherent. True, it
+is possible through a shunting of interest or attention
+(repression or misplaced affect) to divert the course of
+our organic processes from their natural perception in
+consciousness. But this artificial situation through which
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_21">[21]</span>we divert organic process from conscious participation
+and acknowledgment is the condition of unconsciousness.</p>
+
+<p>My whole contention is precisely this: we are constantly
+attempting to deal objectively or attributively with
+experiences that are subjective and essential. We fail to
+understand that our knowledge <i>about</i> our feelings is but
+attributive, that it brings us no nearer the feelings themselves;
+that our feelings are essential, physiological and
+that we may no more know our essential feelings through
+<i>observation</i> of their <i>attributes</i> than we may reach the
+essence of any object about us through a knowledge of
+<i>its</i> attributes.</p>
+
+<p>The basis of this essay is precisely the recognition of
+this impossible breach between the condition of consciousness
+produced through a knowledge <i>about</i> feeling and
+the condition of consciousness that is the feeling itself,
+between the state of mind that is <i>commentative</i> and the
+state of mind that is <i>functioning</i>. The former is objective,
+the latter is subjective. The failure of our psychological
+methods to recognize this intrinsic distinction is to my
+mind the failure of our entire approach to the problems
+of mental and social disharmony. It is this unwitting
+substitution of the <i>theory</i> of human feelings for the
+unannotated experience of the feelings themselves as
+recorded in our interactive functioning as human beings
+that is the impossibility of our present “method” of
+psychoanalysis.</p>
+
+<p>This position is for me an all-important one. Upon the
+acceptance or rejection of it, I believe, depends the
+growth or the decline of psychoanalysis as an agency of
+release for the intrinsic needs of the neurotic personality.
+To-day, under the impetus of psychoanalysis in its
+theoretical or vicarious form, we are carrying theory to
+the point of absurdity. There is now, for example, the
+psychoanalytic theory of the nursery. Anxious young
+mothers are running about looking for texts which will
+serve them as guides in the love of their children. They
+are diligently searching upon every hand for the latest
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_22">[22]</span>approved theory of maternal love. And in response to
+the demand the popular literature is supplying them
+with full details. But there are no librettos of the
+nursery. Baedekers to motherhood are not to be had.
+The motherhood that is true is a subjective relationship,
+and it is only subjectively that it can be felt and understood.</p>
+
+<p>I shall not forget the experience told me by a patient
+whose mother, actuated by the theory of motherhood
+in its highest “scientific” interpretation, undertook to
+enlighten her upon the significance of sex. The incident
+left the most painful impression upon her. The mother,
+having gathered courage for the performance of her
+maternal duty, delivered her errand with a punctiliousness
+which from the point of view of technique was
+irreproachable. She spoke out of the strictest regard for
+the theory of motherhood. But unfortunately her theory
+left out of account an item that needs to be reckoned
+with, namely, the native simplicity of the consciousness
+of childhood. The woman spoke out of the theory of a
+truth, but her child listened with the organic susceptibility
+of truth itself. The mother had not accepted
+within herself the actual significance of life, and so, in
+accordance with the formality of a theory, was vicariously
+imposing its acceptance upon her child. But childish
+perception pierces the veil of pedagogic finesse. The
+rigid demeanour of her instructor readily disclosed the
+discrepancy between the verbal recital and the utter
+lack of conscious acceptance within herself. For the
+child, now a middle-aged woman, the moment was an
+unforgettable one. She had witnessed in her mother an
+outrage to organic truth, and the shock of that experience
+caused a psychic disunity between mother and child
+from which there resulted an introversion of personality
+that covered half a lifetime. And so, while the theory
+of the nursery is from the point of view of theory wholly
+irreproachable, it is from the point of view of the nursery
+wholly absurd.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="p_23">[23]</span></p>
+
+<p>A lesson which parents have yet to learn is that the
+child is closer to the heart of things than the grown-up—that
+the consciousness of childhood stands in a far more
+truthful relationship to the actuality of life, as it is, than
+the consciousness of the conventionalized and sophisticated
+adult. For years it has been my feeling that
+beneath the conflict of the neurotic personality there is
+reiterated an urge toward the expression of this primal
+inherency of consciousness. To-day, it is more than
+ever my view that in the neurotic reaction there is expressed
+an inherent plea for the native simplicity and
+truth of this organic consciousness. It becomes more
+and more clear to me that the pain of these personalities
+is due solely to the organic discrepancy of an unconsciousness
+and indirection within themselves, and that essentially
+their urge is to bring themselves again into harmony
+with the law of their personality by reuniting the needs
+of their consciousness with the needs of their organic life.</p>
+
+<p>As Nietzsche says: “May there not be—a question
+for alienists—neuroses of health?”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_5_5" href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> This question for
+alienists is indeed a vital one but it is one which, as far
+as I am aware, has not as yet even dimly occurred to us.
+There is nowhere, it may be noted, a clearer argument
+for Nietzsche’s hypothesis than Nietzsche’s own neurosis.
+Unfortunately, however, alienists are still as little interested
+in the positive processes that bespeak the organism’s
+conscious health, as physicians in general are interested
+in the positive processes that insure the organism’s
+physical health. But, as long as the collective social
+mind remains the collective unconscious mind, it is not
+to be expected that we shall approach the unconscious of
+the individual, in either its psychic or in its somatic
+aspect, from the basis of an inclusive consciousness and
+health. The question is often asked whether insanity
+will ever become curable. The answer can only be that
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_24">[24]</span>the insanity of the individual cannot be curable as long
+as there exists the insanity of the social mind about him.
+It is not humanly possible for the psychiatrist to remedy
+conditions of mental disorganization as long as he himself
+is part of a disorganized social mind.</p>
+
+<p>If the psychoanalyst, in applying to the lives of his
+patients a theory of life, is himself unconsciously resorting
+to the self-protection of the substitutive and symbolic;
+if the blocked personality of our patients meets with a
+blocking in ourselves, with a compromise, a theory, a
+something which stands as a <i>sign for</i> rather than that
+which <i>is</i>—a situation which offers a compromise mechanism
+identical with that for which they have sought aid from
+us—then clearly the way is not yet open for the release
+of the conflict within these personalities. For a patient
+may be untrammelled only in so far as the analyst is
+himself untrammelled.</p>
+
+<p>In taking this attitude I do not make any personal
+claim for myself. This position is not one to which I
+have come through the success of my work but rather
+through its failure. For in the measure in which I have
+adhered to the dictates of a preconceived normality, in
+just that measure has my work defeated itself. Though
+I have for some time theoretically disavowed the mental
+status represented in the normal reaction, I have tended
+unconsciously all the while to ally myself with this
+standardized brand of unconsciousness and thus, in my
+own work, have inclined to hold to a theory of life rather
+than to its actuality. Not, then, with the neurotic alone,
+but with us all, it would seem that consciousness is
+mainly employed in efforts of self-protection and evasion.
+Truly, consciousness makes cowards of us all. But this
+is not consciousness in the sense of life and growth; it
+is consciousness in the sense of retention and self. It is
+not a free consciousness; it is consciousness with a
+reservation. It is not true consciousness; it is unconsciousness.</p>
+
+<p>In accordance with such a mode of consciousness each
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_25">[25]</span>of us is elbowing for a place for himself. Each is seeking
+more territory for his own expansion. Each of us is an
+unconscious overlord striving to secure the supremacy
+of his own “personality.” Universal and normal as this
+reaction is, its tendency is obsessive and ill. I do not
+believe that life is aggressive and that growth is concerned
+for itself. Personality is impersonality. What is
+needed is the quiet acceptance of life in its actuality.
+In this and this alone lies the opportunity for freedom and
+growth.</p>
+
+<p>We hear much to-day of the technique of psychoanalysis.
+In truth there is no such thing. It is just another defence
+mechanism, just another resistance to the actualities of
+life. As in all instances of therapeutic specialization, the
+technique of psychoanalysis has become a fetish with us.
+It has become a veritable complex, a disorder from which
+I find patients actually suffering. The situation is quite
+ridiculous. The more I think of it, the more I am convinced
+that the so-called technique of psychoanalysis is
+but another hobgoblin wherewith the unconscious tendency
+of professionalism with its egoistic striving for
+preferment contrives to preserve its own separateness and
+distinction. I confess that, in my own unconsciousness,
+I have more than once laid stress upon the importance of
+the analytic technique. But let us not be misled by
+what is called the technique of psychoanalysis. It is but
+another subterfuge for the reality of life. A technique of
+psychoanalysis is no more possible than a technique of
+love or of friendship or of motherhood. There is a
+technique and a very difficult technique of the <i>theory</i> of
+psychoanalysis. But that is quite a different thing.
+Psychoanalysis itself or, as its name implies, the loosening
+or freeing of consciousness is nothing else than the conscious
+acceptance of life. As such, it is the exact contrary
+of the objective and technical. Life is not a technique.
+It does not express itself in terms of technique. Technique
+is an objective instrument. Life is a subjective experience.
+It is a joy or a sorrow, a disappointment or an
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_26">[26]</span>aspiration, and it can no more be handled from the point
+of view of technique than it can be handled with the
+scalpel of the anatomist.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_6_6" href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a></p>
+
+<p>From these and similar reflections I have come to
+regard the formality of applying a system of psychoanalysis
+to the life of an individual as an actual hindrance rather
+than as an aid to the true expression of his personality.
+It is but an added repression, blocking the very way it
+attempts to open. For to meet the unconscious of a
+patient with unconsciousness within oneself, is only to
+answer symbolic substitution and indirection with the
+same substitution and indirection in an altered, more
+subtle, socially plausible form.</p>
+
+<p>The whole meaning, therefore, of an analysis that is
+actual and not theoretical is the realization and acceptance
+on the part of the analyst of the utmost unconscious
+symbolization and distortion within himself. The analysis
+of a patient is the analysis of oneself. It cannot be
+otherwise. And when I say analysis, I do not mean
+an analysis that is a mere unconscious concession to
+normality—a giving vent to the egoistic erotism of the
+individual by diffusing it among the widely distributed
+elements of the social personality in the manifold distortions
+of sexuality. I mean an analysis of personality
+in its widest expression—an analysis through which the
+individual comes into the conscious acceptance not only
+of the repression or distortion that is personal and that
+is comprised within the individual introversion we know
+as the neurosis, but of the distortion or substitution of
+personality that is social and that constitutes the confederacy
+of unconsciousness popularly endorsed as
+normality.</p>
+
+<p>The prime requisite for clear, free, untrammelled work
+in the analysis of human personality is the unqualified
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_27">[27]</span>rejection of the unconscious compromise embodied in
+the social reaction of normality. The analyst who is
+not himself capitulating to the concession of the social
+unconscious will repudiate the attitude of the psychotherapist
+whose criterion is the restoration of his patient
+to a condition of normality, and will take his stand
+against any recourse that is based upon a programme of
+compromise and habituation. He will see that normality
+is merely unconsciousness on a co-operative basis and he
+will not be deceived by its insidious offers. It is only
+through such an attitude of complete freedom within
+oneself that it is possible to offer the opportunity of freedom
+to the personality of the neurotic patient, the very
+heart of whose disharmony lies in an inner repugnance,
+however bewildered and confused, to the untruth of the
+social unconscious comprising his milieu. Viewed analytically,
+normality is but the self-flattery through which
+we pretend we are not unconscious. By so pretending,
+however, we are only furthering our tendency to deeper
+unconsciousness.</p>
+
+<p>As long as there is self-protection, there is self-limitation;
+as long as there is self-limitation, we are necessarily
+setting a limitation to the possibility of growth and consciousness
+in others. Only through rejecting such protection
+may we come to accept the testimony of the
+unconscious within ourselves. Otherwise, we ourselves
+become the inhibitors rather than the liberators of consciousness;
+we who are psychoanalysts become mere
+guardians of disease-processes instead of the willing
+repositories of these unconscious factors, as they exist
+in others, through our understanding and acceptance of
+these processes as they exist within ourselves. For consciousness
+grows upon the medium of consciousness. It
+cannot be nourished upon an extraneous soil. Theories
+of consciousness are extraneous. In the presence of the
+actuality of life, theories of life become mere intellectual
+snobbery. Being wise, sophisticated and remote, they
+are inadequate to meet life in its native simplicity.
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_28">[28]</span>Bearing the testimonials of authority, the credentials of
+office, they do not come low enough. These insignia of
+rank only tend to intimidate personality in its natural
+simplicity. What is needed for the release of the neurotic
+individual is the personality who imposes nothing of his
+own and thus allows the completest opportunity for the
+unfolding of the repressed and introverted personality of
+others.</p>
+
+<p>As psychoanalysis develops and our understanding
+deepens, it will be seen that it is not scientific equipment
+alone but also directness of outlook that make the psychoanalyst.
+It will be seen that the personalities who are
+adapted to an understanding of the needs of human life
+will not necessarily occupy places of importance amid the
+distractions of affairs, but that their place may be an
+unobtrusive one in which understanding for understanding’s
+sake will be their sole concern. The various rules
+laid down by medical or other syndicates with a view to
+determining what are the literal qualifications for a psychoanalyst
+are wholly beside the point.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_7_7" href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> The qualifications
+for understanding are not literal. Although we may
+formulate the most meticulous of programmes setting
+forth the requirements of tuition, it will be found that
+personality will, in the final count, override them all.
+Besides, I cannot think that it is due entirely to the
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_29">[29]</span>accidents of chance that the spokesman for the adoption
+of this or that recipe as a prerequisite to “sound training”
+in psychoanalysis should unfailingly submit a menu that
+tallies in detail with his own catalogue of merits. After
+all, psychoanalysis is a very large name for a very simple
+thing. I well know that this statement offers a delectable
+morsel to any who are disposed to misinterpret my meaning.
+It will be readily regarded as recklessly casting
+aside as valueless all the years of my own medical and
+psychological training. But the responsibility for such
+a misinterpretation rests upon those who are unable to
+distinguish between the culture that is applied academically
+and the academy that is applied culturally. All
+that I mean is that whosoever follows the calling of
+psychoanalysis is merely one who seeks to understand
+and accept life as it is without intruding himself or
+imposing his view or exerting his authority. Indeed
+psychoanalysis is essentially the abrogation of authority.
+For the psychoanalyst is not content but receptacle.
+Lacking method or design he offers nothing, but is the
+recipient of all there is of human experience as subjectively
+substantiated within himself.</p>
+
+<p>But there enters here a consideration of vital importance
+and one that has not yet been adequately reckoned
+with and understood. If the psychoanalyst is to be the
+recipient, there must be those who stand to him as
+recipient also. If he is to understand, he must be understood.
+If the life of the analyst is to be a reality and not
+a system, he himself must in reality participate in the
+life in which he invites others to participate. If it is his
+thesis that human life cannot subsist alone, that communication
+is life, that it is the very meaning of consciousness,
+neither can he subsist without communication.</p>
+
+<p>And so there need to be in the life of the analyst the
+personalities with whom he may share, with whom he
+may communicate, who accept him and are accepted by
+him in turn. For to analyze is to be analyzed, to understand
+is to be understood. Needless to say these are
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_30">[30]</span>conclusions to which I have not come alone. I could not
+have. They are the outcome of my own opportunity of
+participation and expression, as the need of communication
+has come to unfold itself in my own experience.</p>
+
+<p>Clearly, then, we who stand as the promoters of a new
+and untrammelled consciousness must look carefully into
+our own lives to discover whether we ourselves, as part of
+the social consciousness, are not theorists rather than
+unified personalities actuated solely by the law of understanding
+and of growth within ourselves. Clearly, we
+ourselves must realize the completely vicarious and
+repressed element underlying the expression of unconsciousness
+embodied in the social unrest of normality,
+and, fearlessly repudiating this collective reaction of
+substitution and evasion, break completely with the
+popular policies of compromise and untruth underlying
+it. In this course we shall take our stand for the freedom
+and clarity of a mode of consciousness that aims solely
+toward the growth of self-understanding and communication.
+For life is not a system, it is not a technique.
+Life is simple, and its course is one of quiet flow. In so
+far as psychoanalysis is technical, it is not life. In so far
+as its aim is normality, it is not free.</p>
+
+<p>The choice is an unequivocal one. It is a choice between
+expediency and truth, between fixity and growth. For
+the habitual or normal mind whose criterion is expedience
+the choice is already determined; but for the personality
+that is sensitive to the values of life, the choice of growth
+is no less inevitable. It is organically so. Hence it is
+for each of us to make his choice on which side he will
+take his stand—whether, adhering to a theory of life, he
+will blindly protect himself against the recognition and
+acknowledgment of the vicarious element of normality
+and compromise within his own unconscious, or whether
+he will stand for a mode of consciousness that flings away
+every habitual protection and accepts only the conditions
+of life as they unfold themselves in the development
+of his own personality as well as in that of others.
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_31">[31]</span>The outlook is really not ambiguous. The question is
+whether life will be a theory or system corroborated by
+the technical outfit of the consultation room or whether
+it will be the deeply fulfilled experience that comprises
+consciousness in its organic reality.</p>
+
+<p>The definite biological theory on which this thesis
+rests implies an organic or societal continuum as the
+essential basis of consciousness. To understand this
+theory we shall be helped if, in the beginning, we will
+seek to replace the more or less arbitrary divergences of
+personal outlook with a conception that attempts to
+stand far enough removed from this personal mode to
+contemplate within its more ample formulation the
+personal outlook as well. For this purpose we must
+discover, as far as possible, our tendency to personalistic
+delimitation—a tendency due to the unconscious systematization
+of the restricted individual unit—and in this way
+approach consciousness anew from the more inclusive
+basis of its societal meaning.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="p_32">[32]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_II">
+    CHAPTER II
+    <br>
+    A RELATIVE CONCEPT OF CONSCIOUSNESS—AN
+    ANALYSIS OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN ITS ETHNIC
+    ORIGIN
+  </h3>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>In presenting a psychological discussion that presupposes
+the altered basis of the relativists, I am under no illusion
+as to the wide disparity between the mathematical conception
+of the relativists in regard to the universe and the
+clinical preoccupations of a psychopathologist. It is now
+conceded, however, that the theory of relativity is not
+without its revolutionary influence upon our scientific
+thought processes generally. And so, although I am not
+competent to an appreciation of the theory of relativity
+in the objective sense of the physicists, I hope I shall
+not seem presumptuous in attempting a discussion of
+consciousness that demands as its basis a viewpoint that
+is analogous to theirs.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_8_8" href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a></p>
+
+<p>As I understand it, the inadequacy of the Newtonian
+system of astronomy is its autogenous exclusion of data
+requisite to a principle which presupposes a basis of
+universal applicability. Assuming an unqualified absolute
+to reside within the limits of its own circumscribed area,
+it posits a principle which fails to take account of factors
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_33">[33]</span>operating within the larger constellation wherein its own
+system is but a contributory element. So that, in
+estimating the components requisite to a more inclusive
+scale of computation, the Newtonian postulate omits to
+reckon with the principle of the time-space element that
+is constitutive of the extension intrinsic to itself and
+that is, therefore, mathematically indispensable in an
+encompassment of the universal and all-inclusive astronomical
+purview with respect to which its own system
+becomes but relative and extrinsic.</p>
+
+<p>Little by little the necessities of a widening outlook
+have demanded a gradual broadening of conceptual
+principles generally. Of late I have been led to views
+that appear to warrant the conclusion that, in the sphere
+of psychic phenomena no less than in the realm of physics,
+a system of absolutism, preclusive of data existing outside
+its own autogenously circumscribed principle, wholly
+dominates our presumably conscious world. Accordingly,
+if we are to reckon with consciousness upon a true and
+inclusive basis, it is required that the system of absolutism
+thus embodied shall give way to a conception of relativity
+in the conscious sphere comparable to the principle of
+relativity in the physical universe.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_9_9" href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a></p>
+
+<p>I do not see why, in his mental and emotional reactions,
+man may not so far free himself from the traditional
+superstitions of imbued inference as to recognize at last
+that, even with respect to conceptions that are the basis
+of his own mental operations, there is a difference between
+the values that <i>seem</i> and the values that <i>are</i>. I do not
+see why he may not recognize that processes which he has
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_34">[34]</span>hitherto regarded as habitually inevitable are not by any
+means organically necessary, but that the two may in
+fact be essentially contradictory one of the other. If in
+the objective world man may ungird himself of the
+accustomed limitations of a hitherto accepted Euclidean
+geometry, may he not within the sphere of his subjective
+consciousness also rid himself of prepossessions which,
+though they appear to us now as no less basic, may
+ultimately prove equally non-essential?</p>
+
+<p>We have recently waged a world-war which, according
+to the <i>state of mind</i> of its participants prior to its occurrence,
+was the admittedly inevitable recourse, but which, in
+the opinion of thinking men subsequent to its enactment,
+is now equally admitted to have been a wholly unnecessary
+eventuality. How then, upon our present basis of
+mentation, may we conclude what is an adequate criterion
+by which we may determine a dependable process of
+thinking? If we may know our states of mind only
+after we have vented the emotions that first incited them,
+of what use is it to know them? If states of mind can
+produce calamities that gather their toll of human life
+by the millions and we can, by subsequently taking
+thought, come to regard them as unnecessary, what must
+be felt toward states of mind that have produced such
+calamities? Surely it is not the part of intelligence to
+feel regret of a disaster only after the disaster has befallen.
+If disaster need not befall, would it not be wiser to
+deplore it beforehand and so avert the disaster? This
+would seem the logical course, but the truth is that the
+logical course is not accessible to man in his present
+state of unconsciousness. Man may think logically but
+he cannot be warranted to act logically. For, in his
+present stage of development, his actions are predominantly
+under the guidance of his emotions and his thought
+can therefore only follow after.</p>
+
+<p>Consciousness is the individual’s acquiescence in
+sequences that are determined by the necessities of
+organic law. Unconsciousness is the individual’s resistance
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_35">[35]</span>to these organic processes. As consciousness is
+anterior to its own realization, so unconsciousness ever
+follows in the wake of its own event. We think to-day
+only in terms of what ought to have been yesterday, and
+the event of to-morrow embodies again the reaction to
+the issues of to-day. Thus our actions are always but
+the unconscious reflections of the day preceding, and in
+our unconsciousness it is only in the aftermath of the
+morrow that we interpret the omens of to-day.</p>
+
+<p>If man’s judgment is competent to apprehend the data
+of events subsequent to their occurrence, why may it
+not be equally possible, through our prior apperception of
+the mental states leading up to them, to envisage the
+same events with the same clarity anteriorly and thus
+forestall the useless mistakenness and destruction that
+now follow inevitably with their enactment? Surely it
+is clear that, in continuing to preserve unaltered this same
+state of mind whose world-wide consequences we have
+just witnessed, we may be, at the present moment, preparing
+a similar if not a yet greater catastrophe, the while
+we are at the same moment as completely oblivious of it.
+Indeed, from a position that is anterior to the emotional
+inducements to which our mental states are inevitably
+subject in our present absolute view, it will be seen that
+an unconscious and destructive disposition toward life is
+as inseparable from an absence of self-cognizance on the
+part of the social mind as the factors of disintegration
+and unconsciousness are inseparable within the life-sequences
+of the individual unit.</p>
+
+<p>In its necessary limitation with respect to the relativity
+of consciousness in its universal compass, the constellated
+system of processes which at present comprises the
+sphere of the mental life will, in my view, ultimately
+appear analogous to the traditional system of Newton
+with respect to the universe of relativity in the encompassment
+of objective mathematics. As in the intrinsic
+principle of absolutism comprising the Newtonian system
+of gravitation, so in the self-determined principle of
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_36">[36]</span>absolutism, comprising our present system of psychology,
+a dimensional factor has been left out of account, the
+inclusion of which completely shifts the basis of former
+calculations and so distorts our habitual reckonings as
+to demand the fundamental reconstruction of accepted
+values.</p>
+
+<p>But while the principle of relativity comprehended by
+the objective formulae of the physicists is mathematically
+beyond my reach, the conception of relativity within the
+subjective life appears to me not only compellingly clear,
+but organically necessary. Indeed, in the absence of this
+conception of the relativity of consciousness, it is no
+longer possible for me to reckon adequately with the
+processes of the mental life. For in default of a working
+basis broad enough to embrace the dimensional element
+of the system, individual and social, whereof we ourselves
+are a component part, there is lacking the scientific
+comprehensiveness requisite to a universal principle of
+evaluation.</p>
+
+<p>It is worthy of note that between the objective or
+mathematical theory of relativity of Einstein and the
+subjective or organismic theory of relativity here considered
+there is to be traced, however inconclusively,
+a philosophical parallelism that is significant.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_10_10" href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> My feeling
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_37">[37]</span>is, though as yet it is little more than an intimation
+with me, that this cosmological parallel between the
+subjective and objective spheres of relativity marks a
+concomitance that is consistent throughout. I do not
+see how it could be otherwise since the subjective and
+the objective spheres of life, embodying the bipolar
+aspects of the phenomenal world, represent but obverse
+phases of one and the same universe. The analogy that
+interests me here, however, has to do with the feature
+that is equally the basis of the two modes of relativity,
+namely, the feature which entails the abrogation of
+absolute standards of evaluation and the recognition of
+the kinetic factor that is organic to both. In the objective
+interpretation of astronomy this factor comprises the
+mathematical space-time coefficient of the physicists’
+fourth dimension; and in a subjective interpretation of
+consciousness it comprises correspondingly the kinetic
+element that determines the functional coefficient of the
+organic life as a whole.</p>
+
+<p>The thought represented in “the organic life as a
+whole” is, like the inclusive scheme of the physicists, to
+be understood only by exclusion, that is, by exclusion of
+a point of view that is <i>not</i> organic, or by exclusion of the
+absolute system, individual and social, comprising our
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_38">[38]</span>present static basis of consciousness. As this organismic
+conception of consciousness is relativity itself within the
+subjective sphere, its encompassment can no more be
+apprehended in our present scheme of psychological
+evaluation than the relativity of the physicists can be
+apprehended on a static Newtonian basis.</p>
+
+<p>Einstein’s theory of relativity is not intelligible on
+the absolute basis of the older system of astronomy, of
+which conception the newer mathematical theory is, by
+reason of its wider inclusiveness, the logical replacement.
+Likewise, the theory of subjective relativity or the
+organismic conception of consciousness cannot be understood
+on the basis of the absolute principle resident in
+the Freudian conception of the unconscious, of which
+principle the organismic conception is, by inclusion, the
+more encompassing formulation.</p>
+
+<p>Hence this organismic conception of consciousness, subsumed
+under the postulate of relativity, will be understood
+only as we discard entirely the absolute conception represented
+in our present system of psychology. Because of
+our own absolutistic basis, we do not realize that the
+absolutism intrinsic to the dynamic system of our present
+individualistic conception of consciousness maintains a
+position that is relatively not less static than the older
+descriptive systems of consciousness in relation to the
+dynamic psychology of Freud. The Freudian system is
+dynamic in respect to the system it has superseded but
+static in respect to the principle by which it must now
+in turn, I believe, be superseded, precisely as our own
+Newtonian system is dynamic with respect to the older
+Ptolemaic system of astronomy it has transcended but
+static with respect to the mathematical principle of
+relativity which now in turn has transcended it.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, the fact that the intrinsic limitation of our
+astronomical systematization has led us arbitrarily to
+regard time and space as absolute entities, rather than
+as the functional co-ordinates of matter, has no immediate
+bearing whatever beyond the need of adjusting a quite
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_39">[39]</span>infinitesimal error in the astronomical reading of certain
+minimal deflections. It does not in the least alter the
+practical conduct of human affairs. For the grocer and
+the apothecary our standards remain undisturbed. So
+also in the more intimate adaptations of our human
+relations, the absolute basis of mensuration that has
+actuated our reckonings with respect to the objective
+world about us has not for a moment touched our subjective
+mode or the affective sphere of our living. But
+when this artificial basis of self-determined absolutism
+operates within the organic sphere of man’s affective life,
+wherein is the very centre of his being, there are recorded
+errors whose consequences reach to the core of life itself.
+It is here, in the absolute system of evaluations pertaining
+to the affective reactions of human conduct, that
+there is needed the correcture in reading the deflection,
+both individual and social, that comprises man’s unconsciousness.</p>
+
+<p>We have yet to learn that it is in the common affects of
+men that there resides the basis of their collective biology.
+Only in the affective reactions comprising the native,
+organic continuum of life may we trace the menstruum
+of our human consciousness. And so, in approaching
+the affective or organic implications entailed through
+the arbitrary systematization that is our own absolutism,
+we are entering upon the study of the distorted sensations
+and reactions in which is embodied, I believe, the essential
+pathology of consciousness represented in the neuroses.</p>
+
+<p>In considering the conception of the relativity of consciousness
+we shall acquire a clearer insight into the more
+comprehensive scheme subsumed under it, if we will
+begin with an analysis of the rudimentary processes
+comprising our personal judgments and consider the
+elements into which our primary impressions may be
+resolved.</p>
+
+<p>Our judgments are formed from the material of our
+impressions or, as we say, we reason from observation.
+This being so, what must be the substance of our observations
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_40">[40]</span>and what the nature of the processes of reason thus
+derived? To observe is to stand apart from and record
+the impressions reflected to us from the object observed.
+So that upon consideration our observations are seen to
+consist of the <i>reflected images</i> or mental <i>pictures</i> of the
+world of objects by which we are surrounded. That is to
+say, impressions of objects consist of the aspect or surface
+which is reflected to us from them and which is thus
+mirrored in the reflecting surface of our own perceptions.</p>
+
+<p>But in this very process of observation an unwarranted
+assumption has already been posited in advance—the
+assumption, namely, that the position intrinsic to the
+observer is an all-inclusive and authentic one. Already it
+presumes a universe of which the onlooker’s own self-limited
+position is the basis. It does not account for the
+integral component that is the observer’s own organic
+dimension. In brief, the very point of view of the observer
+lays claim to the prerogative of an absolute cosmogony
+whereof he is himself the unconsciously static, self-determined
+centre. Whatever the point of view, it is invariably
+“the point of view” of the observer. So that in constituting
+ourselves perceptual foci from which, according to
+our self-appointed terms, we look out as from a background
+upon the phenomena of life, we have unconsciously
+become artificially detached spectators of a merely static
+<i>aspect</i> of life. This is what I mean by the autogenous
+exclusion of data extrinsic to the self-determined system
+of which we ourselves are only a part, but which, in the
+light of the relativity of consciousness as a whole, is
+revealed, on the contrary, as an arbitrary system determined
+by our own static absolutism. Regarded from the
+point of view of relativity, to adopt such a detached,
+observational outlook toward life is to view it in the
+merely flat, bidimensional plane of the image. It is not
+to experience life through participation in the extension
+of its full-dimensional actuality.</p>
+
+<p>Upon analysis, then, our world of subjectively tabulated
+impressions becomes but an artificial world reflecting the
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_41">[41]</span>artificial systematization that is our own detached observation
+of it. Our unconsciousness is our failure to realize
+that bidimensional reproductions of actuality are not
+actuality. Our own organisms as well as the surrounding
+objects of actuality are elements that are equally to be
+included in the organic continuum of our human experience.
+The mental pictures comprising our bidimensional
+<i>impressions</i> of objects, however adequate as pictures, are
+not adequate as expressions of actuality in the sense of
+the dynamic extension comprising our own organic
+inclusion.</p>
+
+<p>Contrary, therefore, to the casual assumption current
+among us, we do not apprehend the objects about us as
+they exist in their cubic outline, but only in the bidimensional
+“foreshortening” that is our own mental
+or pictorial impression of them. Our so-called objective
+apperception of the world of actuality is in fact superficial
+and unreal. Our alleged world composed of impressions
+is pictorial rather than actual. It is static rather than
+kinetic. In consequence of the bidimensional visual
+plane in which our objective fields are reflected, it is
+inevitable that our environmental actuality should appear
+in the form of pictures before us. Looking out upon the
+world from a bidimensional basis, we can perceive it
+only in terms of the reflected image formed upon our own
+bidimensional mental background. It is due also, then,
+to this contributing factor of a flat or reflected visual
+image within ourselves that there is registered within
+ourselves a flat or reflected mental image of the world
+about us. For in virtue of the bidimensional picture in
+which our impressions are necessarily reflected, our
+mental perception of objects is likewise necessarily
+pictorial and bidimensional.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_11_11" href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a></p>
+
+<p>Such is the probable ethnological account of this misconstruction
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_42">[42]</span>of actuality that underlies our mental world.
+The significance of such a pictorial and artificially foreshortened
+representation of the objective world and its
+mental influence in foreshortening the tridimensions of
+actuality in general cannot be overstressed. We need to
+realize the circumstance of our remote or bidimensional
+position of merely mental or impressionistic observers.
+From this position the mentally reflected and artificially
+pictorial outlook with which the world of solidarity is
+individually viewed by us represents but the portrait
+of life whereof the reality is the inclusiveness of life as
+experienced through our subjective continuity as functional
+elements in the organic whole. So that while it is most
+true that we reason from observation, yet if our observation
+is imbued with a bidimensional or superficial bias,
+then our reason is also influenced by this same bidimensionally
+imbued bias. If our observation is not subjectively
+inclusive of the objective world about us, in the
+same measure our judgments are not inclusive of it.</p>
+
+<p>It is this non-inclusiveness of consciousness that constitutes
+our mental systematization. In this perceptual
+relationship to life, due to our detached basis of interpretation
+of it upon grounds of the apparent aspect
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_43">[43]</span>rather than of its solid actuality, consists the arbitrary
+absolutism of our present system of consciousness. Due
+to this organic misconception of consciousness, we habitually
+prefer the picturesque semblance of the aspect to the
+pragmatic inclusiveness of the actual. This is why we
+tend to explain life rather than to live it. This is why the
+adduced hypothesis of life counts with us more than life
+itself. But an account of life that does not include the
+consciousness that is our own kinetic function and
+repudiate the static pictures of life arbitrarily projected
+by us does not compass life in the full orb of its rounded
+actuality. A principle of life that does not embrace the
+principle arising out of the bias of our own self-made
+systems of personal absolutism and unconsciousness is
+not adequate to encompass life in the rounded sum of
+its functional inclusiveness. It is needful to recognize
+that, in the unconscious absolute underlying the personal
+relatedness of each of us to every other, there is involved
+an organic <i>resistance</i> or a mutual repulsion among the
+elements of the societal personality that forms an impasse
+to its concerted function. On the contrary, in the mutual
+inclusiveness of our individual organisms as elements
+within the confluent sum we thus compose, there is
+embodied the organic continuum that underlies the
+societal organism of man as a whole. It is this homogeneous
+substrate of man’s consciousness in its totality
+that is implied in the principle of the relativity of consciousness.</p>
+
+<p>If, however, an ethnological account is adequate to
+explain the remote, pictorial relation in which we stand
+with respect to the world of objective actuality, such an
+account is not adequate to an understanding of the
+pictorial view we have unconsciously come to assume
+toward the world of subjective actuality or in relation
+to the organisms with which we constitute a common
+species and with which, being subjectively akin, we are
+organically identical. If phylogenetic theory accounts for
+the deflections from reality of the reactions of consciousness
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_44">[44]</span>in the large, it does not account for the deflections of
+consciousness in the particular reactions of the personality
+that determine our relations to our individual fellows.
+Thus far we have considered this absolute system comprising
+our personal basis only in relation to the objective
+world or to the world of things; we have not yet considered
+it subjectively or in relation to the individuals
+with whom a common affectivity renders us organically
+identical. It is only within the subjective sphere of our
+affects, representing man’s organic racial continuum,
+that this distortion of our outlook is manifested in its
+deepest poignancy.</p>
+
+<p>It is, therefore, only in its ontogenetic mode that we may
+fully realize the organic deviations within the consciousness
+of man, due to his bidimensional and unreal apperception
+of his fellows, and to his consequently false inferences
+resultant upon an artificially remote and pictorial
+attitude toward them. It is here alone, I believe, that is
+to be traced the philosophy of the deflections observable
+in the above-mentioned reaction of personal resistance as
+it appears not only in the difform reaction characterizing
+the isolated personality of the neurotic individual, but
+also in the uniform reactions presented in the <i>relatively no
+less deflected group-expressions comprising the collective
+personality of the social consensus</i>. It has become more
+and more clear to me that it is this error of our mental
+refraction, due to the subjective deflection comprising the
+bidimensional judgment of each in assuming a pictorial
+rather than a real relationship to others, that is the
+essence of our resistances. In this surface reflection, that
+is the personal attitude of each toward every other and
+that embodies the psychology of our resistances, is
+represented man’s traditional systematization, both individual
+and social. For, in judging or viewing life on the
+<i>absolute</i> basis of how it appears to <i>me</i>, I automatically
+render it beholden to my personal interpretation of it.
+In my autocratic attitude of onlooker I necessarily
+repudiate the inherency of the individual or object
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_45">[45]</span>looked on. Thus, as the self-assumed centre of the
+universe, the individual is completely detached psychically
+from the organic actuality of everything within his
+observation, and, in his present mental attitude, whatever
+he thinks that he knows and feels is unconsciously constrained
+by the illusory supremacy of his personal wish.
+This is the insidious fallacy of the reflected aspect. This
+constitutes the personal absolute or systematization which,
+in dominating our present mode of consciousness, completely
+distorts the universe of reality. It is such a
+reflective attitude of personalism and unconsciousness
+that is our exclusion of data that lie outside the system
+intrinsic to ourselves and that may be included only in
+the fuller comprehension of an organic relativity.</p>
+
+<p>This reflective attitude entails an autocratic interpretation
+of life on the basis of one’s own personal evaluation,
+and its effect is to sever the natural bond between the
+elements of the societal body. As the inevitable concomitant
+of this habitually reflective attitude toward
+life there is mental dissociation rather than an assimilative
+participation such as may only be realized in the inclusiveness
+of consciousness as an organic whole. Only an
+organic coalescence in our common affectivity, as contrasted
+with our present attitude of detached, bidimensional
+perception of one another, will open the course
+to spontaneous development in yielding the natural way
+to the instinct of mating and reproduction wherein alone
+is the basis of a constructive societal life. For resistance
+is of the affective life. It is a phenomenon that is essentially
+organic in that it marks an obstruction within the
+societal personality of man in the relation <i>inter se</i> of the
+elements, individual and social, of which our societal
+personality is composed. In our blind inversion of the
+essential processes of life, we fail to recognize that there
+can be no healthful growth of the organism apart from
+the soil to which it is indigenous. If isolation and an
+artificial medium are death to the growth of vegetation,
+they are death no less to the societal instinct of our
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_46">[46]</span>common consciousness in which is found the natural
+medium for the growth and activity of man. In the
+measure in which we allow ourselves to participate in
+and become intrinsic and contributory elements in the
+world of organic actuality about us, will our pictorial
+mode of envisagement yield place to the subjective experience
+of a dimensional inclusiveness that is complete in its
+actuality. To view the world of actuality in its merely
+static, cross-sectional appearance is to know only the
+photography of life. Its kinetic reality may be known
+only through the subjective inclusion of our organic
+participation in it.</p>
+
+<p>We cannot return too often to original sources in
+repudiating conceptions whereof they are the basis.
+We experience reality only in the measure in which we
+disavow the symbols of unreality. In proportion as we
+apprehend subjective fallacy may we encompass the
+reality underlying it. It is where our conceptual constructions
+of life leave off that our constructive conceptions
+of life begin. We have seen that the mathematicians
+have come to regard as theoretically worthless those
+objective calculations whose standards of evaluation are
+not measured in accordance with the principle of an
+inclusive relativity. Likewise a formulation of values in
+the subjective sphere of consciousness lacks an adequate
+principle of evaluation if it does not rest upon the relative
+principle comprising the organic and inclusive conception
+of consciousness in its societal totality.</p>
+
+<p>If, in the dissociation of the consciousness of man from
+his organic individuality, he is unconsciously assuming a
+personal absolute that is merely a reflection of the mass
+absolute assumed by the collective social unconscious
+about him, then what we call the consciousness of man
+with its presumable function of dependable evaluation
+is at all times but a system of images, and his vaunted
+prerogative of a personal absolute is only a dissociative
+reaction due to his own secondarily adaptive systematization.
+Upon this basis, what we call our opinions are,
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_47">[47]</span>after all, not our opinions, and our so-called beliefs are not
+beliefs at all. For all our formulations and systematizations
+with respect to human consciousness are but rationalizations
+serving as convenient foils for the blind assertion
+of the personal absolutism that is but the autocratic
+prerogative of our own dissociation, both individual and
+social.</p>
+
+<p>While theoretically, the objective findings of Freud
+are of unquestionable validity throughout, as has been
+fully corroborated through the repeated investigations of
+those of us who have studied the manifestations of the
+unconscious in ourselves and in others, my researches
+within the last years have convinced me that our objective
+finding is not the point—that what we have called the
+objective evidence has been all along but our personal or
+adaptive evidence and that, being unconsciously based
+upon habitual bidimensional inference, this basis has no
+relation whatever to life in its organic inclusiveness.
+The system of Freud is thus adequate only on the adaptive
+basis of normality. <i>By normality I mean the consensus
+comprising the personal absolute vested in the unconscious
+of the collective mind determining the social average</i>.</p>
+
+<p>It is disconcerting, I know, now that we have but
+recently settled ourselves to enjoy in comfort the established
+principles of Freud’s psychology, to think that we
+may be compelled through the requirements of wider
+accommodation to seek other ground. Nevertheless, if
+the position in which we have settled to study the complexes
+of men is itself just another complex of the social
+mind whereof the individual mind we would study is
+but a reproduction, it is clear that we have no choice but
+to recognize the autonomy of our absolutistic values of
+reckoning and to readjust our measures of consciousness
+in accordance.</p>
+
+<p>Surely, if the whole meaning of our mental orientation
+is a disorientation, if our rationality is everywhere but
+irrationality, if with all of us alike the vicarious image
+comprising the reflection of our systematized selves takes
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_48">[48]</span>precedence over the native reality of our primary organic
+individuality, there is no other course than that we wipe
+the board clean and approach the problem of consciousness
+completely anew. For, clearly, since our present process
+of mentation is not spontaneous or from within out, it is
+necessarily adaptive or from without in. Hence, as the
+reflection of the absolute principle that is the personal
+basis of each, it can never lead to a realization of the
+relativity of our conscious life nor to the acceptance of
+the organic individuality that is the all-embracing life
+of man in the inclusive principle wherein alone his consciousness
+truly resides.</p>
+
+<p>It is the position of this thesis that, when we neglect
+to take account of the <i>organic mass consciousness of man</i>
+to which the personal systems of men, single and collective,
+are but relative, we fail to reckon with a significant
+dimension entering into the determination of the
+subjective life of man. On the basis of the time-space
+extension of the astronomers’ fourth dimension it is
+possible to compute errors of deflection only through a
+conception of the universe which regards our own planetary
+system as a function of and hence relative to a more
+encompassing programme of planetary motion. Concomitantly,
+it is possible to evaluate accurately man’s
+place in the subjective scheme of consciousness only
+through a conception which regards his present personal
+and social absolute as being itself relative to a more
+comprehensive background comprising the relativity of
+man’s consciousness as a whole. There is the need to
+recognize that in the sphere of consciousness, as in the
+realm of physics, it is in the kinetic dimension comprising
+the organic participation and inclusiveness of
+life itself that consists the functional component which
+actuates the other three dimensions and which, in uniting
+all, embodies the relativity of consciousness as an organic
+reality.</p>
+
+<p>In this transition from bidimensional picture to tridimensional
+actuality, from contemplation of aspect to
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_49">[49]</span>participation of function, a gulf is spanned that bridges
+a most significant hiatus in the course of man’s evolution.
+It is no less an interval than that which separates the
+mode of man’s unconsciousness from the mode of his
+consciousness. For in this transition we are no longer
+dealing with the mere static dimension of the pictorially
+reflected <i>image</i> of actuality, but there enters the kinetic
+extension of an organic inclusiveness corresponding to
+the functional or space-time extension of the physicists’
+universe of relativity—a universe which, in the psychological
+no less than in the physical sphere, entails the
+abrogation of our prevailing system of absolutism and
+its replacement through the conception of the relativity
+of the conscious life as a whole.</p>
+
+<p>With a view to measuring the deflections of personality,
+by and large, in the light of the relativity of consciousness,
+it is necessary that they be regarded first in the concrete
+expression of their individual and social forms, and that
+subsequently we study these aberrations of consciousness
+in the yet wider expression of their sociological implications
+generally.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="p_50">[50]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_III">
+    CHAPTER III
+    <br>
+    THE ORIGIN OF OUR INDIVIDUAL UNCONSCIOUS
+  </h3>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>In the preceding chapter I attempted to indicate the
+analogy between the principle of relativity as set forth
+by the physicists and what I described as the principle
+of relativity in the sphere of consciousness. If the
+bipolar concomitance there outlined in its phylogenetic
+aspect possesses sufficient warrant, a no less consistent
+parallelism should be traceable in an ontogenetic concurrence
+of the two theories as we come to consider the
+principle of the relativity of consciousness in its individual
+implications.</p>
+
+<p>If it is true in an ethnic comparison of mental values
+that a basis of absolutism is no more tenable in computing
+aberrations occurring in the sphere of consciousness than
+in the sphere of physics, it must also be true that a basis
+of absolute evaluation is inadequate to account for
+deflections of consciousness in its individual application.
+It is admitted that in the physical universe a principle of
+absolutism requires to be abandoned and a revaluation
+of standards established in its stead because it fails to
+take account of data extrinsic to its own static dimensions.
+Likewise, it would seem that, in the concomitant
+sphere of consciousness, an absolute basis of determination
+would be equally inadequate to reckon with data
+exclusive of its own absolute principle of measure and
+that, accordingly, there is here too demanded a restatement
+of values in terms of a more comprehensive conception.</p>
+
+<p>In such an outlook the requisite readjustment is of so
+wide a scope that I do not find it easy to contemplate,
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_51">[51]</span>far less to actualize. It involves no less a task than that
+of placing the fulcrum of one’s mental processes upon a
+basis that lies outside the habitual domain of one’s
+individual consciousness. For this reason the conception
+of the organic inclusiveness of consciousness, here understood,
+is, from our present individualistic viewpoint, a
+most difficult and elusive one. It is a conception that is
+not possible of comprehension on the basis of the static
+and absolute principle of consciousness that is our present
+mode of evaluation. In this conception, the evolution of
+individual knowledge enters the organismic sphere of the
+relative and subjective. It is only relatively, therefore,
+or through our subjective identification with it that we
+may participate in its meaning. As this subjective
+experience is the flux of life itself, as it is this component
+that is consciousness in process—the organic tide whose
+stream we ourselves are, the while we are carried along
+upon it—this experience is an extension which is, of its
+essence, inaccessible to objective cognition. This is the
+veil which life in its subjective reality draws across its
+features, rendering their meaning for ever imperceptible
+to objective observation. Except through the faint
+intimations of analogy, I cannot, of course, claim to do
+more than merely indicate the existence of this subjective
+extension. So that I must ask the reader to
+concede me the fullest measure of his hospitality by
+following my trend with the utmost intuitive participation
+on his own part. It is, after all, only in common that
+we may sense our common part in respect to the relativity
+of consciousness as a whole.</p>
+
+<p>The child that is born amid the cultural influences of
+civilization comes at an early age to learn the names of
+things. With these labels he acquires his objective
+identification with the world about him. In these symbols
+are the talismans that insure the safety of his future wayfaring.
+They are indispensable to his proper equipment
+and an early adeptness in their use is a wise and salutary
+provision. In this same school in which the child is
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_52">[52]</span>taught the handy designations for the objects surrounding
+him, he learns also to recognize the nameless signs
+of a certain immanent category called “right and
+wrong”—signs which, through the accidental empiricism
+of spontaneous trial and error, he comes likewise to sense
+and gradually to incorporate into the code of his
+adaptation.</p>
+
+<p>As with others, who have been inured to a curriculum
+of daily adaptation from the impressionable years of
+earliest childhood, so with ourselves, it is well-nigh
+impossible to study the virgin soil of consciousness from
+our present adaptive premise without vitiating our
+conclusions with the bias of our own adaptation. And
+yet it is clear that an analysis of the reactions of consciousness,
+which fails to include the primary elements
+of which it is composed, leaves out of reckoning the
+basic ingredients of a structure which we are supposedly
+analyzing in its elementary content.</p>
+
+<p>For the past three years I have been occupied with
+the daily challenge of my own habitual processes of
+adaptation—an inventorial procedure, be it said, which
+proved of the utmost discomfort in the necessity it disclosed
+for the fundamental reduction of personal assessments.
+The outlook of these inquiries, even though they
+mark as yet but the merest beginnings, will at least
+denote a tendency that cannot, I think, be without
+interest nor, I hope, without incentive in the further
+approach of others toward an envisagement of consciousness
+in its ultimate, pre-adaptive composition.</p>
+
+<p>The present study, then, forms part of the altered
+conceptual insight into consciousness that was gradually
+induced through the spontaneous sequence of a long
+continued and uninterrupted experiment in individual
+reaction. The experiment consisted in repeatedly testing
+the personal reflex under the hourly present conditions of
+mood-variation due to the accidental release of affective
+stimuli arising from circumstantial and unpredictable
+sources both internal and external to the ego. The unprepossessing
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_53">[53]</span>details of this brief excursion into the
+underworld of personal motivation must be reserved for
+some subsequent chapter. I am now concerned with the
+complete shift of basis which these experiments have
+forced me to take account of in my attempts to reckon
+with the recurring problems of consciousness as they
+are presented in the daily routine of my analytic
+work.</p>
+
+<p>Within the scope of the present thesis we shall have to
+do solely with the mental reaction inculcated under the
+manifesto of our early induced presentiment of “right
+and wrong” or of “good and bad” with its concomitant
+incitement to <i>hope</i> or <i>fear</i> as reflected in the unconscious
+attitude of <i>praise</i> or <i>blame</i> surrounding the child. It is
+my conviction, based on the subjective test of personal
+experimentation, <i>that the deeply entrenched root of our
+human pathology is to be traced alone to the conflict incurred
+through this suggestively induced image of right and wrong
+and that it is profitless, therefore, to seek beyond the impasse
+of this unconscious alternative for the ultimate source of
+neurotic reactions</i>.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_12_12" href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a></p>
+
+<p>Because of some element implicit in the behaviour
+determining the “right” or “wrong” adaptation of the
+individuals surrounding the child in the formative period
+of his early growth, something is imposed upon him that
+operates to check spontaneous impulse. The check I
+am speaking of does not consist in the interdiction
+itself. Our admonitory “do” or “don’t” is in itself quite
+harmless. Indeed these positive and negative commands
+may serve an undoubtedly useful end. I have never
+known of untoward nervous manifestations occurring
+among animals because of the restraining warnings of
+maternal solicitude. On the contrary, such mediation
+commonly proves an effective safeguard against misadventure.
+Of the inhibiting influence itself, therefore,
+I am not speaking. What I have in mind is something
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_54">[54]</span>far subtler than this. It will demand our most searching
+scrutiny if we are clearly to apprehend its meaning.</p>
+
+<p>As I see this miscarriage of instinct incurred through
+our embargo of good and bad, it is the cunning <i>pretence</i>
+underlying the interdiction which induces the reaction
+that works mischief in the child’s organism. It is the
+insidious intimation of benefit or of harm inherent in
+the tabooed act itself that is the pernicious instance.
+The destructive occasion lies in the implied premium or
+forfeit appertaining to the act as it recoils upon the child
+in automatic retaliation. I believe that it is due to this
+enforced superstition of an arbitrary “good and bad”
+that there have been wrought the spurious reactions of
+our human consciousness. I believe that the utterly
+specious system of behaviour, which surrounds us as
+social beings on every hand, is definitely due to this
+falsely imbued suggestion of retributive sequence which,
+as commonly inculcated in early childhood, has been
+prompted through the implied mediation of invisible
+moral agencies. I furthermore believe that it is this
+pretence, and its unconsciousness, that is the basis of our
+adaptation, both individual and social, as embodied in
+the artificial code of morality represented in the collective
+unconscious of our present-day civilization.</p>
+
+<p>What the adult arbiter of the child really has up his
+sleeve is the child’s conformity to <i>him</i> and <i>his</i> convenience.
+Accordingly, the parent or guardian lays
+down the proposition that a good little boy doesn’t
+destroy costly bric-à-brac or that only a bad little girl
+would play in the mud with her nice clean rompers on.
+Both these postulates are utterly false as every sponsor
+for them knows. But that is not the point. The point
+is that such statements are incomparably adapted to the
+ends of adult commodity. The truer rendering of the
+proposition in either instance would be to the effect that
+the misdemeanour in question would occasion inconvenience
+or chagrin to the parent. But so sincere a
+statement on the part of the parent might alienate the
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_55">[55]</span>child’s jealously coveted affection, as we commonly term
+the infantile dependence we secretly tend to beget.
+Hence, the real motive of interdiction must be hidden
+from the child and a comprehensive edict cunningly
+invoked such as will place an effectual check upon him
+and yet amply safeguard the parental interest. It is
+this bogus morality which, by our unconscious social
+consent, the conscripted phantom called “good and bad”
+is unanimously commissioned to represent.</p>
+
+<p>Because of this attitude of pretence in others whereby
+the child is tricked into complicity with the prevalent
+code about him, there is begotten this self-same reaction
+of pretence within him. This illusion that is in the air
+he learns to assimilate from others through imitative
+affinity, and from now forward the ruse becomes self-operative.
+What began as a social coup is continued as
+an individual policy. The silent intimation of a mysteriously
+pervasive immanence of “good and bad” having
+now been engendered, the child henceforth responds
+automatically, not alone to the signals of make-believe
+about him but to the signals of make-believe within him.
+For in unconsciously succumbing to the contagion of the
+autocratic system of “right and wrong” about him, this
+hobgoblin of arbitrary make-believe becomes equally
+systematized within his own consciousness. Accordingly,
+the pretence involved in interdictions of conduct (fear-blame
+reaction) is accompanied by the mental suggestion
+of “wrong” or “bad,” and the pretence underlying the
+inducements of conduct (hope-praise reaction) is accompanied
+by the mental suggestion of “right” or “good”—<i>that
+is, of good or bad as it reverts upon the individual
+from the point of view of his personal advantage as reflected
+in the image of the parent</i>.</p>
+
+<p>An analysis, however, does not reach elementary
+principles if it merely discovers motives prompted by
+suggestion and repression corresponding to the two
+opposed factors of inducement and interdiction actuating
+human behaviour. It is not enough to invoke in explanation
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_56">[56]</span>the sweeping denominator “self-consciousness.”
+Such an account is historic or psychological; it is not
+organic or biological. It is, I believe, only as we unearth
+the mental reaction <i>intrinsic</i> to the organism when
+it responds to the subjective inference of right or wrong
+in its personal inflection that we shall reach the basic
+element responsible for the organism’s inhibited mental
+states.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_13_13" href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a></p>
+
+<p>One would think, as we look about us to-day at the
+utterly destructive processes, social and political, that
+have been incited throughout entire nations of individuals
+“brought up” in this vicarious fashion, that the spectacle
+would give us pause. But we have had a too thorough
+bringing-up ourselves. Our own bringing-up has seen to
+it that we shall not look about us and learn what <i>is</i> but
+that we shall only respond to the suggestion about us
+and acquiesce in what <i>seems</i>. If we should really look
+about us and see unflinchingly into the meaning of things,
+our children would do so too, but that would be subversive
+of their proper up-bringing. This is the self-contradictory
+element in the adult’s “education” of
+the child. In truth, it is not possible to “bring up” a
+child at all. One may let a child grow up, naturally, as a
+plant, tending only the soil about its roots, or one may
+hinder its growth. But to bring a child up by moulding
+its personality to one’s own is organically contradictory.
+A child comes up, if at all, only of himself or in accordance
+with the law of his own growth.</p>
+
+<p>If it is true, then, that this factor of pretence is the
+ultimate element in the dissociations of consciousness,
+what is the nature of this factor of pretence actuating
+our behaviour? As has been said, in order to secure a
+substratum adequate to build upon, it is requisite that we
+forgo at the outset our present conceptions based upon
+a system of valuations which presupposes an absolute
+principle of consciousness. It should be understood,
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_57">[57]</span>therefore, that it is from the fundamentally altered
+premise of a relative basis of consciousness that the
+present thesis sets out.</p>
+
+<p>In an objective view of the components of man’s consciousness,
+it may be seen that there are three determinants
+of the affective life, namely, one’s own self, the
+selves by whom one is surrounded, and the positive or
+negative reactions of the self in respect to other selves
+such as comprise our progressive or regressive interrelationships
+one to another. So that, to return to the
+analogy of the physical world, a diagram outlining man’s
+affective life would represent a contour of three components.
+There is first the dimension consisting of oneself;
+second, the collateral dimension, with its extension
+backward to one’s parents and forward to one’s offspring
+and comprising in general one’s social congeners, singly
+and collectively; and third, the societal extension representing
+the reactions that depend upon the co-ordination
+or non-co-ordination of individuals in the assimilative
+processes of their common activities. Thus our subjective
+or affective life, statically considered, is as truly tridimensional
+in its actuality as our cognitive or objective
+world, statically considered, is tridimensional in its
+actuality. Nevertheless, as was pointed out in the preceding
+chapter, our cognitive apprehension of the world
+of objects about us invariably presents an outline corresponding
+to the bidimensional or pictorial aspect that is
+our perceptual image of it. So in the subjective sphere,
+it may also be shown that our affective reactions invariably
+present a pictorial or bidimensional plane analogous
+to the bidimensional impressions comprising our objective
+perceptions, and that they are due in the subjective as
+in the objective sphere to the unconscious factor of the
+personal equation.</p>
+
+<p>But, to adhere to the test of experiment, it has been my
+analytic experience growing out of the study of personal
+reaction that, owing to the distortion of affect within our
+actual daily life, we do not in fact participate in the
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_58">[58]</span>tridimensional actuality that truly comprises our affective
+world. On the contrary, owing to the rebuff to spontaneous
+impulse incurred through the system of self-conscious
+diplomacy reflected in the social pretence of
+“right and wrong” as first voiced by the parent and
+seconded on all sides by the community about us, the
+real world of affects is unconsciously replaced by an
+artificial cosmogony whose outline is limited to only two
+components, namely, the self plus the immediate interest
+to the self as derived from the selves (collateral dimension)
+by whom the individual is surrounded (advantage or
+disadvantage, good or bad, praise or blame). Thus our
+affective reactions invariably present a merely pictorial
+or bidimensional area corresponding to the two extensions
+comprising the personal element of the self plus the
+element of advantage for the self from other selves.
+Because of this personal foreshortening of our affects to
+the artificial dimensions of self and self-interest, our
+subjective experience of tridimensional actuality is
+reported not in the reality of its three essential determinants
+but in the pictorial aspect of the two-dimensional
+plane that is our personal and autogenous reflection of it.
+It is, then, the substance of these pages that, just as the
+world of cubic actuality is mentally foreshortened into a
+bidimensional aspect of actuality determined by our
+static and autogenous perception of it, so our world of
+affects is correspondingly reduced to the bidimensional or
+pictorial aspect that is our socially reflected impression
+of it.</p>
+
+<p>This brings us again to the question we were speaking
+of—the reaction of pretence into which the child is early
+inducted. It was to help clear away the difficulties
+surrounding this early adaptive reaction of our subjective
+life that I turned to the consideration of the dimensional
+components that comprise our affective world. We have
+seen that the essence of this element of pretence is its
+implication of retroactive gain or loss intrinsic to the
+social act itself and automatically returning upon its
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_59">[59]</span>agent. Coming a little closer still, we see that this
+attitude of behaviour imposed upon the child upon grounds
+of its retributive sequence is induced in him through the
+cunningly conveyed intimation that such has been the
+personal experience of those about him—that they have
+learned from experience and so are qualified to give
+warning that “good” behaviour is requited in reward or
+pleasure to one’s self and conversely “bad” behaviour
+is requited in penalty or pain to one’s self.</p>
+
+<p>My position is that an attitude toward the child which
+posits at the outset of life a world of affective actuality,
+comprised of his own <i>ego</i> plus his own egoistic advantage,
+arbitrarily contracts life to the unreal aspect of a mere
+two-dimensional image. It is to dispose the mind of the
+child in such a way that its entire universe of feeling is
+limited to a mere picture of life consisting of the flat and
+lifeless image of his personal or social adaptation in the
+light of his personal or social gain. It transforms the
+reality of life into a reflection of oneself in a world of
+self-reflections like one’s own. In other words, in falsely
+premising the bidimensional plane of one’s personal
+image as the basis of actuality, we substitute at the
+outset a primary condition of unreality for the inherent
+reality of life.</p>
+
+<p>From the altered angle of a relative and inclusive
+attitude toward the problems of consciousness, I am led
+to think that this artificially contracted outlook is the
+real crux of the dilemma of the unconscious. I have
+come to think that these two factors—the factor of oneself
+and the factor of social advantage for oneself—are
+insufficient, that there is omitted a third factor essential
+to a completely rounded consciousness and that in the
+absence of it the other two present but a static and artificial
+image of life rather than life in the functional inclusiveness
+of its full-dimensional reality. I refer to the
+component of our societal co-ordination—to the factor
+of man’s organic continuum in the functional extension
+of his interrelationship with others. I believe that it is
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_60">[60]</span>the miscarriage of instinct with respect to this societal
+co-ordination that is answerable for the artificial recoil
+of self-interest represented in our fancied apparitions of
+good or bad as seen from the limited point of view of
+one’s individual advantage. In the flat bidimensional
+plane which, in the absence of the inclusive societal factor,
+only reflects the pictorial aspect of actuality in the image
+of the self, there is lacking the rounded extension that is
+the full complement of life in its inclusive, societal meaning.
+To what degree we substitute this reflected aspect of
+life for the reality of an all-inclusive participation in life
+in its full-dimensional extension—if my own experience
+in this regard is any guide—has not as yet begun to be
+suspected by us.</p>
+
+<p>This primary societal component of consciousness must
+not be confused with our secondary and adaptive social
+relationships. Our social adaptation is as self-reflective
+and unconscious as our individual adaptation. By the
+societal component I mean the organic continuity of
+consciousness that unites the individuals of the species
+into a confluent whole. In the social adaptation of its
+members, on the contrary, there is registered merely the
+collective response to the reaction of pretence that we
+have just seen in its individual expression as our personal
+foreshortening of life to the bidimensional image. In
+the reduction of life to the image of self in the light of
+one’s self-advantage, whether individual or social, consists
+the adaptive system that is the personal pretence
+within and about us. In this inversion of life that is the
+mirrored impression of each, as reflected in the aspect of
+others, is the systematization that is man’s unconsciousness.
+It is our non-inclusiveness of others that is the
+systematization of each. It is this perceptual interpretation
+of life on the basis of a reflected or bidimensional
+impression, limiting life to self and self’s advantage
+that is, I repeat, the meaning of our unconsciousness,
+both individual and social.</p>
+
+<p>In studying this reaction of pretence in the social mind
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_61">[61]</span>as reflected in the reactions of the individual, we are met
+with the need of a fundamental reconstruction of values
+in our reckoning with human personality as in our measures
+of consciousness generally. For, in this artificial gauge
+of conduct measured by standards of personal advantage,
+we find established in the individual a criterion of life
+that rests upon an unwarranted assumption of personal
+supremacy. This private criterion has become the
+arbitrarily assumed prerogative of each of us with respect
+to every other. For, through this distortion of the
+universe of reality into the unreal, bidimensional cosmogony
+that is one’s self-reflection of it, there is unconsciously
+built up within us a mental adaptation whose
+basis is an inflexible assumption of personal absolutism
+and autocracy.</p>
+
+<p>In the ultimate reduction of analysis it may be seen
+that what we have, through Freud’s teaching, come to
+recognize as the reaction of <i>resistance</i>, within the individual
+personality, resolves itself into nothing else than this
+private prerogative of the personal absolute. The
+assumption of this personal principle of absolutism in the
+subjective sphere embodying the psychology of resistance
+is analogous to the absolute principle of evaluation applied
+to the physical universe—a principle which the physicists
+have lately shown is not competent to meet the test of
+universal applicability, for the reason that, in the absolutism
+of its own premise, it fails to account for data
+extrinsic to the static absolutism it embodies. Correspondingly,
+in the sphere of consciousness the absolute
+principle of personal evaluation comprising the adaptive
+basis of the individual is inadequate to stand as the
+universal principle requisite to an organismic inclusion of
+consciousness in its societal totality.</p>
+
+<p>As was pointed out in the last chapter, the social mind
+interprets its objects of perception in the bidimensional
+aspect of its own pictorial and flat reflection of them.
+Likewise, our individual mentation, in its adaptive
+response to the retributive implications of so-called “right
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_62">[62]</span>and wrong” or “good and bad,” recoils no less upon a
+two-dimensional plane in the affective reaction that is
+limited to the component of self plus the component of
+pleasure or pain for oneself. This flat, static impression
+of life, comprising the arbitrary systematization that is
+the personal absolute of each, is inadequate to stand as a
+universal principle whereby we may evaluate the phenomena
+of consciousness in the full round of its organic
+compass.</p>
+
+<p>In substituting the judicial absolute of personal interest
+for our inclusive participation as relative elements in the
+full-dimensional reality of life as a whole, we have unconsciously
+adopted a basis which fails to reckon with
+our individual selves as contributory elements in the
+more encompassing unit which our individualistic basis
+now mistakenly presumes to include. Our present basis
+is, therefore, not an inclusive one. In so far as the
+individual rests his theory of consciousness upon an
+individualistic basis, his theory cannot include the
+larger whole wherein the individual is himself but a contributing
+element. The consciousness of the isolated
+individual cannot encompass consciousness in its societal
+inclusiveness. Only consciousness in its societal inclusiveness
+can encompass the consciousness of the
+individual.</p>
+
+<p>In the measure in which we, as an organic group, come
+to adopt the conception of consciousness that accepts the
+intrinsic reality of our common societal life, we shall learn
+to repudiate the personal absolute that is our individual
+resistance and, correspondingly, to participate in an
+inclusiveness of consciousness with respect to which
+the individual is but a relative and adaptive component.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="p_63">[63]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_IV">
+    CHAPTER IV
+    <br>
+    THE UNCONSCIOUS FACTOR WITHIN
+    THE SOCIAL SYSTEM
+  </h3>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Whatever is true of the individual singly, is true of the
+individual collectively. Whatever is observable as neurotic
+process within the isolated personality of the hysteric or
+precoid, is equally observable as neurotic process in the
+collective personality of the social mind. The attitude of
+psychopathology, which ascribes to the social consensus,
+represented in the average-reaction commonly called
+“normality,” a criterion of constructive consciousness and
+health, and which, accordingly, seeks to correct the
+deflections of the aberrant neurotic personality in accordance
+with this limited outlook, is itself an expression of
+the bidimensional limitation that bases its system of
+consciousness upon an absolute principle of evaluation.
+After all, normality, like gravitation, is a mental abstraction.
+Our consensual normality is but the systematized
+abstraction embodying the absolute of its own unconscious
+basis, and, in its personal absolutism, stands
+opposed to a principle of relativity in the mental sphere.
+It is only as we abrogate the absolute standards now
+vested in the prevailing social systems about us and
+measure their dimensions in terms of the principle of an
+organic relativity, that we shall be enabled to challenge
+the element of personal systematization within ourselves
+and so encompass life in the actuality of a universal and
+inclusive consciousness.</p>
+
+<p>Personal survival has been, from the beginning of man’s
+history, the chief concern of his self-interest. Inventing
+medicine with a view to his security here, fabricating
+religion with a view to his security hereafter, he has
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_64">[64]</span>safeguarded his preservation for the moment through
+recourse to “cure,” and for the future through recourse
+to “salvation.” Even in the interchanges of our casual
+social relationships, there is still preserved within the
+folk-mind the vestiges of this dualistic self-interest.
+Upon our meeting, it is the accustomed reaction to make
+mutual inquiry into the condition of health of one
+another. “How are you?” or “How-do-you-do?” we
+ask. Similarly, in parting we commend each other to the
+clemencies of the future with the expression, “Good-bye,”
+that is, “God be with you.” In the obvious apprehensiveness
+underlying this unconscious attitude of the social
+mind there is in one instance the implicit conviction that
+we are wicked and in the other that we are sick!
+Both these reactions, however, merely betray the state of
+anxiety reflected in the fundamental condition of mind
+that is our ethnic self-consciousness.</p>
+
+<p>In earlier times these two anxiety trends of the folk
+unconscious were duly sponsored through the common
+rites of medical and religious fetish under the combined
+auspices of a single functionary or guardian who, as
+priest or soothsayer, dispensed the benefits accruing from
+both. The fact is, I suppose, that the tribal medicine-man
+with his magic potion and amulet is psychologically, as
+well as ethnologically, our true progenitor. For to-day
+we observe the preservation of this concomitance of
+function between the two systems, represented by the
+science of medicine on the one hand and by the philosophy
+of religion on the other, in the current social
+phenomenon of our widely flourishing “sciences of mental
+healing” with their unescapable unconsciousness in metaphysical
+and theosophical implications. Aside, however,
+from historical analogies, the stupendous influence upon
+the societal mind of ecclesiastical and therapeutic canon
+cannot be denied.</p>
+
+<p>Because of this preservation in our midst of such
+ancient repositories of human thought and conduct as
+are represented in the affiliated principles contained in
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_65">[65]</span>the dogmas of church and psychotherapeutic system, a
+consideration of the psychology common to both these
+forms of our social adaptation cannot fail to help us
+understand the basic elements that enter into the making
+of our social personality. As illustration, let us consider
+on the one hand the Roman Church and on the other the
+system of psychoanalysis. The Roman Church represents
+at one and the same time both traditionally the
+longest established and politically the most compact
+organization of the many religious sects existing throughout
+our Western civilization. The system of psychoanalysis,
+representing as it does the most modern conception
+of medical psychology, possesses such scientific
+authority as only the ablest students of philosophy and
+medicine are qualified to bring to the substantiation of
+its principles. An analysis, therefore, of the social psychology
+that equally underlies and actuates the position of
+both these systems will not, I think, be without profit in
+the present study.</p>
+
+<p>Due to the sophistication that was early begotten
+among the members of our human species through the
+limitation of man’s consciousness to the bidimensional
+alternative of a consensual “good and bad,” it is natural
+that we should find this same tendency to personal
+systematization expanded into the collective or social
+form we observe in the group reaction that is embodied
+in state or sect. Thus, from an organismic viewpoint, we
+should expect to discover the same resistances within
+the social as within the individual organism. Nor need
+we be surprised if, upon analysis, it should be disclosed
+that this social resistance represents likewise the bidimensional
+impasse comprised of our personal self-reflection.</p>
+
+<p>Throughout the unconscious period of man’s bidimensional
+arrest commonly called ancient times, a period
+belonging chronologically to the past but pertaining
+psychologically to the present as well as to the future for
+probably an indefinite term, the attitude of the Church
+toward incipient doubt or heresy was, is and for ever shall
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_66">[66]</span>be to apply the remedy of prayer and, failing this recourse,
+to apply the penalty of excommunication.</p>
+
+<p>From the vantage point of the psychoanalyst’s disinterested
+and extrinsic angle of vision, such a policy
+appears manifestly unsound and without warrant. From
+his position of detached observer, it seems to him arbitrary
+and presumptive. And yet it must be conceded that,
+from the intrinsic viewpoint of a socially consolidated
+organization compact with the autogenous authority of
+infallibility, such a position is by no means inconsistent.
+A supremacy that is self-originated is self-operative.
+Autocratic prerogative and unimpeachable authority are
+here conterminous. Indeed the solidarity of the Church
+is unassailable precisely in that its premise and its conclusion
+are mutually inclusive. For inasmuch as both
+premise and conclusion are equally based upon the
+assumption of the personal absolute or the private
+prerogative of the system they embody, all access to it is
+summarily barred. If the Church precludes all question,
+dismisses all opposition, it is wholly within its self-determined
+rights. For by these same tokens all question, all
+argument, being of its nature extrinsic to its autogenic
+system, savours <i>de facto</i> of the aforesaid heresy of doubt
+and, as such, is automatically driven out of court as
+connoting <i>a priori</i> the presumptive fallacy of trespass.
+This relegation to itself of divine and hence unquestionable
+authority is the theological doctrine of self-actuative
+truth assumed by the Church to underlie its official
+pronunciamentos when it formally declares them to be
+<i>ex cathedra</i>.</p>
+
+<p>I offer this preamble not without advisement. In its
+intimation of the heretical tendency of the present thesis,
+it will give to those to whom such tendency is unwelcome
+the opportunity to seal their ears against it. At the same
+time it will give to those of more pliant sympathies due
+notice of the undisguised aim of the present inquiry
+toward the adoption of a more comprehensive and open-minded
+outlook among us. For the trend of this thesis
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_67">[67]</span>is in its intention confessedly subversive of the socially
+authorized version of truth now vested in the autogenous
+systematization that has come to underlie the principle of
+us psychoanalysts.</p>
+
+<p>I do not know to what extent it is humanly possible,
+but, in so far as may be, let us adopt for the moment, at
+least mentally, a position of impersonal disinterestedness
+toward the social consensus in which we ourselves, as
+psychoanalysts, are also corporate elements. It will then
+become clear, I think, that the socially authenticated
+system, representative of us Freudians, embodies an
+unconscious attitude closely analogous to that of the
+social system embodied in the attitude of autogenous
+authority underlying the personal absolutism of the
+Roman Church.</p>
+
+<p>To observe this element of social unconsciousness underlying
+the principle of Roman Catholicism has for us all a
+certain invigorating tang. With such a discovery there
+comes the refreshing release that is the spur to renewed
+investigation. It is the heartening response of the
+organism to its sense of conscious acumen. But, to
+observe the operation of the social unconscious within
+the autogenous systematization of principles which
+insures social coherence within our own consensus, entails
+a contemplation that is not pleasant. This contemplation
+disturbs the habitual repose of settled conviction that is
+our own security. It is to apply the acid test of self-analysis
+to our own socially systematized assumption of
+private prerogative and authority. Yet an attitude of
+impersonal disinterestedness presupposes that our inquiry
+shall proceed without regard to personal security. This
+attitude, indeed, is one which we ourselves have demanded
+of our patients as being an analytically basic one. It
+is, therefore, upon this understanding alone that an
+inquiry, which in its disregard of the personal equation
+is committed to a course equally unflattering to us
+all, may hope to be accorded an unbiased consideration.
+Surely in any other attitude the name of psychoanalyst
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_68">[68]</span>can become only a term of opprobrium among
+us.</p>
+
+<p>Let us, then, consider this factor of private prerogative
+or of the personal absolute, inseparable from the mental
+attitude expressed in the phenomenon of social systematization
+which we see in the Church’s position of assumed
+infallibility toward its postulants, and seek to discover
+whether this same tendency to social systematization
+may not lurk within our own psychoanalytic ranks.
+Let us see whether we, too, are not actuated by an unconscious
+element of personal absolutism that obstructs
+the freer and more adult mode of consciousness such as it
+is our avowed aim to attain.</p>
+
+<p>In mentioning the unconscious element of absolutism
+constituting the closed compartment within a socially
+organized system of principles, I have cited Catholicism
+merely as a convenient paradigm. Protestantism or
+Mohammedanism are, in their assumption of self-appointed
+prerogative, not less indefensible on the same ground, for
+the element of the personal absolute underlies no less the
+private assumption of each. By reason of its higher
+degree of organization, however, Catholicism more
+fittingly illustrates the absolutism of its social polity in
+relation to this phenomenon of doubt or defection occurring
+among its members. This is its aptness in affording
+a convenient position of comparison with our own socially
+organized system of psychoanalysis in respect to the
+phenomenon of defection as envisaged by us.</p>
+
+<p>Within the body of precepts comprising our own
+organization, the accepted mark of defection is a <i>resistance</i>,
+and the remedy we apply is analysis. For, with ourselves,
+analysis is explicitly the only effective means of overcoming
+the intractable tendencies which, in the determination
+of our organized principles of adjudication,
+constitute the sole need of our patient. In the event that
+the patient should remain so far recalcitrant as not to
+embrace the opportunity we offer him to accept our
+socially systematized interpretation of truth as it touches
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_69">[69]</span>his own particular needs, he is automatically excluded
+from participation in the agencies of regeneration such
+as it is our special delegation to dispense. Whence
+there follows our regrettable but none the less inevitable
+ultimatum of “inferior type of personality” and his
+coincident elimination from the pale.</p>
+
+<p>It is, of course, clear that the actuality of the phenomenon
+of resistance in the patient can no more be denied
+than the actuality of the phenomenon of doubt in the
+penitent. Moreover, in accordance with the ruling of
+psychoanalysis, our specification of the condition when
+we posit a resistance is as indisputable as is the specification
+of the Church when it posits a doubt as the underlying
+disorder of the individual postulant. In either
+case there is the position that the individual is impervious
+to the benefits of the system whose principles he is, in the
+judgment of the system, in need of embracing. Indeed,
+it is precisely this factor of doubt in the one case, as it is
+the factor of resistance in the other, that is the whole
+occasion of the individual’s quest of a means of adjusting
+this division within his personality whereof doubt or
+resistance is the idiopathic index.</p>
+
+<p>The actual fact, then, of a resistance within the personality
+is beyond question. The fact is one that is
+equally admitted on the side of the individual as on the
+side of the organization, on the side of the defendant
+as on the side of the arraignment. But what is to be
+done about it does not as yet seem to me by far so clearly
+determined. I know, of course, that it is our attitude,
+based upon the repeated experience of us all, that any
+objection to psychoanalysis is invariably traceable to the
+resistance of the objector. This is a psychoanalytic
+corollary. It is accepted as universal among us all.
+So that a resistance to psychoanalysis is very justly, in
+the view of psychoanalysts, as self-convicting as is a
+doubt in the view of the Church. And from the point of
+view of psychoanalysis no less than of the Church the
+position of these two systems rests upon an undoubtedly
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_70">[70]</span>sound basis, if we may be guided by the consensus of
+their several adherents as attested by the experience of
+each.</p>
+
+<p>But the question which has of late come to engross my
+interest is <i>whether these points of view are sound as embodied
+in their respective systems</i>—whether, from a broader basis
+of envisagement, the intrinsic attitude of ourselves may
+not lend itself to an altered interpretation; whether
+there may not exist a criterion that transcends the scope
+of our present analytic outlook when we claim that the
+only possible motive for questioning our psychoanalytic
+position is found to lie in the resistance of the individual;
+whether, in brief, the socially entrenched systematization
+comprising the psychoanalytic affiliation possesses
+sufficient warrant for impugning the personally entrenched
+systematization comprising the individual. For, if the
+fallacy of the personal absolute underlies the systematization
+represented in the social consensus, in what way does
+the rigidity of the social prerogative differ from the
+systematized prerogative constituting the resistance of
+the individual?&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_14_14" href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a></p>
+
+<p>For the purposes of our inquiry we shall be obliged to
+dismiss for the moment our habitual personalistic criteria
+of interpretation. We shall have to recognize, first of all,
+that what we call the individual is by no means the
+fresh and native expression of individuality pure and
+simple that we are accustomed to assume, but rather
+that he is an individuation resulting from the repressive
+forces acting upon him from the environmental social
+aggregate in which he is himself but an intrinsic and
+contributory element. For every individual arising amid
+the influences of the social system is but a special application
+of the social system about him. Whatever the code
+of the consensus, the individual is necessarily but an
+offprint of it—a new impression of the original by-laws.
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_71">[71]</span>There is, therefore, the need to turn our attention not to
+the individuated excerpt of the system but to the original
+document wherein the system is primarily set forth.
+There is the need to discard the individual form and
+to occupy ourselves with the societal mould whereof
+the individual form is but the subsequent reproduction.</p>
+
+<p>Assuming the broader outlook of this more encompassing
+sociological position, I think we shall come to see
+that the difference between the reaction of doubt, as
+interpreted by the Church, and the reaction of resistance,
+as interpreted by psychoanalysis, is, after all, only
+apparent—that the difference is by no means an inherent
+one, but that it is due merely to the altered circumstance
+of shade and light, so to speak, in which the two reactions
+are diversely reflected by reason of the contrasting sociological
+settings amid which the two phenomena have
+appeared among us.</p>
+
+<p>As regards the sociological manifestation embodied in
+the Church, contrary to its age-old contention that doubt
+or question automatically indicated apostasy which
+reflexly discredited its adherent, it has long been shown
+experientially that such doubt or defection might be
+very logically and honourably entertained. Not only
+this, but it has been further made manifest that it is due
+precisely to the entertainment of such an attitude of
+debate toward the socially systematized consensus,
+represented in the Church, that there have arisen those
+far-reaching investigations of science out of which has
+sprung the splendid renaissance of modern thought with
+its accompanying incentive to human progress.</p>
+
+<p>Hence the question that presents itself is this: May it
+not also be that, quite beyond the scope of envisagement
+of those of us who are intrinsic to the analytic consensus,
+there are motives inviting question of our position which
+do not fall within the category of resistance? May it
+not be that, from a position of extrinsic or impersonal
+evaluation, we shall obtain so inclusive a survey of the
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_72">[72]</span>phenomenon of resistance on the one side and of the
+social phenomenon of organized systematization representing
+the establishment on the other, that the two
+reactions may be included in an encompassment that is
+equally hospitable to both? Surely it cannot be denied
+that, laying aside all consideration of personal involvement,
+the question of such a possibility is not without its
+vista of interest.</p>
+
+<p>With a view to a fair appraisement of the contrast
+between the type of defection manifesting itself as doubt
+and the type of defection manifesting itself as resistance,
+there is first the need to take account of the widely dissimilar
+sociological aspect of the period in which doubt
+was originally viewed by the Church, as compared with
+the sociological countenance of the times in which resistance
+is viewed by ourselves, and, accordingly, to consider
+the difference between the two phenomena in the light
+of the contrasting sociological backgrounds surrounding
+each.</p>
+
+<p>From this sociological angle the factor that immediately
+attracts our notice is the essentially negative, self-deprecatory
+character of the doubt-reaction in respect to
+the ancient dogmas of the Church. We note the sense of
+personal inadequacy that is its characteristic sign. We
+mark its habitually shamefaced, self-depreciative mien.
+For doubt, be it remembered, first arose as the self-accusing
+attitude of the subservient individual who lived
+under the social domination of monarchical forms of
+government in a period of man’s history when, owing to
+his subjugation to the unconscious suzerainty of a fanciful
+father-complex, he meekly bowed in servile obedience to
+the socially systematized authority arbitrarily vested in
+Church and State, as personified in the office of Pope and
+King. Under the prevalent domination of this image of
+indisputable authority, men’s social criterion resided in
+the apparent consensus of the <i>personal absolute</i>, social
+and individual, representing the particular individuation
+of a single man, rather than in the common supremacy of
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_73">[73]</span>our impersonal relativity comprising the generic individuality
+of mankind.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_15_15" href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a></p>
+
+<p>But the social mind has in the last few centuries undergone
+a significant metamorphosis. To-day we have to
+reckon with this. We have to take into account the
+tremendous expansion of the consciousness of man
+sociologically and, from the point of view of the historical
+record of man’s rapid sociological ascent, mark the
+characterological difference in the temper of the individual’s
+defection to-day as compared with his defection
+of yesterday. In the implication of the rights of individual
+freedom of thought implied in the defection of
+doubt, the predominant factor was the individual’s
+acknowledgment of his personal remissness, of his unseemly
+presumptiveness toward the social constitution
+about him. Under the socially systematized autocracy of
+the Church’s absolutism, the individuality of man dared
+not stand erect and maintain the freedom of his individual
+expression.</p>
+
+<p>But in the present hour the consciousness of man proclaims
+itself a freer manifestation. Under the impetus of
+our sociological progress, man’s individuality has more
+and more come into its own. And, though the socially
+organized prerogative has still the upper hand in respect
+to individuality, there are signs abroad to-day which are
+a significant advertisement of man’s urge toward an
+expression of individuality that is an earnest of yet
+wider sociological horizons ahead. I think that it is
+due in no small measure to the advent of this factor of
+man’s sociological rehabilitation that there is seen to-day
+the completely altered character of the individual’s
+resistance as it recoils before the element of personal
+absolutism embodied in the systematized consensus of
+psychoanalysis.</p>
+
+<p>Despite its undoubted unconsciousness and personal
+systematization, note the essentially ruddier countenance
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_74">[74]</span>of resistance as compared with doubt. A resistance,
+unlike doubt, is no admission of ineptitude. Subsisting
+under the sponsorship of a new and freer sociological
+order, resistance is fashioned of sterner stuff. It is no
+personal deprecation; it is a sociological affirmation.
+Far from being an abject confession of individual weakness,
+it is a proud assertion of individual strength. For
+although in the phenomenon of resistance there is to be
+seen the equally unconscious motive that is the protest
+of the individual absolute against the arbitrary domination
+of the socially systematized absolute comprising the
+popular consensus, there underlies this protest something
+that is more virile than this. There is here, I believe, a
+reaction that demands and that will ultimately have the
+consideration that is its due. Though the Church, while
+pre-eminent, might easily dispose of doubt, in our own
+democratic day it is doubt that has disposed of the Church.
+It seems to me that, unless we psychoanalysts recognize
+the group-form of unconsciousness underlying the social
+systematization embodied in the position of psychoanalysis
+when it pronounces the resistance of the individual
+as <i>de facto</i> anathema, without regard to the possible
+propriety of its remonstrance, we, like our less conscious
+analogue, the Church, shall ultimately find ourselves
+hoist with our own petard.</p>
+
+<p>While the fact of resistance and of its unconscious
+motivation is admittedly true, yet to meet a patient’s
+assertion of individual right with the mere assertion of
+the group-right, which is the unconscious protectorate
+of the organized system, is certainly not to answer the
+patient’s need from the point of view of a larger and more
+encompassing mode of consciousness. If the assumption
+of arbitrary prerogative or of the personal absolute
+represented in the reaction of individual systematization
+is the meaning of resistance, then the private prerogative
+or the personal absolute underlying the systematization
+of the social consensus is no less a manifestation of
+resistance. For the attitude of systematization and of
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_75">[75]</span>absolutism in the individual is necessarily but the reflection
+of a prior social systematization to which the individual’s
+adaptation is but a secondary response.</p>
+
+<p>Clearly it is not possible for the socially systematized
+consensus embodied in Church, State or psychotherapeutic
+system to afford the requisite condition of release
+from a resistance thus constituted, when its own systematization
+is itself the social or group embodiment of this
+self-same reaction of resistance. In the nip-and-tuck
+attitude between the resistance of the system comprising
+the single individual and the resistance of the system
+comprising the social corporation of individuals, there
+stands the organic impasse of two mutually opposed
+absolutes. In the autocratic position of each neither may
+yield, for in the absolutism of both each represents an
+identical state of unconscious impaction. As neither the
+individual nor the consensus, in its enfolded self-systematization,
+is as yet conscious of the process in which it is
+the blindly contributing element, both factors represent
+but altered aspects of the common delusion of the social
+adaptation of man, single and collective, namely, the
+delusion of the supremacy of the will-to-self or the
+unconscious autocracy of the personal absolute.</p>
+
+<p>Naturally, I cannot speak of these inadequacies of
+consciousness from a remote or detached position. Needless
+to say, since I am at this moment a contributing part
+of this social maelstrom comprising the system about me,
+I am no less embroiled than others in its social fallacy.
+So that what is here very inadequately apprehended by
+me as a theory is, I confess, still less adequately accepted
+by me as a living, integral experience. Let it not be
+thought, then, for a moment that, in presenting the
+social basis of consciousness that is the substance of this
+thesis, I am under any illusion as to my own inaptness to
+embody in myself the personal expression of the conception
+whereof this essay offers the organismic interpretation.</p>
+
+<p>It is, however, only in the measure in which this less
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_76">[76]</span>personal mode of approach becomes actual for me that
+my work with others grows in significance and in constructiveness
+of purpose. In this light I have come to
+feel more and more that it is only as we regard life from
+the point of view of man’s generic individuality that we
+shall truly encompass the meaning of the neurosis, either
+individual or social, in its true organic assessment. In
+this more inclusive outlook we shall gradually come to
+realize, I think, that the neurosis, whether appearing in
+the arbitrary systematization of the individual or in that
+of the group consensus, consists essentially in the substitution
+of the personal absolute that is our secondary
+individuation for the impersonal relativity that is our
+primary individuality. In this outlook we shall come to
+see that it is only in the common inherency of life that
+is comprised the consciousness of man in the fullness of
+its meaning.</p>
+
+<p>Resistance, then, is the personal systematization of
+men as contrasted with the unsponsored individuality
+of man. The individual unit like the social unit is but
+an arbitrary system, and in the resistance of each of us
+is to be seen the self-determined cosmogony that is the
+individual fallacy of us all. Whether this personal prerogative
+embodied in a resistance has its expression in the
+single individual or in the collection of individuals comprising
+the social aggregate, the factor of systematization
+holding its guarantee of inalienable rights under the
+syndicate of our common unconscious, is, I believe, the
+very kernel of the world-wide dissociation which we now
+diagnose as the neurosis of the individual.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, through this systematization of each one, there
+is repudiated the individuality of each other. In the
+personal absolute of the private consciousness of each,
+there is denied the relativity of the common consciousness
+of all. It is this systematization that is the meaning of
+repression. It is this personal prerogative that is the
+essence of resistance. And so, in the <i>unconscious system</i>
+that is within and about us there is summed up, I believe,
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_77">[77]</span>the entire philosophy of the neurosis. Being ourselves
+intrinsic to the system, both individual and social, it
+is no more possible to deal with it objectively in its social
+than in its individual phase. Our only approach is the
+subjective approach. Only subjectively is it possible for
+each of us to envisage completely the system of repression
+within him that is his individual reflection of the social
+system of repression outside him. In thus relinquishing
+the absolute principle that is merely the autocracy of our
+privately arbitrated system of personalism and unconsciousness,
+we are in a position to forgo the unconscious
+absolute comprising our own resistance and to accept in
+its stead the relative inclusiveness of our conscious life as
+a unified and organic whole.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="p_78">[78]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_V">
+    CHAPTER V
+    <br>
+    SOCIOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS OF UNCONSCIOUSNESS FROM A VIEWPOINT OF RELATIVITY
+  </h3>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Oscar Wilde says in one of his plays: “There are in
+the world two tragedies. One is not getting what one
+wants and the other is getting it.” The epigram is
+peculiarly apt in telling us what appears, on the surface,
+to be true. But what appears on the surface to be true
+is not necessarily true inherently. Unquestionably there
+are these two fatal antitheses in life and in them undoubtedly
+is summed up whatever there is of tragedy in
+our human lot. But, in reducing life to these two issues
+of getting and of not getting what one wants, we fail to
+realize that these contrasting reactions are secondary to
+a condition of mind artificially induced in ourselves at the
+expense of a prior state of consciousness that is in its
+essence not antithetic but unitary.</p>
+
+<p>Each of us is born in the midst of an established system
+whose password is conformity to its prescribed norm.
+Each of us becomes an automatic compartment within
+the systematized consensus that comprises its basis. The
+price of our initiation into this adaptive system is the
+forfeit of our primary individuality, and by the terms
+of its automatic statutes tuition is compulsory. Automatic
+obedience to traditional authority is the retroactive
+principle of its constitution. “Right” or “wrong” is the
+slogan of its guild. In the autogenous postulate of good
+or bad that is its absolute basis, our adaptive system
+stands rigidly opposed to a conception of truth such as
+comprises the relative and all-inclusive principle of consciousness
+in its organismic significance.</p>
+
+<p>In the light of this ulterior motive of good or bad—of
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_79">[79]</span>this adaptive response that is the secondary and reflected
+impression of each—is measured the conduct of us all.
+According as we see ourselves in this mirror of the
+systematized and prescribed norm is conditioned our
+happiness or unhappiness, our comfort or displeasure.
+But always the mirror of each that is the criterion of
+others stands as a solid wall confronting us. Reflected
+in the features of this one our bearing is quite pleasing;
+mirrored in the reaction of that one our countenance is
+not so prepossessing. And so it happens that, as we go
+on in life, we tend more and more to place ourselves in
+positions in which we may obtain the most flattering
+“likeness” of ourselves. Correspondingly, we tend to
+avoid those reflectors that distort our features to our
+own discomforting. In this way we come to “like”
+some people and to “dislike” others. So that, according
+to this account of our adaptation, what is called “ourselves”
+in the vernacular of the system about us is merely
+the reflection of ourselves as reproduced by the system
+itself.</p>
+
+<p>In truth, because of the system of personal reflections
+amid which we move, our judgments are throughout
+undependable. We have no opinions, we merely reflect
+opinions. We have no perceptions, we have only preperceptions.
+We do not verify feeling through senses that
+are native to us, we imitate feeling by means of impressions
+that are extraneous to us. Thus there are great
+gaps within the sphere of our supposedly consistent
+experience—gaps involving wide intervals between our
+feeling and our reason, between processes that are organic
+and processes that are conscious. Our attempts to
+bridge these intervals have constantly led us astray and
+thus has come to pass the system of inconsistencies that
+is the unconscious. For, in this void of his reality man
+can only substitute the images that are his unreality, and
+no image may substitute for reality, no theory of life
+replace the organic consistency of life itself. Yet in our
+dissociative preferences we continually mistake the
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_80">[80]</span><i>image</i> of that which is for that which <i>really</i> is. Nor do
+we at all realize to what extent the actual masquerades as
+real. What is there, for example, more actual than
+illusion, yet what is there less real? An individual
+actually has a delusion but it is not on this account real.
+The voices he hears are actual to him (do they not call
+him by name?) but we who are outside his system know
+very well that they are not real.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_16_16" href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a></p>
+
+<p>My position is that, in our response to the impressions
+arising from the social system about us, our inferences are
+no more dependable than those arising from the private
+systems of the insane. Our confusion, like theirs, is the
+unconscious breach between perceptions that are true and
+impressions that are inferred, between life that is function
+and life that is merely enactment. It is again the disparity
+between life as a system or theory, and life itself.
+All of us are familiar with the inconsistency of people
+who, in order that life may prove comfortable in theory,
+devote their entire energies to making it miserable in
+practice. It is the inconsistency of unconsciousness with
+its inevitable alternation between the opposed extensions
+of a bidimensional image of life in place of the all-inclusiveness
+of life in its functional reality. It is the personal
+absolute underlying the consensual social system within
+and about us.</p>
+
+<p>If this absolute embodied in the system is, then, a
+standard that is but arbitrary and artificial, each of us,
+since he is a reflection of such a specious criterion, is himself
+but a personal representation of this same absolute. If
+the individual is but a reflection of the system of rules
+representing the collection of individuals comprising the
+social consensus about him, then the consciousness of
+man, in both its social and individual manifestations,
+represents an absolute that is throughout false and
+undependable. If, in brief, our standard of truth rests
+upon our own self-reflection in a social system that is
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_81">[81]</span>itself self-reflected, then the evaluation of the individual,
+as of the social organism about us, comprises throughout
+a merely fictitious image, and our criteria of verity are
+everywhere spurious and without support.</p>
+
+<p>In the artificial pretence of “good and bad” or of
+“right and wrong” that represents the arbitrarily
+reflected <i>aspect</i> of life based upon the personal absolute
+of each, life, as I have said, is henceforth contracted into
+the opposite alternatives determined by the two components
+that comprise one’s own pleasure or one’s own
+pain. This shifting choice imposed by the contrary issues
+inseparable from our bidimensional outlook confronts us
+on every hand, and it is this limitation of us all to the
+artificial bidimension of personal loss or gain that reduces
+life to the tragedy of getting or of not getting what one
+wants.</p>
+
+<p>Such a division of personality as this personal bias
+unconsciously entails, amounts to nothing short of a
+compulsion neurosis, the scope of which involves our
+entire social consciousness. The symptomatology of
+this mental division within the social personality finds
+its projection in such familiar antitheses as heaven or
+hell, love or hate, peace or war, idealist or materialist,
+Stoic or Hedonist, Jew or Gentile, aristocrat or proletarian,
+and so on <i>ad infinitum</i>. For such are our ever-shifting
+alternatives of getting or not getting as they are reflected
+in the assumption of private advantage underlying the
+so-called “good” and “bad” that is the preliminary
+outfit of us all.</p>
+
+<p>In this eternal whether-or-no that is our superstitious
+alternation between good and bad lies the meaning of the
+social division constituting the reaction unconsciously
+sponsored under the shifting incertitudes of our popular
+forms and moralities. In our trembling vacillations
+between the ever-pressing issues of personal advantage,
+as apprehended through our superinduced images of
+“good” or “bad,” is the substance of the obsessive
+oscillations of will commonly saluted as man’s conscience,
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_82">[82]</span>a reaction, however, in whose irresolutions an eminent
+psychologist long ago discovered the element of hesitation
+that tends to make cowards of us all.</p>
+
+<p>This perpetual reflection of the self in the mirror of
+self-interest so operates as to invert completely the
+natural processes of life. Due to this unconscious distortion
+of reality, our every experience is viewed in the
+light of the fanciful image that is our own self-projection.
+On the basis of the absolute premise of self, that is the
+result of our own recoil upon the image of our own self-interest,
+everything is subordinated to the bidimensional
+component comprising our own personal aspect. For
+example, this inverted image of self, determining the
+personal absolute of each, underlies the delusion commonly
+concealed under what is popularly known as our “right.”
+After all, what is held most dear within each of us is this
+private reservation that is one’s own “right.” Indeed,
+it is no other factor than this alleged prerogative or
+“right” of the individual based upon his autogenous
+assumption of personal absolutism that, as already
+stated, is our unconscious “resistance” both individual
+and social. Taking our stand upon the inflexible basis
+that is the individual resistance or personal absolute of
+each, we approach life wholly from the position of this
+personal bias on the ground that it is our right. It
+is the preservation of this personal right that is the sole
+propriety of the law. But the laws of men as they
+appertain to personal claim and title are the direct
+antithesis of the law of man as it pertains to the organic
+unity of his life. In truth, what is called the rights of
+private ownership is shown upon analysis to be the
+ownership of private rights.</p>
+
+<p>We do not see—being wholly won over to a policy of
+unconscious self-interest we will not see—that our so-called
+“right” is not a reality inherent in the conditions
+of life itself, but that it is an illusion secondarily derived
+from our personal reaction to the system of autocracy
+that is the unconscious self-interest of the social unconscious
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_83">[83]</span>everywhere about us. Here we find the psychological
+concomitance between the reaction of resistance
+and the process of inversion, between the bidimensional
+aspect reflecting one’s own image and the unconscious
+illusion of the personal absolute assumed to be the private
+“right” of every individual. For, in the measure in
+which one’s outlook upon reality is restricted to a bidimensional
+or pictorial aspect of reality, one’s range of
+perception is necessarily confined to alternations of self-advantage
+or to the issues of good and bad such as are
+determined by the autocratic absolute of one’s own personal
+right. From the fixed background of personal right
+we can look out upon the world about us only from the
+angle of our personal satisfaction. In this outlook the
+sole test of human experience narrows itself to the question
+as to whether an issue bodes good or ill <i>for me</i>. My
+personal right being my standard of measure, every value
+will be weighed by me in accordance with its reading.
+Here, you see, is the very essence of inversion. Here in
+this element of personal prerogative the introversions of
+unconsciousness are to be traced to their biological root.
+Thus, in this repercussion of consciousness embodied in
+our assumption of personal right, we come upon the very
+nucleus of the neurosis.</p>
+
+<p>I believe that in this bidimensional alternation of our
+unconscious self-reflection existing within the societal
+personality lies the basis of our social mania of competition,
+as it is the basis of our tireless discussions and
+altercations within the various spheres of man’s activity.
+It is again the obsessive shift of our compulsive self-interest,
+and our social alternations of competition merely
+reflect our own oppositeness. I believe that this delusion
+of self-interest is the sole validity of our vaunted
+“opinions” as of the endless wranglings and disputations
+and outstrivings that actuate our social interests generally.
+The claim that we go to war because our “right” is
+disputed is not true. We go to war because in the fallacy
+of our personal absolutism our assumed right is held by
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_84">[84]</span>us to be indisputable. Far from possessing warrant
+for what is called our “right” to institute war, it is
+precisely because of the presumptive and illusory nature
+of our arrogated right that we are driven to this alternative
+of immeasurable wrong. The fact is not that we are
+right because we think such and such to be true, but that
+in our compulsive response to unavoidable alternative
+we think such and such to be true in vindication of our
+assumed right. In other words, our “rightness” is not
+the natural result of our logic but our logic is the enforced
+result of our “rightness.” By reason of this secret
+reservation of personal prerogative within each of us,
+everything is made subservient to this autocratic absolute
+of our individual right. If it is true, then, that the self-assurance
+and inflexibility of the personal absolute within
+each presents the true account of the mental and social
+rigidity comprising our resistances, there is here a significant
+commentary upon our so-called adult social consciousness.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_17_17" href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a></p>
+
+<p>This mechanism of unconscious autocracy underlies our
+sociological reactions in a degree that is beyond our
+suspecting, and it is to the social no less than to the
+individual consciousness that we must turn for a solution.
+If we disregard the individual implications of the social
+neurosis, it is not possible to envisage the social implications
+of the individual neurosis. Due to the subjective
+concomitance between the individual and the social
+aspects of consciousness, to attempt to deal with one
+and not with the other entails a contradiction that is
+organic. Just as in the individual personality there are
+alternations of will entailing contrarieties of mood that
+correspond to getting or not getting what one wants, so
+in the social personality there are these same alternations
+of will with their corresponding antitheses of mood depending
+upon our getting and not getting what we want.</p>
+
+<p>The element of failure in Christianity is the element of
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_85">[85]</span>the bidimensional in Christianity. Christ repudiates the
+consensus and the consensus exacts his life in return.
+Judas betrays Christ and in expiation exacts his own life.
+In the real motto of Christianity “Do unto others as ye
+would have others do unto you” there is betrayed the
+familiar alternative of secret self-interest. It reveals at
+once the mark of arrangement, of bargain, of conduct-with-a-view-to
+that here, as always, is the private guarantee
+of personal advantage. In the note of reciprocity underlying
+the Lord’s prayer, with its “Forgive <i>us</i>, as <i>we</i>
+forgive,” the bidimensional is at a premium. Only this
+bidimensional basis is adequate to account for the constant
+dissensions—religious, national, political and economic—that
+exist throughout the world of Christianity under the
+name of “right.”</p>
+
+<p>The truth is that the consciousness of man is not secure
+within itself, and our right is the protection of our own
+insecurity. An insidious division underlies the personality
+of man. Beneath his outer show of amity and covenant
+there resides a restless self-doubt, an anxious fear, a
+divided will. At the heart of his consciousness there
+is a deep-seated uncertainty driving him to temporary
+appeasements which can find issue only in the alternations
+of getting or of not getting what he wants. It is everywhere
+the aspect of the personal advantage under a new
+and altered guise. It is everywhere the alternation of
+self-interest, with its bilateral illusion of advantage or
+disadvantage, due to our fear-ridden obsession of “good
+and bad.”</p>
+
+<p>The vacillations of this illusive alternative likewise
+explain the anxious fascination of the shifting incertitudes
+of “fate.” Here in the uncertain eventualities of chance
+is the irresistible appeal of our endless speculations in
+enterprise and game. In the indispensable element of
+suspense that lends pith to the drama there is again
+echoed this artificial note of self-division. For that which
+constitutes dramatic suspense merely sustains the converse
+extension inseparable from a bidimensional situation, and
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_86">[86]</span>the interest of the drama, as of all art-forms based upon
+the element of conflict or of periodic alternation, is its
+unconscious projection of the dual issues that reflect the
+shifting bidimensions of our social self-inversions.</p>
+
+<p>With the descent of the curtain upon the bidimensional
+situation with which the accustomed drama invariably
+closes, there remains, in essence unaltered, the same
+situation upon which it first arose. This is why it is
+always necessary at the end to create an artificial situation
+such as will temporarily satisfy the demands of a <i>seeming</i>
+conclusion and bring the episode to a halt. But a conclusion
+in the sense of a resolution of elements is not
+possible. The drama that is built upon the dilemma of
+the bidimensional is inevitably committed to one or the
+other of its two horns. Thus the end can be designed
+only with reference to one of the two alternatives in
+accordance with the unconscious ambivalence of author
+as of onlooker. And so the question of termination
+rests always upon the issue as to whether the audience
+shall smile and be pleased with itself (comedy) or weep
+and feel sorry for itself (tragedy) according as it gets or
+does not get what it wants.</p>
+
+<p>The art of the dramatist is, therefore, in the final
+accounting always constrained. It is this exigency that
+causes to be perpetrated in the name of dramatic precedent
+the unpardonable affronts to organic verity which
+we are constantly witnessing. In real life a girl, who
+has had a liaison with a man with whom her relationship
+has been wholly sexual or self-interested, does not confide
+the secret of her inadvertence to a subsequent suitor with
+whom she is now “in love” upon a no less self-interested
+basis. Such a course involves an organic contradiction.
+She knows in her heart that in the unconscious concealment
+of his equally secret self-interest in her it is as
+intolerable to him to have the secret of his illusion disturbed
+as it is intolerable to her to disturb her own. But
+in the drama the psychological verities are thrown to the
+winds, and the heroine, to the artificial delight of a bilaterally
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_87">[87]</span>disposed audience, tells everything that has been in
+the “past” exactly as she would not tell it, and to the
+one person who hears it exactly as he would not hear it.
+But with drama that is bidimensional we must put an
+ending somewhere!</p>
+
+<p>Such are the organic discrepancies with which our
+ablest writers, whether in the form of the drama, the
+novel or the screen, still continue to banter us. The
+reason is to be sought in the unconscious and compulsive
+bondage which they themselves are under with respect
+to the illusion of the alternative that is their own self-reflective
+basis.</p>
+
+<p>It is this illusion of unconscious self-reflection that
+explains also the greater fascination of the bidimensional
+<i>picture</i> we see sketched upon the wall or presented in the
+pages of literature as contrasted with the inherent <i>experience</i>
+that is the tridimensional actuality of our daily life.
+It explains our greater pleasure in the surroundings which
+one’s art may contemplate or portray than in the surroundings
+which one’s life may by participation fill and render
+beautiful. For art as image is the portrayal of unreality;
+art as life is the expression of reality. Art to-day is
+merely the distinction of the individual interpreter. It
+is unrelated to the conscious aims of days and dreams
+that may be shared in common among all people. The
+truth is that in our prepossession with the bidimensional
+and pictorial our interest is centred far more in the
+distractions of art as image than in the inclusiveness of
+art as life.</p>
+
+<p>This illusion of the pictorial aspect with which we
+replace the world of tridimensional actuality finds nowhere
+a happier vehicle than in the mechanical bidimension
+afforded through the medium of illusion achieved
+by the motion-picture. There is no device better adapted
+to reproduce the flat, scenic aspect such as gives the real
+zest to our dreams. For through the device of the
+motion-picture there is reflected the social drama that
+comprises our day, just as through the device of the dream
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_88">[88]</span>there is reflected the individual drama that comprises
+our night. It is in this illusory <i>bidimension</i> of the photo-play
+that we are so much at home. We like its facile
+reproduction of ourselves. This is why we can accept
+without remonstrance the childishly naïve sequences
+standing for plot as represented in the bidimension of
+the screen. The same narrative would appear too utterly
+obvious and banal to pass muster in the solid perspective of
+the spoken drama, but presented upon the screen it finds
+ready acceptance, because in the motion-picture there is
+reproduced the pictorial aspect that corresponds to the
+habitual aspect of self-reflection that is our own image.
+We like moving pictures because we are moving pictures.</p>
+
+<p>This element of unconscious dramatization, prompting
+the activities of the normal mind, we need somehow to
+realize within us. We need somehow to realize that in
+the manifestations of the unconscious comprising the
+collective enactment of the social drama around us
+there is this same reduction of actuality to aspect. <i>For
+in the active motor images of the social mind with its manifold
+gestures of a self-reflective actuality there is inherently no
+less unreality than in the passive sensory images of the
+individual mind in the private theatre of its self-reflective
+phantasy-building.</i> Yet so involved are we now in our
+retroactive processes that in our purblind efforts toward
+their presumably conscious readjustment we still proceed
+retroactively. Such is the futility of our personalistic
+methods of dream-analysis, as it is the futility of our
+personalistic envisagement of the disorders of affect
+comprising the neuroses.</p>
+
+<p>In view of this central defect of our mental vision,
+whereby it is contracted into the artificial bidimension of
+the self- or dream-image, our outlook is everywhere distorted.
+Being vitiated throughout with the prejudice of
+the circumscribed and personal, our affective response is
+not spontaneous and true. As our subjective feeling is
+self-reflective or self-interested, our perception is necessarily
+pictorial and unreal. So that in our presumable
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_89">[89]</span>contemplation of the objective world of reality, the
+experience that reaches us is not reality. On the contrary,
+in the element of the wish or dream that is our bias toward
+actuality, the aspect perceived is merely a foreshortened
+projection of the fanciful image of self. It lacks the
+tridimensional depth and solidarity of an inclusive reality.</p>
+
+<p>This habit of personal dogmatization and autocracy
+has induced in us an autocracy of the mental processes
+generally. Our representations of the aspect have
+become, throughout, the organic antithesis of our participation
+in the real. From a basis of unreal images we can
+only reproduce unreal images. Out of a mental system of
+false impressions we can only elaborate impressions that
+are false. It is precisely this flat unreality of the pictorial,
+whether fanciful or actual, that lends to all our so-called
+“art” its obsessive fascination. Not only is there a
+distortion of reality in the flat mental picture we form of
+it, but in the necessarily detached adaptation of the mere
+onlooker each of us becomes unconsciously an arbitrary
+centre of personal opinionativeness. Each one stands as
+a sort of solar centre within a planetary system comprising
+his own self-determined affects. He thus reflects
+the universe surrounding him, and it is thus by him
+defined. And there has come to be built up in each of
+us in respect also to the world of art a system of personalism
+or unconsciousness that is well-nigh logic-proof in its
+absolutism.</p>
+
+<p>Thus every stimulus—every impression that reaches
+our self-conscious mental retina falls upon the flat, self-reflecting
+surface of the wish, the dream or the personal
+<i>right</i> of each. Of such is the supposedly cognitive reaction
+underlying our “beliefs,” of such is the presumably
+affective reaction we express as “love.” But belief and
+love trace their etymology to a common organic root that
+unhappily betrays the equally illusory origin of each. In
+the Anglo-Saxon <i>leof</i>, meaning lief or wish or bias, both
+reactions are reduced to a single motivation that is the
+tell-tale of their phantastic import. And as belief and love
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_90">[90]</span>(inverse cognition and inverse affect) are the very tissue
+of our personalistic consciousness, we may begin to understand
+to what extent the wish or the preconception
+comprising the bidimensional self-image underlies our
+every perception!</p>
+
+<p>And so, after all, our world of “actuality” is not more
+real than our world of phantasy, our day not less self-reflective
+and unconscious than our night, our waking
+not less apparitional than our sleep. For both alike are
+motivated by the arbitrary reflection that is the inverted
+process of the will-to-self. As yet we do not realize that
+the personal absolute embodying our so-called “right,”
+motivated as it is by self-reflection and unconsciousness,
+is as truly the product of our day-dream as the wish,
+motivated by unconscious self-reflection, is the product of
+our night-dream. We do not as yet see that the wish or
+self-satisfaction comprising the sleeping dream of our
+individual unconscious is itself but a reproduction of the
+wish or self-satisfaction comprising the waking dream of
+our social unconscious. We have yet to recognize that
+here again in the oscillations of its unconscious <i>form</i> is to
+be traced the bidimensional alternation of our own self-reflection
+as determined by the “good” or “bad” aspect
+that is our social as well as our individual advantage.</p>
+
+<p>Here, in the contrasting circumstances of its affiliation
+with the social unconscious on the one hand and of its
+personal isolation within the individual unconscious on
+the other, is doubtless the dynamic element determining
+the vacillation of form that comprises the periodic alternations
+of the sociological bidimension generally. After
+all, what is “good” for me is that which is socially
+approved, what is “bad” for me is that which brings me
+into disfavour with the social consensus composing my
+environment. If the social unconscious about me is
+willing to connive with my individual unconscious and
+applaud my egoistic self-strivings, all is well. If, on the
+contrary, it withholds acquiescence and repudiates my
+self-inverted interests, my state is a correspondingly
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_91">[91]</span>unhappy one. This accounts for our artificial dependence
+upon the social give-and-take with which we hedge ourselves
+about and is the basis of the periodic alternations
+of mood that make up our day. Being unconscious, one
+is a prey to the unconscious about him. Being self-reflective,
+one reacts to the impressions of a self-reflective
+environment. This oscillation of mood, depending upon
+whether our adaptation toward the social consensus is
+assimilative or discordant, explains also the alternations
+of mood observable in the contrasting reactions characteristic
+of certain pathological states, as it is the basis of
+the daily variation of mood registered in the neurotic
+and in the normal constitution. It is here, too, that is
+found the basis of the pleasure-pain shift represented in
+our mood alternations of elation and depression, whether
+existing in the diurnal variations characterizing our
+normal mood alternations or in the more pronounced
+reactions characterizing the extremes of affective tone
+presented in manic-depressive insanity.</p>
+
+<p>It cannot be too strongly urged that, however intrinsically
+opposite these extremes of mood may seem, they
+are in essence identical. For, in reality, these seeming
+antitheses represent but the obverse aspects of one and
+the same bidimensional portrait of personal advantage.
+As regards this intrinsic identity between such seemingly
+opposite mood-tones it is interesting to note the etymological
+concurrence in the Anglo-Saxon root <i>saed</i> (English
+sot, meaning filled), in which we find alike the source of
+such apparently unrelated derivatives of current usage as
+the words <i>sad</i> and <i>satisfied</i>. There is, indeed, an unescapable
+concomitance in the mental attitudes of joy and
+sorrow, of elation and depression, of satisfaction and
+sadness. This coincidence is but an altered form of the
+common alternative of good and bad, of praise and blame,
+of getting and of not getting, and, as always, its presence
+denotes the conflict involved in our inverted self-interest.</p>
+
+<p>Doubtless to this bidimensional alternation are also
+traceable such sociological antitheses as one may witness
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_92">[92]</span>in the contrary reactions expressed in our various economic
+and political factions. This one, failing to suspect the
+element of traditional self-reflection determining his so-called
+party affiliation, registers his personal allegiance
+under the socially augmented symbol or principle embodying
+the standard that is <i>his</i> private absolutism or right;
+that one, no less oblivious of the part he is automatically
+enacting in his character of party promoter, assumes the
+symbolic rôle that tends to further the party principle
+representative of the absolute criterion that is <i>his</i> right.
+So, too, are to be explained the alternations of reaction
+represented in the social antitheses of prohibition and
+anti-prohibition. The anti-prohibitionists are by imputation
+the ultra-liberal, the prohibitionists are by imputation
+the ultra-conservative element, but both are in point
+of fact equally the dupes of the personal reaction that is
+their own self-reflection. For both, in their unconscious
+response to what is commonly called “early training,”
+equally embody expressions of their original infantile
+reaction to the opposed issues involved in the social
+pretence of “good” and “bad.”</p>
+
+<p>Extending into every phase of our social life, it is this
+bilateral motive that is likewise the failure of the schools.
+With credit, praise or privilege and their opposites
+(depending upon whether the child “succeeds” or “fails”
+as judged by the bidimensional standard of good
+and bad, of praise or blame constituting the arbitrary
+<i>picture</i> of his personal conduct), it happens that, through
+an unconscious substitution of the image of the child’s
+person for the function of the child’s personality, the
+entire incentive of the schools becomes ulterior and artificial.
+The so-called liberal schools of to-day are in no
+better case. Despite their much ado about advanced
+methods that will give greater freedom to the child they
+afford mere imitations of freedom. But this is freedom
+in aspect, not in function. It is merely the ideal of
+freedom contemplating its own image. Thus it is futile to
+attempt to alter our situation through recourse to mere
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_93">[93]</span>progressive methods of education. The elimination of
+formal standards of efficiency is likewise unavailing. For
+the ulterior is present still. We find it present in the
+bidimensional attitude that actuates the entire pedagogic
+system with its underlying idea of <i>preparation</i>. Apparently
+it is not realized that this element of the preparatory
+or ulterior is the criterion also of the teachers, being likewise
+the basis of their own promotion as it is the standard
+of promotion in the world at large. But whatever is
+preparatory is based upon the illusion of the personal
+image. It is commentative, premeditated, moralistic,
+and substitutes a mental impression of life in place of
+life itself. When we offer an image of life for which we
+seek to “prepare” the child, the very basis of our educational
+programme becomes pictorial and untrue. Life
+knows naught of images in the personal sense. Life is
+the functioning of interests in constructive activities.
+The rewards of such activities flow naturally out of them
+and consist in a common earning for daily needs in common
+daily pursuits. The child, if given the opportunity, will
+learn to construct useful and beautiful things and his
+only reward will be the natural reward accruing from the
+intrinsic value, social and æsthetic, of the work produced.
+When schools will have become the productive plants of
+natural childish industry, there will not any longer be the
+absurd invention by the schools of ulterior rewards such
+as now supply the artificial stimulus necessary to lend
+vitality to their essential dullness. It will not be necessary
+for teachers to stimulate the industry of their pupils
+through resort to extraneous “merits” in palliation for
+their own lack of joy in the natural creativeness of spontaneous
+childhood.</p>
+
+<p>There is, perhaps, no more subtle expression of the
+bidimensional replacement than in the psychological
+counter-impaction of the marital neurosis. In this
+conjugal vis-à-vis unconscious self-reflection is at flood-tide.
+This is why, in the opposite extensions of the
+conjugal conflict, there are presented concomitantly in
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_94">[94]</span>husband and wife such familiar antitheses as are presented
+alternately in the single individual, as, for example, the
+opposed reactions of mania and depression, the psychasthenic
+and hysterical extremes, as well as the contrasts of
+homosexuality and paranoia. Where such reciprocal
+conditions exist, the opposite rôles are in every instance
+unconsciously assumed, of course, with entire consistency
+by the opposite parties in question. This explains also
+the anomaly presented in so seemingly contradictory a
+spectacle as that of a man of outwardly serious deportment
+enjoying vicariously, through the cosmetics and extravagances
+of self-adornment worn by a narcistically inverted
+wife, the satisfactions of an unconscious exhibitionism.
+It is the law of the marital neurosis, as of the
+balance-scale, that its termini are diametrically opposite
+and that their variation is inverse one to another.</p>
+
+<p>The unconscious mechanism described by Freud under
+the term “psychic ambivalence” (Bleuler) is of all
+reactions perhaps the least understood, but, because of
+its invariable association with neurotic processes, it is
+as important biologically as any of the mechanisms that
+psychoanalysis has disclosed to us. Yet again, in this
+quality of contrast inherent in the manifestations of
+neurotic states, there are represented merely the two
+opposed extremes of reaction due to the division of
+impulse that is inseparable from the alternation of aspect
+we have traced to the illusion of the bidimensional self-image.
+This replacement, as we have seen, occurs normally
+as well as neurotically, socially as well as individually.
+It is again the to-and-fro of the pendulum of good
+and bad. It is again but the oscillation that is our
+obsessive reaction to the make-believe of the self-reflective
+and ulterior.</p>
+
+<p>The truth is that we prefer our impressions of life to an
+understanding of life, and in the ambivalence of our
+response toward others, our reaction is friendly or antagonistic
+only in the degree in which they correspond or
+fail to correspond with our personally preconceived
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_95">[95]</span>impressions. In the present ambivalent scheme of
+things, the ultimate poignancy of one’s grief is the
+element of secret pleasure it affords to others. The daily
+newspapers, seeking unconsciously to make capital of our
+human frailty in this regard, are ever alert to publish
+under glaringly conspicuous head-lines the most startling
+crimes and calamities. Under captions giving notice of
+some inexpressible “Horror” (a term supposedly conveying
+a sense of repugnance) they attain in fact their
+most intriguing effects. The newspapers are wise. They
+have read us before giving themselves to us to read and
+so are canny to supply the grim details we love to hear of
+another’s loss or hurt.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_18_18" href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a> It is this isolation of sorrow that
+is its desolation and its bitterness. Yet it may be traced
+wholly to the unconscious tyranny of this bidimensional
+division within us that we find the pleasure we do find,
+however adroitly repressed, in the unhappiness or calamity
+of those about us. It is, of course, not another’s calamity
+that is the real cause of our satisfaction, but in the
+ambivalence of our attitude as we contemplate his misfortune
+we feel, by contrast, or in a <i>comparative</i> count so
+much <i>more</i> fortunate than he. It is again but the projection
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_96">[96]</span>of the bidimensional division within each of us
+individually as a reflection of the division within all of
+us socially. In this comparison of ourselves with others
+there is again reflected the bidimensional alternative that
+is the fanciful self-advantage of the personal image.</p>
+
+<p>Turn where we will, this same phenomenon of mental
+alternation based on the bidimensional image looms
+ineffaceably before us. Opposed to the <i>mental image</i>
+“male” we project the <i>mental image</i> “female,” in
+contrast to the <i>concept</i> “religion” we place the <i>concept</i>
+“science,” against the <i>psychological attitude</i> of the artist
+stands the <i>psychological reaction</i> of the critic. Because of
+this mentally pictorial outlook among us, we fail to realize
+that in the unconsciously objective approach of the
+artist there is embodied an attitude that is as truly a
+criticism or evaluation of life as is the objective attitude
+of the critic toward the expression of the artist. We
+do not realize that in our unconscious personal alternation
+an element of criticism or evaluation everywhere
+substitutes the fallacy of a mental state toward life for
+the conscious reality of a state of life itself. Our bidimensional
+self-reflection is thus equally the impediment
+of art as of life. The insidious element of personal self-reflection
+is the fatal decoy no less of portrayer than of
+participant.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, in the spirit of the more subjective
+artist what we sense is his insistent sway toward a self-realization
+that is impersonal. We feel that in the measure
+in which he yields it submission his expression becomes
+less and less a reproduction of life and more and more
+an actualization of life itself. This is because in the
+thought or feeling expressed through the art-forms of
+such a personality, he is himself not so much the causative
+or self-conscious agent reflecting a state of mind <i>in relation
+to</i> life as it seems, but rather the conscious link in a sequence
+that <i>identifies</i> him with a condition of life as it is. Thus
+again the truer the artist, the more he tends to round the
+orbit of his personality in a conscious universe of relativity;
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_97">[97]</span>the more imitative the artist, the more he tends to
+oscillate uncertainly between the alternate phases that
+merely reflect the assumed absolute of his own ego.</p>
+
+<p>So it is with our alternations, social and individual,
+pathological and normal, as they exist on every hand.
+There is the precoid and the hysteric, the homosexual
+and the paranoiac, the religionist and the sceptic, the
+moralist and the voluptuary. It is the world-old tragedy
+of getting and not getting what one wants, and in the
+self-satisfaction of the one as in the self-abnegation of
+the other the element of self-consequence is equal and
+identical. It is the ineptitude of virtue that it is but the
+bidimensional reverse of vice. Generosity, like humility,
+contains its ambivalent element of pride. Though from
+time to time we may dispense no slight favours, yet
+always we demand to hold the reins of power within our
+own hands. Let our protégés presume for a moment to
+assert their own individuality and straightway we rein
+them in. Indeed, if we will look into this, we shall
+realize that it is precisely the person toward whom we
+are most lavish of beneficence that is the one of whose
+native and unsponsored expression we are most jealously
+critical. The fact is that our virtues are really too good
+to be true and that our amenities, after all, reflect only
+our own self-advantage. Thus, from the point of view of
+good and bad, our lusts and our repressions are but
+interchangeable adaptations of the central theme of self,
+and in the alternations entailed in the popularly conceded
+distinctions assumed as morality and immorality there is
+preserved under merely reversed aspects this identical
+fetish of one’s own self-image.</p>
+
+<p>Even in the sphere of psychology itself there is this
+same division inseparable from the personal absolute or
+the private arrogation that underlies the assumed right
+of each individual as reflected in our social contrasts of
+good and bad. For example, the propriety of studying
+the “merely motor expressions” of the behaviourists is
+regarded with grave question by the introspectionists,
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_98">[98]</span>while the behaviourists as ardently doubt whether introspective
+studies are the legitimate matter of psychology
+at all. The futility of dissension is again its two-sidedness.
+What we omit to reckon with when we consider the
+vying of these two schools with one another is the element
+of the personal prerogative within them that unconsciously
+goads each to an intolerance of the other. For all
+“rights” being mutually opposed to and exclusive of
+one another, the “right,” or opinion, underlying any
+system except the system that is one’s own is, of its
+nature, inadmissible. In the irreconcilable assertions of
+the multifarious opinions of men, whether occurring in
+group or in single expression, there is always to be traced
+this underlying motive of personal right corresponding to
+the private prerogative of each. By rights I do not mean
+the natural rights that are universal and common, but
+the personal rights that are autocratic and pre-emptive.
+But whether our divisions be national, political, religious,
+economic, professional or familial, their underlying
+meaning is the same. So that, in this antithetical
+“response” characterizing the periodic alternations of
+our bidimensional self-reflection, there is registered a
+reaction of the organism that invariably escapes the
+attention of either disputant—the reaction, namely, of
+the will-to-self or of the private privilege coincident with
+an absolute basis of adjudication. As long as there
+remains this element of unconscious alternation due to
+the self-reflective interest that now actuates human
+motives, students of science, also, are as powerless to
+bring to their problems an attitude of disinterestedness as
+are our national delegates when they attempt to consider
+the problems involving all the subtle self-interest of a
+peace conference.</p>
+
+<p>The really classic division of opinion in the world—the
+division that is of major importance even amid academic
+fields of thought—is the conflict between Science and
+Religion. That the religionists, in claiming the undoubted
+authenticity of sources confirmatory of the
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_99">[99]</span>truth of revealed religion, have offered indisputable
+“proof” of the validity of their position, cannot be
+denied. That the scientists’ assertion of the doctrine of
+spontaneous evolution as opposed to the revealed truths
+of Theism rests equally upon the evidence of incontrovertible
+“proof” leaves likewise no room for doubt.
+In both instances, however, the proofs of each are acceptable
+only to the advocates of their own particular view
+and not to the advocates of the view that is opposite
+their own. But of what avail are the proofs of a position
+which are valid only in the minds which have anteriorly
+set out to prove it? What dependence is to be placed in
+the intellectual verifications of truth which are acceptable
+only to intellects which demonstrate them but which, in
+the view of those of an opposite trend, remain for ever
+inaccessible? These are reflections which necessarily
+force us to question very seriously our objective intellectualizations.
+If, in so wide and vital a division as
+that between Religion and Science, the “logic” on which
+is based the claim of each is so completely without
+meaning, beyond its facility to flatter established prepossessions,
+it is time that our “reasoning” upon all
+issues be summoned to account on suspicion that our
+position is, in every instance, merely the unconscious
+alternation due to the bidimensional image of gain or
+loss that is one’s personal self-reflection.</p>
+
+<p>This blindness of the personal restriction within our
+subjective life is the more interesting when one considers
+the far more impersonal outlook that often characterizes
+man’s consciousness within the sphere of his objective
+interests. With the growing expanse of man’s consciousness
+there has arisen the widely inclusive and impersonal
+field of preventive medicine with its essential preoccupation
+with the communal weal. Through this wider
+sociological approach we have come gradually to realize the
+incomparably greater significance of activities directed
+toward safeguarding the health of the community or of
+the group-life as contrasted with interests directed to
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_100">[100]</span>the personal cure of the individual as a single element
+within the social group. We have begun to recognize
+that where, through recourse to measures of public
+hygiene, it is possible to control the general sources of
+disease, conditions are rendered such that there may be
+no need to treat disease-process within the single individual.
+In Panama, for example, where, through a far-reaching
+programme of civic hygiene, the malaria-breeding
+organism has been almost wholly exterminated, the
+medical and sociological functions of the community have
+become so completely merged that with the appearance
+of the disease-bearing Anopheles it is no longer the
+physician but the civic authorities who are consulted.</p>
+
+<p>Such are the signs of the broadening communal spirit
+that is coming to influence more and more the various
+measures of improvement amid the objective conditions
+of life about us. But, within the subjective sphere of
+man’s activities, his outlook is no whit more encompassing
+to-day than in the moment of his earliest quickenings of
+consciousness. The reason is not far to seek. Man’s
+subjective life is throughout overlaid and oppressed by
+his inverted obsession of personal acquisition. Viewing
+everything in the light of the reflection cast by his own
+image, a broad communal programme of life is for him
+as yet subjectively impossible. An outlook that would
+render his position a relative one and reveal it as but
+contributory to the organic life as a whole would straightway
+menace the illusion of his personal prerogative and
+rob him of what is now for him the basis of all his experience
+and the sum of his personality. He does not see
+that his “experience,” by reason of its inverted absolutism,
+wholly lacks the support of reality. He does not
+see that what he calls his personality is his successful
+collusion in the collective unconscious about him at the
+price of his habitual concession to impressions not
+primarily his own. This is why the psychopathologist is
+still futilely endeavouring to understand his patients from
+the static, personal standpoint of his own dogmatic
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_101">[101]</span>absolutism rather than from the position of a relative
+and inclusive interpretation of consciousness. This is
+why the objective analyst remains always outside the
+real problem of the social disharmony represented in the
+nervous and mental disorders of the individuals by whom
+he is confronted. The truth is, he is himself a part of
+the disorder which in his unconscious absolutism he is
+presuming to treat in others. The tendency is one that
+exists among us all. For the taint of an absolutism within
+the social personality involves each of us equally as a
+contributing element in its fictitious structure. Hence
+the ultimate futility of our constantly shifting “methods.”
+Hence the ever-recurring therapeutic fads that represent
+first one and then another absolute system of cure. But
+though each such system may for a while claim our
+support, in due course it fades again and is in turn succeeded
+by another in accordance with the varying phases
+of our social alternations. Our enthusiasm, as well as
+its decline, must after all be reckoned merely as the
+alternate reverberations of the social consciousness in
+response to the unconscious alternations of the bidimensional
+absolute which has its existence in the individual
+and of which the social manifestation is but a
+reproduction.</p>
+
+<p>As the neurosis is generic, involving the social system
+no less than the individual element, the system of psychoanalysis,
+as well as the individuals composing it, is equally
+included under its indictment. From Freud, therefore,
+as from the rest of us there is due the acknowledgment of
+the inevitable part occupied by psychoanalysis in the
+systematization or unconsciousness that is the social
+neurosis. The private assumption of each of us to the
+contrary notwithstanding, we who have followed Freud
+could not possibly have been inspired in our work by a
+conscious interest in the disorders of personality represented
+in the social anomaly of the neurosis. Being ourselves
+unconsciously involved in the social neurosis about
+us, we have been urged forward through an unconscious
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_102">[102]</span>or <i>personal</i> interest in order to divert our minds from our
+own implication in its <i>social</i> significance. To this end it
+has been unconsciously our endeavour to direct assiduous
+attention only to the specific manifestations of the
+neurosis as it exists in individuals supposedly other than
+ourselves. <i>In brief, we have been diligently occupied with
+the objective study of the neurosis in its obvious appearance
+in others as individuals presumably separate from ourselves,
+in order to escape the subjective acknowledgment of its
+actual presence within ourselves as contributory and interrelated
+elements in our common social consciousness</i>.</p>
+
+<p>With each of us, the real motive has been the unconscious
+grudge of our personal involvement in a world-wide
+enslavement to an artificial precept such as can only
+oscillate between the alternations resultant upon our
+self-limited bidimension of “good and bad.” When we
+can lay aside the incentives of personal self-defence and
+view our own reactions with impartial self-composure,
+we shall realize that it has been our own unconscious that
+first quickened the compensative defence-reactions which
+later culminated in the objective system we know to-day
+as psychoanalysis. For, with psychoanalysis as with
+other systems, its real incitement is found in the inevitable
+“come-back” that is the organism’s response to its
+sense of affront before the illusion of the self-image.
+Again, it is the automatic alternation resultant upon a
+basis of counter-relatedness inseparable from the delusion
+of the personal absolute as contrasted with the relativity
+of the individual in respect to life as an organic whole.
+Again, it is the artificial presupposition of our own
+“rightness” that is the strongest determinative of our
+conduct, and to this secret autocracy that is our own
+personal absolutism we have rendered everything
+subservient.</p>
+
+<p>Men like to say that God created them, but in truth it
+is they who have created “God.” We like to employ
+this anthropomorphic image of absolute authority to
+our personal advantage. Rewarding the good and
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_103">[103]</span>punishing the bad in accordance with the alternations
+coincident with the bidimensional aspect of an absolute
+Deity, this image of supreme authority represents merely
+the projection of the personal absolute based on the
+alternations of our own self-reflection. I do not doubt
+that beneath this vicarious image of a fanciful father-supremacy
+there ever remains the true and abiding
+principle that is the underlying reality of life. But, in
+the place of this principle of reality that is the unsponsored
+soul of man, we have timidly substituted such
+temporary cheats as are adapted only to lull our fancies
+with imperialistic dreams of personal empire. Indeed, in
+the personal projection actuating the social anomaly of
+religious belief the inverted bias comprising our own
+self-image has its strongest lodgment. It is here that
+the collective mind has tricked itself to its collective
+undoing. For in the current expression of our social
+inversion resident in this absolute arbiter of the moral
+law or of “good and bad” lies the very nucleus of our
+human pathology. And it is my position that the
+pretence, underlying the personal adjustment based upon
+early inculcated issues of self-interest and concealed beneath
+our specious determinants of “good” and “bad,”
+is no less the underlying fallacy of psychoanalysis. For,
+in its attempt to offset neurotic disharmonies due to
+an unconscious repression of the sexual life of the individual,
+psychoanalysis has recourse to adjustments that
+are the mere <i>alternative</i> of repression—a repression
+legislated by the dictates of an equally unconscious and
+repressed society, be its expression opportunistic, sublimative,
+or <i>en règle</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Thus psychoanalysis, likewise, presents a policy that
+is but a desperate alternation between the only two
+issues that are available on the basis of the absolute
+criterion such as inevitably obtains in our present bidimensional
+or pictorially constellated scheme of consciousness,
+namely, a policy in which the reaction of the individual
+can only be in the direction of the reverse or
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_104">[104]</span>opposite extension. Hence, however personally displeasing
+to us, there is the need that we who are psychoanalysts
+somehow recognize that we, also, are unconsciously subordinated
+to the moral dilemma that is the reflection of
+our own self-interest. There is the need that we see
+clearly that psychoanalysis, too, is still under the domination
+of a falsely imbued impression of good and bad with
+its attendant issue in the alternations of an unconscious
+social resistance.</p>
+
+<p>This illusory antithesis of getting or of not getting what
+one wants, this irreconcilable ache of man’s unconscious
+is traceable again and again to the false assumptions of
+a self-reflective absolutism as arrogated by the individual
+as a single part or element in contradistinction to our
+organic consciousness as a whole. It is in the absolutism
+of the part that consists the dissociation of the whole;
+it is in the relativity of the part that consists the integrity
+of the whole. Within the sphere of man’s consciousness
+our fallacies of observation lie in the absolutism of the
+observer. On the other hand, in surrendering the bidimensional
+or pictorial illusion inseparable from the fixed
+position of the observer for the tridimensional actuality
+of our organic participation in life as an inclusive totality,
+we automatically yield it the full-dimensional component
+comprising the extension that is our confluent societal
+unity and which, in abrogating the artificial image of a
+personal and unconscious absolute, constitutes life in the
+encompassing scheme of the relativity of consciousness.
+In such a scheme there is offered to the dissociated personality,
+single and social, neurotic and normal, a readjustment
+that is fundamental. I believe it is only in the
+acceptance of the societal consciousness of man that there
+lies the ultimate step for each of us. For the principle
+of the relativity of consciousness is an organically unequivocal
+one. In its individual realization consists our
+societal integrity. In its societal realization consists
+our individual integrity. Only in the co-ordination of
+the two lies the fulfilment of our organic personality.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="p_105">[105]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="PART_II">
+    PART II
+    <br>
+    THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE NEUROSES
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="p_106">[106]</span></p>
+<blockquote class="constrain">
+<p>Personally, I am more and more convinced that the cure for
+sentiment, as for all the weakened forms of strong things, is
+not to refuse to feel it, but to get to feel <i>more</i> in it. This
+seems to me to make the whole difference between a true and
+a false ‘asceticism.’ The false goes for getting rid of what
+one is afraid of; the true goes for using it and making it serve.
+The one empties, the other fills; the one abstracts, the other
+concentrates. Don’t you think half the troubles of life
+come from being wrongly <i>afraid</i> of things—especially afraid
+of oneself? (February, 1890.)</p>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Richard Lewis Nettleship.</span></p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="p_107">[107]</span></p>
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_I_1">
+    CHAPTER I
+    <br>
+    ANALYSIS OF FREUD’S DYNAMIC AND INDIVIDUALISTIC CONCEPTION OF THE NEUROSES
+  </h3>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>The following pages are an endeavour to determine the
+conditions, social and individual, that constitute the
+health of the mental organism. What the health of the
+mental organism is, has not as yet been adequately
+described. On the somatic side, of course, one defines
+health as the harmonious functioning of the parts comprising
+the organism as a whole. But, as regards the
+constitution of the mental life in its totality, we have no
+such inclusive interpretation of the condition requisite
+to harmonious functioning. Although the psychopathologist
+is constantly engaged in efforts to restore the distorted
+mind to a condition of harmony and health, one
+finds nowhere a satisfactory statement as to just what
+constitutes the state of harmony which it is his avowed
+purpose to establish. Health, of course, is synonymous
+with the harmony of the whole. But from the point of
+view of consciousness we have not even determined as
+yet what is the organism as a whole or what are the parts
+constitutive of it. The psychiatrist is habitually preoccupied
+with the outer features of mental disharmony
+which the method of extrinsic observation has brought
+to his personal notice. It is evident, therefore, that his
+conception of consciousness is automatically withheld from
+a subjective inclusion of the organism in its entirety, and
+that it compasses only the particular aspect that falls
+within the limits of his own particular observation. It
+is this discrepancy which I should like, if possible, to
+isolate from its present personal involvement, with a view
+to the possibility of a clearer understanding of our mental
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_108">[108]</span>problems. To this end my recourse can only be such an
+objective inquiry as may be the more hospitable because
+of its subjective inclusiveness.</p>
+
+<p>In pre-Freudian days, as is well known, the psychopathologist
+who had to do with a nervous disorder turned
+quite automatically in the direction to which the patient
+pointed, or to the symptom indicated. Whether a paralysis,
+an obsession, a phobia or what not, this symptom
+or sign constituted for the physician no less than for the
+patient the exclusive focus of interest. Thus in the
+domain of nervous and mental disharmonies the entire
+field of inquiry occupied itself in earlier times with a
+mere obvious index of disease rather than with the
+disease itself.</p>
+
+<p>With the advent of Freud the situation became wholly
+changed. Through his discovery that the disturbance
+was neither <i>what</i> nor <i>where</i> it appeared to be from the
+clinical point of view, Freud came to explain it upon
+grounds which led to a fundamentally altered conception
+of the hysterias and their kindred manifestations. Viewing
+the situation as a dynamic one, Freud regarded the
+symptom in question in the light of an unruly element
+within the central personality, whence, in his view, this
+central personality became, as it were, the controlling seat
+of government. It was Freud’s position that this presiding
+principle must be held amenable for fostering within
+its domain so discordant an element as that whereof the
+symptom gave notice, and accordingly, it was to this
+central principle that Freud henceforth addressed his
+investigations.</p>
+
+<p>This position of Freud’s, in which he regards the
+essential mechanism of the neurosis as a symptom-substitution
+representing in substance a psychic transposition
+or a shift of affect from intrinsic source to
+arbitrary aspect, embodies the whole significance of
+psychoanalysis. It is a significance that marks the
+outset of our understanding of the real nature of the
+neuroses. For it was this conception that first posited
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_109">[109]</span>as the background of consciousness an integral personality,
+from which, as a basis, it was sought to discover the factors
+operative in causing the division within it represented by
+the neurosis. But just as the enduring distinction of
+Freud’s work lies in this conception of a central totality
+of personality constituting the substrate of the conscious
+life, so its limitation consists precisely in the erroneous
+position to which Freud assigned this totality of consciousness.
+I believe that the many inconsistencies and
+half-baked deductions of psychoanalysis, with the consequent
+deadlock to a truly comprehensive interpretation
+of the neuroses, are due precisely to this limitation
+of the conception of the neurosis within the bounds of
+the individual consciousness. When we have realized
+that this conception of a totality of personality is biologically
+tenable only <i>from the point of view of an inclusive
+societal consciousness and not of the circumscribed
+individual consciousness</i>, we shall, I believe, have taken
+the essential step toward dispelling the confusion and
+lack of coherence within the psychoanalytic system as
+it now stands.</p>
+
+<p>As one looks back, it is not difficult to see how Freud’s
+necessarily conventional, clinical point of view—the outgrowth
+of personal inclination and tradition—unconsciously
+bound him to a conceptual outlook that was
+necessarily circumscribed and limited, and how he was
+thus unwittingly led into a contradiction of the ultimate
+significance of the very conception which he had himself
+originated.</p>
+
+<p>In the nature of Freud’s postulate that a psychic transposition
+is the basis of the neurosis, his thesis assumes a
+breach in the integrity of consciousness. This breach
+within consciousness is due to the effort of a delimited
+area within it to establish itself as a separate, self-governing
+unit. His position envisages a conflict entailing a
+dissociation of the personality due to the secession of one
+or more of its integral constituents. Hence the real
+crux of Freud’s thesis was the determination of the
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_110">[110]</span>essential incompatibility between an <i>independent part</i>
+(dissociation) and the <i>coherent whole</i> (unification) within
+the sphere of consciousness—a conception which seems to
+me as beautiful as it is true. But in the bias of Freud’s
+own individualistically circumscribed consciousness, with
+the inevitable separation or dissociation it entailed, Freud
+failed to recognize the implication of his own thesis. He
+did not see that he was himself unconsciously held
+within a position bearing the essential feature of the
+very disorder which presumably he was regarding from
+a non-partisan, unified point of view. He did not see
+that his own position was precisely that of a separate,
+delimited unit, within the totality of consciousness,
+represented in the dissociation of his own personal bias.
+There is here a consideration which Freud, and the rest
+of us along with Freud, have permitted to pass by completely
+unnoticed, due to our own unconscious embroilment
+within the limitations of our circumscribed individual
+consciousness. While theoretically advocating
+unification as the basis of consciousness, Freud was
+himself actually seeking unconsciously to reconcile with it
+a dissociation within himself. It is this self-circumventing
+illusion of the restricted individualistic consciousness
+which, if one may judge from the degree to which it has
+underlain my own work and that of others, is the essential
+fallacy of psychoanalysis.</p>
+
+<p>In reality, then, Freud set out to account for the
+seemingly actual upon grounds of the seemingly actual.
+He did not see that the very medium of human experience,
+as <i>seemingly</i> actual and as commonly accepted by us to
+be actual, is in truth already biased by impressions that
+are only virtual. In short, Freud did not realize that
+our own so-called consciousness is unconsciousness. He
+assumed that the analysis or self-examination to which
+he subjected himself and his patients was disinterested
+and authentic in its inclusiveness of the personality as a
+whole. And all the while he failed to realize that the
+personality as a whole, as embodied in the self-limited
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_111">[111]</span>consciousness of the individual, is itself imbued with all
+the prejudice of self-interest and with all the bias of
+dissociation constitutive of the habitual medium of our
+collective unconscious. As this habitual medium is
+actuated by individual tradition and separativeness, it
+is necessarily based throughout upon motives of personal
+preference. With an outlook distorted by personal preference
+(the unconscious wish), it is not possible to view
+the processes of life and its disharmonies with freedom
+and clarity. From a standpoint of private prejudice it
+is not possible to envisage private prejudice. Unconsciousness
+cannot compass unconsciousness. The wish
+cannot assail the wish. In our present mode of personalism
+and unconsciousness the attainment of consciousness
+is of its nature an impossible task. Thus the bias of
+Freud renders untenable the position of Freud when he
+assumes the abrogation of bias, since his position has itself
+arisen from the unsuspected bias of his own habituated
+or preferential mode.</p>
+
+<p>It is this unconsciousness within ourselves which we
+psychoanalysts have let escape us and which necessarily
+gives to our work, for all its impressiveness, the conventional
+curtailment of the vicarious and unreal. As an
+illustration of what I mean, there is somewhere in the
+“Traumdeutung” an amusingly acute psychoanalytic
+touch in Freud’s interpretation of the dream of a patient.
+This patient had on one day stoutly protested that
+dreams were not invariable wish-fulfilments, and on the
+following day she brought to Freud a dream in which
+she was represented planning a summer outing with her
+mother-in-law whom she cordially disliked. Here, she
+said, was proof that dreams were not necessarily wish-fulfilments,
+and a superficial glance would seem to give
+her the decisive score. But Freud was alert. “Quite
+the contrary,” he replied with analytic acuity, “you
+have only furnished additional proof that dreams <i>are</i>
+wish-fulfilments, for it is precisely in your wish to prove
+to me that dreams are not wish-fulfilments that you have
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_112">[112]</span>dreamed that you are going summering with your detested
+mother-in-law—a dream which could not more amply
+satisfy your wish to prove the incorrectness of my theory.”
+So speaks Freud with triumphant naïveté, and, with a
+complacency that is no less naïve, we who are Freudians
+are still applauding with unstinted assent the subjective
+fallacy of his objective logic.</p>
+
+<p>Like Freud, we have not seen that every dream of our
+own contains no less the identical wish to prove ourselves
+right. Like Freud, we have not seen that it is our wish
+that the dream shall contain the element of a basic and
+invariable sexual factor in substantiation of the thesis
+of us Freudians. It is the fallacy of the dreamer in the
+foregoing incident that she sets out with the absolutism
+of the personal premise; but so do we—the premise,
+namely, of personal “rightness.” Thus we are in no
+different case from the patient whom Freud cites as
+manufacturing a dream to prove her position right.
+But while the wish of this dreamer—in its purpose in
+direct opposition to our own—stands out in sharp,
+unmistakable outline before us, our own wish—in its
+nature identical with hers, namely, the wish to prove
+ourselves right—remains enveloped still in the obfuscating
+mists of our own unconscious. There is here the
+organic inaccessibility of the wish to the wisher, of the
+dream to the dreamer. There is here the blindness of
+the unconscious preference with its basis in the personal
+absolute, and it is the need of us Freudians to recognize
+that the blight of its inconsistency is upon us all.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_19_19" href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a></p>
+
+<p>How dominant is Freud’s own individuating wish or
+personal preference one may realize who reads his essay
+on “The History of the Psychoanalytic Movement” and
+witnesses the bitterness of his feeling toward any who
+gainsay him. How strongly we share with Freud the
+influence of personal bias may be seen in our own bitterness
+when others would gainsay us. It is so with us all.
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_113">[113]</span>It is the morbid compulsion of self-vindication that
+underlies all “rightness.” It is the habitual illusion of
+our own self-centralization, a less wieldy but more explicit
+term for what we have come to know theoretically—that
+is, in other people and as in no way touching our own
+personal feeling—as the unconscious wish-motive. For
+self-vindication and the unconscious wish are one.</p>
+
+<p>And so, objectively, Freud is quite “right” in asserting
+that a basic sexual factor underlies the dream. Do not
+his own and his patients’ dreams prove him so? And
+Jung is, objectively, no less “right” in claiming that
+Freud is mistaken—that dreams are not primarily
+motivated by a sexual wish. Do not his dreams and
+those of his patients equally corroborate <i>his</i> view? And
+so with Adler and his theory, and so with any of us and
+his theory. For notwithstanding that the theories of
+all of us are severally opposed one to another, yet all of
+us are equally “right,” as may be equally substantiated
+by the dreams of each. The explanation is simple. The
+“rightness” of each is the wish of each and the wish is
+father to the dream!</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="p_114">[114]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_II_1">
+    CHAPTER II
+    <br>
+    FORMULATION OF AN ORGANIC OR SOCIETAL BASIS OF INTERPRETATION
+  </h3>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Within the various fields of scientific investigation,
+there is the established precept that we set out from the
+simplest assignable elements as a basis for all future
+inquiry. Of such, for example, is the ground-structure
+of the chemical and the biological sciences, and it is
+likewise upon ultimately irreducible units that the
+furthest abstractions of mathematics rest their foundation.
+But in our approach to the biological elements
+of consciousness we have proceeded upon no such soundly
+established principle. Unconsciously presupposing here
+and taking for granted there, we have reasoned from
+premises that have lacked the warrant of elementary
+support. Hence in the study of consciousness we have,
+in our unconsciousness, unwittingly slurred our obligations
+to the very first principle of scientific method.</p>
+
+<p>This circumstance, however, is not one toward which
+we need feel scornful. Our blunder has been inevitable.
+In the study of the elements of consciousness a factor is
+introduced into scientific reckoning that completely
+reverses habitual perspectives, and to trace with scientific
+conscientiousness this inexorable reversal of the personal
+mode requires of the student very special laboratory
+qualification. For, in turning to the study of the basis
+of consciousness, we are ourselves the primary elements
+of our own inquiry. Ourselves unconscious, we have
+attempted to fold back upon ourselves and, from a basis
+of prejudice, to recapture our primary, unprejudiced
+basis. From a now sophisticated personal <i>adaptation</i> of
+consciousness we have sought to regain the native, unsophisticated
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_115">[115]</span><i>principle</i> of consciousness of which our
+personal adaptation is the unconscious abrogation.
+Clearly, this task is of its nature self-contradictory.
+Only in the measure in which we realize that unconsciousness
+is our habitual mode and so allow it to cease automatically
+to dominate our lives may we come to study
+dispassionately the essential structure of consciousness
+through an unbiased examination of the primary elements
+of which it is composed.</p>
+
+<p>Life has its beginnings in a continuous organic medium.
+Within this common organic medium our original infant
+organisms constitute identical elements. What we later
+regard as individuals are but corpuscles in a homogeneous,
+societal tissue. Organically, or from the point of view of
+their common and inherent affectivity, there exists no
+discrimination among these elements. Race or national
+separation, social or caste distinction have not entered
+into them. These are divergences that have no place
+in the organic origins of life. As integral members of an
+original organic matrix, the elements representing our
+primary infant organisms are no more differentiated
+psychically one from another than they are psychically
+differentiated from the life-source or the maternal organisms
+from which they have sprung. The mental life, being as
+yet wholly subjective and unaware, is simple, unitary. It
+is one with the organism’s inherent feeling. Subjective
+feeling, indeterminate and unqualified, is, in the primary
+organism, the sum of experience, the compass of life.
+Primarily the organism’s subjective feeling is its all.
+And as with the growing perception of outer objects life
+enlarges, this subjective mode is unaltered still. Our
+primary objective experience merges into continuity
+with inherent feeling. It is added to, included in the
+subjective life. So that in its incipient rapport with the
+world of objectivity, life maintains still a fluid, undifferentiated,
+confluent mode. For life is primarily affective.
+In the affect consists men’s common ground. In the
+subjective affect lies organic bed-rock. Here in the
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_116">[116]</span>common inherency of native feeling is the primal
+menstruum of our human consciousness.</p>
+
+<p>But there suddenly comes an interruption to this state
+of unification. The parent, as spokesman of a world of
+unconscious collusion in the defence of self or the exploitation
+of separativeness, strikes in sharply upon this unitary
+mode of being with a wedge of interdiction that marks
+the beginning of a cleavage within the personality which
+the subsequent years tend increasingly to widen and
+secure.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_20_20" href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a> With the sudden arrest of this early, unified
+mode through the entrance of the extraneous strictures
+of command and prohibition (suggestion or repression),
+the personality of the organism becomes automatically
+divided. For with command or reproof there is introduced
+the element of the ulterior. Organic harmony and confluence
+are no more. Into the life of confluence is now
+thrust the rude encroachment of personal motive—of
+motive based upon the outcome of promise or threat, of
+gain or forfeit. The inherent flow, the organic current
+of experience is now artificially checked. Henceforward
+expression is no longer spontaneous. Instead, a programme
+of conduct-with-a-view-to takes its place and
+becomes the dominant order of our activities. In the
+face of every summons the question must first be weighed—Will
+it be well or ill with <i>me?</i> Upon the issue of gain
+or loss depends the response—the issue of gain or loss for
+the now separated, individuated organism. An adjustment
+to the ends of self-interest is demanded. Everything
+is at stake; a fitting policy must be devised and
+the proper combination must be sought. Thus is obtruded
+self-consciousness, self-interest or that separation from its
+basic continuum that is incidental to the interruption of
+the organism’s essential life, and with it a new mode of
+consciousness embodying a fundamental opposition to the
+primary unity of life now takes its rise.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="p_117">[117]</span></p>
+
+<p>Is it not clear that the condition here described is
+nothing other than a dissociation of consciousness, that
+this interpolation of the self-motive involves a division
+of the personality in which there is presented the identical
+reaction that we have come to know as the essential
+mechanism of the neurosis? If so, then life in our
+present mode of adaptation is throughout a dissociation.
+That such is actually the case is the position of the
+present thesis. For it maintains that division of personality,
+or the neurosis, has its basis in this incipient
+cleavage embodied in the separation of the individual
+element from its original organic continuum through the
+interdiction of the organism’s early unitary mode, while
+integrity of the personality, on the other hand, is represented
+alone in the preservation throughout the growth
+of the individual element of its primary organic confluence.</p>
+
+<p>Such a postulate is indeed very sweeping. It will be
+readily protested that it is too sweeping—that in effect
+it claims that the whole civilized world is in the grip of a
+mental dissociation, that it has its being, founds its organization
+upon a basis of unconsciousness. I can only
+answer that, however sweeping such a statement may
+seem in theory, this social implication of the neurosis is
+amply supported in actuality. For the unconscious
+reactions of the social mind about oneself are reflected
+unconsciously within oneself, the individual being but
+an element in our common consciousness. If one will
+permit himself to be sufficiently subjective in his own
+life to view with objective disinterestedness the reflections
+within himself of these unconscious reactions of the social
+mind, there will be little ground for protest against such
+an implication.</p>
+
+<p>This indictment of the entire social mind, however, may
+rest upon no scant or uncertain foundation. We may not
+deal with so broad an issue with the personal conclusiveness
+of a merely dynamic or individualistic interpretation.
+Our approach must needs be genetic in its scope. We
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_118">[118]</span>must take account of those integrations which mark the
+era of man’s first awareness and which reach back to the
+nebulous sources of consciousness itself. For the thoughtful
+student will demand to know the phylogenetic origin
+of this universal tendency to interdiction toward her
+offspring on the part of the mother. Whence <i>her</i> self-consciousness,
+he will ask. One’s answer must be largely
+intuitional, by which I suppose we mean that it must be
+gathered from sources that are coloured by intimations
+arising from one’s own organic life.</p>
+
+<p>It would appear that in his separativeness man has
+inadvertently fallen a victim to the developmental
+exigencies of his own consciousness. Captivated by the
+phylogenetically new and unwonted spectacle of his own
+image, it would seem that he has been irresistibly arrested
+before the mirror of his own likeness and that in the
+present self-conscious phase of his mental evolution he
+is still standing spell-bound before it. That such is the
+case with man is not remarkable. For the appearance of
+the phenomenon of consciousness marked a complete
+severance from all that was his past. Here was broken
+the chain of evolutionary events whose links extended
+back through the nebulous aeons of our remotest ancestry,
+and in this first moment of his consciousness man stood,
+for the first time, <i>alone!</i> It was in this moment that he
+was “created,” as the legend runs, “in the image and
+likeness of God.” For breaking with the teleological
+traditions of his agelong biology, man now became
+suddenly <i>aware</i>.</p>
+
+<p>That man’s spirit should have quailed before the wonderment
+of so complete an emancipation is not surprising.
+Sensing his utter isolation in the face of so strange, so
+unwonted a realization, he could only cling desperately
+to the one visible and concrete sign of the prenascent
+world from which he had newly emerged—to the urgent
+and ineradicable actuality of <i>himself</i>, the one and only
+link that remained to bind man to the vast and hitherto
+uninterrupted continuum of his primordial past. Yet
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_119">[119]</span>turn where he would, the organic hiatus had now been
+made and its inexorable breach yawned wide and inevitable
+before him. Unable as yet to endure the contemplation
+of his new freedom and the limitless expanse
+it spread before him, equally unable to recross again the
+gulf he had lately spanned and recover the paths of his
+original instinctiveness and automatism, the soul of man
+stood divided against itself. For man could now neither
+venture forth nor yet return again. In his division he
+could only grope blindly amid uncertain ways. Before
+him stretched the stern demands of consciousness and
+reality, behind him lay the fictitious decoys of a phantastic
+and immemorial preconscious. His choice lay between
+the two, yet he was incompetent to follow either. It is,
+it seems to me, the intermediate stage in man’s development,
+comprised of these two contending issues and
+entailing the irreconcilable conflict of which each individual’s
+experience is a recapitulation, that is the phylogeny
+of the unconscious. This is the experience of us
+all as it expresses itself in the self-consciousness that
+underlies the personal adaptation of each, through our
+gradually enforced awareness of the self.</p>
+
+<p>Considered also ontogenetically, the development of
+consciousness, contrary to accepted tenets, has by no
+means proceeded upon a fluent and harmonious course.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_21_21" href="#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a>
+In its very birth consciousness embodies a biological
+recoil—an organic impaction. Its very unfolding is an
+infolding, its begetting a misbegetting. For the rudiment
+of consciousness is self-consciousness. In its origin it is
+self-reflexive, self-relational. That is, consciousness in
+its inception entails the fallacy of <i>a self as over against
+other selves</i>. It is in this inevitable <i>faux pas</i> of man’s
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_120">[120]</span>earliest awareness, of his original self-consciousness
+(original sin), that consists the error or lapse in the process
+of his evolution. In this factor of development marked
+by the recoil of our self-consciousness or by the inference
+of our counter-relatedness is to be traced the momentary
+decline in the progressive curve of man’s organic evolution.
+Yet such temporary recessions embody the operation of
+laws that are entirely within the order of our developmental
+descent. In the first dawnings of new and
+untried possibilities, it often happens that, as growth
+proceeds, conditions that are later to become assets in
+the developmental scheme are in their rudimentary phase
+very burdensome liabilities. The infant that has not
+yet learned to walk is wont to crawl with much ease and
+impunity, but with the finer adjustment of walking once
+acquired he may now move about his world in an upright
+posture with far greater agility and comfort than the
+movement of crawling could ever have afforded him.
+And yet many are the rude impacts and ineptitudes that
+attend the gradual acquisition of his new endowment.
+And so the developmental possibility offered man through
+his attainment of the stage of self-awareness is not less
+an onward stage in his evolution because in his awkward
+unaccustomedness he employs it to his own undoing. It
+is one of the glories of his growth which he may temporarily
+dim but not permanently extinguish.</p>
+
+<p>With the further unfolding of the consciousness of man,
+or with his increasing awareness, there followed the
+recognition of the objective intervals between his congeners
+severally and between himself and them. His external
+senses of their very nature apprised him of such intervals,
+as, for example, those in relation to time and to space.
+With growing experience his perception of interval
+between himself and his fellows grew more and more
+insistent. It became indeed the basis of his operations.
+Besides, there were intervals which were not only spatial
+and temporal but intervals or differences that were
+attributive or circumstantial in their nature, such as
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_121">[121]</span>vocal and featural differences, differences of sex, size,
+colour and of texture.</p>
+
+<p>With this constantly growing, steadily deepening
+impression of difference, interval or separation in point
+of external characters, with this habitual looking out
+upon external or objective differentiation or <i>otherness</i>,
+something happened to the consciousness of man. That
+which happened was the <i>faux pas</i> in his evolution to which
+I have just alluded. For, through the suggestive influence
+of repeated observation of objective interval or discontinuity,
+man fell a victim to a trick of his own consciousness,
+and, from implications of disparity in the sphere of
+his peripheral contacts, he erroneously <i>inferred</i> differentiations
+in the sphere of his internal, nuclear, organic life.
+From data of observation in the field of his objective
+relationships he unconsciously drew analogous conclusions
+in regard to the essential continuities of his common,
+subjective consciousness, and so applied to the primary
+and inherent mode of his experience deductions which
+were warranted only with respect to the mode of his
+outer or objective awareness. From a difference of
+envelope he assumed a difference of content. From a
+dissimilarity of outer and accidental character he implied
+a disparity in the realm of his organic and essential life.
+<i>Thus arose the initial confusion accruing from the employment
+of objective method in terms of the subjective mode</i>.</p>
+
+<p>It is my position that the fallacy involved in confusing
+the separate or objective with the confluent or subjective
+mode has become the very warp and woof of the collective
+mind, as it is the biological basis of the displacements
+characterizing the pathological references of the
+insane. Dealing cognitively (objectively) with our affects
+and affectively (subjectively) with our cognitions, we fail
+to envisage what is actually before us. Where there are
+two individuals—oneself, let us say, as compared with
+someone else—because of the dissociated <i>feeling</i> content
+with which each regards the other, our presumably objective
+judgment rests upon a complete subjective misconception.
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_122">[122]</span>It is, of course, perfectly in order that
+people be demarcated by us one from another and from
+ourselves by characters that are external and accidental,
+and that this discrimination prevail even when such
+distinguishing characteristics are of a mental nature.
+But despite all such accidental differences, the original,
+inherent, organic life that is the underlying essence of
+any two individuals is common and identical. However
+different spatially, traditionally and characterologically,
+there is between them the essential bond of an inherent
+continuity, of an organic confluence.</p>
+
+<p>It is interesting how the folk mind betrays its need of
+this underlying subjective unity in its effort to offset the
+objective tendencies of differentiation. In its desire to
+express its feeling of amity, its sense of mutual understanding,
+the habitual mind automatically employs the
+phrase, “It makes no difference.” For example, if one
+has been unintentionally thoughtless of another, he is
+at once put at ease with the reassurance that “it makes
+no difference”—it being obviously felt that difference is
+the essential condition against which the social mind
+must preserve itself. Similarly we say, “It is no matter”
+or “It is immaterial”—a material or objective basis of
+relationship being evidently likewise sensed as an
+impediment to unity. There is the same implication in
+the disparaging intimation contained in the phrase, “He
+has an object in view.” And more telling still is the
+coalescence of the two affiliated ideas of matter and
+disunity in the use of the single stem-ending employed
+in the words “object” and “objection,” the evident
+implication being that <i>object</i> and <i>obstacle</i>, or <i>objection</i>, are
+subjectively indistinguishable.</p>
+
+<p>It seems to me that even such seemingly trivial etymological
+evidences betray the organic intolerance of differentiation
+within the sphere of the subjective life. However
+habituated we may have become to the subjective
+inferences of interval due to the objective report of our
+external senses, beneath these outer and accidental demarcations
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_123">[123]</span>there is the persistent assertion of an underlying
+principle of unification and continuity. In our own
+customary dissociated feeling we lose sight of this completely,
+and, because of the confusion of modes within
+ourselves, our judgment of others as being subjectively
+different from us reaches the point of actual criticism and
+resentment.</p>
+
+<p>A child early illustrates this tendency to erroneous
+inference when he refers to inanimate objects about him—a
+toy or household object—a disposition to thwart his will.
+For example, he will grow angry at some intractable
+plaything and strike or abuse it in peevish retaliation.
+And it is the unfortunate habit of unwise parents—that
+is, of parents generally—to encourage the child’s delusive
+tendency with some such corroborative remark as “naughty
+chair” (or whatever the offending instrument may be)
+and even to carry their complicity to the extent of themselves
+inflicting punishment upon the object in question.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_22_22" href="#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a></p>
+
+<p>This tendency to erroneous inference in the mental
+sphere is the fallacy of an objective method of psychiatry,
+as it is the underlying misapprehension of the clinical
+approach of psychopathology generally.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_23_23" href="#Footnote_23_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a> Indeed, this
+misconception is responsible for many of the inadvertencies
+of reason that exist throughout our scientific
+ranks. It would seem, after all, that the people who
+know most are precisely those who suspect least. If the
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_124">[124]</span>psychiatrist is asked what is dementia præcox, his answer
+consists merely in recounting the signs or symptoms
+“indicative” of the disorder. If he is directly confronted
+with the symptoms or indications of the disorder, he will
+tell you that they represent dementia præcox. With
+such a confusion in the mind of the psychiatrist one may
+well judge the confusion existing in the minds of people
+generally, and with this subjective confusion in ourselves
+one gains readily an idea of the kind of instruction which
+the student of psychiatry is now offered as a preparation
+for understanding the psychology of insanity! It does
+not occur to the psychopathologist to inquire what it is
+that constitutes the inherent condition whereof the
+specific symptoms as well as the generic term for them
+are but the pathological index. It does not occur to him
+to ask, in regard to this and other disease-processes, what
+it is that underlies the label as well as the appearances
+labelled. But unconsciously misled by the superficial
+or cognitive <i>aspect</i> of the real disharmony, he can only
+shift uncertainly from sign to countersign. The reason is
+that, lacking a societal encompassment of mental disorders,
+the psychiatrist does not recognize that a subjective
+condition is to be found alone within himself—that
+the condition for which, in his unconsciousness, he
+is now seeking the objective account is accessible only
+within the subjective processes of his own unconscious, as
+it is accessible subjectively only within the unconscious
+of mankind at large.</p>
+
+<p>Because of this confusion within ourselves we fail to
+recognize that delusion is essentially of the affective mode,
+that its cognitive expression is but its secondary rationalization—a
+symbolic picture presented in lieu of the
+corresponding affect denied. It is this type of “reasoning”
+that is responsible for the tendency one sees everywhere
+within philosophical circles to make dark the
+things that are clear. Descartes’ dictum, “I think, therefore
+I am,” is the keynote to this cognitive fallacy.
+The tendency, as I said, even of us who are psychopathologists
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_125">[125]</span>to evade the recognition of the element of
+unconscious replacement here—confounding cognitive
+form with affective actuality—is due, as always, to the
+bias of this self-same replacement within ourselves. Being
+social participants in the transposition of affect that is
+the societal neurosis, it cannot be otherwise. Hence this
+confusion between our perceptual and our affective
+modes is throughout a basic one, and as it is general in
+its origin it is necessarily general in its results.</p>
+
+<p>We commonly accept the assumption that mysticism is
+an emanation of the Hindoo consciousness, when in point
+of fact the Hindoo consciousness is an emanation of
+mysticism. In truth, mysticism is a replacement that is
+not more endemic to India than to England or to America.
+For in mysticism there is expressed merely this underlying
+fallacy of reference that is habitual to unconsciousness
+generally. Mysticism is thus as symptomatic of
+our matter-of-fact normality as of the most occult form
+of transcendentalism. Psychologically, the normal mind
+is synonymous with the mystical mind. Such a replacement
+is, then, no isolated eventuality signalized in some
+sporadic neurosis or psychosis but, by reason of its ethnic
+scope, it underlies no less the genial illusion of the collective
+social mind presented in the form of amalgamated
+unconsciousness habitually disguised under the social
+symptomatology of our so-called “normality.” Because
+of the automatic and unconscious transposition of modes
+that characterizes our mental processes at their present
+stage of development, the situation is one that obtains
+among us all. In the organismic sense we are none of us
+thinking clearly because we are none of us feeling clearly.
+This fallacy of implied subjective differentiation is the
+whole meaning of unconsciousness and the basis of all
+delusion. I believe that it is upon this deep-seated
+fallacy of affect incident to the development in man of
+consciousness or of self-awareness that rests the foundation
+of the social as of the individual neurosis.</p>
+
+<p>The situation with us is indeed a serious one. Except
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_126">[126]</span>for one’s faith in the ultimate triumph of the forces of
+integration over the disintegrative tendencies of our
+evolution, the mind could only despair at the contemplation
+of the vicious circle of mutual self-destructiveness in
+which our present attitude of unconsciousness involves us.
+As difference or discrepancy in the subjective or organic
+mode is, from the point of view of the continuity and
+cohesion of the species, self-destructive, the maintenance
+of such separateness entails for each individual a desperate
+loss of his sense of organic integrity. Under the blindness
+of the retroactive self-defence to which his erroneously
+assumed separateness inevitably drives him, he
+fights the more desperately to maintain his artificial
+individualistic oneness, and, the more desperately he
+contends, the further he defeats the acceptance of his
+true organic oneness. It is the inevitable fallacy of our
+disparate modes.</p>
+
+<p>Freud, then, is right when in seeking to solve the riddle
+of the neuroses he addresses himself to the personality as
+a whole. But he is wrong in positing a personal or preferential
+localization of this central personality as he does
+when he places this integral consciousness within the
+bounds of the separative individual. This is to frustrate
+at the outset the aim of understanding the processes of
+consciousness through succumbing oneself to the very
+mode of unconsciousness which supposedly it is one’s
+purpose to comprehend. It is an instance of one’s intentionally
+honest effort toward self-understanding failing
+to escape the pitfall of personal preference in its very
+outreaching toward the unprejudiced and true. The
+separative or the personal <i>is</i> unconsciousness. Discontinuity
+and unconsciousness are conterminous. Thus we
+are again and again brought back to the impasse which
+is our refusal to realize that the individual, as a self-appointed,
+unconscious unit, is but a separate and dissociated
+<i>part</i>, that only as the individual accepts his place
+as an integral, confluent part in the common, societal
+personality does he become a conscious, unified <i>whole</i>.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="p_127">[127]</span></p>
+
+<p>There is, then, the need to clear our vision through
+adopting the larger, more organismic viewpoint. There
+is the need to stand apart from the self and view it as the
+element that it is within the larger organism of mankind.
+From the organismic point of view the individual is as
+truly an element in the larger co-ordinated total comprising
+the ethnic organism of man, as the manifold cells
+comprising the individual body are elements in the
+larger whole constituting his individual organism. We
+have not as yet reckoned with the consolidated unity of
+this common societal entity. We have not reckoned
+with its organic urge in its influence upon human destiny.
+In our preoccupation with the dynamic or individualistic
+conception of the libido or of individual aggression, we
+have not reckoned with the genetic or organic urge that
+actuates the unitary race consciousness in its societal
+cohesion.</p>
+
+<p>It is commonly taught by the schoolmen that self-preservation
+is the first law of nature. I do not believe it.
+I believe that the instinct of tribal preservation is by
+far the dominant urge among us. I believe that this
+instinct takes precedence over the impulse of self-maintenance
+to a degree that renders individual life insignificant
+in comparison. In face of the reflex assertion of
+the impulse of race-preservation the individual is brushed
+heedlessly aside. A group of miners will without thought
+descend one after another into a gas-filled chamber to
+rescue a fellow-workman from death and one after another
+share the fate of their comrade. We all know countless
+instances of this rescue-impulse as a response to the organic
+instinct of race unity.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_24_24" href="#Footnote_24_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a> Nor is it confined to these more
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_128">[128]</span>sensational expressions of the impulse. The scientist in
+his laboratory toiling daily with indefatigable energy,
+receiving usually a remuneration that is not adequate to
+his actual needs and too often without even the sympathetic
+appreciation on the part of his environment of
+the significance of his quest, as it relates to the communal
+need he would serve, expresses equally this same organic
+instinct of racial solidarity. Yet I do not lose sight of
+the secret unconsciousness and separativeness that actuate
+also the unconscious and adaptive reactions of even the
+most earnest and gifted of these thoughtful, patient
+investigators. I am not unaware of the delusions of
+competition and petty jealousy existing even among the
+ranks of the scientific student. I am not blinking the
+facts of his personal vanity, of his pride of place and
+distinction. I will not deny how like a child he is when,
+on the day of college commencement, he is afforded the
+opportunity to parade to music in cap and gown and
+vari-coloured academic emblems in order that, having
+assembled with his colleagues, he may unite in praise of
+an archaic deity in thanksgiving for His all-wise discrimination
+in having personally called him to the best
+of conceivable institutions in the best of conceivable
+lands, etc., etc. But, notwithstanding the obviously
+disparate regression observable in these vestiges of
+obsolete nursery rudiments, there is yet, extending beneath
+it all, the surge of an earnest, unifying purpose that
+embraces the confluent needs of human growth as offered
+in interests pursuant of common, social ends.</p>
+
+<p>It is the inherent urge actuating this common societal
+impulse, as contrasted with the narrower motives of
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_129">[129]</span>separateness and self, that is envisaged in an organismic
+point of view. I believe that through this organismic
+outlook alone we shall come to embody the meaning of
+the neurosis in its true, impartial significance. In this
+conception we shall be in a position to view differentiation,
+under whatsoever form it manifests itself, as the fallacy
+of self-sufficiency, as the delusion of separateness that it
+is. Whether presented in the more restricted, individualistic
+expression of an hysterical hemiplegia, for
+example, or under the wider social aspect, let us say, of
+national militarism, we shall no longer study the mere
+manifest content embodied in the obvious symptom or
+signal—a focal hemiplegia or a focal militarism—but we
+shall address ourselves, in each instance, to the societal
+personality as a whole that underlies each and that
+comprises for both the organic totality of consciousness.
+We shall realize that in that totality lies the responsibility
+for the division among its elements expressed alike in
+both manifestations. We shall see that in these two
+seemingly widely dissimilar instances, one expressing
+itself within the individual man, the other within the
+nations of men, the situation is the same. In one,
+differentiation is caused by a breach in the neural continuity
+of the organism as symbolized by the inert,
+functionally disaffected segment within the individual;
+in the other, by a breach in the societal continuity of the
+organism represented in the functional anomaly of manic
+self-assertion and segmentation within the social body as
+symbolized in the separative reaction that has lately so
+disorganized the Western World. However different in
+outer form, in both reactions there is alike expressed an
+unconscious assertion of autocracy or the will-to-self as
+opposed to the confluent life of the organism as a whole.
+And it is only as we view these expressions, one individual,
+the other social, as identical reactions and study them in
+an identical spirit of interpretation, that we shall recognize
+the essential principle of our biology exemplified in them,
+namely, the inherent inviolability of the confluent life of
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_130">[130]</span>the organism, both individual and societal. Only in
+this organismic outlook shall we come to understand the
+true significance of the neuroses in the sense of really
+encompassing the disharmony embodied in them.</p>
+
+<p><i>It should be clearly understood that in the view of this
+thesis it is not a question of discrimination between the
+social and the individual, but between the societal and the
+individual societally conceived on the one hand and the
+social and the individual individualistically conceived on
+the other.</i></p>
+
+<p>From this position we have yet to encompass clearly
+the neurotic disharmony, individual or societal. We
+have yet to encompass in its real significance what is
+the most blatant expression of its societal embodiment.
+Because of our dissociative, individualistic outlook we
+have yet to consider the psychopathology underlying the
+phenomenon of war. We have failed to interpret its
+psychology in the light of the mental attitude that underlies
+and actuates it. We do not realize that the settlement
+of war is properly the concern not of politics but of
+psychiatry. Here, as elsewhere, we shrink from unearthing
+the actuality of the interred affect, preferring to
+preserve its image in the fanciful balm of our own illusions.
+Our horror of war is thus centred solely upon the façade
+it presents and not upon the inherent significance of war.
+Accordingly, our concern is merely to alter the aspect, the
+cognitive form, the mental picture, and, under this
+altered semblance due to our bidimensional alternation,
+we still retain the same affect submerged in the unconscious
+grievance of national separateness and antagonism.
+There is here the subjective fallacy of the transposed
+affect and the ancient metonymy of all unconsciousness.</p>
+
+<p>A conspicuous symptom of our societal pathology is
+the subjective illusion underlying the latent “belief”
+that diplomatic overtures between nations are competent
+to cope with the essential disharmonies which, from time
+to time, tend to issue in the social symptomatology of
+war, but which are, in reality, due to causative factors
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_131">[131]</span>deeply rooted in the psychopathology of man’s societal
+disunity. While not questioning the outstanding objective
+advantage of such superficial covenants as may
+secure to the social confederacies of nations at least a
+temporary cessation of their outward expressions of
+hostility, these surface amenities touch in no way the
+essential disorder. The real cause lies deeper and the
+real remedy must penetrate deeper. For the delusion of
+difference between nations, like the delusion of difference
+between individuals, is but the objective reflection of the
+subjective differentiation existing within the nation
+itself—a differentiation that is comparable to this same
+objective reflection existing within the individual as a
+subjective component of the national organism.</p>
+
+<p>Just as the conflict underlying the neurosis of the
+individual is truly understood only through an analysis
+in the individual of the vicarious reactions that underlie
+it, so an understanding of the conflict underlying the
+neurosis that is societal may be attained only through an
+appreciation of the substitutive reactions of the group-mind
+as disclosed through an analysis of the group-consciousness.</p>
+
+<p>Seen clearly, man’s restlessness to-day is, after all, the
+restlessness of intercepted growth. The tremors we are
+experiencing at this moment throughout the political and
+economic world undoubtedly owe their impulse to the
+awakening of a new order of consciousness. In the
+seething undercurrent of discontent throughout the
+social organism at the present time there is seen the
+symptom of a repression that is no longer reconcilable
+with the growing consciousness of that organism. As in
+the individual personality a condition of repression that
+has become too long pent must inevitably break forth
+in an ultimate overthrow of reason, so in the collection of
+individuals comprising the societal organism the ultimate
+response to a too long sustained repression can issue only
+in a correspondingly overwhelming disruption of the
+social personality.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="p_132">[132]</span></p>
+
+<p>In what has just been experienced sociologically as the
+World War, man is afforded an organic warning of the
+impending disintegration which lurks unseen beneath
+the surface crust of immediate and temporary social
+adaptations within the depths of his unconscious. In
+that far-sweeping manifestation there are felt the first
+rumblings of a sociological disturbance that bodes the
+utter destruction of our old order of habituations, and in
+that desperate expression of man’s social unconscious
+there is evident the need in which he stands of an earnest
+and far-searching self-analysis. For as overwhelming as
+is the catastrophe of the present war—and present it is—this
+catastrophe is but the detonator preceding the
+crash that is to come—a crash that has been gathering
+momentum within the unconscious of the race through
+centuries past and that will descend upon the world
+with inevitable fatality in the absence of a more societal
+and inclusive reckoning among us.</p>
+
+<p>Without the recognition of the meaning of our disaffection,
+sociological as well as personal, without a more
+conscious realization of the social involvement of our
+personal separateness, it will not be possible for the
+creative forces resident within the personality of man to
+come into their natural fruition. But thus to encompass
+the organic disaffection that actuates the neurosis is <i>to
+include it within ourselves</i>. Thus to realize discrepancy is
+to make real within ourselves, where they exist in all
+their completeness, the division and antagonism of the
+disparate consciousness, be its countenance individualistic
+or social. Such a realization—such a comprehension of
+life in its manifold unconsciousness is a subjective, organic
+experience. The process is one that entails the slow
+divorce of self from the long habituations of our narrow
+domesticities, personal, familial and national. It involves
+the gradual sundering of the artificial sophistications of
+self-consciousness with which our childhood has been
+enclosed and in which were early laid the foundations of
+the dissociation that has now become automatic in the
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_133">[133]</span>overwhelming impetus of its social involvement. The
+essence, then, of an understanding that truly encompasses
+the neurosis, consists in the recognition of our collective
+unconsciousness through the realization of a disaffection
+within and among ourselves as elements of a dissociated
+body-social.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="p_134">[134]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_III_1">
+    CHAPTER III
+    <br>
+    THE ORGANIC SIGNIFICANCE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS
+  </h3>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>In submitting a thesis which takes the position that the
+significance of the neurosis is its societal implication, and
+which lays the burden of its adjustment upon the societal
+mind at large, I fully realize that I am offering no welcome
+thought. The illusion of the separate self as all-sufficient
+and omnipotent is too obdurate not to regard with
+suspicion any attempt to dislodge it. Whatever the
+postulate, belief or argument, there lurks beneath it, in
+the mind of each of us, the unconscious determination to
+preserve intact the secret illusion of his own separateness.
+As long, however, as this affective fallacy underlies the
+reactions of our collective mentality, all efforts toward a
+reconstruction of society upon grounds of a more conscious
+and adult adaptation are futile. The adaptive and compensatory
+nature of the normal or collective mind occasions
+dissociation in all the activities arising out of it. With
+our mental outlook based upon illusion, our reactions
+are illusory. No matter how imposing in their manifest
+content, they are fundamentally spurious and undependable.
+For having been organically dissociated through
+the interdiction of the parent, normality is necessarily
+self-conscious and vicarious. This accounts for the ease
+with which the normal mind resorts to the replacements
+represented in mysticism. In the manifold expressions
+of mysticism the social mind finds its ulterior placations.
+This accounts for the habitual self-propitiations underlying
+its cherished superstitions and “beliefs,” and
+explains the whole meaning of the man-made immanence
+represented in the vicariously projected image of invincible
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_135">[135]</span>omnipotence we call “God”—an image with which we
+childishly seek to ally ourselves in order to sustain our
+impotent separateness. Men are tenacious of the substitution
+that is their “God” in a degree far beyond their
+suspecting. It is in vain that they pretend to throw Him
+off in the mere insolence of their reactionary “disbelief.”
+In their very challenge is His sovereignty
+reaffirmed. For wherever there is dogmatism there is
+doubt, and beliefs that are denied are unconsciously not
+less fixed and ineradicable than beliefs that are affirmed.
+As long as there is unconsciousness so long will men be
+a prey to its tyrannical alternatives. Though they
+break or kiss the rod, it is upon them still.</p>
+
+<p>Man will be slow to relinquish this symbol of God
+popularly employed by him as a defence against the free,
+unsponsored growth of his own spirit. It is a symbol, as
+are all symbols of the unconscious, that has been erected
+by us as a protection for the disparate self against the
+confluent life of our common organism. Indeed it is
+precisely in this collective illusion that is man’s most
+desperate recourse. Yet, in our very extremity and in
+the very tenacity with which we cling to this illusion,
+there is to be seen, as always, a symbol for which the
+only warrant is the profound reality that underlies it.
+In so far as the organically true is denied, there inevitably
+ensues the vicariously false, and the insistence of the substituted
+equivalent is invariably the more intense in
+proportion to the urge of the organic need withheld.
+It is organic law.</p>
+
+<p>Recalling the past, it is interesting to consider how
+conscientiously we have carried the biological method of
+research into the various objective fields of scientific
+inquiry. Yet, in regard to the subjective sphere wherein
+our own reality resides, we have persistently befuddled
+our perceptions through an unconscious adherence to the
+childish tenets of fear and superstition, instead of studying
+the phylogenetic account of our inherent mental
+descent in the spirit of objective disinterestedness. For,
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_136">[136]</span>unconsciously yielding habitual perceptions the supreme
+place even in the laboratories of consciousness, as embodied
+in the researches of analysis itself, we have continued to
+preserve the unconscious image of self habitually disguised
+under our personal interpretation of God. Restoring
+the form of the idol from time to time by covering
+the rent with a temporarily stouter fabric whenever the
+straw has appeared, we have continued to maintain the
+self-flattering programme of our vicarious and self-protected
+image-worship. Men apparently do not yet
+begin to recognize that the socially consolidated aberration
+constituting their image of God is an illusion that is
+identical with the individual expression long recognized
+by psychiatry under the clinical characterization of “ideas
+of reference.” Still seriously discoursing of the symbol
+called “God,” they assume that their <i>image</i> possesses an
+actuality apart from their own imagining.</p>
+
+<p>More significant still, however, is the fact that psychiatry
+too has its God. Objectively defining ideas of reference
+in others, we have failed to reckon with the subjective
+presence of this same replacement within ourselves.
+While we psychiatrists would carefully note the tendency
+to transposed affects within the arbitrary systems of the
+insane, we have wholly missed count of this same tendency
+within our own autocratic system. Among psychiatrists
+the favoured Deity is Dementia Præcox. The symptoms,
+reactions and prognostications assigned to the image
+implied in this arbitrary superscription attain with us to
+a quite endless category. And such is the subtlety with
+which the insidious tendency to the vicarious (affective
+displacement) secretly insinuates itself even into the
+courts of the elect, that individual personality is again
+and again led into the unsuspected trap that is our habitual
+confusion of the symbol for the reality that underlies it.</p>
+
+<p>In truth “Dementia Præcox,” the disease, is but the
+symbolic projection of dementia præcox, the actuality,
+ever resident in our generic unconsciousness. As it is
+the primary state of the infant psyche, its rudiment is
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_137">[137]</span>preserved in the unconscious of us all.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_25_25" href="#Footnote_25_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a> The understanding
+and acceptance of this biological substrate of
+consciousness within oneself offers the only condition of
+its solution. In this subjective course lies the whole
+significance of a really organic analysis. To hold a
+theoretical, objective attitude toward the insanities is to
+remain under the thrall of the social unconscious. To
+preserve our own repressions by attempting to deny this
+preconscious factor within ourselves is merely to perpetuate
+this regressive trend under its present symbolic
+guise. Theoretical substitution is the big-stick of normality
+of which an objective analysis is the butt-end.
+To maintain the normal, psychiatric, adaptive outlook
+is to be repressed, vicarious, theoretical. And by our
+attitude of aloofness we merely preserve in unconscious
+form in ourselves the symptom-complex we stigmatize as
+dementia præcox in others. But we cannot alleviate a
+mental disorder from which we stand apart. It is only
+as we accept the testimony of its rudimentary presence
+within our own consciousness that its significance in the
+consciousness of others may become clear.</p>
+
+<p>Of dementia præcox, the disease, psychiatry is in fact
+more a cause than a cure, just as mothers and doctors
+who habitually hold to a mental attitude of personal
+ministration and concern, however handy they may be in
+untoward emergency, are more an occasion than a remedy
+for disease in general. And so the real disorder, after all,
+is not dementia præcox but psychiatry. When the
+psychiatrist will have come to understand dementia
+præcox or the preconscious within himself, this objective
+figment of his own disordered consciousness will spontaneously
+vanish.</p>
+
+<p>To-day, the symbol of the social mind that is called
+“God”—the symbol under which man has worshipped
+himself so confidingly throughout the ages—is gradually
+losing its symbolic adequacy and, as is typical when the
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_138">[138]</span>foothold of man’s unconscious threatens to be dislodged,
+he is hastily replacing his shattered idol with an image
+that bears a new, a subtler and a more plausible disguise.
+Even in schools representing developments of the Freudian
+psychology and presumably devoted to impartial analytic
+inquiry into man’s unconscious, we find this same unconscious
+self-worship shifted from the broken image of
+“God” to a merely revarnished symbol set up upon the
+same altar and called by the newer name of “Love.”
+Though the form is altered, the substance remains the
+same. It is again man’s self-love projected into the
+spurious objective that best lends to it the flattering
+security of the seemingly real.</p>
+
+<p>I do not say that there is not in life an essential unity or
+love. I do not say that there is not for man an answer
+to the need he feels in his relentless but misguided pursuit
+of such an underlying reality. What I do say is that the
+unity he may find is the substance whereof the unity he
+is seeking is but the shadow; that in his unconsciousness
+he has not yet begun to seek the reality that is the need
+of his essential, organic life; and that, failing the reality
+which resides alone in the confluent, unified life of our
+common consciousness, he has pursued the temporary
+and personal satisfactions whereof such fanciful image-projections
+as “God” and “Love” are but hysterical
+replacements.</p>
+
+<p>What is significant is the fact that, under however
+subtle a guise he may clothe it, every individual in the
+great confederacy of “normality” entertains and is
+actuated by some form of “belief”—a “belief” either
+in “God” or “Love” or in some other concept that is
+the emotional equivalent of these more general fabrications
+of our collective unconscious.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_26_26" href="#Footnote_26_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a> But in the image
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_139">[139]</span>fashioned of belief there is seen the inevitable process of
+compensation vicariously exacted of us by virtue of our
+denying the fulfilment of the organic reality of life.
+The dissociated mind can of necessity observe only dissociatively.
+In its repudiation of reality it resorts perforce
+to vicarious images of reality. It is for this reason
+that the normal mind is the mystical mind. In its organic
+disunity it cannot be otherwise. Although it seek under
+manifold signs and symptoms to conceal the tell-tale of
+its stigma, its blight is betrayed by countless evidences
+of its dissociation from the societal or organic personality.
+And it is not in the nature of the <i>object</i> that consists the
+element of the mystical in our human pathology but in
+the <i>mode</i> in which the object is regarded.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_27_27" href="#Footnote_27_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a> The objects of
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_140">[140]</span>man’s mystical devotion offer an infinitely varied range.
+They may readily be presented by a host of images
+expressing the widest discrepancy in manifest content—for
+example, one’s conception of the cosmogony, “the
+true artist,” a scientific discovery, the “error of mortal
+mind,” one’s exchequer, “to-morrow” with its ever
+receding illusion of postponement, or a cult of mental
+healing with texts setting forth the ultimate solution of
+life; or, on the other hand, an autogenic sexual fetish, as
+one’s body, the unreal image one causes to stand for
+one’s mother, a favourite offspring, “God,” or “the superlative
+woman.” Among certain people a very popular
+vehicle for the mystical mode is one’s “voice.” To-day,
+too, there are people who talk in subdued whispers of the
+spiritual virtues of raw foods and who dilate by the hour
+upon the merits of lettuce—as though it were the millennium.
+Then there is to be noted the high place in
+mystical sanctuaries which the family escutcheon occupies
+among its votaries. There are people extant (I confess
+I am one of them) who still tend to entertain the belief
+that a reality underlies the social concept “good family.”
+And—comedy of comedies!—such is the subtlety with
+which the element of the mystical or of vicarious self-worship
+evades the reality of consciousness that the
+very “sincerity” with which one comes to “relinquish”
+such objects of infantile illusion may itself actually
+rank among the spurious images of this identical category!
+Seriously fancying herself well on toward the goal of her
+analysis, if not quite arrived, one of my patients remarked
+to another: “I want nothing.” It was spoken very
+gently, almost imperceptibly, so in keeping was the
+rendering with the spirit of its author. But it is evident
+that at least she wanted to be regarded as <i>not</i> wanting
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_141">[141]</span>anything, else she would have felt no occasion to remark
+her detached state. But how exquisite the subtlety here!
+Another says: “I want to get rid of <i>things</i>, that I may
+be more free.” Getting rid of things or husbanding them
+may equally fall within the mystical or dissociated mode.
+As for one’s “freedom” there is no object, unless it be
+one’s “truth,” that constitutes a more popular idol
+under which to hide the mystical fetish of one’s secret
+self-worship. But whatever the vehicle, that which gives
+to it the hall-mark of the mystical is its quality of an inner,
+esoteric experience possessing an indefinable, transcendental
+meaning revealed alone to the peculiarly favoured
+possessor. Observe here the characteristic element of
+distinction, the factor of favouritism, the inseparable
+paranoid element of special delegation. For the object,
+after all, as every object of the unconscious, is no other
+than the self or the parent from the point of view respectively
+of the parent or the self, and our civilized world
+of boasted normality becomes upon investigation but a
+nursery of ungrown childhood, filled to overflowing with
+bogus Gods and goblins!</p>
+
+<p>As the child lost in the street anxiously scans the face
+of every passer-by in the hope of discovering the features
+of his mother, so the grown-up, who has lost the quiet
+continuity of his organic life and flounders amid a world
+of dissociative habituations and ulterior ends, eagerly
+searches the countenances of all whom he meets, in the
+driving urge to incarnate anew the cherished image of
+<i>his</i> mother. The difference is that everywhere and in
+every one he finds her. And not his mother alone but
+his father, his brothers, his sisters, uncles and aunts,
+and with them (such is the magic of unconsciousness)
+the whole array of traditional furnishings reminiscent of
+his childhood’s scenery. For as his images are born of
+his fancy, his fancy may create them at his will. Thus
+the world at large is but the family at large and the social
+<i>genre</i> but the mother.</p>
+
+<p>In contemplating this identification of “the world”
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_142">[142]</span>with one’s mother we come to sense more intimately the
+real significance in normality of the widely featured
+phenomenon of suggestibility. As suggestion is the
+affirmative expression whereof repression is the negative
+form, suggestion, like repression, is but the operation
+upon the individual of the will of the consensus, of which
+we all, of course, are the only too willing dupes. For
+just as our succumbing to repression is the individual’s
+rejection of the consensual mind, so our succumbing to
+suggestion is the individual’s acquiescence in the consensual
+mind. So that, whether the impetus be the
+factor of suggestion or of repression, whether it be offered
+in the positive inducements to “good” behaviour or in
+the negative disparagements to “bad” behaviour, in
+either case one is but fancifully subjecting himself to the
+domination of the parental will in the expanded guise of
+the consensual unconscious. Contrary to popular belief,
+suggestion is no clinical specific; it is a social pandemic.
+The doctor does not wield it, it wields him. So that
+as suggestion and repression, or the will of normality
+(normality means “accepted rule” by the way), are but
+the will of the parent, it is the will of the parent that
+is really the “power” of suggestion. And as the influence
+exerted by suggestion, like the influence exerted
+by the parent, is based upon the mental precept of good
+and bad, suggestion like repression is necessarily separative
+in its effect. For its self-reflective tendency necessarily
+induces in us the inversion of self-worship. Again
+it is the discontinuity of the dissociative self in the separatism
+of its own unconsciously induced image.</p>
+
+<p>When we come to contemplate this childishness in
+ourselves, we are naturally loath to admit that all our
+beliefs are but make-beliefs, and our privately cherished
+convictions of certitude but the compensatory assumptions
+of mysticism and dissociation. To the man who
+entertains the inner conviction that the girl of his heart
+is just the one woman in the whole world for him, it were
+futile to point out his inconsistency by recalling an
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_143">[143]</span>identical “belief” maintained no less stoutly by him a
+few months ago in regard to his last year’s beloved. It
+were as futile as to attempt to expound to a paranoiac,
+who has proof that he is descended from Napoleon, that
+he is the unconscious prey to unwarranted ideas of
+grandeur. Both of these esoterists will only look you
+blandly in the face and explain to you compassionately
+that “you just do not understand.”</p>
+
+<p>Truly, of the tissue of illusion is the fabric of unconsciousness,
+whether presented under the form of hysteria,
+mysticism or suggestion. All being alike dissociative, all
+are alike inaccessible to the arguments of an organic
+logic. And more and more it seems to me that when we
+who are psychoanalysts consider <i>our</i> unconscious preoccupation
+with the concept, the symbolic equivalent,
+the theory of consciousness as a substitute for the daily
+lived actuality of man’s organic life in its totality, there
+is due the admission that psychoanalysis too, as it now
+exists among us, is itself no less an equivocation, a “belief,”
+an hysterical replacement for the common, organic confluence
+of our societal life. Indeed, precisely because of
+its high claim as representing the court of ultimate
+conscious appeal, psychoanalysis requires to be brought
+to book more than any other of the manifold dissociative
+reactions coming under an indictment that envisages our
+collective, social unconscious. We who are psychoanalysts
+talk of the joyous enfranchisement of consciousness and
+growth as compared with the palsying limitations of
+unconsciousness and regression, when all the while we
+neglect to impeach the unconsciousness of our own lives
+and the narrow interests of personalism and self that
+govern them. Because in our own normality we are
+ourselves so comfortably ensconced in the social security
+of the collective unconscious about us, we fail to recognize
+our own embroilment in it. And so, in the impregnable
+solidarity of mere mass supremacy, our own assumed
+validity passes unchallenged by us.</p>
+
+<p>To cite an example that is closest to me: I have
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_144">[144]</span>repeatedly held forth to patients concerning the potential
+joy inherent in adult love regarded in the light of the
+unifying principle of life, as though I myself participated
+in its subjective actuality in the simple, undifferentiated
+mode of my own daily living, when in fact I was
+only unconsciously exploiting the vicarious concept or
+symbol or theory of love, such as can only stand in the
+way of and obstruct the organic significance of love in
+its actuality. Thus, in spite of ourselves, unconsciousness
+makes disparate elements of us all. Indeed, it may
+more truly be said “because of ourselves” rather than
+“in spite of ourselves,” for, in an organic sense, self (the
+separative entity) and disparity are synonymous.</p>
+
+<p>But, however serious a situation that involves a world-wide
+neurosis, we may not take it tragically. The
+tragedy of it, after all, is only the unconsciousness of it.
+When we shall have truly analyzed the drama of the
+unconscious which now we but enact, there can be no
+tragedy, for the fabric of tragedy is woven merely of the
+elements of human “fate” in its embodiment of the
+unconscious. There is the need, however, to view our
+situation thoughtfully. Consciousness, in the sense of a
+true comprehension of life, will come into its own only
+when we have learned to look upon the humiliating
+spectacle of our dissociated selves with what enforced
+forbearance we can temporarily command. Our present
+attitude will continue to endure until more and more the
+disheartening sense of our disparities becomes accepted
+by us in an outlook that, having grown inclusive, has
+become our automatic and habitual mode.</p>
+
+<p>Paradoxical as it may sound, consciousness has turned
+the heads of us all! As it has turned them in a direction
+that has been inward upon our own image, each of us,
+as a result, has built of his individual organism a little
+separate entity unto himself—an entity which in its
+organic dissociation from life as a whole is necessarily
+wrought of a spurious fibre. Developmentally man is
+the biological snob <i>par excellence</i>. Scorning the slower
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_145">[145]</span>accretions of growth that can alone imbue him with true
+biological culture, in his effort “to attain” he has
+attempted to pass too hastily from his humble category
+of vertebrate to the more socially elevated plane of
+“cerebrate.” The result is that what he assumes to be
+cerebration is really but a fictitious brain-state that has
+become entirely withdrawn from continuity with his
+organic life. So that from the point of view of consciousness
+in the sense of an integral mental life—the especial
+mark whereby we claim prerogative over all other species—man
+is, by this very token, the least integrant of them all!</p>
+
+<p>And yet, when we think of it, our predicament is really
+no shame to us. Consciousness is, after all, a very recent
+asset among us. That we should treasure it narrowly,
+personally, is but the inevitable entail of its slow, laborious
+evolution. It is as if, in our societal separativeness, our
+race had grown grey before its childhood had begun and
+we were now out of breath keeping pace with ourselves.
+For it is only our separativeness that has prematurely
+burdened us with the crushing weight of self-imposed
+responsibilities such as are the concomitant toll of our
+hallucinated self-sufficiency. Unlike the adult, the spontaneous
+joy of children is their whole-hearted participation
+in the free, impersonal radiation of life. Unlike ourselves,
+their personal importance has not yet defeated their
+impersonal significance. As yet they do not live under
+the curse of a dogma of conduct. Theirs is no creed of
+behaviour that is of one cloth with an enforced pretence
+of “goodness.” Their lives are not a daily concession to
+fanciful needs of self-protection against an arbitrarily
+predicated world of “evil.” Adult vigilance, however,
+early inculcates its delusion of separateness—of a self to
+be defended against other selves—and its dissociative
+influence is slowly imparted to the confiding mind of
+childhood. In a world of dissociation this universal
+suggestion acts with powerful effectiveness, and the child
+of yesterday, having once been inducted into the general
+guild of secret mistrust and compensatory behaviourism
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_146">[146]</span>and grown to parenthood, may be safely trusted to pass
+on without question the secret code of differentiation,
+self-distinction and disharmony to the offspring by which
+he is in turn succeeded.</p>
+
+<p>When God called Adam and took him to task for
+going about naked (for eating of “the tree of the knowledge
+of good and evil”), asking him if he felt no sense of
+shame, Adam’s prompt response was to betake himself to
+the bushes overcome with embarrassment. Whereas
+obviously the logical response on Adam’s part would
+have been: “By no means. I am the outcome of your
+own handicraft and if there is any flaw in the product it
+is not for me to feel chagrin.” As a matter of fact, Adam
+was in nowise different from the rest of us. But there
+he crouched, submissively answerable for the work of his
+creator and there he has got us all crouching ever since!
+God, of course, employed the familiar parental recourse
+and intimidated Adam, calling from afar to him in his
+place of hiding. As was calculated, the strategy was
+completely effective and promptly brought Adam to his
+knees. All of which legend is but the allegorical statement
+of the simple organic truth that shame has first
+to be artificially induced in us before it can be experienced
+by us. Division or shame having been put into us, of
+course we feel division or shame.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_28_28" href="#Footnote_28_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="p_147">[147]</span></p>
+
+<p>If we have become aware of ourselves and of our unprotectedness,
+it has been quite in the order of our
+evolution. But by the same process it is now high time
+for us to realize that there is no need of protection, and
+accordingly to come out of hiding and recognize that our
+fear and our self-protection, being alike identical with the
+myth of Adam’s indiscretion, are alike induced in us by
+the identical process of an external word of repression or
+command thrust in upon an essentially inherent and
+consonant mode.</p>
+
+<p>In the absence of our realization of this blunder into
+which we have fallen, from generation to generation we
+unconsciously repudiate the natural unity of our common
+life in favour of a life prompted by sophistication and
+disparity. Ourselves begotten of alien affects, our feelings
+in turn breed diverse cross-strains which can issue
+only in equally hybrid reactions. We refuse to see that
+the “evil,” alike with the “good,” is naught but the
+delusion of separateness extraneously induced in us
+through our artificial self-consciousness. This subjective
+division within us is the essential meaning of the all-pervasive
+bogey of our so-called incest-awe. As I see it,
+incest-awe is the organic inconsistency of this division
+within the organically indivisible sphere of man’s essential
+feeling. Normality is unconsciously under its thrall
+because, through its organic disunity, normality has
+unconsciously placed itself under its sentence. Psychically
+normality <i>is</i> incestuous and hence its awe. The
+degree of its awe or guilt-revulsion is precisely the measure
+of its psychic inbreeding. The more organically unwelcome
+the infolding, the more organically outraged or
+neurotic the personality, and, accordingly, the greater the
+awe or feeling-conflict resultant upon our unconscious
+intimations of organic “guilt.” Our sexual self-consciousness
+is the perennial fig-leaf of early tradition
+foliating anew in our critical Twentieth Century. It is
+the division of the self of behaviour from the self of
+spontaneity, of the self as disparate entity from the self
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_148">[148]</span>as an integral element in our common organic life that is
+the meaning of the incest-awe as of the neurosis, in its
+social as well as in its individual expression.</p>
+
+<p>When once we have assumed the broader organismic
+outlook, we shall see that, beyond a more extended compass
+of vision, there is really nothing of an innovation in
+this societal mode of envisagement. In respect to all
+systems coming under scientific observation, we have
+habitually entertained a biological conception of the
+relation <i>inter se</i> of the elements to their aggregate that is
+identical with the conception offered in the present theme.
+Hitherto the area generally considered has merely been
+circumscribed within narrower limits, that is all. When
+we shall have learned to move aside from our personal
+involvement in it, we shall see presented an organic
+phenomenon which upon examination consists of a dissociation
+within the societal organism. We shall see
+that this dissociation involves disharmony in respect to
+the mental and social relationships of the unit-elements
+or individuals that comprise ourselves and constitute
+<i>inter se</i> the larger biological aggregate of our common
+consciousness. Maintaining our impersonal angle of
+envisagement and turning to the idea of the sum of the
+more circumscribed biological aggregate constituting the
+individual, we see that this dissociation is, in reality,
+identical with the dissociation within the individual
+organism that manifests itself as impairment of harmony
+in respect to the physiological or functional relationships
+of the units or cells comprising <i>its</i> ultimate elements.
+When we lose sight of our place as common elements
+within the organic aggregate of mankind—as in the
+absence of an encompassing organismic point of view we
+must—we tend to separate arbitrarily the biological
+continuity of the two spheres, the individual and the
+societal. Because of our own subjective involvement we
+fail to recognize that the societal sphere, in the more
+inclusive sense, is the aggregate whereof the individual is
+the unit, precisely as in the more circumscribed physiological
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_149">[149]</span>view the body cells are the units of which the
+individual is himself the aggregate. Between the two
+spheres there is a progressive continuity. There is no
+interruption of the organic transition from one to the
+other. For the psychological or the societal and the
+functional or physiological are continuous.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_29_29" href="#Footnote_29_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a></p>
+
+<p>It is evident that every bodily lesion consists of a
+<i>separation</i> among the elements of the impaired part.
+If among the cells of the liver, for example, there is produced
+the condition of disharmony or disease represented
+by a state of inflammation, there inevitably occurs some
+partition, some breach in or interruption of their concerted
+function, or of the function of the organism as a
+whole. The unfailing signal wherewith the individual is
+apprised of the destructive process is the reaction subjectively
+registered as <i>pain</i> or a sympathetic awareness
+on the part of the aggregate organism of the disordered
+condition of these elements constituting a part of itself.
+Such a disordered state or lesion being thus reported to
+the central system, as it were, the immediate response is
+an outcry of pain and a prompt recourse to remedial
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_150">[150]</span>aids. The organism as a whole, experiencing pain,
+reflexly demands relief, for the reason that impairment
+of the organism in any of its parts is a menace to its
+integrity as a whole. That is to say, when any one of
+us as an aggregate experiences pain in any part whereof
+he is the whole—when he experiences some local inflammation
+or separation within the elements of a part or
+organ within himself, he promptly directs his efforts
+toward its alleviation. But in the organic whole comprising
+the societal aggregate whereof he, as an individual,
+is the contributive element or part, the situation, as we
+shall in a moment see, is wholly altered. As related
+parts or elements within the larger organic aggregate, it
+is we ourselves who are the separative process—the circumscribed
+area of inflammation.</p>
+
+<p>It is essential to bear in mind that the organic pathology
+of this biological lesion or separation that is the individual’s
+dissociation from the inherent continuum of his
+organic, racial congeners is a condition that is conterminous
+with the individual’s division or separation within himself.
+For organically there is no difference between himself
+and his congeners. Thus in respect to this societal lesion
+the individual element bears a twofold relation, an
+intrinsic and an extrinsic one. The element as an
+<i>individual</i> within the societal organism on the one hand
+is the <i>source</i> of the lesion. And on the other hand, as an
+organic <i>participant</i> in the confluent race consciousness,
+this same element or individual <i>experiences</i> the lesion as
+a menace to the integrity of his own organic consciousness
+or of his confluent life as a whole. The individual is thus
+the contained and the container, the stimulus and the
+response. Herein lies the unassuageable poignancy of
+the neurotic conflict. It is a conflict between the part
+and the whole, wherein the individual is the embodiment
+of both. Since he is unconsciously the part while inherently
+the whole, his conflict is one that is concomitantly
+individual and societal, for the individual and the societal
+factors are organically inseparable.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="p_151">[151]</span></p>
+
+<p>Just as in a comprehensive inquiry into the structural
+development of the organism it is necessary to consider
+not only the biological characters occurring in the development
+of the individual but also the corresponding characters
+observable in the development of the race, so in an
+organismic study of consciousness it is necessary that we
+keep in mind the essential parallelism between its individual
+and its phyletic trends. Analogous to what we
+know of the facts of comparative biology in the structural
+sphere, the organic consciousness of man, which we see
+expressed ontogenetically in the essential continuity of
+the individual personality, finds its phylogenetic expression
+in the inherent continuity of the societal organism.
+Accordingly, as the miscarriage of this primary continuity
+of consciousness is to be seen in the dissociation of the
+single personality, so the miscarriage of man’s societal
+personality is correspondingly to be seen in the social
+dissociation of the collective unconscious. After all, the
+consciousness of the individual is but the consciousness
+of the race in miniature, and the personal dissociation
+within the individual is, therefore, only the miniature
+expression of the social dissociation within our societal
+consciousness. In other words, as one’s individual
+organism is a replica of the social organism, the dissociation
+of the social mind is identical with the dissociation
+of the individual mind. For, since the societal and the
+individual factors of evolution are identical in their
+course, the social and the personal factors of dissociation
+are also identical. Hence the dissociation that is personal
+is necessarily social; the neurosis we study in the individual
+is necessarily concomitant to a neurosis within
+the wider social polity.</p>
+
+<p>Let us now compare the difference in the subjective
+reaction of the individual according as he is himself the
+aggregate experiencing pain in any part of <i>his</i> organism,
+or as he is himself a part unconsciously contributing to
+the lesion within the organism comprising our common
+societal aggregate. As central system presiding over his
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_152">[152]</span>own individual organism we have seen his prompt recourse
+to agencies of relief at the least trespass upon the integrity
+of any organ or part within himself. But observe the
+total reversal of reaction when he himself, as a single
+individual element, is the pathological instance threatening
+the integrity of the organic aggregate that encompasses
+him as a single individual element. Mark how he struggles
+<i>in blind collusion with</i> the disruptive process he unconsciously
+or separatively embodies. Such is precisely the
+behaviour of the neurotic individual and such is precisely
+the meaning of his “resistance.” For in such a situation
+he seeks recourse to every conceivable avenue of evasion
+and of symbolic disguise in order to escape the protests
+of pain in the central inherent system resident in the
+common societal consciousness and experienced by him
+in its continuum with his own essential life. In the
+spirit of his behaviour he is exactly comparable to an
+individual who, on succumbing to a local disease-process,
+would seek to stifle the organism’s premonitory pain in
+order to aid the toxic invasion and further its ravage
+within his own tissues! Such, however, in our unconsciousness
+is precisely the case with each of us. Each of
+us, in his misguided, ingrown self-interest, constituting in
+himself the pain and impairment that operate within and
+against the organic societal aggregate, contends in his
+self-protection not against but in favour of the disease-process
+which, from the point of view of the societal,
+organic life, is his own destruction. He seeks not its
+interruption but its continuance, not its remedy but its
+aggravation, precisely as the inflammatory process in
+any organ within the body seeks to maintain its separateness
+and prolong to a fatal issue the destructive process in
+the individual.</p>
+
+<p>It is characteristic of separateness that it fights desperately
+for its own separative ends. Separateness, being
+destructive, must operate destructively. It would even
+seem that this self-destructive tendency on the part of
+the isolated component is the penalty imposed by the
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_153">[153]</span>societal organism to safeguard itself against the tendency—among
+any of its elements as parts—to infringe upon the
+integral sum of elements constituting the organic whole.
+But if the separateness of the part is its own destruction,
+concomitantly the confluence of the whole is its own
+conservation. If the neurotic regarded individually, or
+as the embodiment within himself of a societal lesion, is
+an expression of separatism and pathology, the neurotic
+viewed organically, or as the embodiment within himself
+of the societal continuum, is no less an expression of
+confluence and health. If, in the first instance, he is
+himself the disorder that is his own separatism and unconsciousness,
+in the second he is the integration that is
+his own confluence and consciousness. It is this constructive
+aspect of the neuroses of which we have not
+yet taken account and of which we may take due cognizance
+only upon the basis of a wider, organismic interpretation
+of these disorders of the personality. It is the
+understanding of these disharmonies in the light of their
+congeneric significance, and their encompassment as
+morbid processes operating within the separative individual
+organism to obstruct the function of the societal
+organism as a whole, that is the significance of an organismic
+formulation of the neuroses.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="p_154">[154]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_IV_1">
+    CHAPTER IV
+    <br>
+    ORGANIC ANALYSIS OF REPRESSION AND OF
+    THE FACTOR OF RESISTANCE FROM THE
+    SOCIETAL VIEWPOINT
+  </h3>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>The psychic phenomenon with which Freud was confronted
+in the very inception of his work was the element
+of repression and its concomitant reflection in the objective
+reaction of resistance. The resolution of this factor
+of repression or resistance Freud came very early to
+regard as the essential problem of psychoanalysis. But,
+as we have seen, Freud’s conception of resistance was
+inevitably coloured by his own individualistic monocular,
+and in consequence it was not possible for him to view
+the neurosis of the individual in its societal implication.
+Lacking a societal basis of interpretation, he could not
+see that the resentment toward one’s fellows comprising
+the individual’s social resistance is merely the individual’s
+objective evasion of the subjective disaffection within
+his own essential organism. Mistaking the mere symbol
+of the individual for the inherent continuity of individuality,
+Freud could not see the biology of resistance as the
+breach it is in the individual’s continuity with life as a
+confluent, organic whole.</p>
+
+<p>From an organismic viewpoint, the individual’s reaction
+of resistance or his effort to project upon his fellows the
+pain of his subjective curtailment and repression only
+illustrates further the essential <i>sociology of the neuroses</i>.
+In the fuller light of a societal basis it may be seen that
+the mechanism of social replacement embodying resistance
+is purely symptomatic of the individual’s constraint
+toward a surface rationalization of his own inherent
+grievance. His grudge is not personal, it is societal. It
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_155">[155]</span>is not logical, it is biological. Residing wholly within
+himself, it involves only himself. His tendency to <i>refer</i>
+his grievance to the attitude of others is due to his own
+separative habituation and to his consequent effort to
+escape the <i>seeming</i> isolation of his biological responsibility
+toward it. And so the problem of resistance is
+central, not peripheral. Like its close kin charity (if
+not its very self in the garb of religious sentimentalism)
+the relinquishment of resistance is a benison that begins
+at home. It may not be inculcated through theoretical
+precept nor through the subtlest refinement of a technique
+based upon a system of analysis, but only through our
+actual participation in the societal confluence that is its
+underlying biology. Our very theory of resistance as an
+impediment to life is itself a resistance. For no formulation
+of life can function as life. It is only life itself in its
+organic confluence that may abrogate the separateness
+that is the essence of resistance. Whether in the societal
+or in the individual sphere, whether in the sphere we
+arbitrarily designate as psychological (mental) or in that
+we call functional (physiological), the question of health
+or disease hangs solely upon the issue as to whether the
+element—cell or system—functions integrally or separatively,
+congruently or resistantly. Under the limitations
+of a dissociative reaction toward the confluent, societal
+organism as a whole, such as constitutes our present
+socially affective mode, the individual organism cannot
+but react disaffectedly, and hence further the disruptive
+tendencies that breed disharmony within its own life.
+The dissociated organism can function only dissociatively.</p>
+
+<p>If it is true of the world at large that each is against
+each, if throughout the tissue of the societal fabric every
+element is maintaining its own separateness against every
+other element, where may there be found a way to restore
+the condition of societal confluence that is the basis of
+man’s inherent life? Clearly, if this separation from the
+organic life takes place within the individual, its reconcilement
+must take place also within the individual.
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_156">[156]</span>As, however, the individual is but a replica of every other
+individual—an organic world in miniature in the complex
+of sensations and emotions comprising his own personality—the
+reconcilement of the organic conflict within himself,
+or his own unification of personality as an integral part of
+the continuum uniting the whole, is also the reconcilement
+and the unification of himself with his congeners. Naturally,
+such a reconcilement cannot be the achievement of
+the individual as a separate social unit, but only of the
+individual as an integral element in the organic unit of
+our common life.</p>
+
+<p>It is just here that there needs to be unearthed the
+essential fallacy of Freud, as of us all—a fallacy that has
+been the inevitable outcome of a habit of reasoning that
+is inseparable from the disparate social unit and its dissociative
+mode. Precluding within himself a participation
+in the organic societal mode, it was, of course, not
+possible that Freud should take account, in any inclusive
+organismic sense, of causative elements lying within this
+mode. Reasoning from the biased premises of an unconscious
+separatism, he could reckon only with elements
+falling within the scope of the separative mode, that is,
+he could only reckon personally—I mean in the sense of
+dissociatively rather than integrally.</p>
+
+<p>In Freud’s conception of the neurosis the condition
+embodies a repression of sexuality. That is, sexuality,
+regarded as synonymous with the sexual instinct, is
+posited as the primary factor of which the attitude of
+repression is a subsequent issue. In other words,
+sexuality or the “libido,” as commonly understood (the
+separative will-to-self&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_30_30" href="#Footnote_30_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a> in the view of the present interpretation)
+is in Freud’s formulation the basic, antecedent
+element, and repression (whatever the occasion—lack of
+adequate outlet perhaps or the inadmissible character of
+the sexual impulse) is the organism’s automatic recourse
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_157">[157]</span>operating as a result. So that Freud assigns the cause of
+a mental disharmony to the subject’s repressed sexuality,
+and the basis of his analytic procedure has been very
+logically the endeavour to remedy the situation through
+an adjustment of the sexual life. Accordingly, it is the
+essence of the individualistic position of Freud that the
+neurosis is represented in life’s repression of sexuality;
+while it is the essence of the organismic attitude here
+defined that the neurosis consists in sexuality’s repression
+of life. In brief, according to the dynamic conception of
+Freud, the basis from which individual life takes its
+origin is represented in a heterogeneous substrate that is
+biologically discrete and “polymorph perverse”; whereas
+in the genetic conception of the present formulation life
+traces its source to a homogeneous matrix that is organically
+confluent and unitary.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_31_31" href="#Footnote_31_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a></p>
+
+<p>In the light of a conception which assumed that the
+integrity of consciousness resides within the personality
+of the individual, Freud’s confusion was inevitable. Yet
+viewed even from the standpoint of the individual, the
+factors of repression and sexuality can be regarded only
+in the light of organic concomitants. Under whichever
+of these alternate forms of reaction it may appear, both
+forms are the inevitable extremes of the dilemma due to
+the conflict that has been artificially created within the
+organism. Both are the individual’s restless evasion and
+substitution following inevitably upon its separation from
+its primary organic source. Although repression and
+sexuality are organic concomitants, being simultaneous in
+their occurrence and in their efficacy equal and contrary,
+the factor of repression is dynamically the prior instance.
+This is true precisely in the sense that the pressure of my
+hand as I lay it upon the table is dynamically the prior
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_158">[158]</span>stimulus, though the two elements involved—my hand and
+the table—are from the point of view of the respective
+pressures exerted by each, mutually coincident and equal.
+Considered in the light of individualistic consciousness (unconsciousness),
+repression with its actuation in the alternative
+of infantile fear or “goodness” and sexuality with
+its compensatory reaction in the alternative of infantile
+defiance or “badness” are inseparable and conterminous.
+For repression and sexuality are equally the <i>result</i> in the
+individual of the factor of organic disunity in the societal
+consciousness. There is the need to emphasize the fact
+that the reaction of sexuality as it abounds among us is
+currently confused with the basic instinct of sex. In
+point of fact sexuality is the direct antithesis of this
+organic expression.</p>
+
+<p>The vast mass of the literature of sexuality embraced
+under sexology, with its voluminous representation of
+man’s symbolic relation to life, will some day undoubtedly
+appear comparable in value to the equally formidable
+array of literary compilations that discourse of God and
+of man’s extraordinarily complex relationship to Him
+included in a no less voluminous theology. As articulate
+in form, as sympathetic in treatment and as logical in
+development as both these themes undoubtedly are, it
+will ultimately be seen, I believe, that both are equally
+open to serious criticism and both on identical grounds,
+namely, that in respect to the matter of each, there is no
+matter there. I mean literally that, in default of the
+objective reality of the subjects treated under the two
+discussions by their respective authors, both treatises are
+in their nature utterly spurious. In Ellis as in Calvin,
+in Freud as in Aquinas, the sexuality envisaged in one
+system no less than the divinity envisaged in the other
+lacks a basis of reality. Both are vicarious rationalizations
+of the collective unconscious due to the effort to
+compensate its repression of the organic integrity of our
+common, societal consciousness. The concept “God” in
+the one instance, and its counterpart, obsessive sexuality
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_159">[159]</span>in the other, are in the meantime made to serve the
+expedience of temporary symbols.</p>
+
+<p>It is noteworthy that man is the only species of the
+animal world whose communal life requires for its regulation
+a system either of sexology or of theology. Concomitantly,
+one cannot but remark the far stronger
+co-operative instinct existing among the animals and the
+consequently incalculably greater societal solidarity of our
+less “conscious” kinsfolk as compared with our own!&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_32_32" href="#Footnote_32_32" class="fnanchor">[32]</a></p>
+
+<p>Approaching the problem of the neurosis anew from
+the vantage coign of a more inclusive, integral background,
+I have come to regard the factors of sexuality
+and repression as standing to each other in a relationship
+that is the exact reverse of that assumed by Freud—the
+factor of repression being from this altered viewpoint the
+primary <i>cause</i> and sexuality the incidental <i>result</i> entailed
+by it.</p>
+
+<p>To make clear what I mean, it is necessary to view the
+societal aggregate, with its basis in our organic consciousness,
+as an entity distinct from that of the separative
+individual unit with its basis in our dissociated unconscious.
+The element of repression is incident to the
+interruption of our functional participation in the unitary
+race consciousness. The separative, dissociated attitude
+of mind that precipitates the obsessive, dissociated and
+resistant individual is a development consequent upon
+this interruption. So that it is only as we come to
+recognize our need to include the sphere of man’s integral
+organic life that the conception of repression as a factor
+anterior to sexuality may be understood in its biological
+import. To this end our conception of the organic
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_160">[160]</span>societal consciousness needs to acquire the coherency of
+clearer form and definition. We need to take account of
+the original, racial solidarity of man’s consciousness and
+to consider the interpenetrations of common instincts
+and habits that originally ramified throughout the undifferentiated
+mental tissue of our common species,
+knitting its contributing elements into a unitary, homogeneous
+organism.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_33_33" href="#Footnote_33_33" class="fnanchor">[33]</a> We need to form a clearer image of
+the uniform, co-ordinated <i>one-mindedness</i> of this primordial,
+“multi-cellular” organism that was man. In brief,
+we need to recognize the <i>individual</i> that was originally
+the aggregate consciousness of the race. For, to consider
+man’s phylogeny at this period of his evolution is
+to consider a unitary organism. It is to break through
+the prejudice of the separative mode of individual men
+and reckon immediately with the unified principle of
+consciousness as a whole, from which only later there
+diverged the separative elements represented in the
+dissociated units we ourselves now comprise, but which
+unified principle survives to-day unaltered in the common
+unity of our confluent societal personality.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_34_34" href="#Footnote_34_34" class="fnanchor">[34]</a></p>
+
+<p>Such is the parent organism from which we trace the
+course of our psychobiological descent. Such is the
+parent organism from which we trace as well our psychobiological
+dissent! For it is evident that at a certain
+stage in the growth of this nuclear, racial organism there
+must have arisen those first faint stirrings which subsequently
+entailed man’s earliest reckonings with the
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_161">[161]</span>nebulous beginnings of his self-awareness. This reaction
+whereby mind for the first time grew aware of itself was
+thus a societal reaction. It involved the aggregate, not
+the element. Its scope was ethnic, not individual. It
+was the primal awareness of man’s organic consciousness.
+In our unconsciousness we deny the reality of this
+biological phylum embodied in our organic consciousness
+and underlying the processes of our individual mentation.
+For this reason we seek perforce to appease our organic
+need through the imaginary solaces of a fanciful immanence
+that is but the unconscious <i>symbol</i> of the immanent
+and encompassing actuality of this common consciousness.
+In our unconsciousness we deny the collateral immediacy
+of our societal inclusiveness and for this reason we project
+the lineal image of indefinite extension composing
+man’s dream of a personal life eternal. Denying our
+organic unity of compass, we compensate in a fanciful
+unity of duration. Denied his societal participation in a
+communal earth, man’s need can only vent itself in the
+private illusion of a sectarian heaven. After all, life in
+its reality is immediate. Philosophy <i>ad infinitum</i> to the
+contrary notwithstanding, there is no “time” like the
+present! When we can enter heartily into the realization
+of the “pseudo” quality of our mental unctions, we
+may begin to sense more closely the organic inevitableness
+of such symbolic equivalents as the generic folk-image
+of “God” and the infinite corps of His understudies,
+impressed one after another into the service of man’s
+inverted narcism. We may, then, realize that nowhere is
+nature’s abhorrence of a vacuum more vigorously asserted
+than in the organic intolerance of consciousness toward
+the voids of unreality. We may, then, understand how,
+upon the slightest suspension of reality in the sphere of
+consciousness, a symbolic surrogate will inevitably fill the
+rift with a punctuality that is automatic. This is reality’s
+ultimate test of reality. It is the unfailing standard of
+the organism in its measure of the actual. Here is truth’s
+organic criterion.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="p_162">[162]</span></p>
+
+<p>In their original organic commonness, individuals
+were complete and sufficient. They were undisturbed by
+the separative attitude of mind that mars our present
+development with competition and dissension. They did
+not spend their days in self-interested comparison. They
+had not yet come into the conflict of a self-conscious image-worship.
+In this sense—that the mental tissue of our
+common species was then undifferentiated—the aggregate
+consciousness of the race was synonymous with the
+consciousness of the individual. It was an organically
+unified consciousness.</p>
+
+<p>Through the organic violation on the other hand,
+involved in the primal recoil of self-consciousness within
+this societal organism, there is to be traced the biological
+history of our mental and social disharmonies. Here, I
+believe, is to be traced the inception of man’s collective
+unconscious and the phylogeny of the societal neurosis.
+Under the authority of this long-standing and consolidated
+system of repression the individual is born, and
+still under its shadow he enters upon the course of his
+development as an individual. It is this organized Mafia of
+societal repression, with its enormous weight of traditional
+and conventional authority—this repression within the
+collective societal unconscious, with its ready initiation of
+each new subject—that is the causative factor in the
+secondary reaction which we observe in the individual
+as “repression of sexuality.” In our own unconscious
+fealty to the system about us we fail utterly to comprehend
+that <i>the repression which we observe in the individual is
+the result of a prior cause lying outside of the individual
+and that it consists of the repression within the collective,
+racial unconscious acting concertedly from without upon the
+now detached individual unit</i>.</p>
+
+<p>It is important to distinguish between the social prohibition
+operating upon the discrete element or individual
+as a response to popular covenant, and the societal prohibition
+that operates within the confluent aggregate and
+is coincident with our organic separation from man’s
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_163">[163]</span>primary societal consciousness. The former is the result
+collectively of the latter, just as the neurotic repression is
+the result of it individually. For the societal repression
+is primary and the social reaction is a repression subsidiary
+to it.</p>
+
+<p>To understand aright the essential conception of this
+thesis, it is necessary to have clearly in mind the basis
+upon which it rests. This basis is the distinction between
+the element that is societal and the element that is
+social, between the factor that is sex and the factor that
+is sexuality. It should be remembered that sexuality,
+whether in its social or in its individual manifestation, is
+here throughout regarded as an egoistic and infantile
+expression resultant upon the alternatives of secret self-interest
+secondarily induced in the individual in response
+to this same substitution and repression in the mind of
+the consensus about him. It is here held that the neurosis
+is a condition which indicts not the individual alone but
+society in general and that it consists in the substitution
+of this obsessive reaction of sexuality for the basic
+and inherent instinct of sex—that sex is an instinct
+that pertains not only to mating but to the unity
+of our congeneric life which, when unintercepted, is the
+function confluently of man’s conscious and organic
+life.</p>
+
+<p>If it is true that the societal repression resident within
+the race is the factor that is the cause of the individual’s
+sexuality, it is evident that no amount of preoccupation
+with the individual factor or with the element of sexuality
+will avail to release a neurosis the source of which resides
+in the societal repression. The causative factor, then,
+that resides within the societal unconscious is the subjective
+factor to which the individual’s sexuality (or its
+counterpart, the individual’s repression) is the resulting
+objective response. As repression or sexuality of their
+nature constitute division, clearly they can have no place
+in the confluent subjective life. And as the neurosis is
+primarily a disharmony of the confluent subjective sphere,
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_164">[164]</span>it is upon the continuities of this sphere alone that we must
+depend for the efficacy of an analysis that retains as its
+aim—the only logical aim of analysis—the recomposition
+or synthesis of the scattered elements of the personality
+into the organic unit of their original aggregate.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="p_165">[165]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_V_1">
+    CHAPTER V
+    <br>
+    ORGANIC ANALYSIS OF REPRESSION AND OF THE FACTOR OF RESISTANCE FROM THE INDIVIDUAL VIEWPOINT
+  </h3>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>As the causative element in the neuroses is societal or
+subjective, an analysis that proceeds upon the objective
+tack of uncovering a patient’s complexes is futile. If I am
+objectively interested in a patient’s separative, dissociative
+expressions—in the infinite variety of his sexualities or
+infantilisms, it is traceable alone to the retention of this
+same unconscious mode within my own personality.
+In this situation the analytic procedure is such as bids
+fair to extend to an indefinite duration. But if, on the
+contrary, my own mode is organic and inclusive, my
+interest in the patient and my whole relationship to him
+will rest upon an organic, confluent basis. I shall be
+interested not in the dark secrets of sexuality which he
+may bring himself to divulge but in the delusion of
+separateness that leads him to suppose that my own
+sexuality or the desperate recourses of separatism and
+repression within myself are less dark than his own.
+Indeed, arguing merely from presumptive evidence, my
+absorbing interest in the subject of the neurosis would of
+itself make it a safe conjecture that my own reaction to
+the societal repression or my own sexual conflicts must
+have been by far the greater of the two. But neither is
+this the point. The point is that our sins are common
+because our lives are not common, and that the patient’s
+sole need is his understanding of the causative factor in the
+reaction of separation and repression of the collective
+mind as it may be realized by him in the relationship of
+his personality to my own. My sole endeavour, then,
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_166">[166]</span>will be directed to an understanding on his part of the
+cause of his neurotic separatism or of the societal repression
+which, in dissociating him from the congeneric consciousness
+common to us both, artificially creates his
+illusion of difference between us.</p>
+
+<p>Lacking this realization of the societal involvement of
+the neurosis, there necessarily ensues a personal involvement
+in the analysis that invites situations which not
+infrequently attain to an acute crisis. The only remedy
+is the realization through one’s own analysis of one’s
+own societal disaffection. The only recourse is the
+complete reversal of one’s own pictorial or introverted
+habits of experience. It will not be easy. To accept
+voluntary subjection to conditions involving involuntary
+pain will not become a popular pastime. But it is the
+only way in which we may be made aware of our social
+involvement in the societal neurosis about us. It is the
+only way by which we may come to take a conscious part
+<i>in</i> and not be an unconscious part <i>of</i> the analysis.</p>
+
+<p>Never in the drama of human vicissitude has there been
+staged anything more ironical than the spectacle of an
+analyst’s perplexity when the patient, having become by
+implication a “cure,” fails to acquiesce in the principle
+she is now understood to illustrate. For presumably the
+time has arrived at which she (for the sake of dramatic
+interest let us say “she”) should naturally wish to
+withdraw from treatment. Unhappily, however, she
+entertains no such intention. On the contrary, in implacable
+defiance of analytical canons, she still stoutly
+maintains the unabated actuality of her neurosis and
+offers forthwith irrefutable vindication of her position
+in the sudden recrudescence of her incipient symptoms.
+In face of the undeniable testimony, the situation is
+untoward in the extreme. For at this point the patient’s
+attitude toward the analyst is such as can be only
+adequately expressed by her in the language of the poet
+who wrote: “All the current of my being sets to thee,”
+and in the interest of a busy practice, if to no other end,
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_167">[167]</span>it is urgent that a channel be promptly provided into
+which to divert the stream! This is the real climax of the
+situation. Its tenseness is further heightened at this point
+by the introduction of that most delicate and difficult
+process in the technique called “analyzing the transference”!
+The fact is the transference will not analyze.
+It never does. That is the difficulty of this very delicate
+phase. At this juncture we cast frantically about for an
+“interest” for the patient, that is, an interest other than
+ourselves—marriage, art, social service, something, anything!
+The truth is, our analysis has failed of its aim,
+and in our extremity we are driven to seek shelter under
+the cover of a subterfuge. It is this subterfuge which
+consists in an effort toward what is called, in scientific
+phraseology, “the sublimation of the patient’s sexuality”
+and is the closing act of our little comedy. As the curtain
+is finally rung down (the management is fortunate if it
+drops without a hitch), it descends upon a much perplexed
+psychoanalyst. He feels distinctly that something went
+wrong. He is not certain just what it was, but knows that,
+whatever it was, the fault lay entirely with the patient.
+But the circumambient gods, as one’s fancy pictures,
+who from their remote recesses have witnessed until now
+with unsubdued mirth the transient episode of our
+unconscious charade, observing the wretched fate of the
+patient in her unanswered need, suddenly alter their
+mood from levity to grave concern as they thoughtfully
+remark one to another in their own wise way that the
+essential catastrophe, after all, is the unconscious of the
+analyst and that the real drama has but just begun.</p>
+
+<p>However unpalatable the admission, here is the whole
+crux of the matter. We have dealt objectively with an
+inherently subjective situation. Our approach has been
+cognitive, not affective. It has been personal, not
+inclusive. Again we have merely looked out, not in.
+Again it is the illusion of the organic interval, and our
+problem has eluded us in the common fallacy of objective
+reference.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="p_168">[168]</span></p>
+
+<p>In a list of precepts for psychoanalysts (“precepts”
+for the elimination of repressions scarcely requires
+comment!) there is offered this naïve word of admonition:
+“Don’t forget that the neurotic’s chief dictum is: ‘I am
+not as other men are.’” But here again the analyst
+characteristically fails to recognize that such a dictum is
+by no means the private monopoly of the “neurotic.”
+He overlooks the fact that it is equally the tendency of us
+all and (what is of crucial importance) most especially
+of the analyst himself in the very utterance of his dictum.
+For in imputing to others this unconscious fallacy of self-distinction,
+he is in the same breath necessarily assuming
+the same distinction for himself—the distinction, namely,
+that he is himself in so far “not like other men” as to be
+privileged to tell them of the presence of this fallacy
+within themselves. Of course the analyst will say:
+“Well with me, you see, it is different.” But this is
+precisely what the patient says, as it is what every one
+says. And here we come once more to the heart of
+the matter, namely, that as the neurosis is societal the
+self-distinction underlying it is necessarily the particular
+claim of every individual within the societal body. In
+this situation the analyst inevitably regards only the
+disparity of “the other fellow,” a result which I feel to be
+typical of the error of the Freudian analysis.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_35_35" href="#Footnote_35_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a> But “who
+decries the loved decries the lover.” In the true sense—in
+the sense of our organic life—there is no other fellow.
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_169">[169]</span>Our interpretation of his apparent differentiation from us
+is but our own projection of the differentiation within
+ourselves, just as his interpretation of our apparent
+differentiation from him is but his projection of the
+division within himself. It is this unadmitted division
+within each of us that has created the illusion of our
+organic separateness from one another. For this reason
+it is only as we accept the subjective task of realizing the
+spurious fabric of our own separateness and self-sufficiency
+that we may come to realize it within our patient by virtue
+of our inherent identification with him. Thus, to realize
+our division through participation with another is to
+pierce the delusion of our mutual separateness and
+unconsciousness and so to become mutually united again
+through the acceptance of our common organic life.</p>
+
+<p>Based upon the organismic conception here outlined,
+clearly this subjective recourse can be the only logical
+position of the analyst. For, in the light of this conception,
+the neurosis or the separate mode was originally induced
+in the immature organism through the external suggestion
+of the individual in closest contact with it operating to
+dissociate it from its primary, organic mode. In consequence,
+the dissociated consciousness thus artificially
+induced can be restored to the mode of unification and
+confluence only by substituting for the superimposed
+suggestive contact—the predominant social repression
+embodied in the parent—the presence of a personality
+whose tendency is preponderantly of the confluent,
+societal mode. It is clear that in this conception the
+analysis of a patient, in the sense of his realization and
+acceptance of life, presupposes as a rigid organic condition
+the prior analysis and acceptance of life on the part of
+the analyst. In impaling the cause of this separatism,
+delusionally assumed by the patient to reside within
+himself alone but in reality having its residence in our
+common social repression, the analyst’s preoccupation
+can only be with this same delusional arrogation of
+separateness as it occurs within himself. This means
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_170">[170]</span>nothing less than that the life of the analyst must in its
+consciousness completely encompass the life of the
+analysand in its unconsciousness. This, I know, is a large
+demand. It is to realize in oneself a breadth of consciousness
+that embraces in its scope nothing less than
+the totality of unconsciousness in its entire social aspect.
+It is to include within oneself the collective unconscious
+or the far span of normality in all its separateness and
+sexuality. In brief, it is to open the way to a reversal of
+the unconscious situation now prevailing in which societal
+men encompass individual man, and to achieve the mode
+of consciousness in which societal man encompasses
+individual men.</p>
+
+<p>I remember a young woman journalist coming one day
+into my study on the pretext of illness but in reality to
+look me over. She had been the rounds of the New York
+analysts, she said, having been “analyzed” by first one
+and then another, though I doubt whether any of the able
+physicians cited by her would have dignified the interviews
+in any such terms. But while herself unconscious,
+indeed quite paranoid, she made a remark which has
+since seemed to me highly significant. She said that we
+psychoanalysts appear actuated by an unconscious
+attitude of antagonism toward our patients, that we
+seem motivated by a determination “to get even.” In the
+spirit in which it was made, the remark was obviously
+a projection and not a judgment, but I think the criticism
+is in general true—certainly it has proved true in my own
+case. For the analyst is either unconsciously pleased with
+the patient who gives him his confidence or he is unconsciously
+displeased at his withholding it. In other
+words, the attitude of the analyst is not uninfluenced by
+personal or egoistic predilection.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_36_36" href="#Footnote_36_36" class="fnanchor">[36]</a> Here, then, is straightway
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_171">[171]</span>the factor of unconsciousness, of separation and
+hence antagonism in the analyst.</p>
+
+<p>But if the analyst consciously senses the patient’s
+situation, he sees without bias that the patient—being
+of a separative, unconscious mode—will, and inevitably
+must, act in every instance from motives of unconsciousness.
+If he confides in the analyst, he does so
+solely in the hope of winning for himself the good-will of
+the analyst (positive infantile affect or suggestion);
+if he is silent or evasive, it is because he doubts the
+advantage to himself of sharing his confidence (negative
+infantile affect or repression). The psychoanalyst who
+would reckon consciously with a patient’s life may be
+moved by neither one nor the other manifestation. Both
+are outside the mode of reality. Both are expressions
+of dissociation. Neither attitude will touch the analyst
+affectively if he is truly within his own life. If, on the
+other hand, he is himself dissociated, whether normally
+or neurotically—in the collusion of the group-expression
+or in single isolation—and is ever seeking to reinstate in
+the present moment the mother-comfort of his own
+childhood, he will necessarily either receive the unconsciously
+motivated confidence of his patient with the
+unconscious satisfaction of self-interest (infantile egotism)
+or he will respond to his patient’s unconsciously withheld
+confidence with the no less unconscious dissatisfaction of
+self-interest defeated (infantile egotism thwarted). In
+one case he manifests the sentimentality of unconscious
+sympathy and approbation, in the other the equally
+sentimental reaction of unconscious resentment and hate.
+In either case it is to be partisan, separative, personal,
+unconscious. This unsuspected personalism or unconsciousness
+within ourselves makes it easier for us to
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_172">[172]</span>condone the personalism or unconsciousness in another,
+rather than understand it. Because of the greater
+significance to us of our own personal grievance as compared
+with our understanding of the impersonal needs of
+life as a unitary experience, our sympathy is automatically
+enlisted on the side of the patient’s personal grievance.
+In brief, we prefer to sympathize with the suffering of an
+organism rather than with the organism that suffers.
+This characterological weakness in our analytic system
+renders the analyst an easy mark for the sentimentalizing
+reveries of the neurotic patient. It is thus a far cry
+from “Freud,” the psychological conception as it tends
+toward the more unitary formulation and co-ordination of
+the problem of neurotic disharmonies, to “Freud” the
+father-complex as it tends unconsciously to dominate the
+consciousness of patient as of follower.</p>
+
+<p><i>The admission that has eventually to be made without
+qualifying reservation is that the transference upon which
+we have laid such stress as an objective scientific phenomenon
+is in truth a state of mind subjectively induced in the patient
+in direct response to the attitude of unconsciousness on the
+part of the analyst himself</i>. It is just here, in the dissociated
+attitude of analyst toward analysand, that there
+stands the inevitable impasse to the personal or individualistic
+analysis of Freud. Here is the futile revolution
+within a vicious circle that is the fallacy of its
+individualistic viewpoint. It needs to be repeated that
+the sexual or the personal, in the sense of the separative,
+is itself unconscious. Its primary source is the reaction
+originally induced in the organism by the disunity of
+the social unconscious as voiced by the parent. We shall
+be helped if we keep in mind that much of the confusion
+of psychoanalysis is due to the failure of psychoanalysts to
+realize that there is a distinction between the mother-image
+and the mother-organism. We must ultimately
+come to see that, due to the dissociative or bidimensional
+attitude on the part of the mother, the child automatically
+replaces the biological reality of the parent organism with
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_173">[173]</span>the artificial <i>image</i> of the parent&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_37_37" href="#Footnote_37_37" class="fnanchor">[37]</a> induced by the parental
+command. Following the investigations of the last years
+it has come to be my definite conviction that it is this
+element of the pictorial and statutory, as reflected in the
+parent-image, that is the real impediment to consciousness
+and the sole meaning of “unconsciousness.”</p>
+
+<p>The suggestive instance (image) of the parental organism,
+due to the early influence of separatism operating upon
+it, savours wholly of a repressive, non-confluent attitude.
+It necessarily tends, therefore, through the gradual
+inculcation of the ulterior, separative, behaviouristic
+mode, to dissociate more and more from its original
+biology, the immature organism within its range. As the
+neurotic diathesis is induced through the surface diversifications
+of external suggestion infringing upon the
+original consonance of the organism, as unconsciousness is
+diversity of outer aspect in contrast with the concentration
+of consciousness and personality in its inner confluence,
+the resolving of the neurotic conflict lies in recalling the
+personality from its precipitation into the manifold quests
+of external compensations to the original integrity of its
+essential unitary life. In this process of rehabilitation
+there is abrogated the ceaseless urge toward the unconscious
+fulfilment of the <i>wish</i>, through the restoration of
+the native impetus of life in a conscious fulfilment of
+<i>function</i>. It cannot be too strongly emphasized that the
+original incitement to the neurosis is, from an individualistic
+basis, external. This reaction within the individual
+to a prohibition acting from without constitutes the whole
+significance of the attitude of separatism, of self-seeking
+and of self-defence that are synonymous with the repressed
+sexuality of the neurotic personality. But there is the
+need to recognize that this same attitude is also synonymous
+with the released sexuality which is “normally”
+regarded at the present time as a true expression of life.
+This so-called normal expression, however, in its obsessive
+self-seeking and in its obvious kinship with secondary
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_174">[174]</span>dissociative reactions, stands at the very opposite pole
+to sex as the instinct of life in its organic significance.</p>
+
+<p>The automatic release of the reaction of self-defence
+that is the reflex response to the irritant of organic
+prohibition is biologically significant. For with the
+extraneous interception of the organic mode or at the
+instance of prohibition, the individual is reflexly stimulated
+to a compensatory effort to replace this mode with the
+vicarious mode of self-defence. There is here the psychological
+concomitance between organic interdiction and
+organic recoil, between repression or curtailment of
+personality and sexuality or the retroactive impulse to
+individual aggression. In this connection it is interesting
+to note the etymological agreement of the ideas of defence
+and prohibition in the French word <i>défense</i> meaning
+prohibition. There is psychological warrant for assuming
+that the relation between these two words is more innate
+than accidental.</p>
+
+<p>This psychological parallelism between repression or
+self-love and sexuality or self-defence, between the
+egoistic wish and the suspicion of interference with its
+fulfilment, underlies the identity of the phenomenon of
+homosexuality and that of paranoia. Students of psychoanalysis
+have tended to regard the reflections of these
+reactions as distinct manifestations, viewing them as
+contradictions rather than as concomitants, as opposites
+rather than as alternatives, as different phases of reaction
+rather than as different aspects of the same phase.
+Freud, for example, lays emphasis upon the factor of
+sexuality, giving it the place of dominant importance in
+the neurotic conflict, while Adler asserts that it is the
+factor of the individual’s egotism that is of central
+importance in the causation of the disharmony. These
+seemingly opposed views are, in reality, the same. One
+envisages the somatic, the other the psychic aspect of a
+condition that is nuclear and common. Their seeming
+difference is merely the inevitable limitation of an
+objective and absolute mode of approach. In either case
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_175">[175]</span>it is the symbolic manifestation that is confronted.
+Whether the reaction is represented in lust of body
+(homosexuality) or in pride of mind (paranoia), in both
+conditions the aspect contemplated is again the mere
+symptomatic index. In each is expressed but the secondary
+response to a deeper, more encompassing factor that
+has its substrate in our common consciousness. In each
+it is the semblance of the individual personality replacing
+the actuality of the societal personality. Each is the
+objective resultant of a subjective impediment to the
+confluent, organic life. In both there is represented but
+the superficial aspect, one expressing itself clinically in the
+symbolic anomaly of homosexuality, the other, in the
+symbolic anomaly of paranoia.</p>
+
+<p>Thus far the interest of these anomalies, as far as
+psychoanalysts are concerned, has been their implication
+as it touches the psychopathology of the isolated or
+neurotic personality. Far more significant, however, is
+the bearing of these manifestations upon the psychobiology
+of the social organism as a whole. That these
+distortions of personality exist in a larval stage in the
+group-neurosis of “normality” is a circumstance with
+which the psychopathologist needs yet to reckon in his
+wider office of clinical sociologist. Naturally we have not
+yet begun to suspect the presence of these unsavoury
+elements, homosexuality and paranoia, in the unconscious
+of “normality,” and as normality enjoys the security of
+mutual protective agreement among its constituents,
+the existence of these unseemly maladjustments within
+its ranks will long be treated by us with stolid disavowal.
+It is the distinguishing feature of the naïve countenance of
+normality that it experiences no need of self-questioning.
+A delusion that has become socially buttressed in the
+mutual reciprocities of its unconscious adherents is
+indeed impregnable.</p>
+
+<p>Human consciousness, however, will not be understood
+nor a clearer, saner life opened to man until he has
+repudiated the unconscious, vicarious or separative as it
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_176">[176]</span>exists in its securest, most widespread and most aggressive
+form, that is, in the <i>socially systematized delusion comprising
+the collective unconscious of our vaunted “normality.”</i>
+For if normality, so-called, is in reality a dissociation
+existing under the protective mask of society, how can
+we who are normal or collectively dissociated comprehend
+dissociation in the neurotic personality? How can the
+actor be at the same time onlooker? How can subject
+and object co-exist in the selfsame content? How, in
+brief, is it possible for unawareness to envisage unawareness?
+Surely it is clear that the dreamer is of necessity
+partisan to his dream, and that the contemplation of a
+dream from within a dream is subversive of the very
+principle of consciousness. For knowledge being awareness
+<i>of</i> or <i>in regard to</i>, demands as its condition the two contrasting
+factors of a subject looking upon and an object
+looked upon. If normality is mere collective unconsciousness
+and therefore itself an artificially induced neurosis—if
+it is a condition of unconsciousness produced through
+the influence of external suggestion and therefore represents
+in itself a secondary dissociative state, how is it
+possible to fulfil the requisite condition of consciousness
+in respect to the two factors of subject and object in
+the matter of our consideration of the dreams of our
+patients? As my own work has in the last years come to
+adopt a more and more inclusive organismic viewpoint,
+I have become convinced that what we psychoanalysts
+<i>in our present personal and objective interpretation</i> consider
+“dream-analysis,” and in regard to which we have taken
+ourselves and our patients so seriously, is utterly futile
+and invalid. I am convinced that, in the mood in which
+dream-analysis is now applied, it is itself the expression
+of an hysterical symptom—a cognitive replacement
+within the social unconscious comprising the arbitrarily
+assumed group-differentiation “psychoanalyst.”</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="p_177">[177]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VI">
+    CHAPTER VI
+    <br>
+    THE DREAM AND ITS ANALYSIS IN AN ORGANISMIC INTERPRETATION OF THE NEUROSES
+  </h3>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>The dream of the individual together with the individualistic
+analysis of the dream presents a most difficult and
+as yet untried field. There is here required a technique
+that is as elusive as it is unprecedented. For such a
+technique must include the unconscious complicity of the
+analyst in the social or image basis from which he analyzes.
+For it is only impersonally and confluently that we may
+understand what is personal and separative in another.
+To approach the dreamer’s separative attitude of repression
+and self-defence toward the elements of his dream, in an
+attitude of our own that is socially no less separative and
+repressed, is to invite a situation in which we merely
+exchange the dissociative symbols of the sleep state for
+analogous symbols in the waking state. It is to replace
+refraction and distortion as they occur in the individual
+repression, with its symbolic wish-fulfilment in dreams,
+for refraction and distortion as they occur in the social
+repression, with its symbolic wish-fulfilment in “beliefs.”
+For this reason, having come to view the unconscious in
+its waking and in its sleeping expression from the point of
+view of the common, organic mode, I have reached the
+conviction that the conception of dream-analysis as it has
+been entertained by us is throughout a misconception,
+that to speak at all of dream “analysis” from the
+personal or separative viewpoint is self-delusive. For our
+so-called dreams of the night are but the unaccepted
+realities of the day, the so-called realities of our day but
+the unaccepted dreams of the night. The night’s reaction
+is individualistic, the day’s reaction is social. Both are
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_178">[178]</span>identical in their method as in their aim. Both represent
+the endeavour, through futile recourse to symbolic or
+“would-be” measures of recommunication, to adjust
+vicariously and upon a separative basis the organic
+outrage to life’s inherent unity. It is the self-determined
+illusion of our societal disaffection. It is the lure of the
+symbolic in its mock pursuits of the personal and separative.
+It is the vicious circle of all unconsciousness vainly
+rotating upon the phantom axis of its own unreality.</p>
+
+<p>In view of the repercussion of consciousness that is the
+essence of man’s unconsciousness, the attitude that will
+best liberate us from our infolding tendencies of mentation
+lies in a conception that regards unconsciousness as a
+self-reflexive mode throughout. Such an attitude will
+clearly demarcate our tendency toward the peripheral or
+social distribution of the mental images comprising our
+<i>mirrored</i> affects as contrasted with the societal conservation
+of our <i>real</i> affects in the conscious fulfilment of our
+common personality. As long as we fail to realize this
+generic basis we shall continue to suffer from the delusion of
+our own organic disunity, and there will necessarily persist
+the vicarious shunting of affect into the distributive
+expressions of anger, duplicity and antagonism constitutive
+of resistance. Since our affects are organically
+common, if we do not permit them expression in universal
+confluence, they must inevitably seek an expression that
+is scattered and random. And so we need to recognize
+that we may not adjust our affective or subjective life
+through the study of the objective mechanism of the
+images or dreams that merely reflect it, but only through
+the subjective (conscious) reabsorption within us of
+the displaced and socially distributed affects to whose
+suggestion the dream, by day or by night, is the mirrored
+reaction.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_38_38" href="#Footnote_38_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</a></p>
+
+<p>In an organismic view <i>differentiation is unconsciousness</i>.
+That is, the dissociated self or the separative element is,
+by reason of its organic anomalousness, necessarily at
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_179">[179]</span>odds with self. For this reason there is inevitably entailed
+the universal conflict of unconsciousness, collective and
+single, that is man’s disunity, social as well as individualistic,
+“normal” as well as “neurotic.” Such is the
+disparity that is reflected in his dreams, sleeping and
+waking. The diversity of our fabrications, social and
+individual, is the diversity of our <i>selves</i>. Our complex is
+our complexity. In very truth “<i>our</i> little life is rounded
+with a sleep.” We waken only to alter the form of our
+dream. Throughout the diurnal cycle the dream-state
+remains unbroken, and all efforts of analysis in our
+unconscious, separative mode are helpful only in accentuating
+the powerlessness of consciousness in its present
+state of differentiation. In the separative mode the
+elements of the personality are unassembled, and the
+result is an absence of organic coherence, of an essential
+unity such as may alone be the basis of a truthful inquiry
+into the unconscious processes of man’s inversion. In my
+own case (the only case upon which any of us may occupy
+himself profitably is one’s own) it has become clear that
+my attitude toward the night is predetermined by my
+attitude toward the day. If I have kept personal and
+repressed my real feeling during the day, the secret of my
+dissociation will be kept faithfully throughout the night,
+and upon waking in the morning such camouflage as will
+successfully hide my separativeness will have been
+already established by my own order prior to the waking
+moment.</p>
+
+<p>It would seem that sleep is the beneficent leveller, that
+mentally as well as physically its function is restorative,
+that it is the solvent and the dissolvent of our fancied
+differentiations, of our artificial, fear-begotten defences
+against one another. It would seem that it is for man the
+opportunity of organic rehabilitation, that in this period of
+withdrawal and quiescence after the restless day of self-seeking
+and antagonism there is a palliative and conciliatory
+process at work.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_39_39" href="#Footnote_39_39" class="fnanchor">[39]</a> After all, diplomacy and lying
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_180">[180]</span>are wearying in their exactions, and in this period marked
+by an absence of social pretences and of the strain of our
+separative adjustments, consciousness undoubtedly tends
+to reassert its common, primal mode with images that
+promote and do not impede organic function—joyous
+images, expressive of common need, of organic participation,
+of concerted, confluent function. After all, our
+dreams are but the shadows our lives cast behind them
+when we stand in the light of our own personality.</p>
+
+<p>It is only as we become one with this inherent personality
+through an acceptance of the unity of life in its entirety
+that the shadows comprising our dreams, sleeping and
+waking, may be truly resolved. Since our dreams of the
+night only tend to restore the equilibrium which the
+day has destroyed, our dreams are only in so far distorted
+as our day is distorted. In so far as the day is an evasion
+of the recognition of the infantile wish, with its corresponding
+entail of over-compensation and atonement, in so
+far does the dream reproduce again the identical wish of
+the day after having recourse to the extravagance and
+distortion requisite to its disguise. When in our day’s
+reactions we shall have entered upon an organic, confluent
+mode of consciousness, our dreams will be one with the
+organic confluence of the day, furthering in their harmonious
+imagery the quiet process of the day’s constructiveness.
+It will then be realized that sleep is but the day’s
+diastole, that just as the period of diastolic relax following
+the rhythmic contraction of the heart has a function that
+is reciprocal and harmonious in relation to the systolic
+impulse, so in the rhythmic cycle of our day its period of
+rest is reciprocal and continuous with, not contradictory
+and opposed to, the constructive function of the day’s
+activities. The dreams of the separative mode, on the
+other hand, only occlude and congest the avenues of our
+sleep-consciousness. These obstructive travesties effect
+a complete deadlock due to the confluent organism’s
+ineffectual effort to arrest and clarify these separative
+trends that are reflections even in sleep of the unlived,
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_181">[181]</span>fear-ridden, organically discordant experience comprising
+the day.</p>
+
+<p>With our present habitually tutored day, the very
+approach of our awaking automatically prompts us to don
+a costume of disguise before we rise to move again amid
+the tedious maze of masked players who, like ourselves,
+have lost the reality of life’s organic meaning. As long as
+one’s feeling is thus resolutely set against the surrender of
+his artificial defences, as long as one fears to remove
+the mask of pretence covering his personality, no amount
+of intellectualization, of mental analysis, of theoretical
+“truths” (I have tried them all!) will avail to lift his
+repression and admit him to the simple reality of his
+common, organic feeling. It is in vain that we seek the
+truth. Truth, as it is customarily conceived, is but the
+theory whereof life, as it may be lived, is the reality.
+To seek the truth is again to pursue the phantom of our
+own mental imagery. For reality disappoints all formulation.
+No symbol may stand for equivalence but only for
+equivocation. The lesson the psychoanalyst has yet to
+learn is that reality has no substitutes, that no <i>seeming</i>,
+however plausible, may replace that which <i>is</i>. It is this
+lesson—the very lesson we presume to teach our patients—of
+which all our work is as yet but an empty recitation.
+Accordingly, no amount of intuitional or theoretical
+acumen on the part of the analyst can do other than
+thwart a patient’s need of self-realization. Such intellectualism
+on the part of the analyst is the substitution
+that is <i>his</i> neurosis. Recourse to intellectuality is his
+concession to the socially current repression and substitution
+which in our collective unconsciousness we
+credit as normality, never once suspecting, in the strength
+of our numerical security, that <i>normality is but the collective
+dream-state of man’s waking life</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Because of the psychological identity between the
+dream that is our day, with its dramatization in the
+objective furniture of cubic actuality, and the dream that
+is our night, with its scenic reproduction in flat, pictorial
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_182">[182]</span>outline, an individualistic analysis in the sense of an
+encompassing realization is of its nature precluded. Only
+as we can come to stand apart from both, and view them
+in their proper light as symbolic phenomena divorced
+from life, may they be assessed in their true relation and
+thus analyzed in the only sense that gives meaning to the
+term. But this is not a merely mental process. This is to
+actualize organic life in our daily experience with such
+sincerity as to realize within ourselves the spuriousness of
+our habitual, dissociated mode. It is so to include the
+dream outside the dream, constituted of the separative
+day with which the separative night is enclosed, that we
+shall have automatically entered upon the mode of self-unification
+which is one with a societally unified, confluent
+consciousness. The essential mark of such a mode of
+consciousness is that, in its subjective consonance, it
+regards with an equally objective clarity the vicarious
+processes of the day and of the night.</p>
+
+<p>Our attitude of the day is amply illustrated by our
+attitude toward our dramas. As our lives are based upon
+unconsciousness, our dramas as well as our dreams are
+also necessarily based upon unconsciousness. Since
+the logic of the dream is inverted, it is essential to reverse
+the dream’s unconscious motive in order to understand
+its fallacious sequences. The drama equally represents
+the interplay of unconscious motives. Based thus upon
+the inverse processes of unconsciousness, its logic is also
+necessarily inverse. And so in order to understand the
+drama, its motive must likewise be observed in its reverse
+trend. In other words, the drama and the dream are
+identical in their essential mechanism. When the
+psychopathologist is confronted with the drama of <i>actual
+life</i>—the inverse process represented in the neurosis—his
+immediate recourse should be to intercept as far as
+possible the inharmonious development of the patient’s
+life history and, having completely reversed its underlying
+motive in the light of conscious perspectives, to
+unravel its meaning through carefully retracing discoverable
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_183">[183]</span>inadvertencies of development to their logical
+source.</p>
+
+<p>In this function the analyst’s attitude toward the
+human drama presented in the neurosis of his patient
+becomes identical with his attitude toward the dreams of
+his patient. One would naturally expect that his attitude
+toward the drama of the stage would be equally logical.
+But a societal analysis fails to justify this expectation.
+For such is the elusive tenacity of the seemingly actual,
+as it appears in the dissociative recourses of the social
+mind, that the psychoanalyst, too, continues to regard
+the bidimensional <i>aspect</i> of life presented in the drama as a
+conscious form of art. In consequence it comes to pass
+that a train of unconsciously destructive events which he
+deplores as an expression of life in the clinic is applauded
+by him as an expression of art in the theatre. The same
+untoward sequences, which in clinical retrospect are
+<i>viewed</i> with compassion, are in the process of their
+theatrical portrayal <i>experienced</i> with delight.</p>
+
+<p>I do not see how such inconsistencies between our
+collective and our individual reactions to unconsciousness
+are separable from the present confusion that exists
+between the objective and the subjective spheres of consciousness.
+Because of this confusion, in our dissociation
+we take pleasure in participating in the dramatic representation
+of the identical processes of unconsciousness
+which, subsequently contemplated as actuality, we
+interpret only as pain. This inconsistency between our
+subjective and objective reactions accounts also for the
+many discrepancies in the psychiatrist’s personal attitude
+toward the dramas of the clinic and the drama within his
+own home. It explains how it happens that we, who are
+seemingly competent to trace an individual’s neurosis
+directly to the influences that have unconsciously surrounded
+him as a child, will yet unconsciously surround
+our own children with these selfsame influences. Surely
+never was the “other fellow” so abused and ourselves so
+tricked as in our psychiatric clinics when, in our self-conscious
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_184">[184]</span>formulation of the occasion of his confusion, we
+deem ourselves less unconscious than he.</p>
+
+<p>As it is the especial métier of the unconscious to convert
+the actual into the seeming, its subtlest attainment is the
+conversion of what is most actual into what is most
+seeming. If of realization itself it may effect a semblance,
+it is the ultimate achievement in unconscious ventriloquy.
+If of analysis itself it may make a pseudo-analysis, it
+has secured its entrenchment through a technical recourse
+that is wellnigh impregnable. Through such a strategic
+manœuvre one often attains a quite faultless analysis of a
+dream, when all the while the realization is but seeming.
+As the dream is but the reflected image or “negative”
+of yesterday’s duplicities and introversions, an attempt
+to capture and “analyze” it from the retrospective standpoint
+of the replacement and introversion of the day, is
+but to retain unaltered and unalterable the unconscious
+embroilment of one’s self-delusive introversion. Yet, with
+the practised dexterity of our habitual sleight-of-hand
+methods of analysis, we still pursue the futile industry of
+our objective dream-trapping, idly endeavouring to drag
+the travesty of the day’s distortions embodied in the
+dream into the self-conscious analytic dissecting-room.
+In truth, the real need is that we surrender the analytic
+dissecting-room and all its paraphernalia of symbolic
+technique to the common reality which underlies it,
+realizing that its artificial displacements constitute the
+sole function of the dream parody. For set what snare
+we will, a dream cannot be taken alive. The chasing of
+dreams is like the chasing of rainbows. One may no more
+behold his <i>real</i> self in the mirror of the dream than in any
+other reflecting surface. The image reproduced may be
+never so lifelike but it is not life. As with birds on the
+wing, so with our dreams; we cannot capture them
+except we destroy them. The attempt to do so is to repeat
+without end our habitual offence against the organic
+grammar of life constitutive of the double negative of all
+unconsciousness. Again it is unconsciousness within
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_185">[185]</span>unconsciousness, personal preference within personal
+preference, unconsciousness <i>unconscious</i> that is the
+baffling complicity in our self-dissociation.</p>
+
+<p>This self-involvement of the neurosis, this <i>unconsciousness
+of the totality of self</i> makes of our individual enfoldment
+a wellnigh inscrutable situation. In such a situation the
+individual’s efforts of self-help—the recourses of personal
+rather than of societal outlooks—become comparable to
+the efforts of a man who would attempt to lift himself by
+his own boot-straps. This it is that comprises the dream
+within the dream of all individuation—of all separateness.
+Of course, it quite naturally seems to us, in our now
+differentiated mode, that the attainment of a position of
+relative inclusiveness is a humanly impossible task. Yet,
+if we are to attain to a true recognition of our <i>societal
+dissociation</i>, we may do so only through the acceptance
+of the basic actuality of our common, organic confluence.
+Such alone is the essential recourse of a fully awakened
+consciousness.</p>
+
+<p>Whether we will or no, we are thus brought back again
+and again to the essential fallacy of our day’s dreams as
+of our night’s—to the illusion of personal causation or
+of individual sponsorship that is at the heart of man’s
+dissociation, both neurotic and normal. In the presumption
+of his self-determined hypothesis of good and
+bad, of hope and fear, the individual is assuming unconsciously
+the supervision of the universe, and the constant
+endeavour of his thoughts as of his dreams is to keep
+secret the traces of his personal presumption through the
+subtle projections of the disguised image. Some call it
+God, some call it evolution, but no matter what the
+collective title under which our private prerogative is
+symbolized, it is in reality but the cheat that is the
+personal illusion of a central causality resident within
+ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>I know that in this subjective statement of the disharmony
+of consciousness there is presented a trend that
+is wholly unacceptable to the symbolic or absolute
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_186">[186]</span>logician; but, on the other hand, the objective statements
+of the absolute logician are with equal validity unacceptable
+to the relativist. According to the objective logic of
+the mental absolutist the fact of our very existence is
+theoretically untenable. In the unconscious determinism
+of men’s personal prerogative, the postulate, as is generally
+known, is that the universe in which we have our being
+was either created by some agency existing outside itself
+or it was self-creative. Of the two alternatives either is
+impossible, but the vital fact remains that here we are!
+The logical untenability of a position that limits itself
+to these commonly accepted alternatives may some day
+offer sobering consideration to our unconscious absolutism.
+For the present there is grave need that our absolute or
+theoretical logic yield place to the relative logic of a more
+organismic point of view. In the world of physical
+phenomena prior to Einstein it was impossible for
+physicists to proceed with further creative extensions
+because of the limitation of their underlying conception.
+So in the sphere of human activities around us, as long as
+we continue in our present objective fixity of thought, it
+will not be possible for life to unfold because of the set
+limitations of unessential attitudes of mind that block all
+essential creative expression.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="p_187">[187]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VII">
+    CHAPTER VII
+    <br>
+    THE BIOLOGICAL SUBSTRATE OF THE NEUROTIC CONFLICT IN ITS ORGANIC SIGNIFICANCE
+  </h3>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>In studying the neurotic diathesis one recognizes the
+existence of two marked reaction-types more or less
+clearly delineated one from another in mood and <i>tempo</i>,
+though they equally sustain the same central <i>motif</i>. The
+vicarious method of dream-analysis described in the last
+chapter as having all the appearance of adequacy, when
+inherently it is invalid, is especially characteristic of one
+of these two types of personality. The two types may
+be distinguished by the contrast between their specific
+reactions to the original repressive incident occasioning
+the organism’s primary dissociation.</p>
+
+<p>I am not in sympathy, however, with the <i>implication</i> in
+the discrimination of types demarcated as “introvert”
+and “extravert.” These terms imply, as they are meant
+to imply, an essential difference of type rather than a
+circumstantial difference of reaction. In general the
+extravert is rather approvingly regarded in the light of
+a “jolly good fellow,” as contrasted with the introvert
+whose disaffectivity, on the contrary, tends to be regarded
+with an undisguised slant. As if the jolly good-fellowship
+of the hysterical type, with all its aggressiveness and
+ebullience, were not as truly a substitutive alternative
+resultant upon repression as is the reaction of his more
+silent, ingrown confrère of the opposite type! As if the
+affable, effervescent type were not as truly “shut-out”
+as his psychological vis-à-vis is “shut-in”! Psychiatry
+has a great deal to say about the shut-in type of personality
+but it has nothing to say about the shut-out type of
+personality. Yet of the two the latter is by no means a less
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_188">[188]</span>serious form of dissociation, and certainly it is by far the
+more widespread in its results.</p>
+
+<p>There are, then, two types of reaction to be discriminated.
+There is the type of individual who upon the initial
+stimulus to defence has recourse to a tactic of unconditional
+retreat. He simply withdraws <i>in toto</i>, and his
+attitude toward his congeners is thenceforward completely
+negative. He no longer sees nor is seen by them. They
+are so far outside his ken that their existence is not for a
+moment admitted by him. Excluded from the range of
+his actualities he does not even concede them an hypothetical
+status. Such is the <i>autocentric</i> individual. This
+personality is the subsequent precoid, if in his withdrawal
+he does not even so much as pretend acknowledgment
+of the external world; he is the later psychasthenic,
+or normal of the socially detached type, if he adopts the
+more temperate policy of a seeming <i>rapprochement</i>. In
+either case, enclosed within a system all his own, he lives
+entirely apart from the world of actuality, ruling alone
+(and of course supreme) over his self-determined cosmogony.</p>
+
+<p>Then there is the type of personality whose course is the
+exact opposite of that just described, the difference of
+reaction being due to the modifying conditions, “constitutional”
+for aught I know, that attend the repressive
+occasion. With this type of personality, due to the fact
+that the arresting instance overtakes him, as it were, in
+the open, retreat is automatically barred. He is surprised
+in the act, discovered with the goods in his possession.
+Detection and apprehension are here simultaneous.
+Unable to deny the actuality of the situation, his instinctive
+recourse is in the direction of a desperate effort to
+palliate the attending circumstances. Resort to an alibi
+being out of the question, he seeks to exculpate himself
+by adopting a policy of a more or less truckling servility.
+He would atone his offence by propitiating his accusers
+and so winning a recommendation of leniency. Such is the
+<i>allocentric</i> type of personality. This type may be seen
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_189">[189]</span>either in the so-called normal individual of the socially
+adaptive reaction or in the definitely efflorescent or
+hysterical neurotic, according respectively as he succeeds
+in conniving in the social pretence and unconsciousness
+about him and thus saves his own neck, or as he fails in
+his effort at social compromise—the process flatteringly
+known to-day as “sublimation.” In this event his
+failure of adaptation is due to the stronger urge within him
+of the factors that are allied with the underlying communism
+of his organic consciousness but which in his
+mental dissociation he is unable to co-ordinate with his
+innate experience.</p>
+
+<p>Viewed biologically these two types represent, as I see
+them, a functional over-emphasis <i>in the individual</i> of the
+reactions pertaining to one or the other of the two
+fundamental co-ordinated systems underlying the biology
+of man’s confluent life and determining, when in balanced
+relation to one another, the integral health of the organism.
+I refer to the cerebro-spinal and the sympathetic nervous
+systems. The opposite recourses of behaviour, manifested
+in the two psychological types just cited, represent, I
+believe, the two extremes of reaction resultant upon the
+disturbed balance between these two systems coincident
+with the factor of repression.</p>
+
+<p>In the preconscious form of life&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_40_40" href="#Footnote_40_40" class="fnanchor">[40]</a> preserved among the
+animals, there has occurred no break between these two
+fundamental systems. In the feline series, for example,
+one observes the same graceful, organic undulations in
+the movements actuated by the voluntary muscles or in
+the reactions presided over by the cerebro-spinal system,
+as occur in the rhythmic and harmonious co-ordinations
+that characterize the function of the internal viscera
+controlled by the sympathetic ganglia. With man the
+picture is a very different one. Upon the introduction of
+suggestion or repression and their concomitant interdiction
+to his inherent feeling, there resulted an organic cleavage
+within his personality. Coincident with this artificial
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_190">[190]</span>summons to an adaptive and ulterior response, the
+spheres of reaction corresponding to these two systems
+within the organism of man were henceforth divided.
+Affective responses within the organism’s subjective
+nuclear life, with its physiological substrate in the vasomotor
+and visceral reactions (sympathetic system), were
+no longer correlated with affective responses which,
+having their substrate in the nuclei of the brain and spinal
+cord (cerebro-spinal system), pertain to the objective,
+external adaptations observable in the organism’s
+voluntary activities. Hence, from this moment forward
+the co-ordination between the two systems became automatically
+impaired, and there could no longer be the
+smooth, uninterrupted confluence of function that originally
+united the two systems into a single co-ordinated
+unit.</p>
+
+<p>The disintegrating effect of this artificial cleavage
+between these two reciprocal systems occurs only in the
+constituent that marks the adaptive cerebral reactions or
+in the segment or terminal mediating the relationships
+<i>socially</i> of the individual elements <i>inter se</i>. In the central
+or visceral system the organic unities remain intact.
+Here in the depths of man’s organic being, actuated by his
+involuntary, instinctive life, the disparity of separateness
+cannot enter. Here is unbroken continuum. Here the
+organism is susceptible to no interstitial flaw. In this
+central, involuntary system which is organically common
+and confluent throughout the species, the extraneous
+element of repression with its reaction in disparate,
+ulterior quests is automatically excluded, for in its native
+inherency the organism is one and indivisible. It is the
+peripheral portion of our organisms with its specialization
+into the external sense-organs, through which is mediated
+our recognition of objective difference or interval and
+through which occurs, as has been said, our consequent
+inference of intrinsic differentiation. In the peripheral
+system, therefore, the fallacy of separateness due to this
+biological fission may be enforced with seeming success.
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_191">[191]</span>In a word, it is only in our social and external relations
+that the fallacy of organic differentiation works havoc in
+any positive or active sense.</p>
+
+<p>In this generic schema is probably represented the
+physiological substrate of the schism within the organism
+caused by the impact from without of the trauma of
+repression, and there is represented as well the basis of
+the resultant contrast of reaction-types in accordance as
+the repression tends more strongly toward one or the
+other side of the divided reaction.</p>
+
+<p>Replacing essential continuity with mere contiguity,
+or the unity of our organic life with the superficial gestures
+of an outer code, the <i>normal</i> of the hysterical type may
+rub surfaces, as it were, and play desperately at the game
+of vicarious unity. We see this everywhere exemplified
+among the devotees of normality in reactions that are
+apparently confluent but that are, in reality, determined
+cerebrally or peripherally in response to the division
+within the unitary organism of man. Such are the expressions
+to be seen, for example, in our religious hobnobbings,
+our spurious social covenants, our ingenious
+political and economic affiliations, and in the superficial
+flatteries and connivances common to normality generally.
+How definitely such vicarious reactions are an infringement
+upon man’s organic life is readily seen in the
+unfailing equalization that follows swiftly upon them,
+exacting their inevitable toll in the ultimate retributive
+penalties of national and industrial wars, of social and
+political dissension and in the world-wide expression of
+disaffection that marks the social periphery of our self-plumed
+“civilization.”</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand the <i>neurotic</i> of the hysterical type,
+by reason of the greater sensitiveness of his organism,
+is held within the grip of this organic conflict. It permits
+him neither to fawn nor to defy whole-heartedly, but
+because of the irreconcilable urge of this inner conflict it
+keeps him ever torn between its two extremes. As an
+expression of the allocentric reaction he lives within a
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_192">[192]</span>system that is divided against itself, sensing throughout life,
+only intuitively, the unassuageable pain of his division.</p>
+
+<p>In direct contrast with this reaction the autocentric
+type lives within a system that is completely dissociated
+from the common, congeneric life. But, though the
+system is in itself uniform throughout, he suffers no less
+the affliction of his life’s incompleted cycle because of his
+organic separation from the socially reciprocal, peripheral
+system. The allocentric seeks in vain to atone to himself
+for his extradition from the co-ordinated organism in
+the spurious compensations of a peripherally (socially)
+separative system. The autocentric would annul the pain
+of his separation from the co-ordinated organism in the
+futile appeasements of a central (individual) system
+which, in its insulation, represents no less his complete
+dissociation from the world of actuality. The one would
+repair the organic breach within him through recourse
+to conciliations that lie exclusively within the social
+sphere (peripheral dissociation). The other would resort
+to reparations, which, being wholly enclosed within the
+<i>ego</i>, embody exclusively the individual factor (central
+dissociation). In brief, the allocentric sees himself as
+<i>picture</i> in the world outside of him. The autocentric sees
+the world outside of him as picture <i>within</i> himself. If the
+conduct of the latter personifies the smoke-screen, the
+conduct of the former is typical of the red-herring!</p>
+
+<p>Here again we witness the vacillations between the
+social consensus and our personal resistance to its behests,
+between the opposed factors of suggestion and of repression,
+of personal advantage and of personal disadvantage, due
+to our unconscious alternatives of good and bad. In
+the disorganization pertaining to these two reciprocally
+dissociated spheres—the cerebral and the visceral—our
+unconsciousness consists, in either case, in the individual’s
+inability to realize a unification of personality comprised
+of the balanced inclusion of the two through the co-ordination
+of the organic and the conscious spheres of his
+experience.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="p_193">[193]</span></p>
+
+<p>It is my view that in the phenomena of repression or of
+sexuality artificial symbols are substituted for the natural
+gestures represented in the innate feelings of life and sex.
+In substituting the manifold symbols of expression for the
+natural gestures of spontaneous feeling, there is manifested
+a dissociation of the consciousness of man of which the
+union of his nuclear and peripheral fields of feeling
+(affectivity) is the biological basis. Just as the gesture
+is the motor expression of its concomitant sensory reaction,
+so is the symbol the motor expression of the
+sensory <i>repression</i> concomitant to it. As the gesture is
+the organic accompaniment of reality, the symbol is the
+vicarious barrier against reality. We find the sponsorship
+for the symbol in unconsciousness or in a mode that is
+personal, systematized, repressed, while the gesture has
+its sponsorship in a mode of consciousness or in a confluence
+of feeling that is impersonal, societal, organic.</p>
+
+<p>If one may speak of ethnic modes, it may be said that
+in what is called the period of Greek thought—with its
+preference for form to substance, for “the good” conceived
+rather as beauty than as truth, for life felt more
+in its outward line than in its inner meaning—there is
+ethnically reflected the allocentric or peripheral type of
+reaction. A close sympathy with all that pertains to this
+early period of Greek culture is certainly characteristic of
+the strongly marked types of this reaction.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, the era of Christ and of the psychasthenic
+reaction of Christianity, with its lugubrious
+reversal of the Greek <i>motif</i>, is a mode one finds pre-eminently
+adapted to the autocentric type of character,
+with its apotheosis of the symbols of love, of truth and of
+the spirit. Said Christ: “The spirit is more than flesh,”
+thus controverting the tendency of the Greek ideal, and
+an ascetic Christianity has flocked to him. But in the
+eidolon of Greek as of Christian there is offered again but
+the symbol. In the organic incompleteness of each there
+is presented only the inadequacy of the letter, of that
+which serves as a sign. In the first it is form, colour,
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_194">[194]</span>substance; in the second it is the word, the concept, the
+spirit. To-day there are not wanting indications that there
+awaits man a period that is confluent of the two in which
+these symbolic or separative racial modes shall become
+absorbed in a unification of word and of substance. This
+moment of man’s organic realization within himself of
+the integrity of life in its totality will usher in a sociological
+renascence when man’s life will embody a mode in which
+the spirit <i>is</i> flesh.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_41_41" href="#Footnote_41_41" class="fnanchor">[41]</a></p>
+
+<p>The contrasting systems here denoted as allocentric and
+autocentric, corresponding to the contrast between the
+cerebral, peripheral or social mode of reaction on the one
+hand and the visceral, central or nuclear reaction-type on
+the other, merely mark anew a very old and commonly
+recognized division. Here in this more physiological
+envisagement of it there is offered merely a different
+conceptual basis. There is an analogous division in the
+experimental psychologists’ discrimination between motor
+and sensory. Doubtless also in the contrast more rhetorically
+defined as romantic and classical there is contemplated
+the same division of types, not to mention the contrasted
+reaction-types popularly known as temperamental and
+phlegmatic.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_42_42" href="#Footnote_42_42" class="fnanchor">[42]</a></p>
+
+<p>It is needful to remember that the allocentric type of
+individual is, within the peripheral division of his cerebro-social
+system, as truly self-centred as is the autocentric
+type within the central, visceral division of his sympathetic
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_195">[195]</span>system. The difference is that the allocentric embodies
+dissociation in his seeming adaptation toward the social
+dream that is his day, and the autocentric in his seeming
+adaptation toward the individual dream that is his night.
+Every psychiatrist is familiar with the facility with which
+the dementia præcox patient may analyze his own
+dreams. But what avails his facility? He is by very
+virtue of it not less but rather more shut in, for his
+“analysis” is but the trick through which he subtly
+evades the social demands existing outside his own
+centrally dissociated mode. At all times he holds the
+stage of his self-determined drama, viewing the spectacle
+of it not as onlooker but as producer. What he permits
+you to see is but a play within a play, conceived and
+enacted within the theatre of his own mind. And so in
+the autocentric type embodied in the psychasthenic personality—the
+reaction of the type of normal or neurotic
+that is related to the precoid in its extreme expression—one
+may be led quite far from the touchstone of reality
+by reason of the very simplicity and quite genuine
+correctness of his “analysis.” And so no less with the
+allocentric type and the equally plausible decoys of <i>his</i>
+illusory system. What is needed is our realization that
+in the projections of one as in the <i>intrajections</i> of the other
+there is equally embodied the identical purpose of self-withdrawal
+from the common medium of reality.</p>
+
+<p>Most significant of all is the need that the psychoanalyst
+realize, on the one hand, the peripherally determined
+tendencies of his own socially compensative
+reactions or of his own allocentric normality, and, on the
+other, the centrally biased trends of his own insularly
+compensative adjustments or of his own autocentric
+adaptation. Failing to accept, through his own analysis,
+the possibility of the completely theatrical or symbolic
+nature of the so-called actualities of his own day as they
+tend to be expressed in the immediate moment at hand,
+he may himself easily succumb to the fallacy of a too
+ready credence (analyst’s wish-fulfilment) in judging the
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_196">[196]</span>validity of a patient’s presumable self-envisagement.
+This unconscious alternative which we trace again and
+again throughout the varying manifestations of the mind
+of man, whether in its single or in its collective expression,
+whether in the immediate reaction of the individual or in
+the remoter adaptations of the race mind, is equally the
+unconscious actuation underlying the system of psychoanalysis.</p>
+
+<p>It would seem to mark some strange miscarriage in our
+sociological progress that a dualistic system, such as
+psychoanalysis, should have arisen as an emanation of
+Jewish thought, when one considers the essentially
+monotheistic tradition of the Hebrew consciousness. In
+this sense the sociological reaction of the Hebrew mind
+manifested in the dualistic principle of Freud, as exemplified
+in his basic theory of psychic ambivalence,
+would seem to denote some inadvertence in racial perception.
+Monotheism with its principle of a universal
+immanence of good is clearly a sublimation of the unitary
+preconscious mode (autocentric), just as the dualistic
+theism of the Gentiles, with its basis in the alternatives of
+good and evil, is the sublimation of an irreconcilable
+unconscious mode (allocentric). May it not be that unconsciously
+psychoanalysis is a Semitic repudiation of the
+basal law of Moses and of its preconscious principle of an
+underlying unity, precisely as Christianity is an unconscious
+repudiation of the same unitary precept as
+exemplified preconsciously in the teachings of Christ?
+May it not be, too, that these unconscious alternatives now
+actuating the dualistic systems of Jew and Gentile will
+ultimately resolve themselves into an organic monism of
+accord which, in the societal encompassment of each,
+will become equally understanding and inclusive through
+the united consciousness of both?</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="p_197">[197]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VIII">
+    CHAPTER VIII
+    <br>
+    THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN SEXUALITY AND
+    SEX IN RELATION TO UNIFICATION AND
+    ORGANIC MATING
+  </h3>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>In the impatience of the industrial laboratory to meet the
+public need, it happens not infrequently that, through
+an omission of adequate qualitative tests due to the
+unusual haste of production, an inferior grade of material
+is distributed such as would not have been produced
+under more temperate circumstances. The time has
+come to acknowledge that through a like inadvertence
+many of the products of psychoanalysis are seriously
+open to criticism upon the same grounds. Owing to
+overhasty construction and to a lack of requisite tests
+of their genuineness, an appreciable deficiency has
+occurred in the quality of the material produced. Due to
+this occasion psychoanalysis is answerable for engendering
+in the public mind certain conceptions which are utterly
+without a basis in fact. Coupled with this want of
+moderation, certain publicity experts have disseminated
+a wide range of literature embodying a mass of disastrous
+misapprehension. In mere zeal for a market they have
+circulated it broadcast amid all manner of suggestible,
+because unconscious, individuals and communities. Unconscious
+doctrines, however, cannot be promulgated
+except from unconscious sources. When psychoanalysis
+has achieved a sufficiently impersonal and far-reaching
+outlook to apply to itself in reality the same tests which
+it is now applying to others in theory, it will realize the
+need of recalling, as far as is possible, the many conceptual
+products of its overhasty output and of offering instead
+a more scientifically controlled and a more adequately
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_198">[198]</span>tested summation of views such as are suited to serve as
+an ultimate interpretation of human consciousness.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_43_43" href="#Footnote_43_43" class="fnanchor">[43]</a></p>
+
+<p>There is a characterological aspect of human consciousness
+which psychoanalysis has yet to consider. By
+character I do not mean the habituations of personal
+bigotry. I have in mind a characterology that is racial
+and that furthers the conscious integrations of man as
+expressive of his societal life as a whole. Thus far, instead
+of regarding the personality of man as a societal aggregate
+assembled of the elements comprising individual men,
+psychoanalysis has tended to create artificial divisions
+within this organic unity. Unconsciously influenced by
+a division based upon the bias of its own arbitrary
+alternatives, psychoanalysis has assumed contrasts of
+behaviour which completely lack the foundations of an
+organismic inclusiveness.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps the most unwarranted of such conceptual
+contrasts, because most harmful and far-reaching in the
+confusion it entails, is the artificial discrimination connoted
+under the terms homosexuality and heterosexuality.
+From an organismic viewpoint the alternatives
+presupposed in such a distinction are traceable
+alone to the unconscious ambivalence within the psychoanalytic
+system itself. From an inclusive position it will
+be seen that in the systematization underlying the contrasting
+concepts homo- and heterosexuality, the psychoanalyst
+himself has fallen a prey to the contrasting images
+of hope and fear, “good” and “bad,” underlying the
+alternatives of his own absolute system.</p>
+
+<p>In a situation that is organically false, an organically
+false reaction is the inevitable response. As long as
+sentimentality—the unconscious projection of the flattering
+likeness of one’s own ego—dominates, as now, all
+clinical procedure, the tendency to inversion or image-substitution
+that underlies the psychoanalytic system
+itself will necessarily render what is now the purely
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_199">[199]</span>fanciful isolation of the so-called homosexual complex
+inaccessible to consciousness.</p>
+
+<p>It is the tacit assumption among psychoanalysts as
+among sexologists generally that the condition described
+by Freud as unconscious “homosexuality” deserves
+recognition as a true biological phenomenon, and accordingly
+they tend to concede it place in the social scheme.
+Since the analytic approach is not societal, the analyst
+necessarily gives to the homosexual inversion a position
+that is positive and static. Whether the case is regarded
+as “curable” or “incurable” it is customarily treated
+as an objective disease-entity. Many instances of so-called
+“analysis” that I have known have consisted in
+nothing else than overcoming through suggestion (consensual
+assurance) a patient’s social resistance to this
+type of adaptation, notwithstanding that to this end
+there were pressed into clinical service the external
+adjustments of active heterosexuality. This conception
+is as unfortunate as it is unnecessary. The adaptation of
+the homosexual disorientation within the societal consciousness
+is organically as impossible as is the adaptation
+of the disorientations of paranoia in the organically
+societal aggregate. “Normally” the adaptation of both
+phases of inversion are a commonplace, but that it is so
+is but an added commentary on normality and its collective
+unconsciousness.</p>
+
+<p>That the natural expression of sex is the union between
+man and woman is indisputable. The concomitance
+between the sex of man and the sex of woman is self-evident.
+Being organic, this reproductive convergence of
+the male and female of a species is a process that occurs
+spontaneously and without intervention. No dissertation
+is required to establish this view. There is, however, the
+need to set forth clearly a factor entering into human
+behaviour that is not spontaneous and to render conscious
+the conditions now obtaining unconsciously among us
+through the artificial intervention of this extraneous
+factor. When we spoke of the reactions of the child to the
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_200">[200]</span>early influences of inducement and prohibition (suggestion
+and repression) corresponding respectively to the mental
+images of good and bad, we saw that “good” coincides
+with the individual’s personal advantage as reflected in
+the social approval about him, and that “bad” represents
+his personal disadvantage as likewise reflected in his social
+surroundings. In the presumptive absolute of our arbitrary
+images of good and bad, the system of behaviour
+thus unconsciously begotten in us assumes sponsorship
+even of the primary and organic instinct of mating.
+Not even this fundamental impulse of our human
+behaviour is safe from the infringements of our self-reflective
+alternatives of good and bad with their attendant
+measures of individual advantage. Accordingly, the
+organic and inherent impulse of mating is henceforward
+seen from the point of view of personal self-interest.
+A common, societal instinct of reproduction experiences
+thus the inversion of a secret, personal aim.</p>
+
+<p>This secret element of personal advantage and acquisitiveness
+that has come to mar the free and natural
+expression of man’s mating impulse is fully attested in
+the covert self-consciousness that characterizes his “in-love”
+attitude. In the alternative attitude of good and
+bad that necessarily limits him to the issues of advantage
+or disadvantage for himself, man no longer approaches
+the essentially unitary instinct of love with unity in
+himself. Either there is the response in the individual
+that is “good” in that it concedes the social exaction
+(positive suggestion of self-advantage), or the response
+that is “bad” in that it repudiates the social consensus
+(negative suggestion of self-disadvantage, i.e., repression).
+In the first instance the individual accepts the alternative
+of the socially approved adaptation of heterosexuality,
+in the second the individual’s reaction issues in the
+alternative of the socially repudiated adaptation of homosexuality.
+In either alternative the factor of psychic
+inversion and self-interest is equally decisive. In the first
+it is presented in the form that is the individual’s response
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_201">[201]</span>to the consensual suggestion, in the second it is presented
+in the form that is his response to the consensual repression.
+What is significant is the fact that, as each
+type of response is an alternation on the basis of the
+social suggestion or the social repression answering, in the
+first instance, to the desire of personal gain or approval
+and, in the second, to the fear of personal loss or disfavour,
+both types of response, in returning upon self and self-interest
+for their satisfaction, are equally <i>ego-sexual</i>.</p>
+
+<p>As is universally the case with reactions based on the
+unconscious contrasts of good and bad, in the choice of
+either alternative there are preserved the elements
+actuating both. In the heterosexual alternative there is
+the unconscious presence of the homosexual component,
+in the homosexual alternative there is the unconscious
+presence of the heterosexual component. The reason is
+that the underlying factor that equally determines each
+of these seemingly opposed reactions is the deeper
+unconscious inversion of man’s ego-sexuality with its
+inevitable alternatives of self-advantage based upon our
+artificial differentiations of good and bad.</p>
+
+<p>The conclusion is unavoidable that we shall have to
+reconstruct entirely our conception of the interrelationship
+of man and woman in respect to the instinct of sex.
+As has been said before, hetero- and homosexuality are
+purely fictitious discriminations. Like the distinctions
+presumably expressed by the conception extravert and
+introvert, they embody no discrimination <i>in kind</i> whatever,
+but are terms for the alternative aspects of one and
+the same thing. As the concept connoted by these terms
+may with advantage be replaced by the concept connoted
+by the terms allocentric and autocentric, so the concept
+expressed by the terms heterosexuality and homosexuality
+may with propriety give way to a concept such
+as we may correspondingly express by the terms <i>allosexual</i>
+and <i>autosexual</i>—terms which do not indicate a difference
+of content between two reactions but merely an alternation
+of aspect in one and the same reaction. With a view,
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_202">[202]</span>then, to what I feel will afford a clearer and more encompassing
+outlook upon the problems of our human
+adjustment, both individual and social, I shall, wherever
+convenient, dispense with the term “homosexuality,”
+because of the needlessly misleading stigma it imposes
+upon the individual, and use instead of <i>homosexual</i> the
+term <i>autosexual</i>; correspondingly, instead of the term
+<i>heterosexual</i>, with its equally misleading social implication
+of “right” comportment, the expression <i>allosexual</i> will
+be used, it being understood that by these contrasts I
+mean the dual alternations of self-love due to man’s
+unconscious repudiation of the organic instinct of sex in
+favour of the personal inversions of sexuality.</p>
+
+<p>Sexuality is the <i>effort</i> of conjunction of peripheral and
+visceral spheres, but because of the interposition of the
+personal or self-reflexive element, with its necessarily
+inverse aim, there results on the one hand (socially) the
+mere apposition of periphery with periphery, entailing an
+inverse erotism or autosexuality in the form of narcism
+(self-reflection), or unconscious homosexuality proper;
+and on the other (centrally) the mere (psychic) enfolding
+of visceral with visceral, entailing an inverse erotism in
+the form of autoerotism or ego-sexuality proper. Sex, on
+the contrary, is the spontaneous, effortless and non-personal
+conjugation of the organismic poles comprising
+male and female. This distinction between sexuality and
+sex explains the ulterior quality of a sophisticated and
+self-conscious “in-love” state representing <i>contrast</i>, in
+replacement for the organismic love-state representing
+<i>identification</i>. Hence sexuality is but the temporary
+self-appeasement of a reciprocal adjustment, whereas sex
+is the permanent self-realization of a mutual co-ordination.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_44_44" href="#Footnote_44_44" class="fnanchor">[44]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="p_203">[203]</span></p>
+
+<p>A consideration that cannot fail to be of interest to the
+psychoanalyst is the obviously complementary relation
+of the two types, the allocentric and the autocentric, in
+respect to one another, and its undoubted significance as
+regards the instinct of mating among the more conscious
+personalities such as we should expect to follow the
+unifying process of analysis. The marked unconscious
+affinities observable between the two types I take to be a
+fact of general recognition among psychoanalysts if not
+among the laity itself. But unconscious affinities, being
+infantile or adaptive in character, are obviously attachments
+of an ego-sexual nature. It is an organic corollary,
+however, which in its social implication is unconsciously
+blinked by psychopathologists, that an individual who is
+infantile or unweaned or ego-sexual is in his objective
+sexual interest also <i>de facto</i> ego-sexual—ego-sexuality here
+being nothing else than the extension of the ego-sexual or
+autoerotic mode into the sexual objective of another
+individual. If, as would appear, normality is the expression
+of the unweaned and unconscious mode of
+society generally, it is not to be wondered at that the
+admission of this fact has been so generally suppressed,
+since there follows logically the distasteful conclusion
+that, unconsciously, normality or society in general,
+which includes us all, is ego-sexually constellated.</p>
+
+<p>Accustomed as we are to think so much more readily
+in objective than in subjective terms, the conception of
+ego-sexuality as the determinant of the relationship
+between persons of the opposite sex, or the conception
+of our supposedly “normal” or “heterosexual” society
+as being in essence ego-sexual, has not yet entered the
+analytic consciousness, nor is it likely to do so without a
+violent storm of social protest and “resistance.” But
+the typical expression of sexual union, as it exists among
+“normals,” is redolent of this inverted bias. The folk-reaction
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_204">[204]</span>of the social mind represented in the custom of
+marriage, if clearly confronted, reveals throughout the
+unmistakable signs of this alternative. If we note carefully
+the countenance of this social reaction, we cannot fail to
+observe that its instigation is based upon the mutual
+desire to mollify, to “please.”</p>
+
+<p>Hence, marriage is for the most part a process of mutual
+adjustment of the ego-sexual claims upon one another of
+the two parties involved. After all, the “oneness” of
+marriage is an achievement due to the pooling of the
+private unconscious of the two parties to the arrangement.
+It is the permanent coalition of the unconscious of both,
+collectively, with a view to the temporary guarantees of
+each, severally. For marriage is an arrangement in
+accordance with the terms of which each party to the
+covenant secretly withdraws from his organic place as a
+societal element, in exchange for his fanciful sovereignty
+as a circumscribed domestic aggregate! That is, in
+marriage two unconscious elements have merged into a
+single unconscious entity. Through the self-reflection
+one achieves in his unconscious mate, through the self-reduplication
+he achieves in his unconsciously begotten
+offspring, one’s family is again but the unconscious of the
+individual freshly reinforced through a subtle recourse
+to symbolic replacement. It is the substitution of the
+single, self-limited social group for the all-inclusive,
+organic consonance of the societal aggregate. Thus the
+social cluster comprising the family is but the <i>symbol</i> of the
+societal unity comprising one’s own confluent life. The
+transaction is, in reality, nothing else than the unconscious
+reinstatement of the early childish mode of separateness,
+fear and dependence, such as actuated the mental bias of
+one’s own domestic traditions. In the marriage and homemaking
+of each of us there is but the unconscious transmission
+of the marriage and home of our parents.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_45_45" href="#Footnote_45_45" class="fnanchor">[45]</a> For
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_205">[205]</span>as the child is nurtured amid a codified system of opinionativeness,
+this self-reflective (suggestive) habit about him
+engenders a self-reflective habit within him. Having early
+formed an image of himself in the social reflection with
+which he is surrounded, he begins early to examine his
+own reactions from the sector of this habitual self-reflection.
+It is in this reflection of the self that consists
+the repercussion of consciousness constitutive of self-consciousness
+or the manifestation we unconsciously
+personify as <i>behaviour</i>—an off-hand term for a reaction
+which we have not yet begun half adequately to analyze.</p>
+
+<p>As self-consciousness is of its nature personal and
+adaptive, it does not lend itself to analysis on the static
+basis of a merely adaptive and personal premise. Its
+true analysis is the realization on an inclusive basis of a
+genetic and relativistic principle of consciousness. In the
+mere match-making of our pictorial affects, human
+relationship has become throughout artificial. It is this
+private impersonation of affects which we have substituted
+for the common unity of our real affects. In this
+mutual comparison of reflected impressions our relation
+to one another becomes a superficial and meaningless
+balancing of one affect against another. This artificial
+substitutive quality has entered even into the expression
+of man’s mating and reproductive impulse, and it is
+blindly venting itself to-day in the merely mutual attritions
+of our so-called sexual life. But this suggestive,
+substitutive image-systematization of sexuality is the
+direct antithesis to the unification and spontaneity of sex.
+Where there is unity of spirit, the symbol of unity expressed
+in bodily congress assumes a totally different
+significance. Sexuality is the mere apposition of bodies
+in place of a unity of spirit. In this apposition of the
+personal is the very abrogation of personality. It is the
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_206">[206]</span>mark of sexuality that it is autocratic and exclusive; it is
+the mark of sex that it is relative and inclusive. This
+bidimension or image-substitution of sexuality is the
+psychological mechanism of our sexual resistances. For
+resistances, after all, are but the irksome oppression of our
+habitually enforced adjacencies. For this reason marriage
+is habituative, suggestive, inverted.</p>
+
+<p>Wherever conditions require the isolation together of
+any two normal individuals though of the same sex,
+over a protracted period, there appear very unexpected
+phenomena in the mental reactions of the two with respect
+to one another. These reactions may be noted not only
+where their isolation is due to the accidents of circumstance,
+but also where it is due to voluntary withdrawal
+from habitual associations in the mutual interest of a
+common pursuit. The observation is noteworthy that, in
+such instances, the dreams of each individual show a
+persistently autosexual trend whose invariable object is
+the other, while, on the other hand, the fancies of their
+days’ dreams disclose a no less persistent criticism and
+repugnance on the part of each toward the other. It is
+the more interesting that this identical ego-sexual reaction
+(secret antagonism) is found also in two persons of unlike
+sex under the mental conditions of isolation involved in
+the mutual pursuance of self-interests represented in the
+bilateral attitude of marriage.</p>
+
+<p>It is not inevitable that marriage should be the expression
+of inversion we make of it at present. Marriage is inverted
+or ego-centred not because of an organic necessity but
+because, in its mistakenness of form or its violation of the
+organic inherencies, marriage, like all mere external forms,
+is not biological but symbolic. In the present stage of
+society’s arrested growth marriage is not the outcome of
+a mode of societal confluence but of a mode of personal
+preference. It is the unconscious enforcement of a self-predicated
+want, not the conscious acceptance of an
+organically determined need. When I speak of marriage,
+I have not in mind the permanent union of man and
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_207">[207]</span>woman that is biological and true and that is the natural
+basis of our human society. I refer to the <i>mental attitude</i>
+toward marriage that we have come to substitute unconsciously
+for marriage itself. In place of the bipolar
+position of man and woman, we have substituted the
+bidimensional attitude of male and female. Because of
+this mental attitude of “marriage,” people whose lives
+might be mutually necessary become, on the contrary,
+merely inevitable to one another. It is again our paramount
+image of self with its resultant reflection in the
+bidimensional picture. But whatever is pictorial is
+personal, whatever is personal is factional, and wherever
+there lurks the unconscious element of the factional or
+separative, union is organically interdicted.</p>
+
+<p>Glancing even superficially at the obvious aim toward
+the mutual exchange of egoistic satisfactions and at the
+give-and-take of superficial coquetries and accommodations
+generally characterizing the marriage relationship,
+there is ample evidence of the completely infantile, undeveloped,
+ego-sexual nature of the motives determining
+such unions. If one considers the large number of women
+who are supported by men in the capacity of sexual
+partners, and observes their obsessive self-ornamentation,
+their voluptuous exaggerations of dress and manner,
+their liberal use of perfume and cosmetics with which to
+enhance their personal appeal, and considers correspondingly
+the large sums of money contributed annually by
+their votaries in maintenance of such sexual commodities,
+the ego-sexual character of such mutual arrangements is
+not far to seek.</p>
+
+<p>In contrast with this state of affairs in the sexual life of
+“normals,” it has for some time interested me to observe
+the unconscious autosexuality invariably presented by
+neurotic individuals. The unconscious character of it,
+whether latent or actual, always manifests itself in a
+privately repressed, unsatisfactory form or in a form that
+invariably entails conflict. It has long seemed to me that
+this repressed and tormenting expression of the tendency
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_208">[208]</span>to the enfolded satisfactions of autosexuality, or to the
+unconscious extension of one’s ego-sexuality to others of
+one’s own sex, is but the aim of the personality toward an
+organic unification deflected into the symbolic form
+represented in <i>bodily</i> identification or in objective likeness.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_46_46" href="#Footnote_46_46" class="fnanchor">[46]</a>
+It has further seemed to me that such a symbolically
+distorted urge, if converted into its true meaning, would
+issue in an organic identification representing a completer,
+more conscious order of union. I am not unmindful that
+in the fixity of our own symbolic substitutions our
+tendency is to make such organic conceptions needlessly
+difficult of assimilation. In a paper read before a psychoanalytic
+meeting several years ago&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_47_47" href="#Footnote_47_47" class="fnanchor">[47]</a> I gave expression to
+this same view, and my meaning was so completely
+misconceived that I was actually quoted subsequently as
+having said that I considered neurotic autosexuality
+(I then suggested the use of the term homo-phyllism)
+to embody a “higher expression of love” than that
+represented in allosexuality. Such a statement could not
+be otherwise interpreted than as an outspoken advocacy
+of homosexuality! It is, of course, not to be denied that
+the union <i>typified</i> in the allosexual relationship is alone
+an adequate expression of sex-unity. But it is adequate
+only as organic unity or conscious love, not as sexuality or
+self-love, the basis on which at present it very generally
+rests.</p>
+
+<p>Biologically, autosexuality cannot be other than
+essentially infantile and regressive in character and as
+such it runs counter to the basic aims of analysis. But
+emphasis should be placed upon our need of recognizing
+to what a very large extent actual autosexuality exists
+under the objective symbols of allosexuality. Marriage,
+I repeat, as it largely obtains in the present stage of
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_209">[209]</span>society, fairly teems with this infantile mode of sexuality.
+As the dominant impulse between “lovers” with their
+coy, infantile aim of secret self-satisfaction amply attests,
+the relationship, under whatever guise of exterior circumstance
+it may be concealed, is necessarily egoistic or
+autosexual.</p>
+
+<p>I feel sure that sooner or later it will be recognized that
+allosexuality and autosexuality are synonymous, that
+these seemingly contrary adaptations are really but
+alternate aspects of one and the same thing. Sooner or
+later it will be seen that, while the neurosis entails in every
+instance an autosexual undercurrent, it is an expression of
+autosexuality that is organically intolerable, and that the
+social adaptation underlying normality is equally the
+unconscious expression of a collectively assimilated ego- or
+autosexuality. Thus our pseudo-normality is an unconsciously
+conceded (socially assimilated) inversion to
+this infantile mode of sexuality in substitution for the
+original organic instinct of sex. This is why it has seemed
+to me that in the neurotic reaction, for all its distortion,
+there is presented a progressive urge of evolution—that
+in the very distortion of the neurotic personality there
+is the premonition of a type of a clearer, more conscious
+social order. In his distorted effort to assimilate to
+himself a vicarious, objective (bodily) likeness, the
+neurotic expresses symbolically, unconsciously, an inherent
+urge toward a subjective, organic identification.
+In this view normality with its allosexual reaction is
+psychologically more autosexual than the reaction we
+recognize as unconscious or neurotic autosexuality.
+Although this repressed expression is symbolically the
+more infantile and regressive of the two, yet, of the
+two, it is potentially far the more competent to the truly
+complemental relationship whose fulfilment is merely
+symbolized in the allosexual adaptation as it commonly
+exists among us. What really underlies the conflict
+of the neurotic or the unconsciously autosexual is
+his organic urge toward a completer oneness of life.
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_210">[210]</span>His autosexuality is but symbolic. It is a disposition
+the essence of which is what I have elsewhere called
+“homophyllic”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_48_48" href="#Footnote_48_48" class="fnanchor">[48]</a> and the organic culmination of which
+can be realized only in the unification of the complementary
+systems embodied in a corresponding monophyllic
+union.</p>
+
+<p>In the beginning of my analytic work I fully believed
+with other psychoanalysts that there was a condition of
+neurotic or “unconscious homosexuality” distinguishable
+from what I then believed to exist conversely as “heterosexuality.”
+I was too theoretical, habituative, academic,
+too limited in the freedom of unsystematized observation
+to recognize that sexuality, as it now exists socially, is
+everywhere of one cloth, that all sexuality being narcistic
+is “homosexuality,” that it is of its nature an expression
+of the infantile desire of self-supremacy, of self-seeking, of
+self-gratification, that, in a word, sexuality is synonymous
+with autosexuality or ego-erotism. As homosexuality is
+but the projection socially of what is ego-sexuality
+individually, sexuality or ego-erotism is the very essence
+of homosexuality or homo-erotism. But, like the rest of
+my confrères, it was my habit to refer the question of
+health or disorder of adaptation to the artificial distinction
+between heterosexuality and “unconscious homosexuality”
+respectively. In other words, my criterion of
+health and growth was formerly the merely unconscious
+conventionalization of sex, the mere procuring for it, as it
+were, the external formality of the social blessing. It is
+only in the last years that I have seen in its fuller clarity
+that health is essentially unity and identity of personality
+as contrasted with the introversions of an unconsciously
+alternative adaptation. Only in the last years have I seen
+that as life and sex are one, so are self-worship and
+sexuality one, and that the real contrast as seen in the
+light of the health and growth of the organism, whether
+individual or societal, is the contrast between the organic
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_211">[211]</span>instinct of sex on the one hand and the introversions of
+sexuality on the other.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_49_49" href="#Footnote_49_49" class="fnanchor">[49]</a></p>
+
+<p>It is the unerring test of unconscious autosexuality that
+the quest that manifestly registers itself under this
+artificial form of expression can find its answer only in a
+realization which, in its true sex determination (love),
+is latently the precise reverse of this expression. In the
+attitude of lust and autosexuality toward the male there
+is presaged love or sex toward the woman; in the attitude
+of lust or autosexuality toward the female is the earnest
+of love or sex toward the man. On the contrary, it is
+the unfailing test of the delusionally systematized autosexuality
+(ego-sexuality), which is social or “normal,”
+that the quest thus recorded in its manifest content can
+find its satisfaction only in the no less manifest “reliefs”
+of a <i>seemingly</i> opposite sexual determination (allosexuality).
+In the self-lusts (autosexuality) of the male,
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_212">[212]</span>his objective is the body of the female with her autosexuality
+or self-lusts; in the self-lusts (autosexuality) of
+the female, her objective is the body of the male and his
+self-lusts or autosexuality. In the satisfactions of these
+objective conquests lies the whole meaning of sexuality,
+as in the inclusiveness of a subjective unification lies the
+meaning of love.</p>
+
+<p>The type of union biologically natural and fitting is that
+between man and woman as unified personalities. But in
+the present repressed, vicarious, infantile state of the
+individual and society, such a union is as yet in very large
+measure merely a type. To make of the union of personalities
+something more than a type—to make of it an
+organic reality—there is needed some such unification
+within each through the personality of the other as would
+be realized in a relationship representing the union of the
+two complementary systems, the peripheral and central,
+the societal and individual. The separation of these two
+systems we have seen to be the response to external repression
+from without, and in the re-uniting of these artificially
+separated complements there would be re-established
+the originally confluent organism, individual and societal,
+such as alone embodies the free and unified personality.</p>
+
+<p>Union is not a thing of body in the contrasts of male
+and female with their artificial dissociation from life.
+The female in her rôle of costly <i>objet d’art</i> and the male
+as collector of such wares do not approach in this mere
+surface affinity a consummation even remotely akin to
+any such organic reality. No man or woman ever understood
+the other’s body who has not understood the other’s
+mind; no man or woman ever understood the other’s
+mind, who has not understood the body of the other.
+It is only in an organic identification such as is inclusive
+of both that there is fulfilled the united understanding, in
+both, of the mind and body of each. Union is of personality
+as realized in man and woman through the fulfilment
+in each of their identification with life in its totality, the
+one (male or female) embodying the peripheral, societal,
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_213">[213]</span>allocentric complement, the other (male or female) the
+internal, central, autocentric complement, the two divided
+personalities realizing in the welding of each with each
+the organic unity of both.</p>
+
+<p>In saying “male or female” I am advisedly avoiding
+assigning specifically either sex element to either organic
+rôle. In general the societal or peripheral rôle and the
+visceral or central rôle would seem analogous to the
+respective rôles of male and female, in the fact that the
+former is more fittingly adapted biologically to the
+external demands of life as hunter and provider and the
+latter to the more retired, enclosed conditions of life
+pertaining to the functions of conservation and maternity.
+There is the further parallel that in the female the reproductive
+organs are organs of receptivity, lying deeper,
+more centrally within her organism, while those of the
+male are more contiguous to the external skeletal tissues
+and are invasive in function. Nevertheless, because of
+the frequent transposition between the two sexes of the
+traits supposedly specific of each—a far more frequent
+transposition than the conventional division between the
+sexes affords opportunity to observe, the woman being
+often the more aggressive, the man the more retired of the
+two—to assign forehandedly one or the other complement
+to one or the other sex is arbitrary and without warrant.
+This is true particularly in respect to the distinction
+between the neurotic exaggerations of type described as
+auto- and allocentric, in which the conventional psychosexual
+differentiations are practically indeterminable.</p>
+
+<p>These and kindred reflections lead me to feel that the
+term “opposite” sex is subjectively an unfortunate
+misnomer. To the neurotic especially, whose life has
+been crippled through repression in response to external
+opposition, all “oppositeness” is felt as a menace.
+Consider the inhibiting intimidations to the subjective
+child, resulting from the implied oppositeness between
+teacher and pupil, that characterizes the attitude of our
+prevailing pedagogical systems. Consider to what extent
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_214">[214]</span>our systems of education are really barriers to education.
+In the very idea of oppositeness the child is instinctively
+revolted. His organism shrinks from it as from a blow.
+It is under such circumstances that, in his sense of the
+oppositeness of the sexes, the individual’s unconscious
+recourse is to the sex that is not opposite his own. Yet
+here too, as we have seen, he has only turned to the
+objective symbol of unity, and the inherent opposition
+remains. For the symbol of unity or that which stands
+instead of unity is itself opposition. Thus in the neurotic’s
+unconscious recourse to this symbolic or autosexual form
+of identification the opposition or separation is only
+accented anew.</p>
+
+<p>Organically, or from the point of view of personality,
+woman is not opposite to man but each is the complement
+of the other. As in a current of electricity the flow
+between its two termini is dependent not upon their
+opposition but upon the functional confluence between
+its positive and negative poles, each being incomplete in
+the absence of the other, so is the relationship of sex
+between two organisms; it is confluent and not opposite,
+it is of the nature of complement and not of contrast.
+And so the need of the neurotic, as of the normal individual,
+is such a completion of his personality in the organic
+complement of his mate as is co-extensive with his
+unification with life in its organic compass.</p>
+
+<p>In the symbolic unification or unconscious autosexuality
+represented in an objective likeness or bodily
+identification there is but the short-circuiting of a true
+organic unification. Where it has occurred in personalities
+of a high intellectual or social order, the phenomenon
+has tended to be accounted for through recourse to a
+conceptual accommodation that is more generous than
+scientific. A plea has been advanced for the acceptance of
+the comrade-love of such individuals on grounds of the
+high character of the expression of their inverted tendency.
+To this end there has been invoked the conception of an
+“intermediate sex.” But in this undoubtedly hospitable
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_215">[215]</span>envisagement there is to be seen the sentimentality that
+is as always but inverted sentiment. The conception of an
+intermediate sex is the creation of an intermediate
+imagination. An intermediate sex is a biological solecism.
+It represents the attempt of a divided mind to reconcile a
+divided state of feeling that is prior to it. It is again the
+arbitrary assumption of opposition and the vicious circle
+of separateness and unconsciousness. As for the high
+order of many of its representatives, there is no high
+order of infantilism or autosexuality. The existence of a
+high order, moral and intellectual, of this type only
+imposes upon its representatives the greater societal
+obligation to understand and encompass its meaning.
+Their need is to relinquish the infantile distortion of life
+symbolized in this inverted bias of their unconscious autosexuality,
+and concurrently to enter into the organic
+realization of their innate consonance. It is only when
+this organic inherency has become disturbed, whether
+neurotically or normally, singly or societally, that there
+occurs the reflex effort toward vicarious restitution,
+resulting either in the exaggerations of self-assertiveness
+or in an over-emphasized self-derogation representing
+respectively the spurious bravadoes of an alternative
+maleness on the one hand and the artificial propitiations
+of an alternative femaleness on the other.</p>
+
+<p>As has been said, because of our objective, perceptual
+attitude toward one another, our contacts, whether
+mediated through visual, auditory, tactile or other stimuli,
+are necessarily superficial and attributive. This superficial
+registry of stimuli includes also the sphere of our sexological
+responses. Thus in civilized man the sexual
+reaction, in both male and female, is restricted to the
+superficial sexual zones. Because of man’s repression of
+this essential sphere of his feeling, the natural flow of
+the sexual impulse is artificially intercepted. Hence the
+genital stimulus in man is limited to the superficial
+tactile organs. It does not radiate to the deeper visceral
+structures constituting its nuclear terminus—in the male
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_216">[216]</span>the rectal, prostatic and crural zones, in the female the
+rectal, the deeper vaginal zones and the cervix uteri
+(the homologue in the female of the prostate in the male).
+It is because of this intercepted radiation of the natural
+sexual response that there has arisen the necessity for
+the formulation of an “anal complex”—a complex that
+is regarded by psychoanalysts as existing quite sporadically
+in certain neurotic individuals and that is by no means
+recognized as a condition common to the race of civilized
+man! For naturally with the interception of the sexual
+impulse at its nuclear pole, or with repression of the
+visceral sex zone, there can only result in its stead a
+“complex” and along with it such artificial sexual
+adaptations as have been described as intermediate. In
+addition to this repression of our organic sex feeling there
+has occurred a corresponding compensation in the sphere
+of the mental and social life, which in the woman has led
+to the social adoption of the rôle corresponding to the
+<i>mental image</i> female and in the man to the <i>mental image</i>
+male.</p>
+
+<p>Among the lower orders of animals the distinction
+between male and female entails no organic opposition.
+In one and the same organism this bipolar condition is
+undifferentiated and self-contained. On the other hand,
+with the mental sophistication connoted under the
+distinction man and woman we have come to assume the
+presence of an artificial opposition between the male and
+female organism. With the male element or organism we
+demand the mental and physical attributes we arbitrarily
+posit as “man,” with the female element or organism we
+demand the mental and physical attributes we arbitrarily
+posit as “woman.” Thus we repudiate the polarity that
+is confluent of the two elements male and female and
+exact of the organism we discriminate as man that it
+repudiate the characteristics we discriminate as woman,
+and of the organism we discriminate as woman that
+it repudiate the characteristics we distinguish as
+man.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="p_217">[217]</span></p>
+
+<p>This arbitrary, unbiological dictum necessitates that
+a “man” shall repress the female component within him
+notwithstanding that his organism is compounded of it
+along with the male element. Conversely, it makes
+obligatory upon the woman that she repress the male
+element within her notwithstanding that it is a no
+less constituent factor than the female element in
+composing the bipolar quality essential to the unity of
+her organism.</p>
+
+<p>With this artificial condition and its edict of enforced
+repression there often occurs such a one-sided development
+within the organism that the result is the exaggerated
+reaction we see in the bilateral extremes we
+have described as good and bad, as saint and sinner. It is
+interesting to observe, though, that upon analysis one
+discovers within the repressed sphere of the sinner’s
+personality all the factors that constitute the personality
+of the saint, and that within the repressed
+sphere of the saint’s personality, there are disclosed
+all the elements that constitute the personality of the
+sinner.</p>
+
+<p>Such findings as we owe to our deeper penetration into
+individual psychology make clearer the superficiality of
+our normal, social distinctions. They afford us reason to
+believe that when psychiatry has loosed itself of its
+superficial acceptations we shall find that wherever the
+bipolar life of the organism, male or female, is permitted to
+fulfil its natural expression there will be no longer the
+repressed or unconscious instigation to such exaggerated
+distortions or over-compensations as now issue as a result
+of the organic repression of these artificially dual phases.
+We shall then recognize that the “intermediate sex”
+is a fallacy due to discriminations that arise from a
+disregard of the inclusive nature of sex. What is really
+apprehended by the term intermediate sex is the <i>composite
+sex</i> whereof the unification of personality within every
+individual, normal as well as neurotic, is the inherent
+embodiment. It is in this concomitance of the social and
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_218">[218]</span>nuclear systems that consists the organic co-ordination of
+the individual element. Without it there is lacking the
+organic correlation of the societal aggregate such as is the
+essential biology of man.</p>
+
+<p>The organismic postulate here proposed sets out from
+the conception of a <i>principle of primary identification</i>
+within the original psychic organism as the biological basis
+of consciousness.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_50_50" href="#Footnote_50_50" class="fnanchor">[50]</a> Upon this principle rests the biological
+significance of the unity of personality that comprises the
+consonance of life, individual and societal. The essence of
+the neurotic diathesis, socially and singly, is merely the
+reflection within the individual of these surface diversifications
+of external suggestion or repression, as more
+and more they infringe upon this original consonance of
+the organism. This gradual replacement of our original
+unity and inherency by the external inducements of the
+extraneous and alternative is the whole significance of
+unconsciousness. This, in reality, is the meaning of the
+manifold dissimilitudes of men as compared with the
+unified personality of man.</p>
+
+<p>If, in the androgynous personalities represented in
+such autocentric types as Buddha, Plato or Christ, there
+is manifested this unifying urge of the inherent organism
+of man, so the allocentric personalities of Socrates, of
+Napoleon and of Nietzsche are equally expressive of
+this same composite urge. If this unifying urge of man’s
+common sex incited the genius of an Hypatia in centuries
+past, it has directed no less in our own times the creative
+impulse underlying the genius of George Eliot or of Olive
+Schreiner. In the contemplation of such genius we see
+presented the unity and concentration of personality that
+is the real meaning of the artist as contrasted with the
+extraneous dissipations and diversities of the average
+reaction-type. It is this unity of personality that is the
+source of the artist’s creativeness as it is the inspiration
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_219">[219]</span>of his genius. This composite quality of the sex life
+explains the gentler intuitions we often find in the personality
+of a man. There is undoubtedly the feminine in
+man though as yet he stands in fear of it. It does not
+wrangle or contend. It does not calculate success. The
+feminine in man is the artist in man. It is because of this
+that there can be in the societal unity of the artist’s
+intuitive instinct no place for the illusion that is called
+“the public.” To him “the public” is but the collective
+repudiation of the common soul of man—a repudiation
+that corresponds to this same disavowal within the private
+soul of each of us. Unmoved by its clamorous demands,
+the artist feels within these manifestations of the public
+mind the common soul that underlies it, and senses within
+it the pain of denied needs identical with his own. This
+is the unfailing intuition of the artist. It is because of this
+sense of the unity of life that no artist was ever yet
+successful, that his triumph or his failure are above all
+public concern.</p>
+
+<p>And so by “the artist” I mean the quality of personality
+that is enticed by no external advantage, that
+entertains no indirection, is unmoved by the inverse
+compensations of egoism and the unconscious wish.
+Such a quality is organically, societally self-contained and
+subsists without object. It does not sue for favour nor
+seek to please. In this confluence of the personality of the
+artist as of the neurotic, in this creative concentration of
+man’s genius, whether articulate or denied, is embodied the
+societal instinct that is the composite life of the race.
+This organic integrity of personality that is the composite
+life of man and that is organically inseparable
+from the unifying urge embodied in the impulse of
+mating has its clearest intimations in the affirmations
+of the artist as in the frustrations of the neurotic.
+In the unifying urge represented in these two opposite
+extremes of reaction—an urge which shall neither
+impose nor accept an adjustment extraneous to the
+inherent personality—is expressed the demand for a self-realization
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_220">[220]</span>in a unification which, being organic, is all-inclusive.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_51_51" href="#Footnote_51_51" class="fnanchor">[51]</a></p>
+
+<p>Only in such a conjunction will man realize his original
+mode of societal confluence. When such a conjunction
+will enable him truly to realize in the instinct of mating
+the deepest need of his being, union will no longer as now
+be <i>represented</i> through juxtaposition in the mere physical
+symbol of bodily interpenetration, but it will <i>be</i> through
+unification the societal reality of an organic intussusception.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="p_221">[221]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_IX">
+    CHAPTER IX
+    <br>
+    ULTIMATE RESOLUTION OF THE SOCIETAL NEUROSIS IN ITS SOCIAL IMPLICATION
+  </h3>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>The first demand of our organic completion through a
+unification with another is a unification within oneself.
+From a basis of a divided self one can look out only
+dividedly. From a separative mode one can judge only
+separatively. If the individual embodies a symbolic
+replacement within himself, others about him appear to
+him necessarily also as symbolic replacements, and the
+degree of his resentment toward his own separateness is
+the measure of his resentment toward theirs. After all,
+the only implacable enemy of man is his own unconsciousness,
+and the reconcilement of himself to himself the
+severest test of his essential personality. Its realization
+is born of a patience that is not virtue but encompassment.</p>
+
+<p>Man, in his unconsciousness, stands ever by himself and
+for himself. In the separateness of his personal resistances
+toward the societal organism as a whole, the individual
+has become marooned within his own insular
+habituations. But this isolated attitude of mind is a
+condition which, in our interpretation, is societally
+anomalous. Though originally imposed, this condition
+now automatically imposes itself upon the social personality.
+Thus far this organic disaffection of man has sought
+alleviation in the social convivialities that are but the
+syndicate of men’s collective unconscious. Men have
+sought to appease their personal isolation through the
+accommodations of mere objective agreement. They
+have substituted the symbols of social fraternization for
+the actuality of man’s organic consonance. Within the
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_222">[222]</span>unconscious of man his secret disaffection has remained
+unaltered still.</p>
+
+<p>So often this statement that every man is for himself
+alone has brought the rejoinder: “But why may he not
+be? Surely such selfishness is natural to man.” But is
+it? I do not think so. Of course I have not in mind the
+individual’s effort of preservation in the interests of his
+natural life and growth. I have in mind the private
+differentiations due to man’s <i>mental attitude of self-distinction</i>.
+In the conservation of interests incident to
+the individual’s instinct of physical preservation, man’s
+native experience entails no secret <i>self-conscious</i> design.
+But it is the tell-tale of man’s mental attitude of personal
+separatism that he is constantly under the necessity to
+<i>pretend</i> that he is not separative or for himself. This
+universal pretence reveals a biologically specious condition
+of life for which we feel a universal need of concealment.
+For whatsoever attitude of mind is not openly
+compatible with the personality imposes a division of the
+personality. A socially divided personality is a socially
+insecure personality. Back of the social mind that
+pretends it is not concerned exclusively for self lies a basis
+of social fear and distrust. Pretence is division of personality,
+and division of personality is fear. If the
+pretence and the division are social, the fear is social.
+The effort of numbers or of the social consensus to combine
+in support of their mutual fear is unavailing, for a consensus
+begotten of fear is an organically spurious consensus.
+At the heart of it lies a secret division. This is the
+travesty of normality with its secret soviet of fear.</p>
+
+<p>The analyst or the psychiatrist whose outlook is
+objective fails to regard this consensual fallacy in its social
+as in its personal implication. Being of the social unconscious
+he cannot contemplate the social unconscious.
+Being himself divided he cannot realize his own division.
+We all prefer the satisfaction of seeming together socially
+to the reality of being together organically. We like the
+seeming integrity of the social unconscious because it
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_223">[223]</span>conceals our own disaffection. It is only this seeming
+security of numerical preponderance, however, that affords
+us comfortable protection against the aberrations of the
+isolated, non-conformable or neurotic personality. Nowhere
+is the autocracy of unconsciousness more blindly
+cruel than in the mass impetus of our social consolidation.
+We are not unaware of the resistance of the individual
+to the social consensus, but we have yet to discover the
+resistance of the social consensus to the individual.
+The psychopathologist has offered interesting formulations
+regarding delusions of persecution, but none whatever
+regarding delusions that persecute.</p>
+
+<p>The group work that has been gradually developing
+among my students and myself has consisted essentially
+in a reversal of this habitually objective course of the
+psychiatrist. Instead of studying ideas of reference
+objectively as expressed in the individual, we have
+studied ideas of reference subjectively as they occur
+socially among ourselves. Our experience as a group has
+led us inevitably to the conclusion that the personal
+analysis is a self-contradictory process, that only as the
+individual realizes through his societal experience the
+futility of the personal or private basis is it biologically
+possible to be truly in harmony with a healthy and
+constructive environment. If our position has any value
+and significance it is because it has come to us through
+the daily test of an actual living experience, and because
+as a societal experience it cannot fail to extend itself
+societally to others also.</p>
+
+<p>Let it not be thought, however, that our efforts toward
+a social analysis have proceeded upon a smooth and
+untroubled course. If the individual has his “ups and
+downs” in the effort to unify his consciousness on the basis
+of a personal analysis, he meets no less with alternations
+of satisfaction and depression according as his resistances
+surge or ebb in his efforts toward a social unification of
+consciousness. If the individual analysis presents a
+situation that is unconscious and bidimensional, a group
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_224">[224]</span>analysis presents a condition that is equally unconscious
+and bidimensional. In the bidimensional reaction of the
+individual toward the personal analysis, he tends, as we
+have seen, toward a permanent fixation upon the analyst
+which shows itself alternately in the mental reaction of
+“love” or of “hate.” But in either the personal or
+social situation he tends to hold tenaciously to this new
+object of his infantile affect in the secret hope of ultimately
+reconciling and amalgamating it with the love that
+underlies still the original mother-image. Unhappily,
+it is the invariable failure of the personal analysis that the
+patient carries his secret purpose to a successful issue.
+For either he remains fastened between the old and the
+new love-objects in a consolidated image-fixation upon
+the analyst, or else he returns to the original love-image
+afforded by the parent or to its surrogates, with or without
+the collateral aids of sublimation.</p>
+
+<p>In the actual experience of our group analysis the
+tendency was essentially no different. But there was an
+additional recourse in the group analysis that is precluded
+in the personal analysis. In the personal analysis there is
+a bidimensional attitude toward the analyst that alternates
+constantly between infantile docility and infantile resentment,
+between sentimental approbation at one time
+and outraged disillusionment at another. But this
+alternation always occurs, of course, within one and the
+same individual. In the social analysis the situation is
+expressed quite differently. It was my experience that this
+diversity of reaction within the group led at first to the
+formation of reaction-clusters within the group, so that
+one unit became consistently docile toward the analyst
+and resentful among themselves, while the other unit
+became hostile toward the analyst and docile toward one
+another. Both alternations (resentment or docility)
+were, of course, equally spurious within each group of
+reactions.</p>
+
+<p>The practical outcome in each sub-group was very
+different however. In the cluster that united against the
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_225">[225]</span>analyst, a confederacy was formed that presented all the
+features of unconsciousness we have seen to characterize
+the collective reactions occurring everywhere throughout
+the domain of our normal adaptation. The psychology of
+this reaction, as we know, is the collective pooling of the
+unconscious of its members severally, with a view to the
+mass support afforded each individual within the unit
+separately. The result as it occurred in this cluster was a
+temporary deadlock and a corresponding re-adoption of
+the normal level of bidimensional standards, personal and
+social.</p>
+
+<p>In the cluster in which the sense of resentment was
+limited to inter-reactions among its own members, while
+as a unit all held an attitude of friendliness toward the
+analyst, there was offered a form of group-unconsciousness
+that at least lent itself to progressive analysis and resolution.
+But here again there was discoverable the
+secret pooling of unconscious motives of personal interest
+and self-protection that in no way differentiated this
+group division from the former, that did not separate
+the “faithful” from the “unfaithful,” nor absolve the
+“docile” any more than the “resentful” from a secret
+complicity in the collective reaction that is the mass
+neurosis of normality.</p>
+
+<p>It should be remembered that the plan of group
+analysis was adopted not because I had <i>a priori</i> found in
+it the logical solution of the neurosis. Not by any means.
+Neither had I inductively reached conclusions that led
+to any such logical determination. Not even theoretically
+was there at hand anything of the nature of a <i>logical</i>
+solution. A dissociation is not logical and its solution
+could not be logical. The neurosis is not a matter
+of the intellect and the process of its unravelling could
+not have been intellectually predetermined. As thought
+and affect are processes that occupy essentially different
+spheres, to <i>think out</i> a solution for a disorder of affect is
+self-contradictory. To attempt to do so is beyond the
+range of organic possibility. All that I had in mind in our
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_226">[226]</span>group undertaking was <i>to obtain affective conditions shared
+in common that might afford a basis for the observation of
+affective conditions withheld separately</i>. It seemed to offer
+the opportunity to secure a relative and societal background
+against which the individual would be enabled to
+view in impersonal perspective his own hitherto absolute
+and personal evaluations. Up to this time I had for years
+worked on the group conception in the absence of any
+tangible background of experimentation. There was now
+needed the practical substantiation of this group conception
+in the actual assembling of “analyzed” individuals
+into an organized social aggregate. While the programme
+of group analysis entered upon by my students and myself
+came into an intensive application with the beginning of
+the year 1923,&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_52_52" href="#Footnote_52_52" class="fnanchor">[52]</a> it was actually the summer of that year
+that marked the active inception of our experiment as an
+organized unit, our group having then its first opportunity
+of a practical test in the daily contact of its members;
+so that we were still at this time only feeling our way
+toward the ultimate outcome of an analysis involving
+more than two or three individuals.</p>
+
+<p>In my view the really significant finding that has
+resulted from our close mental association as a group has
+been the opportunity of demonstrating through group
+experience the practical significance of the very unexpected
+disclosure upon which I chanced some years ago
+in my conception of the bidimensional image and its
+influence upon the reactions of consciousness at large.
+It is this conception which has proved to be the real
+foundation of our work. I am convinced that an adjustment
+of consciousness, whether analytic or conventional,
+whether of the laboratory or of the street, will ultimately
+demand that we bring to book the very origins of our
+mental and social systems of “thinking,” that we challenge
+our customary values of mental adaptation at their very
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_227">[227]</span>foundation. Our problem resolves itself into one that
+shall challenge in every detail the fixed basis of an arbitrary
+and unconscious position of absolutism as contrasted with
+the fluent evaluations that alone pertain to a basis of
+conscious relativity.</p>
+
+<p>Upon the basis of our prevailing personal criterion first
+inculcated through the alternative precept of good and
+bad, the mind of every individual existing under our
+present social system is disposed toward a dualism of
+outlook that renders every affective judgment of the
+individual irreconcilable and self-contradictory. For a
+basis that rests upon a mental <i>standard</i> or criterion of
+evaluations is necessarily moralistic and divided. A
+moralistic command entails a moralistic interdiction.
+Every affirmation contains <i>in itself</i> a negation that is
+equal and contrary. That is, every criterion <i>of its nature</i>
+entertains its opposite. Whatsoever I must be or think
+or feel, I must at the same time also not be or think or feel.
+Whatsoever I believe, to that precise degree I likewise
+disbelieve.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_53_53" href="#Footnote_53_53" class="fnanchor">[53]</a></p>
+
+<p>This is not so simple. It is not by any means so simple
+as we tend to make it. It does not merely mean, as we
+would like to think, that if I love good people I do not love
+bad people. Not at all. That would be obvious and a
+matter of fact. It would leave our absolutism quite
+intact and our criteria quite unchallenged in their fallacy.
+It means something far subtler than this. It means that if
+I love good people I <i>do not</i> love good people. It means that
+in the measure in which I love an object, in that measure
+I hate that object. It means, in sum, that, within a
+system of absolute measures, my concept “love” as my
+concept “good” is throughout fanciful and artificial,
+that, in disturbing the natural equilibrium of the organism,
+my mental criterion is resisted by a counter-judgment,
+which, being fanciful and artificial, tends in a precisely
+reverse direction at one and the same time. It means that
+every mental image, arising on the basis of our present
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_228">[228]</span>absolute criterion, possesses unconsciously an ambivalent
+value. <i>Stating the proposition in psycho-dynamic terms,
+every affective mental image is counterbalanced by an
+opposite image having an attractive force that possesses the
+quality of all bidimensional (or pendular) motion and accordingly
+it acts with a momentum the direction of which is at
+every moment precisely equal and reverse to its own impulse.</i></p>
+
+<p>After many years in which I have been delving into the
+processes of the unconscious and striving to unearth its
+intricate mechanisms, I have come upon no phenomenon
+that has seemed to me of such basic significance as this
+illusory mechanism of unconscious dualism and conflict
+that underlies our absolute criteria of values, individual
+and social. Through Freud we have learned that a
+psychic ambivalence underlies the neurotic processes of
+the individual, but we have not yet learned that an equal
+ambivalence underlies the processes of the social unconscious.
+Furthermore, while Freud has shown that
+there is this ambivalence of motive underlying the
+individual process represented by the neurotic conflict,
+it remains to be seen that each term within this ambivalent
+outlook is itself likewise ambivalent—that
+psychic ambivalence necessarily presupposes at all times
+an essential condition of ambivalence that repeatedly
+doubles upon itself. For, if we will examine either term
+of our ambivalent proposition, we shall find that it too
+is based on opposed valences. That is, on our present
+absolute basis of evaluation, every term of our subjective
+judgment necessarily divides and re-divides with its very
+inception. Not only does the contrast between love and
+hate represent ambivalence, but love contains in itself an
+ambivalent motive, and hate contains in itself a motive
+that is equally ambivalent. And so, to whatever subjective
+determinant we may turn, there is inevitably this
+inseparable element of contrast due to our own subjectively
+bidimensional basis.</p>
+
+<p>As regards the neurosis of the individual, we have
+learned through Freud that an unconscious system of
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_229">[229]</span>images, operating to inhibit spontaneous thought and
+action, is the essential meaning of this disorder. Of
+course, Freud attributes such disorders of development to
+an associative inadequacy resident in the individual
+organism. But in the study of the social unconscious
+upon the inclusive basis of a relative method of approach,
+we shall recognize that an identical system of images
+operates to hinder the spontaneous expression of the
+social organism; that as there exists a neurosis of the
+individual that is due to an unconscious system of personal
+images, so there exists a neurosis of the social mind due
+to an equally unconscious system of social images; and
+finally that the latter condition within the social consciousness
+as a whole is the primary and essential disorder
+of which the individual manifestation is but a subsequent
+and secondary symptom.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_54_54" href="#Footnote_54_54" class="fnanchor">[54]</a></p>
+
+<p>It is not possible to speak of the group basis of analysis
+that has become the central feature of my own work
+without calling attention to a bidimensional situation
+that has made itself felt within the ranks of psychoanalysts
+themselves. Moreover, this situation has forced
+into prominence a hitherto unrecognized impasse within
+our psychoanalytic interpretations, precisely because of
+the inevitable conditions of an individualistic basis of
+analysis. The outstanding theoretical feature of Freud’s
+position toward his patients has always been a policy of
+“hands off.” With the inception of psychoanalysis it has
+been the signal position of Freud, and subsequently of us
+all, that the patient shall be left free of all domination or
+direction or suggestion, that in order that he come into
+a sense of adult responsibility toward his social environment
+generally he must come into a responsibility toward
+his own mental processes as they relate directly to
+the analyst. This policy of non-interference is one which
+those of us who have attempted to follow the psychoanalytic
+programme have adhered to with strict conformity.
+But it is clear that the analyst becomes automatically the
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_230">[230]</span>all-engrossing criterion (transference) of the patient’s
+unconscious and that unconsciously the analyst assumes
+toward his patient a corresponding position of personal
+criterion. So that, however sincere our intention, there
+has resulted what is perhaps the weakest point in our
+psychoanalytic technique, a point that has warranted the
+most severe criticism of our work, namely, that treatment
+by psychoanalysis continues for a far too long and indefinite
+term.</p>
+
+<p>To offset this embarrassment recourse is now had
+to a procedure whereby the analysis is brought to a conclusion
+at a certain definitely assigned period—a period
+to be determined by the analyst according to the circumstances
+in each case. The change proposed, then, is from
+a course of indefinite to a course of definite duration; from
+a procedure that, at least theoretically, places upon the
+patient the responsibility of terminating the analysis to a
+procedure that definitely takes this responsibility from
+him and places it in the hands of the analyst. But, in
+proposing that the analyst shall at an assignable moment
+in the analysis peremptorily determine upon a definite
+period at which the analysis shall cease, and in formally
+pronouncing that from this moment on the patient shall
+be cured, we are confronted again with the deadlock of
+the bidimensional and alternative. In this recourse we
+are merely resorting again to the legislation of suggestion
+and, unconsciously falling a victim to the pictorial
+concept “cure,” we are in no sense meeting the issue.
+For in the criterion of the suddenly achieved “cure” we
+are not less the unconscious victims of an illusory and
+absolute criterion than we were victims of a criterion that
+is illusory and absolute when we presumed the position
+that the patient must at all hazards be left in a position of
+freedom toward the analysis.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_55_55" href="#Footnote_55_55" class="fnanchor">[55]</a> In my view, this proposal
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_231">[231]</span>of psychoanalysts themselves that we no longer assume
+a policy of non-interference but that we offer instead
+the arbitrary suggestion of spontaneous “cure,” there is
+sounded the death-knell of psychoanalysis as administered
+on the basis of the personal analysis. This does not mean,
+however, the death-knell of the basic position of psychoanalysis
+as deducible from the principle first enunciated
+by Freud. On the contrary, if we would enlarge the
+application of psychoanalysis to include the wider scope
+of our societal personality, there would be realized the
+necessary advance toward the full significance of Freud’s
+essential principle.</p>
+
+<p>It is admittedly a part of the purpose of the present
+thesis to show that there do exist conditions which make
+treatment through the method of psychoanalysis, as it is
+at present, needlessly long. But to reduce the length of
+treatment calculated to adjust the distorted mind would
+seem as unreasonable as to curtail the length of treatment
+intended to adjust the distorted limb. As Freud remarked
+long ago, no one would question the validity of the
+orthopaedist’s method because of the length of time it
+requires. Why then all the outcry because of the length
+of time often required by the psychoanalyst’s method?
+It is my own feeling that if there are conditions which
+make the method of psychoanalysis needlessly long,
+what is required is the analysis of these conditions. I
+believe that under these circumstances the method will
+automatically adjust itself. But to shorten a course of
+treatment because it is long seems unintelligent to me.
+It seems merely shifting from one unconscious condition
+to its equally unconscious alternative.</p>
+
+<p>Let us examine more closely the real alternative here.
+The fact is that by reason of the dualistic basis existing in
+the personal analysis, the analyst necessarily invites the
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_232">[232]</span>indefinite continuation of the analysis on the part of the
+patient, no matter what he may theoretically say or do
+to the contrary. For the analyst is himself the victim
+of an unconscious criterion represented in his personal
+standard of “cure.” That is, he entertains for the patient
+an image of self-dependence obtainable alone through
+psychoanalysis. But in this standard of “cure” he
+entertains a wish-motive that is self-contradictory. For,
+in wishing to cure a patient through a process of self-dependence,
+the analyst, because of the involvement of
+his personal wish toward the patient, necessarily presents
+his cure through processes that interfere with self-dependence.
+It is again the bidimensional dilemma of the
+absolute or personal criterion, and an absolute criterion
+necessarily involves a wish-motive of two terms either of
+which unconsciously invites its opposite. In his personal
+criterion the analyst would both release a patient with a
+view to the patient’s self-dependence and at the same
+time retain a patient in order to make sure that his self-dependence
+is complete. With one gesture he would detain
+him while with the other he would set him free.
+This is undoubtedly an awkward deadlock. This is the
+very contrary of a cure that aims at self-dependence.
+For the analyst, whether in detaining or dismissing a
+patient, is acting for him. But, on the basis of the
+criterion of the personal image, there is inevitably this
+alternative. It is unescapable.</p>
+
+<p>This solicitous attitude of mind, I concede, has undoubtedly
+tended to extend the course of the analysis to
+an indefinite duration. But does the alternative—the
+arbitrary manifesto that a certain time limit shall peremptorily
+conclude the analysis—really settle the issue?
+Does it not rather sustain than remove the dilemma?
+Of course, a theoretical assumption has been invoked that
+is calculated to warrant this procedure upon psychological
+premises—the premises, namely, that the analysis
+consists in the fanciful reproduction of the birth experience,
+that the trauma in which the birth culminates
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_233">[233]</span>physiologically must be psychically reproduced through
+the trauma of sudden separation of the personality of the
+patient from that of the analyst. But does corroborating
+the illusory and symbolic dramatization occurring within
+the neurotic mind assist such a patient in disabusing his
+mind of the fallacy of the illusory and symbolic? In this
+alternative of a predetermined period for a patient’s
+withdrawal from analysis are we not merely having
+recourse to the more decisive position of the father as
+contrasted with the more lenient and compromising
+attitude of the mother-image? Further, in what we call
+the mother-father alternation are we not again merely
+projecting the dualistic criterion that is our own personal
+and contrasting basis of evaluation?</p>
+
+<p>In my own work I have had an opportunity to realize
+convincingly the completely illusory and arbitrary
+character of this mother-father alternation. This has
+been shown in the fact that patients undergoing analysis
+with me have turned to my assistant, Mr. Shields, in the
+thought that they would find in him a less severe analyst
+than in myself, while patients who were being analyzed
+by Mr. Shields have turned to me in a similar hope.
+Needless to say, in either case, the patients were equally
+disappointed in their quest. Yet this alternation would
+have continued indefinitely had not a solution been found
+elsewhere, namely, under conditions of a social analysis
+in which a personal attachment is not permitted the
+conditions of lodgment necessary for completing the
+personal illusion of permanence and fixation.</p>
+
+<p>I have come to the definite conclusion that in the
+individual analysis the neurotic patient pulls the wool over
+the eyes of the analyst and inevitably comes out the
+victor, because unconsciously the analyst is inevitably
+on the patient’s side. Besides, to show sufficient interest
+in an individual to sit with him in personal conference
+daily or three times weekly (whatever the routine may be)
+is to indicate to the very susceptible emotions of the
+neurotic patient that his presence is personally desirable.
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_234">[234]</span>The situation is only interpretable on the part of the
+neurotic patient, with his unfulfilled personal emotions, as
+the implication that those emotions are fully reciprocated
+personally on the part of the analyst. For with whomsoever
+we enter into a personal situation of mutual secrecy
+we are in a situation of mutual complicity. In the
+secrecy and confidence of the individual analysis, in which
+there is the close, private, specialized relationship of one
+individual to another, there is the tacit disavowal in each
+of the commonness of the socially prevalent quality of all
+unconsciousness. As long as there is a private and
+personal system resident within the analyst, he necessarily
+corroborates the private and personal system resident
+within the patient in front of him. The fallacy of the
+private system is the illusion of personal secrecy. Clinically,
+it is the secrecy of unconsciousness that is the backbone
+of unconsciousness. Though a patient divulge in
+minutest detail all the data entering into his unconscious
+experience, he yet retains his unconsciousness if he
+retains a sense of secrecy toward it.</p>
+
+<p>In our group activity, as we have seen, there were
+several, who in refusing to meet the organic demand for
+a social amalgamation of their personality, were forced
+unconsciously to seek the protective regression afforded
+either in family, in friends, or in some form of defence-reaction
+that led to the isolated activities of mere social or
+normal connivance. On the other hand, others, with no
+less motive of personal defence-reaction, sought protection
+in the alternative of family union which they
+contrived to secure among themselves, and unconsciously
+assumed collectively that I, as the analyst, could
+be arbitrarily delegated by them to the rôle of <i>pater-mater
+noster!</i> As I have said, there was thus formed once
+more an unconscious cluster, a cluster, however, that was
+no less an unconscious form of social encapsulation than
+the first.</p>
+
+<p>Biologically it is the natural process that with the
+growth of their strength offspring become less and less
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_235">[235]</span>attached or dependent upon the parent and that concomitantly
+there is more and more aptitude for equal
+give-and-take activities or play with their fellows, at first
+with brothers and sisters and later with those of their
+congeners with whom chance affords association. Of
+course, though, if the parent has a mental background
+that attaches the child artificially to him through the
+image-suggestion of omnipotence, then, on the basis of
+our present individual and social adaptation, the child
+cannot find in any of his contacts a natural medium of
+association. Although the child may leave his natural
+parent and associate objectively with his congeners, he
+carries with him the image of the parent, and naturally he
+foists this image upon all with whom he comes in contact.
+At the same time all who come in contact with him
+equally foist upon him the image of <i>their</i> omnipotent
+parent. Our position is that <i>as this image is not personal
+but social it cannot be personally but only socially resolved</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The point would seem to be that the child cannot look
+for companionship in the mother or father as long as he
+holds the mother or father in the light of an image or
+criterion. Neither can he come into simpler relationships
+with his fellows on the basis of this criterion of the mother-image
+without investing the personalities of his associates
+with an equal image or criterion. The difficulty of the personal
+analysis is the preservation of an image-situation
+the while one endeavours theoretically to dispel the image.
+But in the natural give-and-take of human beings in their
+work and play activities under conditions of social
+analysis, there is afforded the reality of a social equalization
+that renders untenable the secret and obsessive
+fixation with which we merely <i>look on</i> one another from
+the background of the bidimensional picture.</p>
+
+<p>The result of our group affiliation, to express it symbolically,
+has been a family of “good” and “bad” children,
+of whom some desired to run away from home while
+others were content to remain beside the family hearth.
+Socially, the result was a bidimensional division or
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_236">[236]</span>alternative that exactly parallels the division or alternative
+within the individual. But there is this significant
+difference between the personal and the social analysis.
+In the individual the component that is unwelcome may
+be permanently repressed, while in the alternatives
+represented socially it is possible to stimulate these components
+into repeated recognition through the constant
+clashing resultant upon placing the opposed elements,
+represented by the alternate issues, under conditions
+of socially irritating contrast or competition. In the
+social analysis there is no letting sleeping dogs lie. Once
+the unconscious of one alternative reaction has been set
+upon the other, the fight is to the finish. There is not
+the private recess of personal secrecy into which one may
+retreat. There is not the recourse to self-partiality that
+allows a smoothing over of unpleasant reminiscences and a
+successful substituting of more flattering condolences.</p>
+
+<p>According to our group or social conception of the
+neurosis it is assumed that the causative element in the
+production of these disorders is social or phyletic and that
+the correction of these disorders must proceed upon a
+social or phyletic basis. Our position is that the individual
+cannot be healthy whose consciousness is the
+outgrowth of an unhealthy social mind about him. It,
+therefore, becomes the essence of our group conception
+that the disorder of the individual presented <i>manifestly</i>
+in the individual’s “symptoms” may only be corrected
+through the analysis of the social processes constituting
+<i>latently</i> the individual’s collective medium.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_56_56" href="#Footnote_56_56" class="fnanchor">[56]</a></p>
+
+<p>As we first learned from Freud and as has been corroborated
+through researches in psychoanalysis made
+independently of Freud, the neurosis is synonymous with
+the repression of the instinctive life of man, and in the
+prevailing interpretation of psychoanalysis the remedy
+lies in the successful adaptation of the personal satisfaction
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_237">[237]</span>of sexuality expressed both in direct physiological
+release and in the equivalents of sublimation. It is our
+position that this interpretation is far too narrow, that in
+interpreting the neurosis as due primarily to disorders
+within the sphere of man’s reproductive instinct, there is
+left out of account the disorders of instinct due to the
+obstruction of man’s tribal or congeneric life and to the
+consequent interruption of the creative expression of his
+personality as a societal unit. Our feeling is that sexuality,
+as it now exists, is very generally of an over-stimulated or
+obsessive character, owing to the undue and greatly
+aggravated insistence that has been vicariously brought
+to bear upon this sphere. In the absence of the natural
+outlets of man’s societally instinctive expressions through
+the common avenues of concerted work and play, the
+function natural to the physiological process of reproduction
+has been overburdened and inflated out of all
+proportion to its primary significance. While, as a consonant
+part of the congeneric instinct of man, sex is an
+undoubtedly powerful urge, in the self-interested and
+bidimensional bias of its autosexual, personal quest, this
+manifestation has become but a symbolic exaggeration
+of the natural instinct of sex. This exaggerated condition
+is due secondarily, however, to a repression of the reproductive
+faculty of man as naturally expressed in the
+creative interests of his common societal activities. As
+our give-and-take expressions among our fellows develop
+into activities that are reciprocally creative, in the same
+measure our obsessive drive toward the satisfactions of
+sexuality, whether repressed or indulged, will cease to
+dominate human personality in its present completely
+unconscious and bidimensional image insistence.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_57_57" href="#Footnote_57_57" class="fnanchor">[57]</a></p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="p_238">[238]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_X">
+    CHAPTER X
+    <br>
+    ULTIMATE RESOLUTION OF THE SOCIETAL NEUROSIS IN ITS PERSONAL IMPLICATION
+  </h3>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>I well recognize that in its matter this essay offers little
+that is new. What I have sought to do is rather to speak
+of our human reactions in the large from the basis of the
+altered consciousness of the handful of men and women
+whose group experience, as gradually it has grown and
+gathered strength and cohesion among us, has permitted
+the more subjective or societal realization of these reactions.
+But though it is true that there is little that is
+new in the matter of this essay, yet, in so far as the
+collective differences existing among us as a group have
+been allowed slowly to diffuse themselves gradually into
+the solution of our common acceptance of one another,
+it seems to me that in its mode at least our position offers
+an approach that brings us a step closer to the increasingly
+urgent problem of our human adjustment.</p>
+
+<p>After all, the intrinsic mode underlying our conception
+is the real significance of our conception. To understand
+our position the reader’s only recourse is to repudiate the
+bidimensional alternatives of extrinsic moralities based
+upon precepts of a personalistic or self-restricted behaviourism.
+For the position of this thesis will be little
+understood in the light of the accustomed interpretations
+of the conventional social mind. Because of the unconscious
+bias of its own mental absolute it will appear to the
+social polity that, in the altered attitude here outlined, the
+social polity is threatened at its very foundations. In its
+tenacious hold upon habitual prepossessions the organized
+consensus does not realize that these foundations are
+already tottering. It will not see that in order to further
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_239">[239]</span>the replacement of the already disintegrating structures
+of our present social system, a more widely envisioning
+concept of the organized consciousness of man must needs
+be invoked. In some way, though, there must first be
+brought home to each of us the realization that there can
+be no true unity within the societal organism as long as we
+are a prey to impressions that are but the give-and-take
+reflection of mental attitudes existing mutually in one
+another. As long as we fail to identify the tyranny of
+mental attitudes within the social unconscious with the
+reflection of similar tyrannical mental attitudes within the
+personalism and defection of each of us, man cannot rise
+to the reality of an organized social consciousness. As
+long, for example, as we fail to understand that when
+a mental attitude in others pleases or incenses us, it is
+necessarily but the reflection of a corresponding mental
+attitude in ourselves, we shall continue to praise or punish
+such mental attitudes, together with the acts resulting
+from them, with the mere retaliative measures of personal
+reward or redress. So that our attitude will continue to
+be, as now, the mere pro-and-con reaction to impressions
+determined by the unconscious self-reflection of our own
+“good and bad.”</p>
+
+<p>It is precisely this illusion of mental oppositeness that
+we need to dispel. Harmony will follow automatically
+once we have accepted in its societal significance the
+affective unity of life. With this realization there will
+be no further need of the restraints of an alternative
+principle of morality which, in its bidimensional legislation,
+aims to establish merely a temporary balance
+between essential opposites. With the elimination of the
+individual hope-fear alternation the whole incitement to
+personal infringement will have been removed. What
+inducement will I have to cheat a man if he is myself?
+Or betray a woman if she is I? To what purpose will I
+seek to enslave another to my whim (call it love, marriage
+or what you will) if between us there is the acceptance of
+an organic compliance that allows the realization in each
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_240">[240]</span>of the common unity of both? Why would I seek to
+outdo anyone in the invidious competitions of what is
+called “success,” if I know clearly that success comprises
+only the self-reflective distinctions existing
+within the unconscious of the social mind in response
+to the spurious incentives of the personal alternative
+as it exists within the unconscious of the individual
+mind?</p>
+
+<p>Our prevailing personalistic basis is not applicable to an
+organismic viewpoint, because a policy that is self-reflective
+in the unconscious is self-contradictory in consciousness.
+Unity or consciousness of personality is organically
+preclusive of whatever is personal or unconscious in the
+personality. For every wish that is attained an equal
+disappointment is incurred. For every satisfaction that
+is secured a corresponding denial is imposed. To fulfil
+one’s wish is to abjure one’s reality. Asking is its own
+postponement, as striving is its own defeat. This inner
+homology between desire and its non-attainment is alike
+the hope and the despair of atoning to oneself unconsciously
+or personally for what is one’s need consciously
+or societally. As with compulsion-replacements elsewhere,
+the real occasion of prayer is one’s unanswerable attitude
+of mind in prayer. In the self-compensation of man’s
+want as an individual organism, he necessarily repudiates
+his inherent consonance as a societal organism. Thus our
+personal dearth and our personal plenty are organically
+the same. As the part embodied in one’s personal wish
+(unconsciousness) is intrinsically opposed to the whole
+embodied in one’s societal unity (consciousness), to desire
+is at the same time to fail of attainment as well as
+to covet. This is the paradox of our personalism and
+unconsciousness, as it is the impasse of the personal
+absolute underlying it. In the personal opportunism of
+the unconscious wish we would fancifully summon the
+processes of life to ourselves in place of contributing our
+individual function as common participants in the reality
+of these processes. Our contradiction, after all, is the
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_241">[241]</span>division within ourselves, and the real impasse as always
+is the self-image embodied in the delusive alternative of
+good and bad.</p>
+
+<p>I know, of course, that much that I have tried to set
+down in these pages has been said many times before and
+by those more competent of expression than I. Indeed,
+in its objective envisagement, the recognition among us
+of differences, personal, national and international, has
+become a commonplace. Even in the columns of our daily
+news items, these conditions of societal defection are
+mentioned time and again in the casual tone of the matter
+of course. Among the current comments one reads,
+for example: “The task of saving civilization seems
+rather hopeless when it doesn’t promise an immediate and
+private profit”; “When a statesman says he despairs of
+the world he means that he despairs of getting what he
+wants”; “All nations seem agreed that chaos may
+result unless other nations forsake their evil ways”;
+“Civilization is just a slow process of envisioning more
+rights to fight for”; and so on without end.</p>
+
+<p>But no amount of objective observation, however
+astute, will avail in clearing personal outlooks. Too
+easily is one’s mere observation, however right and
+seemingly true, the embodiment of secret self-satisfaction
+and detachment. Personalistic observation, far from
+resolving the affective illusion of the onlooker, serves only
+to accentuate it. Dissociation within another individual
+that is observed by us but that does not quicken us to a
+realization of our own implication, automatically embeds
+us still deeper in the fixity of our own unconscious personalism.
+There is need to withdraw from our accustomed
+observations and to include within ourselves the dissociation
+that seems to lie outside of us but that is, in fact,
+the unconscious projection of our own dissociation. In
+this affective illusion of the onlooker, we are ever hoping
+merely to convince others of the disinterestedness of our
+interference with them. A disinterested interference is
+biologically impossible. To wish to convince others is to
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_242">[242]</span>be unconvinced ourselves. True disinterestedness consists
+alone in our own self-realization.</p>
+
+<p>The familiar French saying, “Tout comprendre est tout
+pardonner” is, like so much that is proverbial, <i>almost</i> true.
+It has assembled the right elements but in the wrong order.
+It gives to the letter dynamic priority over the spirit.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_58_58" href="#Footnote_58_58" class="fnanchor">[58]</a>
+It is hysterical replacement refurbished in the condensation
+of the epigram. It is but the literature of the neurosis.
+If we transpose the equation in such manner as to convert
+intellectual values into their organic terms, the proposition
+resolves itself into a form that is, I believe, much
+nearer the answer to the problem of our human pathology:
+To forgive all is to understand all. I have only this in
+mind in saying that the neurosis is societal, that it is
+common. This is what I mean in saying that differentiation
+is unconsciousness and that the factor of societal
+repression or the societal factor of separatism is anterior
+to the separatism of sexuality or to the factor of our
+individual repression. As the societal and the individual
+are organically one in mode, the unification of the individual
+is at least a step toward the unification of our
+societal consciousness. This is all I have in mind in
+speaking of consciousness as the encompassment of life.
+It is a mode of consciousness that is inclusive and that
+reconciles within itself the disparity that is social.</p>
+
+<p>All this I had at first “in mind” only. It was, I confess,
+a theory with me and, like all such substitutive replacements,
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_243">[243]</span>the theory held for me only an unconscious
+or symbolic significance. There was lacking in myself the
+recognition that the theoretical is identical with the
+symbolic. And so my position in stating that the theory
+of analysis is the neurosis of the analyst has lacked its
+personal acknowledgment within my own consciousness.
+Truly, unconsciousness cannot envisage unconsciousness.
+Secret separateness cannot encompass secret separateness.
+The division of each of us is the division within himself.
+The real grudge is one’s own grudge. After all, there is
+only one vice and that, paradoxically, is the virtue of
+being better than other people. Yet so tenacious are we
+of this our solitary shortcoming, that we will acknowledge
+all other “faults” rather than disclaim this one. But the
+task of ourselves as the task of our patients is the recognition
+of our own personalism and resentment. It is to
+forgive all <i>within ourselves</i>, that we may understand all
+within others who are societally no less ourselves. It is
+to realize that the whole intricate problem of our “understanding”
+is but the retributive fabrication of our own
+unforgiveness.</p>
+
+<p>It is just here that the repressed and isolated individual
+resolutely balks. Such a solution, he declares, offers
+nothing for him. He does not discover in it an advantage
+for himself. Quite true. In his unconscious sense, there
+is nothing for him. His self-seeking is itself the very
+kernel of his delusion. It is only in the disparate bias
+of his arbitrary individualism (I do not say individuality)
+that he can apprehend anything so dissociative as an
+advantage for himself as a separate individual. It is only
+as the wilful, defiant, separative child that he is, that he
+would seek the treasure of life for himself, that he comes
+demanding a governmental form embodying a system of
+monarchical autocracy whereof he is to be the supreme
+ruler, when, in truth, life is of its very essence an organic
+democracy and the individual an element in its societal
+confluence. In the quandary of his organic involution the
+neurotic, if one might so crudely express it, is literally
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_244">[244]</span>“hell-bent” on attaining heaven. He does not see, for
+he will not see, that life and self are irreconcilable. On
+the contrary, with every available device, with every
+recourse of subtlety and with ever more enticing symbols,
+he seeks to decoy the common, free gift of life into
+the circumscribed and artificial confines of his own
+self-bias.</p>
+
+<p>In this deflection of his mental outlook he is far from
+the basis from which his experience originally set out—the
+organic basis in which the secret of life is its commonness
+and in which the commonness and the joy of it are one.
+As the analysis proceeds, synchronous with the gradual
+acceptance on the part of the patient of his mistakenness
+and of his growing responsibility toward this mistakenness
+through the widening of his societal outlook,
+there comes his automatic awakening to the realization of
+the inherent confluence of life in its utmost fulfilment.
+It is a slow process this that demands our reversal from an
+habitual attitude of disparity and separation to one of
+participation and confluence, from self and unconsciousness
+to consciousness and life, but it is the inevitable task
+of an analysis that bases its procedure upon an organismic
+conception of consciousness in its relative inclusiveness.</p>
+
+<p>I am under no illusion as to the futility of reckoning
+upon any far-reaching assent to such a thesis as this. I
+know well that a thesis which confronts the securely
+entrenched ranks of the social unconscious is, in general,
+predetermined to defeat. In this unpromising outlook,
+however, I am not dismayed. Were I guided solely by
+personal inclination I would endeavour at least to narrow
+the scope of a challenge such as this. I would, for instance,
+absolve myself from the obligation of recording so sweeping
+and unwelcome an indictment as that which lays to
+the door of normality in the large the imputation of autosexuality
+and infantilism. To many, such a statement
+will seem extravagant, bizarre, unwarranted. So that, if I
+would propitiate my readers through the presentation of a
+more acceptable thesis, I should naturally wish, if I may
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_245">[245]</span>not wholly withdraw this statement, at least to palliate its
+implications.</p>
+
+<p>But as this statement seems to me essentially true, as it
+is the very crux of this thesis that unconsciousness is
+social and not individual, that the collective unconscious
+is the anterior factor to which the individual factor
+involving the neurosis is but the reflex response; as the
+central issue upon which my entire position must stand
+or fall is the conviction that the <i>responsibility for the
+neurosis rests upon the societal consciousness in its ontogenetic
+phase within each of us</i>; and above all, since my
+indictment of the social unconscious is one from which I am
+no more exempted than others, to withhold such a statement
+would be nothing other than the hesitation to affirm
+my real conviction and so retain the servility and introversion
+of my own social unconsciousness. This position
+is precisely the expression of what I believe to be the
+essential embodiment of the neurosis, and my wish to
+keep silent would be nothing else than my own unconscious
+wish not to relinquish the neurosis in which I
+share as a social element within it. Upon closer view, my
+unconscious fear becomes merely my wish to save my own
+individuation and unconsciousness at the expense of the
+participatory, societal confluence that alone constitutes
+consciousness.</p>
+
+<p>This, as I think of it, is interesting, for upon reflection it
+grows still clearer that my reluctance would be again the
+neurosis within myself or the retention of the very
+separateness I am presumably undertaking to observe.
+After all, my irresolution would amount to my withholding
+not the statement but myself. It would represent
+my preference (as always it is my preference unconsciously)
+to withhold myself from my organic place as a
+confluent part in the societal aggregate. Instead of being
+one, therefore, with every other element comprising it,
+it would mean that I preferred to retain the illusion of
+my own disparateness, phantastically hoping in my
+dissociative mode thus to comprise in my individual self
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_246">[246]</span>the self-possession that alone pertains to the acceptance of
+one’s share in our common, societal aggregate.</p>
+
+<p>And so I have come to believe that, however unwelcome
+the imputation, it is only the societal indictment as it
+applies to oneself personally that affords the real opportunity
+of release from the neurosis of society. It is the
+illusion of differentiation that is the essence of the neurosis.
+It is the fallacy of our personal separateness that is the
+meaning of our societal discord. Through our mutual
+analyses and also in the contacts of our daily living as a
+subjectively organized group, we have come to realize
+that this subtle attitude of disaffection is extraneous to the
+essential life of man. Affective conditions recognized as
+results outside of us are affective conditions unrecognized
+as causes within us. Subjectively, societally, they are
+the same. From a relative or organismic basis there is no
+difference. Just as cosmically or in the objective universe
+there is no absolute time and space, so organically or in the
+subjective universe there is no absolute cause and effect.
+As objectively time and space are “relative to moving
+systems,” so subjectively cause and effect are relative to
+organic sequences. Accordingly, our need is to recognize
+the implication of the unconscious not as directed against
+others nor against oneself, but as including oneself equally
+with others in constituting together in our common life a
+single, societal unit.</p>
+
+<p>There will, I know, be much misunderstanding in regard
+to what has been set down in these pages. If, by chance,
+the conventional artist should read this thesis, he will tell
+you that he understands and that he accepts it fully, on
+the ground that he finds its full realization within his own
+intuitions. But the artist will be mistaken. Should the
+conventional scientist read it, he will tell you that it is not
+possible to find substantiation for such a thesis within the
+scope of his authenticated formulations and that therefore
+he cannot understand or accept it. But the scientist will
+also be mistaken. Both will be quite right objectively,
+but this is, in itself, to miss the meaning of a conception
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_247">[247]</span>that is essentially subjective.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_59_59" href="#Footnote_59_59" class="fnanchor">[59]</a> This thesis has been
+felt and written from an intrinsically relative mode, and it
+is only from an intrinsically relative mode that it can be
+felt and understood. As yet the artist knows feeling only
+in the absolute form of the images that exist within
+himself; as yet the scientist knows feeling only in the
+absolute form of the images that exist outside himself.
+The one lives within the dreams (fanciful formulations)
+arising within the personal system that is individual;
+the other lives within the concepts (theoretical formulations)
+transmitted to him from the personal system that is
+social. Yet I do not doubt that among both artists and
+scientists, as well as among many people who are technically
+neither artist nor scientist, there will be those who
+will partake more or less consciously of what is here more
+or less consciously partaken of. In the form of its presentation
+it is inevitably restricted to the objective
+symbol of the written word; nevertheless, in the subjective
+encompassment of each that is its common inclusion of
+both, it may equally reach and unite the basic personalities
+of poet and craftsman, of male and female, of artist and
+scientist.</p>
+
+<p>In this sense and in this spirit of a common involvement
+in the unconscious of my fellows, I feel that to some,
+at least, my meaning will seem clear and my motive not
+untoward. For there are those who, like myself, are only
+“normal” under duress and who secretly revolt against
+the compromising yoke of the social as well as of the
+individual unconscious. It is for these that I have written.
+To speak fearlessly and with freedom to the few, who are
+fearless and free enough to understand, means far more to
+me and will, I believe, prove ultimately far more fruitful in
+making clear the real meaning of our human need than
+half-hearted statements muttered with bated breath and
+trimmed to suit the fear-ridden prepossessions of the
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_248">[248]</span>collective mind as it tends in its blind autocracy to
+dominate the clearer vision of us all.</p>
+
+<p>The more I consider the factor of one’s personal
+hesitancy to entrust himself unreservedly to the societal
+aggregate through unbosoming his own unconscious wish
+to repress his share in its collective dissociation, the more
+it is clear to me that in this very symptom of one’s own—for
+such it is—lies the strongest corroboration of the
+impersonal or societal interpretation of the neurosis. For,
+as I have said, it is the acceptance of the oneness of each
+of us individually within the encompassing societal
+organism as an aggregate that alone points the way to our
+release from the fear or separateness that is the neurosis of
+the societal organism.</p>
+
+<p>To consider the instinct of the societal bond without
+mentioning its influence in the development of the formulations
+that have resulted from the conceptions of Freud,
+would be to waive acknowledgment of the very determinants
+which have made possible the present societal
+interpretation. Abstract truths are the personal relics of
+genius; their vindication in the concrete text of experience
+is the heritage of our common consciousness. If the
+significance of personality lies in the organismic consciousness
+of man, the springs of all creative genius are to
+be traced to this common source. This organic consanguinity
+is the very essence of genius. Holding its
+incisive course against all obstacle, this societal urge
+makes of genius the socially solitary expression that it is.
+The source of genius is nuclear, original, essential. Moving
+amid the surface crusts of “types” which in their restriction
+of outer contact may only absorb or reflect the
+impressions about them, genius eradiates from the
+common centre of our societal organism sustained by an
+impulse that is cosmic. For this reason, it is the unalterable
+sentence of genius that it break with every
+accustomed adherence. It is its law that it raise itself out
+of habitual inertias and see straight and clear, beyond all
+temporary immediacies, into the unfurbished truth of
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_249">[249]</span>things. In this wise, in face of the personal criticism and
+resentment of the very world whose progress it was the all-engrossing
+effort of his genius to further, Sigmund Freud
+saw and reported what he saw, fearless, determined and
+alone. There is no more isolated appointment than this
+to which genius is summoned. It is in this appointment
+and in the societal implication of it, that lies the real
+significance of Freud. Should we fail to realize this, we
+would ourselves be overlooking the societal urge that is
+phyletically inherent in Freud’s psychology.</p>
+
+<p>In the course of our development the period of men’s substitutive
+image-production was first interrupted through
+the return to reality inaugurated by Darwin’s theory
+of evolution. What still remained over in man’s mental
+life has been further threatened by Freud’s theory of
+the evolutionary processes of the unconscious. When the
+evolutionary theories of Darwin and Freud are carried
+to their ultimate social conclusion, the result will be the
+entire repudiation of man’s image-production and a
+re-uniting of his organic and conscious life into a single
+constructive whole.</p>
+
+<p>In an essentially psychological study of this kind in
+which the effort has been made to trace the mechanisms of
+unconscious processes in their social application, there is
+not place for discussing the practical outcome, political,
+economic and industrial, that must follow through the very
+altered position of man’s conscious outlook as a result of a
+more inclusive interpretation of our societal background.
+It is impossible to conjecture the influence upon man’s
+behaviour socially and nationally that would result from a
+complete dispelling from his mind of the images that now
+occupy the place of his organic reality. How much the
+reaction that is ostensibly the most disastrous in our social
+life—the reaction of war—is due to the obsession of the
+social mind with mere images having no reality, it would
+only be extravagant to attempt to surmise. But these are
+practical considerations that must occupy us in subsequent
+discussions if the basis here outlined in its fundamental
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_250">[250]</span>biology shall be found of value amid the growing processes
+of man’s thought.</p>
+
+<p>There is a further statement I wish to make. In this
+statement I should like to be understood as speaking in the
+fullest sincerity of which I am capable, my feeling being
+uninfluenced either by sentimental modesty or by any
+deprecatory wish to refer to extraneous agencies the
+sponsorship for this record. This thesis in a very true sense
+is not my thesis—it represents no intellectual achievement
+of mine. On consideration it will readily be seen
+that of its very nature it could not be my thesis. The
+outgrowth of automatic conditions stoutly resisted by me,
+it is the product of environmental circumstances over
+which I had no control. It was exacted under pain of
+repudiating in actuality the theoretical interpretations for
+which my work has stood. It is the outcome of inevitable
+concession to the ordeal of facing in its grim detail the
+fabric of substitution and disparity composing the
+structure of my own daily living. Convictions have been
+wrung from me against my own personal will, against
+every tradition about me and in spite of every effort of
+subtlety on my part to escape their exactions. Through
+many months I have fought their acceptance over every
+step of the way. As, little by little, a more relative and
+societal conviction has been borne in upon me, it has
+proved that the realization I have so long and so resolutely
+resisted has been the actuality of my own
+separatism and unconsciousness, as contrasted with the
+undifferentiated, organic life of which my personal work
+has been but the theory. It is because this work in its
+actuality is the expression of an urge common to life,
+sweeping aside in the strength of its organic tide every
+claim to personal consideration, that there is due the
+acknowledgment that it has come to expression unbeholden
+to me, that its motive has been, as far as
+humanly possible, not personal but societal.</p>
+
+<p>The organic theory here offered has been advanced by
+me hitherto on grounds of mere conceptual intuitions.
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_251">[251]</span>Its present form embodies in its spirit of an impersonal,
+affective participation, however imperfectly fulfilled, the
+subjective record of an organic experience. In its plea
+for a wider acceptance of the common fellowship of man’s
+native consciousness, I well realize that it is only with the
+years that we may hope to yield it fuller accord.</p>
+
+<p>I shall be glad if this embodiment of whatever societal
+acceptance may have found expression in these pages
+may bring a clearer meaning, a quieter understanding to
+any whose need has been deep and unfulfilled. For my own
+part, this expression is the response to what is the deepest
+demand of my own life—the need for the organic unification
+of personality that I feel resides alone in the common
+consciousness of man.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="p_252"></a><a id="p_253"></a>[253]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="INDEX">
+    INDEX
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<ul class="index">
+  <li class="ifrst">Absolutism—</li>
+  <li class="isub1">in affects, <a href="#p_39">39</a>, <a href="#p_227">227</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">in present system of consciousness, <a href="#p_33">33</a>, <a href="#p_43">43</a>, <a href="#p_63">63</a>, <a href="#p_104">104</a>, <a href="#p_227">227</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">in psychoanalysis, <a href="#p_67">67</a>, <a href="#p_68">68</a>, <a href="#p_73">73</a>, <a href="#p_101">101</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">in the Church, <a href="#p_66">66–68</a>, <a href="#p_73">73</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1"><i>see also</i> Personal absolute</li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Adler, <a href="#p_113">113</a>, <a href="#p_174">174</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Affects, <a href="#p_115">115</a>, <a href="#p_121">121</a>, <a href="#p_130">130</a>, <a href="#p_178">178</a>, <a href="#p_205">205</a>,
+    <a href="#p_227">227</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Affective life, <a href="#p_115">115</a>, <a href="#p_125">125</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">components, <a href="#p_57">57</a>, <a href="#p_58">58</a>, <a href="#p_62">62</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Allocentric and autocentric—</li>
+  <li class="isub1">complementary, <a href="#p_203">203</a>, <a href="#p_213">213</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">definition, <a href="#p_188">188</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">reactions, <a href="#p_191">191–196</a>, <a href="#p_218">218</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Allosexuality—</li>
+  <li class="isub1">and autosexuality, <a href="#p_207">207</a>, <a href="#p_208">208</a>, <a href="#p_211">211</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">definition, <a href="#p_201">201</a>, <a href="#p_202">202</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">identical basis, <a href="#p_209">209</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1"><i>see also</i> Sex</li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Alternative—</li>
+  <li class="isub1">bidimensional, <a href="#p_80">80–85</a>, <a href="#p_93">93</a>, <a href="#p_96">96</a>, <a href="#p_97">97</a>, <a href="#p_226">226–228</a>,
+    <a href="#p_239">239</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">in art and drama, <a href="#p_85">85–87</a>, <a href="#p_96">96</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">in psychoanalysis, psychology, and psychopathology, <a href="#p_97">97</a>, <a href="#p_100">100–103</a>, <a href="#p_229">229–233</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">individual expressions of, <a href="#p_88">88–91</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">occurrence in group analysis, <a href="#p_223">223</a>, <a href="#p_224">224</a>, <a href="#p_236">236</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">social expressions of, <a href="#p_85">85</a>, <a href="#p_92">92–95</a>, <a href="#p_99">99</a>, <a href="#p_102">102</a>, <a href="#p_207">207</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1"><i>see also</i> “Good and bad”</li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Ambivalence, <a href="#p_86">86</a>, <a href="#p_94">94</a>, <a href="#p_196">196</a>, <a href="#p_228">228</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1"><i>see also</i> Alternative</li>
+
+  <li class="indx">“Anal complex,” <a href="#p_216">216</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Analysis—</li>
+  <li class="isub1">aim of, <a href="#p_26">26</a>, <a href="#p_137">137</a>, <a href="#p_164">164</a>, <a href="#p_165">165</a>, <a href="#p_166">166</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1"><i>see also</i> Dream; Group analysis; Psychoanalysis</li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Aquinas, <a href="#p_158">158</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Art, <a href="#p_87">87</a>, <a href="#p_96">96</a>, <a href="#p_183">183</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Artist, <a href="#p_96">96</a>, <a href="#p_218">218</a>, <a href="#p_219">219</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Autocentric—</li>
+  <li class="isub1"><i>see</i> Allocentric</li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Autosexuality, <a href="#p_206">206</a>, <a href="#p_215">215</a>, <a href="#p_244">244</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1"><i>see also</i> Allosexuality</li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Besant, Annie, <a href="#p_139">139</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Belief, <a href="#p_47">47</a>, <a href="#p_143">143</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Bidimensional plane, <a href="#p_41">41</a>, <a href="#p_42">42</a>, <a href="#p_58">58</a>, <a href="#p_60">60</a>, <a href="#p_62">62</a>,
+    <a href="#p_104">104</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1"><i>see also</i> Alternative; Relativity of consciousness</li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Bleuler, <a href="#p_94">94</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Buddha, <a href="#p_218">218</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Calvin, <a href="#p_158">158</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Cerebro-spinal nervous system, <a href="#p_189">189–192</a>, <a href="#p_194">194</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Childhood—</li>
+  <li class="isub1">consciousness of, <a href="#p_22">22</a>, <a href="#p_23">23</a>, <a href="#p_145">145</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">imposition of social images upon, <a href="#p_52">52–55</a>, <a href="#p_58">58</a>, <a href="#p_59">59</a>, <a href="#p_92">92</a>, <a href="#p_93">93</a>,
+    <a href="#p_116">116</a>, <a href="#p_123">123</a>, <a href="#p_132">132</a>, <a href="#p_145">145</a>, <a href="#p_213">213</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Christ, <a href="#p_218">218</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Christianity, <a href="#p_85">85</a>, <a href="#p_193">193</a>, <a href="#p_196">196</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Church—</li>
+  <li class="isub1">as social systematization, <a href="#p_65">65–75</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Claparède, <a href="#p_156">156</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Collective unconscious—</li>
+  <li class="isub1"><i>see</i> Social unconscious</li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Complexes, <a href="#p_47">47</a>, <a href="#p_72">72</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Compulsion neurosis, <a href="#p_81">81</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Consciousness—</li>
+  <li class="isub1">absolutism of present system, <a href="#p_43">43</a>, <a href="#p_44">44</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">as unconsciousness, <a href="#p_24">24</a>, <a href="#p_110">110</a>, <a href="#p_111">111</a>, <a href="#p_114">114</a>, <a href="#p_115">115</a>,
+    <a href="#p_119">119</a>, <a href="#p_143">143</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">definition, <a href="#p_119">119</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">individualistic compared with societal, <a href="#p_51">51</a>, <a href="#p_62">62</a>, <a href="#p_109">109</a>, <a href="#p_144">144</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">ontogenesis, <a href="#p_119">119–121</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">phylogenesis, <a href="#p_118">118</a>, <a href="#p_160">160</a>, <a href="#p_162">162</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">relativity of, <a href="#p_32">32–40</a>, <a href="#p_48">48</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">unification of, <a href="#p_122">122</a>, <a href="#p_126">126</a>, <a href="#p_169">169</a>, <a href="#p_173">173</a>, <a href="#p_212">212</a>,
+    <a href="#p_218">218</a>, <a href="#p_242">242</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1"><i>see also</i> Dissociation; Self-consciousness; Societal concept of consciousness</li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Darwin, <a href="#p_249">249</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Dementia præcox, <a href="#p_124">124</a>, <a href="#p_136">136</a>, <a href="#p_137">137</a>, <a href="#p_195">195</a>, <a href="#p_203">203</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Depression, <a href="#p_91">91</a>, <a href="#p_94">94</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Descartes, <a href="#p_124">124</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Differentiation, <a href="#p_129">129</a>, <a href="#p_169">169</a>, <a href="#p_178">178</a>, <a href="#p_242">242</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">delusion of, <a href="#p_120">120–122</a>, <a href="#p_125">125</a>, <a href="#p_131">131</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><span class="pagenum" id="p_254">[254]</span>Dissociation—</li>
+  <li class="isub1">individual and social, <a href="#p_45">45–47</a>, <a href="#p_76">76</a>, <a href="#p_109">109</a>, <a href="#p_110">110</a>, <a href="#p_132">132</a>,
+    <a href="#p_144">144</a>, <a href="#p_148">148–153</a>, <a href="#p_155">155</a>, <a href="#p_176">176</a>, <a href="#p_185">185</a>, <a href="#p_241">241</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Division of personality, <a href="#p_81">81</a>, <a href="#p_85">85</a>, <a href="#p_95">95</a>, <a href="#p_147">147</a>, <a href="#p_222">222</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">genesis of, <a href="#p_116">116–119</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">physiological substrate, <a href="#p_189">189–191</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1"><i>see also</i> Dissociation; Neurosis; Repression</li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Doubt—</li>
+  <li class="isub1">attitude of Church toward, <a href="#p_65">65</a>, <a href="#p_66">66</a>, <a href="#p_68">68</a>, <a href="#p_69">69</a>, <a href="#p_71">71</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">compared with resistance, <a href="#p_71">71–74</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Drama, <a href="#p_85">85–88</a>, <a href="#p_182">182</a>, <a href="#p_183">183</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Dream, <a href="#p_178">178–183</a>, <a href="#p_185">185</a>, <a href="#p_195">195</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">analysis, <a href="#p_88">88</a>, <a href="#p_176">176</a>, <a href="#p_177">177</a>, <a href="#p_184">184</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">and personal absolute, <a href="#p_90">90</a>, <a href="#p_111">111–113</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">and wish, <a href="#p_89">89</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Eddington, A. S., <a href="#p_32">32</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Education, <a href="#p_92">92</a>, <a href="#p_93">93</a>, <a href="#p_214">214</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1"><i>see also</i> Childhood</li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Ego-sexuality, <a href="#p_201">201–203</a>, <a href="#p_206">206–208</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1"><i>see also</i> Sex</li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Einstein, <a href="#p_32">32</a>, <a href="#p_36">36</a>, <a href="#p_37">37</a>, <a href="#p_38">38</a>, <a href="#p_186">186</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Eliot, George, <a href="#p_218">218</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Ellis, Havelock, <a href="#p_158">158</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Extravert, <a href="#p_187">187</a>, <a href="#p_201">201</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Family, <a href="#p_204">204</a>, <a href="#p_234">234</a>, <a href="#p_235">235</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Feeling—</li>
+  <li class="isub1">as subjective experience, <a href="#p_20">20</a>, <a href="#p_21">21</a>, <a href="#p_115">115</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Freud, <a href="#p_1">1</a>, <a href="#p_4">4</a>, <a href="#p_5">5</a>, <a href="#p_9">9</a>, <a href="#p_14">14</a>, <a href="#p_38">38</a>,
+    <a href="#p_47">47</a>, <a href="#p_101">101</a>, <a href="#p_108">108</a>, <a href="#p_109">109</a>, <a href="#p_110">110</a>, <a href="#p_111">111</a>, <a href="#p_112">112</a>,
+    <a href="#p_113">113</a>, <a href="#p_126">126</a>, <a href="#p_154">154</a>, <a href="#p_156">156</a>, <a href="#p_157">157</a>, <a href="#p_158">158</a>,
+    <a href="#p_159">159</a>, <a href="#p_174">174</a>, <a href="#p_199">199</a>, <a href="#p_204">204</a>, <a href="#p_236">236</a>, <a href="#p_248">248</a>,
+    <a href="#p_249">249</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Freudian analysis, <a href="#p_1">1–5</a>, <a href="#p_38">38</a>, <a href="#p_47">47</a>, <a href="#p_138">138</a>, <a href="#p_168">168</a>,
+    <a href="#p_172">172</a>, <a href="#p_231">231</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Freud’s theory—</li>
+  <li class="isub1">of the neuroses, <a href="#p_12">12</a>, <a href="#p_14">14</a>, <a href="#p_37">37</a>, <a href="#p_94">94</a>, <a href="#p_108">108</a>, <a href="#p_109">109</a>,
+    <a href="#p_126">126</a>, <a href="#p_156">156</a>, <a href="#p_157">157</a>, <a href="#p_196">196</a>, <a href="#p_228">228</a>, <a href="#p_229">229</a>,
+    <a href="#p_236">236</a>, <a href="#p_237">237</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">of resistance, <a href="#p_61">61</a>, <a href="#p_154">154</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">“Good and bad”—</li>
+  <li class="isub1">as image of personal advantage, <a href="#p_55">55</a>, <a href="#p_59">59</a>, <a href="#p_62">62</a>, <a href="#p_81">81</a>, <a href="#p_85">85</a>,
+    <a href="#p_90">90</a>, <a href="#p_192">192</a>, <a href="#p_200">200</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">bidimensional alternative, <a href="#p_53">53</a>, <a href="#p_58">58</a>, <a href="#p_62">62</a>, <a href="#p_65">65</a>, <a href="#p_78">78</a>,
+    <a href="#p_81">81</a>, <a href="#p_91">91</a>, <a href="#p_102">102</a>, <a href="#p_103">103</a>, <a href="#p_201">201</a>, <a href="#p_227">227</a>,
+    <a href="#p_239">239</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">pretence underlying, <a href="#p_54">54–56</a>, <a href="#p_58">58</a>, <a href="#p_92">92</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1"><i>see also</i> Image</li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Group analysis, <a href="#p_131">131</a>, <a href="#p_223">223–226</a>, <a href="#p_234">234–238</a>, <a href="#p_246">246</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Heterosexuality—</li>
+  <li class="isub1"><i>see</i> Allosexuality; Homosexuality; Sex</li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Homophyllic, <a href="#p_208">208</a>, <a href="#p_210">210</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Homosexuality, <a href="#p_94">94</a>, <a href="#p_97">97</a>, <a href="#p_199">199</a>, <a href="#p_211">211</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">and heterosexuality, <a href="#p_198">198</a>, <a href="#p_200">200–202</a>, <a href="#p_210">210</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">and paranoia, <a href="#p_174">174</a>, <a href="#p_175">175</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1"><i>see also</i> Sex</li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Hysteria, <a href="#p_63">63</a>, <a href="#p_97">97</a>, <a href="#p_143">143</a>, <a href="#p_189">189</a>, <a href="#p_191">191</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">social, <a href="#p_16">16</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Ideas of reference, <a href="#p_136">136</a>, <a href="#p_223">223</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Image, <a href="#p_40">40–42</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">as substitution, <a href="#p_16">16</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">basis of marriage, <a href="#p_207">207</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">basis of sexuality, <a href="#p_14">14</a>, <a href="#p_15">15</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">bidimensional, <a href="#p_53">53</a>, <a href="#p_57">57–59</a>, <a href="#p_226">226–228</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">contrasted with reality, <a href="#p_41">41</a>, <a href="#p_79">79</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">of male and female, <a href="#p_96">96</a>, <a href="#p_216">216</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">of parent, <a href="#p_55">55</a>, <a href="#p_103">103</a>, <a href="#p_173">173</a>, <a href="#p_235">235</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1"><i>see also</i> “Good and bad”; Mother-image; Social images</li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Incest-Awe, <a href="#p_147">147</a>, <a href="#p_148">148</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Individual—</li>
+  <li class="isub1">as systematization, <a href="#p_70">70</a>, <a href="#p_76">76</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">as separative element, <a href="#p_126">126</a>, <a href="#p_150">150</a>, <a href="#p_152">152</a>, <a href="#p_153">153</a>, <a href="#p_160">160</a>,
+    <a href="#p_243">243</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">as societal element, <a href="#p_115">115</a>, <a href="#p_117">117</a>, <a href="#p_127">127</a>, <a href="#p_130">130</a>, <a href="#p_148">148</a>,
+    <a href="#p_156">156</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Infantilism, <a href="#p_215">215</a>, <a href="#p_244">244</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Insanity, <a href="#p_23">23</a>, <a href="#p_24">24</a>, <a href="#p_91">91</a>, <a href="#p_124">124</a>, <a href="#p_137">137</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1"><i>see also</i> Neurosis; Social neurosis</li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Instinct, <a href="#p_60">60</a>, <a href="#p_127">127</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">common societal, <a href="#p_200">200</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">organic instinct of sex, <a href="#p_202">202</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Introvert, <a href="#p_187">187</a>, <a href="#p_201">201</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Jung, <a href="#p_113">113</a>, <a href="#p_156">156</a>, <a href="#p_204">204</a>, <a href="#p_205">205</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Kropotkin, P., <a href="#p_159">159</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Libido, <a href="#p_156">156</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Mania, <a href="#p_91">91</a>, <a href="#p_94">94</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Marriage, <a href="#p_93">93</a>, <a href="#p_94">94</a>, <a href="#p_204">204</a>, <a href="#p_206">206–209</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Masturbation, <a href="#p_211">211</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Meyer, Adolf, xx</li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Mood-alternation, <a href="#p_91">91</a>, <a href="#p_94">94</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Mother-image, <a href="#p_141">141</a>, <a href="#p_172">172</a>, <a href="#p_234">234</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Mysticism, <a href="#p_125">125</a>, <a href="#p_134">134</a>, <a href="#p_139">139–142</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Napoleon, <a href="#p_218">218</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Narcism, <a href="#p_157">157</a>, <a href="#p_202">202</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Nettleship, Richard Lewis, <a href="#p_106">106</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Neurosis, <a href="#p_15">15</a>, <a href="#p_76">76</a>, <a href="#p_77">77</a>, <a href="#p_83">83</a>, <a href="#p_102">102</a>, <a href="#p_117">117</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">and sexuality, <a href="#p_157">157</a>, <a href="#p_173">173</a>, <a href="#p_174">174</a>, <a href="#p_209">209</a>, <a href="#p_237">237</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">marital, <a href="#p_93">93</a>, <a href="#p_94">94</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">source, <a href="#p_53">53</a>, <a href="#p_125">125</a>, <a href="#p_169">169</a>, <a href="#p_173">173</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1"><i>see also</i> Normality; Social neurosis</li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Neurotic personality, <a href="#p_13">13–16</a>, <a href="#p_24">24</a>, <a href="#p_44">44</a>, <a href="#p_168">168</a>, <a href="#p_191">191</a>,
+    <a href="#p_214">214</a>, <a href="#p_243">243</a>, <a href="#p_244">244</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">and organic consciousness, <a href="#p_11">11</a>, <a href="#p_12">12</a>, <a href="#p_23">23</a>, <a href="#p_153">153</a>, <a href="#p_209">209</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><span class="pagenum" id="p_255">[255]</span>Newton, <a href="#p_35">35</a>, <a href="#p_36">36</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">Newtonian system, <a href="#p_32">32</a>, <a href="#p_33">33</a>, <a href="#p_35">35</a>, <a href="#p_37">37</a>, <a href="#p_38">38</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Nietzsche, <a href="#p_23">23</a>, <a href="#p_130">130</a>, <a href="#p_218">218</a>, <a href="#p_247">247</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Normality—</li>
+  <li class="isub1">and personal absolute, <a href="#p_47">47</a>, <a href="#p_63">63</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">and sexuality, <a href="#p_173">173</a>, <a href="#p_203">203</a>, <a href="#p_209">209</a>, <a href="#p_244">244</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">as criterion, <a href="#p_11">11</a>, <a href="#p_27">27</a>, <a href="#p_30">30</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">as neurotic manifestation, <a href="#p_12">12–16</a>, <a href="#p_175">175</a>, <a href="#p_176">176</a>, <a href="#p_191">191</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">mysticism in, <a href="#p_125">125</a>, <a href="#p_134">134</a>, <a href="#p_139">139–141</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">unconsciousness of, <a href="#p_26">26</a>, <a href="#p_27">27</a>, <a href="#p_147">147</a>, <a href="#p_179">179</a>, <a href="#p_181">181</a>,
+    <a href="#p_203">203</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Objective observation, <a href="#p_18">18</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">within subjective sphere, <a href="#p_19">19–21</a>, <a href="#p_51">51</a>, <a href="#p_121">121–124</a>, <a href="#p_167">167</a>, <a href="#p_176">176</a>,
+    <a href="#p_178">178</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Organismic—</li>
+  <li class="isub1">definition, <a href="#p_3">3</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1"><i>see also</i> Societal concept of consciousness</li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Paranoia—</li>
+  <li class="isub1">and homosexuality, <a href="#p_174">174</a>, <a href="#p_175">175</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Paranoiac, <a href="#p_94">94</a>, <a href="#p_97">97</a>, <a href="#p_143">143</a>, <a href="#p_199">199</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Personal absolute, <a href="#p_102">102</a>, <a href="#p_103">103</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">and war, <a href="#p_83">83</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">as resistance, <a href="#p_61">61</a>, <a href="#p_62">62</a>, <a href="#p_76">76</a>, <a href="#p_82">82</a>, <a href="#p_84">84</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">as right, <a href="#p_82">82</a>, <a href="#p_83">83</a>, <a href="#p_90">90</a>, <a href="#p_92">92</a>, <a href="#p_98">98</a>, <a href="#p_112">112</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">in psychoanalysis, <a href="#p_73">73</a>, <a href="#p_101">101</a>, <a href="#p_102">102</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">underlying social system, <a href="#p_45">45–48</a>, <a href="#p_63">63</a>, <a href="#p_70">70</a>, <a href="#p_72">72–76</a>, <a href="#p_80">80–84</a>,
+    <a href="#p_240">240</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1"><i>see also</i> Absolutism; Resistance; Will-to-self</li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Personal equation, <a href="#p_4">4</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Plato, <a href="#p_218">218</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Precoid, <a href="#p_63">63</a>, <a href="#p_97">97</a>, <a href="#p_195">195</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Preconscious mode, <a href="#p_10">10</a>, <a href="#p_119">119</a>, <a href="#p_137">137</a>, <a href="#p_189">189</a>, <a href="#p_196">196</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Primary identification, <a href="#p_115">115</a>, <a href="#p_116">116</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">principle of, <a href="#p_218">218</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Psychasthenic, <a href="#p_94">94</a>, <a href="#p_193">193</a>, <a href="#p_195">195</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Psychiatrist, <a href="#p_107">107</a>, <a href="#p_124">124</a>, <a href="#p_136">136</a>, <a href="#p_223">223</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Psychiatry, <a href="#p_123">123</a>, <a href="#p_136">136</a>, <a href="#p_137">137</a>, <a href="#p_183">183</a>, <a href="#p_187">187</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Psychoanalysis—</li>
+  <li class="isub1">alternative in, <a href="#p_103">103</a>, <a href="#p_196">196</a>, <a href="#p_198">198</a>, <a href="#p_229">229–233</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">as social systematization, <a href="#p_65">65</a>, <a href="#p_67">67–76</a>, <a href="#p_101">101</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">as theory, <a href="#p_17">17–19</a>, <a href="#p_21">21</a>, <a href="#p_25">25</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">duration of treatment, <a href="#p_230">230–233</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">impasse in, <a href="#p_109">109</a>, <a href="#p_172">172</a>, <a href="#p_223">223</a>, <a href="#p_224">224</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">misconceptions, <a href="#p_2">2</a>, <a href="#p_197">197</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">personal absolute in, <a href="#p_3">3</a>, <a href="#p_73">73</a>, <a href="#p_101">101</a>, <a href="#p_102">102</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">position of, <a href="#p_9">9</a>, <a href="#p_10">10</a>, <a href="#p_229">229</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">unconscious element in, <a href="#p_3">3</a>, <a href="#p_143">143</a>, <a href="#p_167">167</a>, <a href="#p_234">234</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1"><i>see also</i> Analysis; Group analysis</li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Psychoanalyst—</li>
+  <li class="isub1">attitude toward patient, <a href="#p_24">24</a>, <a href="#p_166">166–172</a>, <a href="#p_181">181</a>, <a href="#p_183">183</a>, <a href="#p_195">195</a>,
+    <a href="#p_229">229</a>, <a href="#p_230">230</a>, <a href="#p_232">232–234</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">involvement in social unconscious, <a href="#p_110">110</a>, <a href="#p_111">111</a>, <a href="#p_183">183</a>, <a href="#p_184">184</a>, <a href="#p_222">222</a>,
+    <a href="#p_223">223</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">qualifications of, <a href="#p_28">28</a>, <a href="#p_29">29</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Psychology, <a href="#p_5">5</a>, <a href="#p_33">33</a>, <a href="#p_36">36</a>, <a href="#p_38">38</a>, <a href="#p_65">65</a>, <a href="#p_97">97</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Psychopathology, <a href="#p_63">63</a>, <a href="#p_100">100</a>, <a href="#p_101">101</a>, <a href="#p_123">123</a>, <a href="#p_124">124</a>,
+    <a href="#p_223">223</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">of war, <a href="#p_130">130</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Ptolemaic system, <a href="#p_38">38</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Relativity of consciousness, <a href="#p_32">32–40</a>, <a href="#p_43">43</a>, <a href="#p_45">45</a>, <a href="#p_48">48</a>, <a href="#p_51">51</a>,
+    <a href="#p_57">57–62</a>, <a href="#p_104">104</a>, <a href="#p_246">246</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Religion, <a href="#p_64">64</a>, <a href="#p_96">96</a>, <a href="#p_98">98</a>, <a href="#p_99">99</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Repression—</li>
+  <li class="isub1">and bipolarity, <a href="#p_216">216</a>, <a href="#p_217">217</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">and sexuality, <a href="#p_156">156–159</a>, <a href="#p_162">162</a>, <a href="#p_163">163</a>, <a href="#p_174">174</a>, <a href="#p_193">193</a>,
+    <a href="#p_215">215</a>, <a href="#p_242">242</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">and suggestion, <a href="#p_55">55</a>, <a href="#p_142">142</a>, <a href="#p_189">189</a>, <a href="#p_192">192</a>, <a href="#p_200">200</a>,
+    <a href="#p_201">201</a>, <a href="#p_218">218</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">individual and social, <a href="#p_7">7</a>, <a href="#p_13">13</a>, <a href="#p_15">15</a>, <a href="#p_30">30</a>, <a href="#p_76">76</a>, <a href="#p_77">77</a>,
+    <a href="#p_131">131</a>, <a href="#p_154">154</a>, <a href="#p_162">162</a>, <a href="#p_163">163</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">physiological substrate, <a href="#p_189">189–193</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Resistance—</li>
+  <li class="isub1">as personal absolute, <a href="#p_61">61</a>, <a href="#p_62">62</a>, <a href="#p_76">76</a>, <a href="#p_82">82</a>, <a href="#p_84">84</a>,
+    <a href="#p_230">230</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">attitude of psychoanalysis toward, <a href="#p_69">69–76</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">compared with doubt, <a href="#p_71">71–74</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">individual and social, <a href="#p_43">43–45</a>, <a href="#p_65">65</a>, <a href="#p_75">75</a>, <a href="#p_76">76</a>, <a href="#p_152">152</a>,
+    <a href="#p_154">154</a>, <a href="#p_155">155</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Schreiner, Olive, <a href="#p_218">218</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Self—</li>
+  <li class="isub1">and sexuality, <a href="#p_15">15</a>, <a href="#p_173">173</a>, <a href="#p_200">200</a>, <a href="#p_201">201</a>, <a href="#p_210">210</a>,
+    <a href="#p_211">211</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">image of, <a href="#p_16">16</a>, <a href="#p_58">58–61</a>, <a href="#p_79">79</a>, <a href="#p_82">82</a>, <a href="#p_83">83</a>,
+    <a href="#p_141">141</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">preservation and race-preservation, <a href="#p_127">127</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Self-consciousness, <a href="#p_116">116</a>, <a href="#p_118">118–120</a>, <a href="#p_125">125</a>, <a href="#p_132">132</a>, <a href="#p_147">147</a>,
+    <a href="#p_161">161</a>, <a href="#p_162">162</a>, <a href="#p_205">205</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Sex—</li>
+  <li class="isub1">and sexuality, <a href="#p_11">11</a>, <a href="#p_156">156–159</a>, <a href="#p_163">163</a>, <a href="#p_193">193</a>, <a href="#p_200">200–217</a>,
+    <a href="#p_237">237</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">as organic unity, <a href="#p_11">11</a>, <a href="#p_163">163</a>, <a href="#p_199">199</a>, <a href="#p_208">208–212</a>, <a href="#p_220">220</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">intermediate, <a href="#p_214">214</a>, <a href="#p_215">215</a>, <a href="#p_217">217</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">oppositeness in, <a href="#p_211">211</a>, <a href="#p_213">213</a>, <a href="#p_214">214</a>, <a href="#p_216">216</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Sexuality, <a href="#p_15">15</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">as replacement, <a href="#p_10">10</a>, <a href="#p_163">163</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1"><i>see also</i> Repression; Sex</li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Shields, Clarence, xix, <a href="#p_233">233</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Social images, <a href="#p_96">96</a>, <a href="#p_102">102</a>, <a href="#p_135">135–138</a>, <a href="#p_161">161</a>, <a href="#p_229">229</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">and childhood, <a href="#p_51">51–55</a>, <a href="#p_58">58</a>, <a href="#p_59">59</a>, <a href="#p_92">92</a>, <a href="#p_93">93</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">as distortion of reality, <a href="#p_87">87–90</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1"><i>see also</i> Image; Mother-image</li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><span class="pagenum" id="p_256">[256]</span>Social neurosis, <a href="#p_101">101</a>, <a href="#p_125">125</a>, <a href="#p_130">130–133</a>,
+    <a href="#p_162">162</a>, <a href="#p_245">245</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">and images, <a href="#p_229">229</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">individual implication, <a href="#p_84">84</a>, <a href="#p_246">246</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Social unconscious, <a href="#p_117">117</a>, <a href="#p_133">133</a>, <a href="#p_162">162</a>, <a href="#p_222">222</a>, <a href="#p_223">223</a>,
+    <a href="#p_228">228</a>, <a href="#p_245">245</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">as basis of normality, <a href="#p_11">11–14</a>, <a href="#p_26">26</a>, <a href="#p_27">27</a>, <a href="#p_44">44</a>, <a href="#p_47">47</a>,
+    <a href="#p_176">176</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1"><i>see also</i> Unconsciousness</li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Societal concept of consciousness, <a href="#p_31">31</a>, <a href="#p_45">45</a>, <a href="#p_46">46</a>, <a href="#p_127">127–131</a>, <a href="#p_148">148</a>,
+    <a href="#p_149">149</a>, <a href="#p_160">160–163</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1"><i>see also</i> Relativity of consciousness</li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Socrates, <a href="#p_218">218</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Subjective sphere—</li>
+  <li class="isub1"><i>see</i> Feeling; Objective observation</li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Sublimation, <a href="#p_189">189</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Suggestion—</li>
+  <li class="isub1"><i>see</i> Repression</li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Sympathetic nervous system, <a href="#p_189">189–192</a>, <a href="#p_194">194</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Transference, <a href="#p_167">167</a>, <a href="#p_172">172</a>, <a href="#p_230">230</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Unconsciousness, <a href="#p_5">5</a>, <a href="#p_15">15</a>, <a href="#p_111">111</a>, <a href="#p_126">126</a>, <a href="#p_135">135</a>, <a href="#p_144">144</a>,
+    <a href="#p_173">173</a>, <a href="#p_178">178</a>, <a href="#p_183">183–185</a>, <a href="#p_192">192</a>, <a href="#p_193">193</a>, <a href="#p_204">204</a>,
+    <a href="#p_234">234</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">as resistance, <a href="#p_34">34</a>, <a href="#p_76">76</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">underlying normality, <a href="#p_47">47</a>, <a href="#p_125">125</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1"><i>see also</i> Consciousness; Dissociation; Social unconscious</li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">War, <a href="#p_14">14</a>, <a href="#p_16">16</a>, <a href="#p_34">34</a>, <a href="#p_35">35</a>, <a href="#p_83">83</a>, <a href="#p_129">129–132</a>,
+    <a href="#p_249">249</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Wilde, Oscar, <a href="#p_78">78</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Will-to-self, <a href="#p_13">13</a>, <a href="#p_75">75</a>, <a href="#p_90">90</a>, <a href="#p_98">98</a>, <a href="#p_129">129</a>,
+    <a href="#p_156">156</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Wish, <a href="#p_89">89</a>, <a href="#p_111">111–113</a>, <a href="#p_173">173</a>, <a href="#p_180">180</a>, <a href="#p_195">195</a>,
+    <a href="#p_232">232</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+
+<p class="center">
+PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY<br>
+THE EDINBURGH PRESS, 9 AND 11 YOUNG STREET, EDINBURGH
+</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="FOOTNOTES">
+    FOOTNOTES
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_1_1" href="#FNanchor_1_1" class="label">[1]</a> The word “organismic” refers to the feelings and reactions common
+to the social body regarded as a coherent, integral organism. The
+term organismic, as I use it in its social application, is identical with
+the term organic in its individual application. The difference is that
+the term organismic is employed in a more generic sense. But in
+general the usages, organic and organismic, are interchangeable.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_2_2" href="#FNanchor_2_2" class="label">[2]</a> “The Preconscious or the Nest Instinct,” a thesis presented in outline
+at the Seventh Annual Meeting of the American Psychoanalytic
+Association, Boston, Mass., May 25, 1917.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_3_3" href="#FNanchor_3_3" class="label">[3]</a> “Social Images versus Reality,” <i>The Journal of Abnormal Psychology
+and Social Psychology</i>, Vol. XIX, No. 3, Oct.-Dec., 1924.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_4_4" href="#FNanchor_4_4" class="label">[4]</a> “Our Social Evasion,” <i>Medical Journal and Record</i>, Vol. CXXIII,
+No. 12, June 16, 1926.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_5_5" href="#FNanchor_5_5" class="label">[5]</a> “Giebt es vielleicht—eine Frage für Irrenärzte—Neurosen der
+Gesundheit?”—Nietzsche’s <i>Werke</i>. Erste Abt., Band I. <i>Die Geburt
+der Tragödie.</i> Leipzig, 1903.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_6_6" href="#FNanchor_6_6" class="label">[6]</a> An instance of this inversion of natural expression is seen in the
+system of technique that is the obsession <i>par excellence</i> of singers. In
+the art of singing, as correspondingly in any art of life, technique is
+applicable only to the theory of vocalization but not to the actuality
+of spontaneous musical expression.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_7_7" href="#FNanchor_7_7" class="label">[7]</a> I realize that a patient should have the protection of the medical
+expert’s knowledge. This means that the analyst, if not himself a
+physician, should be directly associated with the office of a physician.
+We know, of course, that charlatanry exists no less within the medical
+profession than elsewhere; yet while a medical degree is in no sense a
+certificate of personal sincerity, it is a social surety of professional
+responsibility. On the other hand, I have yet to hear the suggestion
+offered that a physician who is not himself a psychoanalyst should be
+closely associated with the office of a psychoanalyst. It seems odd,
+as one thinks of it, that this provision should not have been offered by
+those who have been conscientious enough to recognize the reverse need.
+As a matter of fact, the number of instances in which mental disorders
+are mistaken for somatic conditions is incomparably greater than those
+in which there is failure to recognize the existence of the somatic component.
+If it is important that the analyst should be competent to
+trace the source of structural diseases, the internist should be equally
+competent to trace the source of mental disharmonies.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_8_8" href="#FNanchor_8_8" class="label">[8]</a> “To free our thought from the fetters of space and time is an
+aspiration of the poet and the mystic, viewed somewhat coldly by the
+scientist who has too good reason to fear the confusion of loose ideas
+likely to ensue. If others have had a suspicion of the end to be desired
+it has been left to Einstein to show the way to rid ourselves of these
+‘terrestrial adhesions to thought.’ And in removing our fetters he
+leaves us, not (as might have been feared) vague generalities for the
+ecstatic contemplation of the mystic, but a precise scheme of world-structure
+to engage the mathematical physicist.”—A. S. Eddington,
+F.R.S., “The Theory of Relativity and its Influence on Scientific
+Thought,” <i>The Scientific Monthly</i>, Vol. XVI, No. 1, Jan. 1923.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_9_9" href="#FNanchor_9_9" class="label">[9]</a> It is, of course, not possible to trace through mathematical intricacies
+a detailed analogy between the cosmic theory of relativity,
+as it bears upon the objective data of an abstruse calculus, and the
+organic theory of relativity, as it bears upon the subjective data of
+the all-inclusive principle of psychology here regarded as the basis of
+a universally comprehensive scheme of consciousness. The comparison
+has significance for me merely in the aptness of its theoretical alignment
+with a conception of consciousness which includes data extrinsic to
+our habitual psychological system, i.e. the system intrinsic to ourselves
+and commonly accepted as the totality of consciousness.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_10_10" href="#FNanchor_10_10" class="label">[10]</a> Newton observed the universe from the point of view of his fixed
+position upon the earth. Einstein observes the universe from the
+point of view of all possible positions within the universe. Likewise
+our present-day systems of psychology regard the conditions of life
+from the position of observation that is one’s individual point of view
+toward them. In the conception here advanced these conditions, on
+the contrary, are regarded from points of view that are socially relative
+to and inclusive of all possible positions of observation.</p>
+
+<p>The reader will recall that the conceptions of the physicists first
+led them to a theory of special relativity through their calculations of
+uniform motion, while their deductions came only later to embrace
+data pertaining to difform motion, or to motion that is not uniform,
+as contained under the conception of general relativity. With regard
+to the theory of relativity in the subjective sphere, it was upon noting
+the habitual deflections from a predictable organic constant, observable
+in the erratic reactions of the neurotic personality, that the conception
+of relativity in the sphere of consciousness first occurred to me. It
+was only subsequently that the relativity of consciousness as applied
+to the uniform reactions characteristic of the collective social mind
+came to shape itself into the organismic conception of relativity here
+outlined as the underlying principle of consciousness.</p>
+
+<p>While representing in no sense a detailed correlation between them,
+there is nevertheless a certain analogy, not only in the manner of
+inception of the objective and subjective theories with respect to the
+observation first of difform or abnormal deviation, and later of discrepancies
+of normal or uniform reactions; but there is also this further
+concomitance between the two aspects of the principle. The Newtonian
+hypothesis takes account of motion or reaction in the planetary system
+only in the large, while the theory of Einstein is adequate in contemplating
+the motion of planets both in the large and in the small. Conversely,
+our present Freudian theory of the unconscious takes care of
+the reactions of the personality in the small or in an individual or particular
+sense, while the theory of the relativity of consciousness regards
+personality not only individually or particularly (whether regarded
+singly or in its collective social expression) but also societally or in
+the sense of consciousness in its universal or organismic meaning.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_11_11" href="#FNanchor_11_11" class="label">[11]</a> This psychobiological misconception is doubtless also aided in large
+measure by the physiological conditions of our visual organs of perception
+and by the bidimensional surface upon which our impressions
+of objects are received. Because of the disposition of the nerve terminals
+of the retina upon a flat or bidimensional area, our visual perception
+of objects is limited to impressions of a flat or bidimensional plane.
+If by means of binocular accommodation objects present to us the
+appearance of “depth,” it is of course not to direct visual perception
+that we owe our sense of perspective but to stereoscopic inference,
+seconded by our stereognostic experience of tridimensional solidity.
+Hence, what is actually “perceived” upon looking at an object of
+three dimensions is a visual facet, as it were, due to our own mentally
+flattened “cross-section” of the solid object before us as determined
+by the particular aspect of it that is momentarily presented to view.
+I think it cannot be doubted that this mechanism of our visual perception
+is a contributing factor in influencing our tendency to “see” mentally.
+One says “I see” when he means “I understand.” There is the same
+implication in saying that one “sees” the logic of such and such a
+statement. So, too, we speak of a “mental point of view” or of
+“intellectual vision.” This illusory character of our mental percepts
+probably owes its explanation also in part to the fact that our visual
+sense is the sense that best permits a distant and detached observation
+<i>of</i> rather than a contact <i>with</i> the surrounding world.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_12_12" href="#FNanchor_12_12" class="label">[12]</a> “Our Mass Neurosis,” <i>The Psychological Bulletin</i>, Vol. 23, No. 6,
+June, 1926.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_13_13" href="#FNanchor_13_13" class="label">[13]</a> “The Reabsorbed Affect and Its Elimination,” <i>British Journal of
+Medical Psychology</i>, Vol. VI, Part 3.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_14_14" href="#FNanchor_14_14" class="label">[14]</a> “Speaking of Resistances,” address before the Sixteenth Annual
+Meeting of the American Psychoanalytic Association, New York City,
+June 10, 1926. <i>Psyche</i>, No. 27, January, 1927.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_15_15" href="#FNanchor_15_15" class="label">[15]</a> “The Heroic Rôle—An Historical Retrospect,” <i>Psyche</i>, No. 25,
+July, 1926.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_16_16" href="#FNanchor_16_16" class="label">[16]</a> Needless to say the distinction here made between “actual” and
+“real” is used very specifically.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_17_17" href="#FNanchor_17_17" class="label">[17]</a> “Insanity a Social Problem,” <i>The American Journal of Sociology</i>,
+Vol. XXXII, No. I, Part I, July, 1926.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_18_18" href="#FNanchor_18_18" class="label">[18]</a> I recall an incident that occurred several years ago in the office of
+a prominent newspaper that well illustrates this point. A member of
+the staff was called to the phone to receive the details of a drowning,
+word of which had just been reported. One can picture the professional
+zeal with which he turned to the phone, alert with the eagerness of
+expectant acquisition. If a moment later he dropped the receiver and
+drew back with a sudden cry of horror, his whole face gradually altering
+to a look of dejection and pain, it was not because he had been disappointed
+in the expectation of a thrilling item of news. Not at all.
+The item was as tragic in its details as one could wish. The disappointment
+lay only in the fact that, on inquiring the name of the
+boy who had been drowned, he learned that it was his own son. It
+was only this circumstance, then, that explained why his countenance
+suddenly changed from satisfaction to pain. A matter of information
+which was to have been sold to his readers as a delectable item of news
+concerning the drowning of another man’s son became a poignant
+sorrow when the self-same news related to his own son. And so, upon
+examination, it may be seen that what really happened was an unexpected
+shift of affect due to the sudden alternation of the personal
+motive through the reversal of the bidimensional vantage.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_19_19" href="#FNanchor_19_19" class="label">[19]</a> “Psychoanalytic Improvisations and the Personal Equation,”
+<i>The Psychoanalytic Review</i>, Vol. XIII, No. 2, April, 1926.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_20_20" href="#FNanchor_20_20" class="label">[20]</a> Consider the legend of the origin of the life of man as symbolized
+through the intuitions of the folk unconscious recorded in the Book of
+Genesis. For its discussion see “The Origin of the Incest-Awe,” <i>The
+Psychoanalytic Review</i>, Vol. V, No. 3, July, 1918.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_21_21" href="#FNanchor_21_21" class="label">[21]</a> The term “consciousness” is used by the writer in two different
+senses, the one having to do with the mental sophistication of individual
+awareness, the other with consciousness regarded as an inclusive
+racial principle. The reader must rely upon the context for the distinction
+between the restricted individualistic interpretation on the one
+hand and the organismic interpretation on the other.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_22_22" href="#FNanchor_22_22" class="label">[22]</a> This mistaken tendency of inference has so far laid hold upon us
+as to mislead our perceptions even in respect to judgments concerning
+data which lie altogether within the objective mode. To cite an instance
+of homely type quite remote from the present argument:—when we
+speak of two buckets of water, drawn from a common source, in reality
+our concept is buckets of two waters. For the accident of their separation
+in space and of the demarcation of the bulk of each by the outline of
+its container leads the mind, habituated to the fallacy of subjective
+inference, to posit a difference or a <i>twoness of essence</i> where there is but
+a difference or twoness of outer circumstance or accidental condition.
+Hence there results a concept not of two buckets but of two waters,
+whereas the apparently two waters dipped from the same source are
+essentially one.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_23_23" href="#FNanchor_23_23" class="label">[23]</a> “The Need of an Analytic Psychiatry,” <i>The American Journal of
+Psychiatry</i>, Vol. VI, No. 3, January, 1927.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_24_24" href="#FNanchor_24_24" class="label">[24]</a> An example of the blindly impulsive character of this instinct often
+recurs to me. I was standing with a lady on the shore of Lake Zürich.
+A sudden storm arose and we could see plainly that two young men
+in a sail-boat well out in the middle of the lake had lost complete control
+of their craft. To the crowd that had gathered on the quays it was
+evident from the way the sail was jibing from side to side that the boat
+would overturn. A number of launches began hurrying toward it.
+As the boat capsized, throwing the men into the lake, my companion,
+suddenly tearing off her gloves, dashed toward the water. I managed
+to seize her just as she reached the water’s edge. On my rallying
+her and inquiring just what might be her plans with reference to two
+men a full quarter of a mile out in the lake and closely surrounded by
+competent rescue parties, she was unable to account for her impulsive
+reaction beyond declaring that she “just couldn’t let them drown like
+that!” Here was an individual with as goodly a share of unconscious
+egotism as the rest of us, but in whom at the sight of danger to others
+the self-instinct was completely subordinated to the organic behests
+of our common societal instinct.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_25_25" href="#FNanchor_25_25" class="label">[25]</a> “Character and the Neuroses,” <i>The Psychoanalytic Review</i>, Vol. I,
+No. 2, February, 1914.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_26_26" href="#FNanchor_26_26" class="label">[26]</a> We overlook the fact that it is not the content of a belief but rather
+the mere condition of believing that determines its errancy or truth.
+The word <i>belief</i>, as has been said, is a derivative of the Anglo-Saxon
+<i>leof</i>, meaning <i>preference</i>, but we do not recognize that what one
+“believes” is merely what one <i>wants to think</i>. There are undoubtedly
+as many devout believers among the devotees of Science as of Religion,
+and upon inquiry we should probably find that the pet <i>beliefs</i> of the
+scientist rest upon as unreasoning an attitude of mind as those of the
+religionist. The point is that whatever is thus believed in response
+to personal preference is arbitrary and doctrinaire, be it evolution,
+relativity, or God.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_27_27" href="#FNanchor_27_27" class="label">[27]</a> It is really the element of secret emotionalism that constitutes
+mysticism. It is again a phase of the private alternative whereby we
+get what we want. What is called “intellectual mysticism” is but
+a secondary rationalization of this emotional element. But there is
+need of discrimination. While it is true that conceptions arising from
+intuitional inference may readily be begotten of emotionalism, yet the
+same inferences when based upon biological analogy cease to be mystical.
+Nietzsche’s “primordial unity,” because biologically inferred, seems
+to me a quite unemotional and inclusive conception. In the biological
+consistency that unites the most highly differentiated species with the
+lowest single unicellular organism, the mind straightway finds substantiation
+for Nietzsche’s conception. Whereas the “metaphysical
+unity” of the religionists is, on the contrary, a wholly mystical conception.
+Through this postulate the mind is immediately involved in
+such vagaries as one connects with the doctrine of transubstantiation
+or with the flights of Annie Besant and her astral bodies!</p>
+
+<p>But one can perhaps still more aptly illustrate the distinction in
+question by considering the totally opposed meanings—the one intellectual,
+the other emotional—contained in the word “vibrations”
+according as it is used by the scientist in regard to mathematically
+mensurable physical wave-lengths or as it is employed by the “hypersensitive
+personality” to describe certain sensations presumably
+recorded somewhere in the region of the epigastrium in response to
+subtle but invisible “psychic communications.” In defining the term
+mystical one must not fail to include the attitude of mind that leads
+one scientist, who has failed to understand the investigations of another,
+to refer to those investigations as mystical. I am inclined to feel somewhat
+strongly on this point because of the fact that my conception of
+the primary biological unity of the organism and its influence upon the
+subsequent development of the personality has tended to be regarded
+quite arbitrarily in the light of a mystical interpretation. (See note 1,
+page 10.)</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_28_28" href="#FNanchor_28_28" class="label">[28]</a> There is a story reminiscent of juvenile days in my own home
+that is to the point. An older brother, then between four and five
+years of age, was being given his bath in the nursery as was customary
+in those days. Hanging above the mantel was a picture of the Sistine
+Madonna. The youngster being freed of his clothing ran skipping
+about the room. His governess happened to be present, and being
+duly horrified or, what is more probable as I remember her, acting in
+response to a sense of duty, she gently chid him for his lack of modesty,
+saying “Jesus doesn’t love little boys who go about that way.” The
+child looked up at the picture of the nude infant with doubtless a more
+discerning sympathy with Jesus’ views than grown-ups are wont to attribute
+to the wisdom of childhood, and looking his would-be instructress
+quietly in the eyes he replied incontrovertibly: “He does it hisse’f!”</p>
+
+<p>If the story of my brother’s life should ever be fully told, as some
+day I hope it may, it will help us realize the unerring fatality of an early
+enforced system of repression and its logical effect upon the individual’s
+subsequent life as upon its close.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_29_29" href="#FNanchor_29_29" class="label">[29]</a> The biological (organic) continuity between the societal or psychological
+and the functional or physiological spheres is interesting in view
+of their obvious homologies as shown in the marked suggestive influences
+which we see passing over from the psychological sphere and affecting
+the processes pertaining to the functional or physiological sphere and
+doubtless operating no less in the reverse direction. One wonders
+without undue presumption how many so-called “organic” diseases
+are not primarily functional and hence functionally modifiable through
+the integral, societal agency of an organic analysis, provided, of course,
+that the separative process has not already crystallized into the static
+condition of structural alteration. At least it is clear that many so-called
+physical derangements need to be frankly regarded in the light of sheer
+somatic hysterias. See “The Psychological Analysis of So-called
+Neurasthenic and Allied States,” <i>The Journal of Abnormal Psychology</i>,
+Vol. VIII, 1913–14, page 246, note 1.</p>
+
+<p>An analogous condition is demonstrable in the physical universe in
+the fact that the phenomena of gravitation (such as planetary motion)
+and the phenomena of electricity (including the motion of light) have
+been proved to be so intimately related to one another as to be regarded
+now by the physicists “as parts of one vast system embracing all
+Nature.”</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_30_30" href="#FNanchor_30_30" class="label">[30]</a> The Southern negro has a definition of libido that is biologically truer
+than that of either Freud, Jung or Claparède. He refers to inadequacy
+of the sexual life as a lack of “ambition.”</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_31_31" href="#FNanchor_31_31" class="label">[31]</a> It should be recalled that in the view of the present thesis sexuality
+as it exists socially among us is, in essence, narcistic throughout and
+that hence sexuality, including so-called <i>normal</i> sexuality, is, in my
+conception, a repression, and must be definitely discriminated from
+the spontaneous and biological expression embodied in the native
+instinct of sex. (See p. 10.)</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_32_32" href="#FNanchor_32_32" class="label">[32]</a> One may find the objective evidence of this statement amply set
+forth in P. Kropotkin’s <i>Mutual Aid, a Factor of Evolution</i>. Here
+Kropotkin traces in a very conclusive way the presence of the societal
+instinct in the lower animals and in primitive man. Kropotkin errs,
+however, when he reaches the levels of development expressed in the
+social organizations of man. For he fails to discriminate between the
+instinct of societal solidarity that is the natural cohesion of a species
+and the quite premeditated and ulterior expressions of social accord
+represented in the mutual self-interests of man’s collective adaptations.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_33_33" href="#FNanchor_33_33" class="label">[33]</a> “An Ethnic Aspect of Consciousness,” <i>The Sociological Review</i>,
+Vol. XIX, No. 1, January, 1927.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_34_34" href="#FNanchor_34_34" class="label">[34]</a> If, in the flash of so brief an interval of time (speaking ethnologically)
+as fifty years or so, a plan were effected involving the complete
+segregation from one another of all the individuals comprising the
+societal organism of the species, the result, notwithstanding the many
+millions of years required for the gradual evolution of the race up to
+the present time, would be its complete extermination! Such a
+consideration allows us to realize, at least objectively, how closely
+interwoven are the elements comprising our societal organism and how
+dependent is the integrity of the whole upon the organic participation
+of its parts.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_35_35" href="#FNanchor_35_35" class="label">[35]</a> A striking instance of psychoanalytic unconsciousness may be seen
+in the analyst’s quite naïve attitude toward his own unconscious need
+for such infantile pacifiers as he finds in the obsessive use of tobacco.
+That such diversions are no more adult than the use of the rubber
+ring or nipple of his infancy he does not for a moment suspect, the
+concomitance of such practices with the oral eroticism of his childhood
+having only a <i>theoretical</i> significance for him. The truth is, the psychoanalyst
+<i>wants to smoke</i>. Of course, it is not consistent with his teaching
+and if he is to have his way in the matter some process must be devised
+that will make it consistent. And so in his authoritarian suzerainty
+he forthwith decrees that the patient who objects to a smoke-filled
+room is a prey to unseemly resistances, and that his or her attitude
+of mind, not the analyst’s, must be promptly looked into with a view
+to summary treatment.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_36_36" href="#FNanchor_36_36" class="label">[36]</a> Let me say at once that this nomadic young lady did me the honour
+to remark that she sensed immediately upon meeting me that <i>my</i>
+attitude was entirely different from that of other analysts. Of this she
+made haste to assure me at the outset. In thinking of it, a wince gives
+place to a smile as I recall the trustful complacency with which I
+benignly accepted as a statement of fact the cunning decoys of this
+seraphically unconscious individual, her flattering reassurances seeming
+to me at the time clearly to indicate the very rare perceptions of this
+unusually discerning young person! The aftermath as it has come to
+pass in the brief succeeding years enables me unhesitatingly to aver
+that my severely reproved colleagues were at least not more unconscious
+than I.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_37_37" href="#FNanchor_37_37" class="label">[37]</a> See note 1, page 15.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_38_38" href="#FNanchor_38_38" class="label">[38]</a> See note 1, page 56.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_39_39" href="#FNanchor_39_39" class="label">[39]</a> See note 1, page 10.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_40_40" href="#FNanchor_40_40" class="label">[40]</a> See note 1, page 10.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_41_41" href="#FNanchor_41_41" class="label">[41]</a> Perhaps this distinction of type has its societal counterpart also
+in the opposite psychological reactions embodied in the esoteric tendencies
+of Catholicism with its markedly autocentric organization, as
+compared with Protestantism’s more allocentric trends. The difference
+between the two types of reaction is also seen in the broad geographical
+contrast that separates the consciousness of Asia from that of Europe.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_42_42" href="#FNanchor_42_42" class="label">[42]</a> See discussion of opposed reaction-types independently determined
+by M. Geiger, “Neue Complicationsversuche,” <i>Philos. Studien</i>, XVIII,
+1903, pp. 347–436 and also by myself, <i>The Determination of the Position
+of a Momentary Impression in the Temporal Course of a Moving Visual
+Impression</i>, The Johns Hopkins Studies in Philosophy and Psychology,
+No. 3, The Psychological Review, Psychological Monographs, Vol. XI,
+No. 4, September, 1909.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_43_43" href="#FNanchor_43_43" class="label">[43]</a> “Psychiatry as an Objective Science,” <i>British Journal of Medical
+Psychology</i>, Vol. V, Part 4.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_44_44" href="#FNanchor_44_44" class="label">[44]</a> Narcism (homo-erotism) is a reversion of interest representing a
+sexual reaction to the pictorial affect or to the personal image. Autoerotism
+(ego-erotism) represents an arrest of the individual’s sexuality
+due to its impact with the personal image or with the social self-reflection
+about him. Narcism embodies the reflection of the individual’s erotism
+in its social phase. Autoerotism is the absorption of the individual’s
+erotism in its personal phase. Autoerotism is thus central and
+represents the retroversion or interception by the organism of its
+efferent interests. This occurs in the individual inversion expressed
+in the sensory images of dementia præcox. Narcism is peripheral and
+is expressed in the social inversion pertaining equally to the motor
+images of homosexuality as to the sensory images of paranoia.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_45_45" href="#FNanchor_45_45" class="label">[45]</a> While a student of Jung’s in the early days of psychoanalysis, at
+the time when Jung was the very organ of Freud’s genius, the clear
+emanation of his spirit, I remarked to him one day that I had come
+to the conclusion that the neurotic individual inevitably married his
+mother. Jung’s reply, alert as a flash, was characteristic of his brilliant,
+inclusive scope of vision. “I have come to the conclusion,” he said,
+“that <i>every</i> individual inevitably marries his mother.”</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_46_46" href="#FNanchor_46_46" class="label">[46]</a> The word <i>like</i> is from Anglo-Saxon <i>gelic</i>, compounded of <i>ge</i>, meaning
+together, and <i>lic</i>, meaning body.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_47_47" href="#FNanchor_47_47" class="label">[47]</a> “Convention in Psychoanalysis and Its Interpretative Inhibitions,”
+a paper read at the Eighth Annual Meeting of the American Psychoanalytic
+Association, Atlantic City, May 10, 1918.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_48_48" href="#FNanchor_48_48" class="label">[48]</a> See note 2, page 208.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_49_49" href="#FNanchor_49_49" class="label">[49]</a> In a recent meeting of psychopathologists a paper was presented
+which described the results of a questionnaire that had been distributed
+among the students of one of our prominent American
+universities, the object of which was to learn the nature of the sexual
+life of the college students. The figures compiled from the answers
+submitted showed in the author’s view a surprisingly high percentage
+of masturbation and homosexuality. But what is of interest is the
+fact that in the interpretation of the author of the paper, as well as in
+that of every member who participated in the discussion, the concept
+of masturbation was restricted solely to personal practices on the part
+of the single individual, while the concept of homosexuality was confined
+entirely to the manifestation of sexual interests or activities occurring
+between persons of the same sex! Apparently it was not suspected
+that these manifest expressions of autoerotism or homosexuality are
+the least widespread or significant forms of its occurrence, that the
+really important and far-reaching expression of these disorders of
+instinct occurs in the latent form represented in the symbolic substitutions
+of heterosexuality as commonly practised, for example, in
+houses of prostitution. Yet these latter expressions were avowedly
+regarded as real expressions of heterosexuality and, accordingly, its
+devotees were naïvely interpreted as presenting a psychological adaptation
+which showed a frank contrast to that of their “homosexual”
+confrères! It is hopeless to expect any scientific understanding of
+anomalies of reaction that pertain to our subjective life as long as
+scientists themselves persist in confusing the objective appearances
+under which these anomalies are disguised for the subjective actuality
+of these anomalies themselves.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_50_50" href="#FNanchor_50_50" class="label">[50]</a> “The Genesis and Meaning of ‘Homosexuality’”—a development
+of <i>the principle of identification or the primary subjective phase of consciousness</i>.
+See <i>The Psychoanalytic Review</i>, Vol. IV, No. 3, July, 1917.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_51_51" href="#FNanchor_51_51" class="label">[51]</a> It is not by accident but by some inner, intuitive design that man
+has adopted the symbol he employs as the sign of infinity. In the
+mark of the mathematicians—consisting of two circles that are one,
+one circle that is two, wherein is neither beginning nor end—is expressed
+the character of the infinite and all-inclusive in a form of conjunction
+so complete as not to be susceptible of possible increment.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_52_52" href="#FNanchor_52_52" class="label">[52]</a> The reader is reminded that this book was outlined in 1923. From
+that time to the time of publication (1927), the group analysis, proceeding
+along the lines indicated in this chapter, has further substantiated
+the thesis here stated.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_53_53" href="#FNanchor_53_53" class="label">[53]</a> See note 1, page 53.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_54_54" href="#FNanchor_54_54" class="label">[54]</a> See note 1, page 15.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_55_55" href="#FNanchor_55_55" class="label">[55]</a> We are warned, of course, that this new shift of technique will
+arouse in us unprecedented resistances. But let us be wary lest we
+capitulate too easily to this ready-to-hand ogre of “resistances”; for
+by the same token we have been warned throughout these analytic years
+that we must expect unprecedented resistances to the former dictum of
+psychoanalysis—a dictum which imposed without parley or mitigation
+a rigid analytic policy of non-interference. Our inconsistency is but
+another instance of the automatic illogic of the alternative, of the
+inevitable compulsion of the personal criterion.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_56_56" href="#FNanchor_56_56" class="label">[56]</a> “The Group Method of Analysis,” <i>The Psychoanalytic Review</i>,
+Vol. XIV, 1927, “The Laboratory Method in Psychoanalysis,” <i>The
+American Journal of Psychiatry</i>, Vol. V, No. 3, January, 1926.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_57_57" href="#FNanchor_57_57" class="label">[57]</a> It should be clearly explained that <i>group analysis is not my analysis
+of the group but that it is the group’s analysis of me or of any other individual</i>.
+In our laboratory usage, “group” does not mean a collection of individuals.
+It means a phyletic principle of observation. This phyletic
+principle of observation as applied to the individual and to the aggregate
+is the whole significance of group analysis.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_58_58" href="#FNanchor_58_58" class="label">[58]</a> I hold that the word “spirit” employed in its biological connotation
+belongs to the legitimate equipment of the laboratory. Because the
+religionists have carried it off and perverted it to sentimental uses, I shall
+not surrender the claim of the scientist upon it. And so by “spirit”
+I do not wish to indicate anything akin to the ghostly itinerants reputed
+to stalk o’ nights, nor to that beneficent impulse that moves people
+to cheer the afternoon of life by “doing good” when the infelicities of
+age or infirmity have dulled the edge of less salutary proclivities.
+Neither have I in mind any philosophical concept whatever, nor least
+of all a conception savouring of a religious purport, all of which seem
+to me equally apparitional. I mean merely man’s innate, unprompted
+or unchecked feeling as expressive of his organic life. That which in
+man responds to natural beauty, actual or inferred, is of the sphere
+of the spirit as I use the term.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_59_59" href="#FNanchor_59_59" class="label">[59]</a> “There are ages, when the rational and the intuitive man stand side
+by side, the one full of fear of the intuition, the other full of scorn for
+the abstraction; the latter just as irrational as the former is inartistic.”
+Nietzsche, <i>Early Greek Philosophy and Other Essays</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="transnote">Transcriber’s note: the ebook cover was made by the transcriber, and is placed
+in the public domain.</div>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78616 ***</div>
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