(French title : l'âme et la vie)
Born in Switzerland, Carl Jung was perhaps the most famous pupil of Sigmund Freud. He established many concepts in psychoanalysis and psychiatry that our now fundamental in the study of the mind. Modern Man in Search of a Soul was first published in 1933.
The eleven chapters in this work are lectures (except for one) delivered by Jung prior to 1933 (date of publication of this book), at the cusp of the horrors of the Second World War. Jung examines some of the most contested and crucial areas in the field of analytical psychology: dream analysis, the primitive unconscious, and the relationship between psychology and religion. It is a rich palette of his thoughts, ideas, theories, and opinions about the psyche around the time he was 50. What is fascinating about the book is how contemporary the issues remain today, in a world juxtaposed between materialism and search for meaning. As the translator’s preface underlines:
“Between the two extremes of those who uphold religion and those “enlightened” by intellect, science, economics, technology…every conceivable shade of opinion about this great problem of humanity’s next step in psychic evolution can be found…. This middle position is held by people who do not wish to sever the piety they feel within themselves from the body of scientific fact to which reason gives its sanction. They are convinced that if they can attain more knowledge of the inner workings of their own minds, more information about the subtle but none the less perfectly definite laws that govern the psyche, they can achieve the new attitude that is demanded without having on the one hand to regress to what is but a thinly veiled medieval theology, or on the other, to fall victims to the illusions of the nineteenth-century ideology”
It is to this last group that Jung speaks in convincing terms.
The title of the book therefore spoke to me since I was curious about what modern man would be in 1933 and what was behind the notion of soul. As I waded through the chapters it became ever more evident to what extent we are grappling with the same societal and existential issues today.
We are all in search of a soul, of an identifiable meaning to our existence, of what makes us truly unique and human. Jung treats many “normally adapted” patients, those who do not suffer from traumatic illnesses but are nevertheless deluded to modern life. His writing style is enlightening, comprehensible and reveals his sense of humility, placing himself in the line of psychotherapeutic research with a lot yet to discover.
I have taken a selection of texts from the initial chapters of the book, interspersed with personal comments. The text in bold are key sentences I consider well reflect Jung’s overall standpoint. The remaining chapters are equally as inspiring, however not detailed in this book review (my ultra-brief summary in brackets!). It is astounding to what extent the chapter on Spiritual Problem of Modern Man, which I strongly recommend to read, still applies in today’s increasingly materialistic world.
· Freud & Jung - Contrasts (More than sexuality, not only pathology & there’s mysticism)
· Archaic Man (more in touch with the psyche than Modern Man)
· Psychology & Literature (discovering the psyche in someone’s literature, poetry and art)
· Basic Postulates of Analytical Psychology (Jung supporting the concept of a divine)
· The Spiritual Problem of Modern Man (Jung criticising Modern Man’s spiritual void)
· Psychotherapists or Clergy (when looking for the meaning in life, to whom do you go?)
DREAM ANALYSIS
The origin of trauma may not be deep in the past
“I do not deny that many neuroses have a traumatic origin ; I simply contest the notion that all neuroses are of this nature and arise without exception from some crucial experience in childhood. This view of the question results in a causalistic approach. The doctor must give his whole attention to the patient’s past ; he must always ask “why” and not neglect the pertinent question “what for?” (pourquoi versus pour quoi). While searching deep into the past, things of immediate importance may be grossly neglected.”
Jung criticises the analyst’s “professional vanity”, which gets in the way of the cure
Dreams become less transparent, and more blurred, shortly after the beginning of treatment. To say they are “unintelligible” is a mere reflection of the doctor’s subjective opinion. The psychiatrist may call the patient “confused” when he should recognise the projection and admit his own confusion. For the purpose of the patient it is important for the analyst to admit his lack of understanding from time to time, for nothing is more unbearable for the patient than to be always understood. By taking refuge in the doctor’s self-confidence and “profound” understanding, the patient loses all sense of reality, falls into a stubborn transference, and retards the cure.
It is relatively unimportant whether the doctor understands or not, but everything hangs on the patient’s doing so.
“The dream façade” : we say the dream has a false front only because we fail to see it.
“Free association” will reveal our own complexes but will never discover the meaning of the dream
On the importance of dreams to reveal the inner psyche
“No amount of scepticism and critical reserve has ever enabled me to regard dreams as negligible occurrences. Often enough they appear senseless, but it is obviously we who lack the sense and ingenuity to read the enigmatical message from the nocturnal realm of the psyche. No one doubts the importance of conscious experience; why then should we question the importance of unconscious happenings? They also belong to human life and they are sometimes more truly part of it than any events of the day.”
“Dreams give information about the secrets of the inner life and reveal to the dreamer hidden factors of this personality. As long as these are undiscovered, they disturb his waking life and betray themselves only in the form of symptoms.”
On Freud - the unconscious - monster or beauty?
“It is well known that the Freudian school presents the unconscious in a thoroughly depreciatory light, just as also it looks at primitive man as little better than a wild beast. It’s tales about the “infantile-perverse-criminal” unconscious have led people to make a dangerous monster out of the unconscious. As if all that is good, reasonable, beautiful and worth living for had taken up its abode in consciousness! Have the horrors of the World War really not opened our eyes? Are we still unable to see that man’s conscious mind is even more devilish and perverse than the unconscious?... Freud has invented the idea of sublimation to save us from the imaginary claws of the unconscious. The unconscious is not a demonic monster but a thing of nature that is perfectly neutral as far as moral sense, aesthetic taste intellectual judgment go. It is dangerous only when our conscious attitude towards it becomes hopelessly false.”
Compensatory activity – plus & minus signs
“The psyche is a self regulatory system that maintains itself in equilibrium like the body does, calling for “compensatory activity”. It is always important before trying to interpret a dream, to ask : what conscious attitude does it compensate? Every dream is a source of information and a means of self-regulation, and why dreams are most effective aids in building up personality. The unconscious does not harbour explosive materials, but it may become explosive due to the repression exercised by a self-sufficient, or cowardly, conscious outlook!”
Example of drunk driver father – “we need less to ask why he had this dream, but what for? He seemed to have a perfectly good relationship with father (+). Perhaps too good? A“Fils à papa”. His father is still too much the guarantor of his existence. So the unconscious seeks to lower the father (-) and elevate the son. Without the knowledge of the conscious situation the true meaning of the dream would have remained in doubt. If the conscious personality is destroyed, or even crippled, there is noone left to do the assimilating.”
Look for the meaning of symbols
“It is important to look for the meaning of symbols, for the patient, and not “fixed symbols” and their archetypes. It is the indefinite content that marks the symbol as against the mere sign or symptom. The Freudian School acts with hard and fast sexual “symbols”: but these are only signs, for they are made to stand for sexuality, and this is supposed to be something definitive. But Freud’s concept of sexuality is very elastic and so vague that it could include almost anything – the activity of the glands at one extreme and the highest reaches of the spirit at the other. So we must not take a dogmatic stand that rests upon the illusion that we know something because we have a familiar word for it. Rather it is the announcement of something unknown, hard to recognise and not to be fully determined.”
The example of word “mother” in archetype, helps to understand two dreams of a 17 year old girl, the first of her mother and the second of a horse. “The mother symbol refers to a place of origin, to nature, that which passively creates, it connotes also the natural and instinctive life, the physiological realm, the body in which we dwell, a vessel, the hollow form (uterus) that carries and nourishes, the foundations of consciousness. The yin concept in Chinese philosophy. All this has not been acquired in the 17 year old’s existence, rather a bequest from the past. On the one hand it has been kept alive by the language, and on the other hand it is inherited with the structure of the psyche and is therefore to be found in all times in all peoples.”
The horse is an archetype widely current in mythology and folk-lore – as an animal it respresents the non-human psyche, the sub-human, animal side, and therefore unconscious. Dynamic power and means of locomotion, it carries one away like a surge of instinct.
PROBLEMS OF PSYCHOTHERAPY
Jung takes us through the different stages of psychotherapy, moving from a purely “confessional” standpoint through to the importance of the therapist having to do a significant amount of self transformation of his own. This last stage speaks mostly to me, since studying psychotherapy at SFU requires both a theoretical understanding and personal transformation. I would liken Jung’s view here to one of Mahatma Ghandi’s famous quotes : “You have to be the change you want to see in the word”.
Stage 1 : Confession. Catharsis, knowing the source of the neurosis, clinical roots, the patient reveals his secrets and sins
Stage 2 : Explanation. The relationship due to transference – the need to explain what the patient is projecting onto the doctor. Freud’s detailed elaboration of man’s shadow side.
Stage 3 : Social Education. Adler’s refusal to leave the patient in a childish condition helps the patient who has learned to see in himself to find the way to normal life.
Stage 4 : Transformation & self education
A man can hope for satisfaction and fulfilment only in what he does not yet possess ; he cannot find pleasure in something of which he has already had too much. To be a socially adapted being has no charms for one to whom to be so is mere child’s play. Always to do what is right becomes a bore for the man who knows how, whereas the eternal bunglar cherishes the secret longing to be right for once in some distant future.
Two factors come together in the treatment – that is two persons, neither of whom is a fixed and determinable magnitude. Their fields of consciousness may be defined but they bring with them an indefinitely extended sphere of unconsciousness. For this reason the personalities of the doctor and the patient have often more to do with the outcome of the treatment than what the doctor says or thinks – although we must not undervalue this latter fact as a disturbing or healing one.
The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances : if there is any reaction, both are transformed….. you can exert no influence if you are not susceptible to influence. It is futile for the doctor to surround himself with a smokescreen of fatherly and professional authority. This almost chemical influence is the counter-transference. The doctor is just as much in analysis as the patient. The physician must face the task he wishes the patient to face. He must always try to meet his own therapeutic demands if he wants to have a proper influence on the patient. It can be summed up in a single rule : be the man through whom you wish to influence others.
The medical diploma is no longer the crucial thing, but human quality instead.
As soon as psychotherapy requires the self-perfecting of the doctor, it is freed from its clinical origins and ceases to be a mere method for treating the sick. It is now of service to the healthy as well, or at least to those who have a right to psychic health and whose illness is at most the suffering that tortures us all. Between the realisation of this hope and the actual present, there lies an abyss over which no bridge is to be found.
THE AIMS OF PSYCHOTHERAPY
Relativity in all viewpoints, including those of Freud and Adler
Jung begins by accepting the relative validity of Freud’s view of neuroses in terms of sexualisation and the Adlerian emphasis on social factors. They are both truths which correspond to psychic realities. He then modestly proposes: “I hold the truth of my own views to be equally relative, and regard myself also as the exponent of a certain predisposition. It is in applied psychology that we should be modest and grant validity to a number of apparently contradictory opinions. For the present we have merely more or less plausible opinions that defy reconciliation”.
Jung’s humility is evident: “In my psychotherapeutic practice of nearly 30 years, I have met with a fair number of failures which were far more impressive to me than my successes. Failures are priceless experiences which open up the way to a deeper truth and force a change in views and methods.” The consideration of only Freud’s and Adler’s views have not been sufficient in the treatment of certain patients. There is a psychology of a younger person, of “the morning of life”, bringing the patient to a certain level of adaptation and normality, a general striving towards concrete ends. Then there is a psychology of the afternoon, of an adult around 40 years and older. “His neurosis comes mainly from the clinging to a youthful attitude which is now out of season”. Just as the youthful neurotic is afraid of life so the older one shrinks back from death”. The notions of resistance, transference, “guiding fictions” (Adler), have one meaning for young people, and quite another for older people.
The aims of therapy must be modified to correspond to the psychology of the patient
So an unsuccessful person with an infantile need for assertion should not be treated with the Adlerian viewpoint, and a successful man whose motives can be understood in terms of the pleasure principle should not be treated with the Freudian approach. In fact many individual psyches refuse to fit any general scheme. The “psychic constitution” can be more extrovert or introvert, it can be more spiritual or materialistic. There are materialists who deny their religious disposition. So Jung warns that an attitude can exist in its own right or as compensation for the opposite. These are all “indicia”, warning signs against one-sidedness in approach. So “we must avoid all theoretical presuppositions as to the structure of the neurosis”. It is usually assumed that the therapist should have an aim but “it is advisable for the physician not to have too fixed a goal”. “The shoe that fits one person pinches another”.
Where rational treatment yields no satisfactory results, the therapist must be guided by the patient’s unconsciousness. So the approach is less a question of treatment and more about developing the creative qualities that lie in the patient himself.
About 1/3 of Jung’s cases suffer from no clinically definable neurosis, but from the senseless and emptiness of their lives, what he describes as “the general neurosis of our time”. The ordinary expression is “I am stuck”. “I have no readymade philosophy to hand out to them”.
This chapter is full of parallels to the ills of society which have not disappeared and are even exasperated today.
Dreams and fantasies are essential in getting to the unconscious.
Dreams are “the quintessence of uncertainty and arbitrariness”, but they are still “better than nothing”. It is nevertheless a “practical and importance hint which shows the patient in what direction the unconscious is leading him”. Jung’s one criterion for the validity of his interpretation of dreams is that it “works”. As to why it works, this can only be a scientific hobby, for Jung to ponder in his spare time!
Jung goes on to describe his approach to dreams, a further development of Freud’s free association method. He allows the patient to find his own connections, as well as giving the benefit of his own guesses and opinions, enriched with analogies coming from his associations with primitive psychology, mythology, archaeology and comparative religion. Any occurrence in a dream may be significant: “the least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it”.
The usefulness of getting the patient to paint
Jung gets his patients to paint what they have seen in a dream – painting what one sees within must not be considered as art, as this influences the fluidity of the exercise. A feature common to all pictures is primitive symbolism, with colours of barbaric intensity and archaic quality. Jung likens these traits to the realm of psychic life which he calls our collective unconscious. He defends himself to those who may see painting as futile.
Since these are patients “who have not to prove their social usefulness, but who can no longer find significance in their value to society, and who have come to the deeper and more dangerous question of the meaning of their individual lives”. “The importance of individual life may always be denied by the educator”, whose pride it is to breed mass-men. But any other person will sooner or later be driven to find the meaning for himself”.
He supports the patient’s fantasies which he describes as the “maternally creative side of the masculine spirit”. “All the works of a man have their origin in creative fantasy. What right do we have then to depreciate imagination?”. A peculiar purposefulness comes from painting – we might call this a new illusion – but what is illusion? What we call the real is surely equally full of illusion. In psychic life, as everywhere in our experience, all things that act are actual, regardless of the names we put on them.
Jung puts a great deal of importance on man’s spiritual side. “Many neuroses are because people blind themselves to their own religious promptings because of a childish passion for rational enlightenment.
A religious attitude is an element in psychic life whose importance can hardly be overrated”.
“Most of my patients knew the deeper truth but did not live it. And why did they not live it? Because of that bias which makes us all put the ego in the centre of our lives, which comes from the over-valuation of consciousness.
“A young person still needs to educate his conscious will, whereas the patient in the second half of life must learn to understand the meaning of his individual life, to experience his own inner being. He thus wins an inner firmness and trust in himself.”
A PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF TYPES
Jung takes us through his reasoning behind the 4 types that he has chosen to describe the fundamental differences in personality. This chapter was interesting for me as I have a qualification in the Myers Briggs Type Indicators (MBTI), based in Jung’s Theory of Types.
Jung starts by observing that everyone has an opinion about the psyche. He states that “Psychology is the youngest of all the sciences, and therefore the one that suffers most from preconceived opinions. We must however admit that what is closest to us is the very things we know least about, although it seems to be what we know best of all.”
He goes on to describe “Complexes”, which are either the cause or effect of a conflict. Their characteristics – shock, upheaval, mental agony, inner strife, are our “bêtes noires”, our “skeletons in the cupboard”, our vulnerable points”. They find their origins in the first experience of childhood; they are innate, not acquired during the course of life.
A brief exposure of early classifications of individuals into types, the oldest attempt being oriental astrologers who devised the trigons of the 4 elements, air, water, earth and fire. (ex. Fire signs Aries, Leo and Sagitarius share a firey nature, etc). Later expressed in physiological terms of Greek medicine, giving us a classification of phlegmatic, sanguine, choleric and melancholic, terms for the supposed humour of the body. This classification lasted nearly 17 centuries, and astrology lasts to this day!
Jung then launches into his explanation of types (described in more detail in his book on Types) – an essential bias which conditions the whole psychic process, establishes habitual reactions and thus determines not only the style of behaviour but also the nature of the subjective experience.
· Introverted v Extroverted attitude – everyone has a preference for one
· Thinking v Feeling – differences in rationality when coming to a decision
· Sensing through conscious sensory processes v Intuition as perception through unconscious contents and connections
People can never be everything at once, always developing certain qualities at the expense of others, and wholeness is never attained. We are always at a disadvantage in using the inferior function because we cannot direct it, being in fact its victims.
“I value the type-theory for the objective reason that it offers a system of comparison and orientation which makes possible something that has long been lacking, a critical psychology.”
THE STAGES OF LIFE
In this chapter, Jung explains the importance of treating patients who are in morning of their lives (from puberty to 35-40 years old), to those who are beyond 40 years of age, in the second period of human existence, who have different preoccupations. Inevitably of interest to me, as I am nearing 40 years old!
1. The childish stage of consciousness – initially no problems
Jung begins by asking “why does man in obvious contrast to the animal world, have problems? There are no problems without consciousness. So the question is : in what way does consciousness arise, describing the look of “knowing” we observe in a baby who starts to recognise someone or something. These are sporadic “islands of consciousness”, with no continuous memory. These are more than the initial connections of the psychic contents, they are the ego, the feeling of subjectivity or “I-ness”. Then there is an estrangement with oneself, the ego-complex, a dualistic state that brings about the beginning of problems.
2. Morning : The period of youth
“The demands of life put an end to the dreams of childhood. The transition to a professional career can be smooth. It is the demands of life that harshly put an end to the dreams of childhood. He may cling to illusions such as “exaggerated expectations, under-estimation of difficulties, unjustified optimism, or a negative attitude”. Something in us wishes to remain a child. The significance of the morning lies in the development of the individual, making our place in the outer world, propagation of our kind and care for our children.”
3. The second period of human existence
“Nature doesn’t care about the higher state of consciousness; society does not value these feats of the psyche, where its prizes are for achievement, not for personality. So we tend to limit ourselves to what is attainable, and this means renouncing all other potentialities (the reason for the lack of spirituality in our task-oriented western society). The achievement that society rewards are won at the cost of a diminution of personality.” Jung quotes the idealistic youngsters who years later grow dry and cramped in a narrow mould.
“The serious problems of life are never fully solved – if it looks like they are then something has been lost!”
“Between 35-40 years old, a significant change in the human psyche is in preparation. Inclinations and interests begin to weaken and others arise to take their places. Convictions and moral principles harden. Jung observes that this stage is often delayed by the fact that one’s parents are still alive, especially in the case of men’s fathers.”
4. Afternoon : At the stroke of noon, the descent into old age begins
Jung draws a parallel of man’s aging with the rising and setting of the sun. “The descent means, as well as a physical reversal, also the reversal of all the ideals and values that were cherished in the morning. The sun falls into contradiction with itself, drawing in its rays instead of emitting them.” Quoting a French cynical resignation : “Si jeunesse savait, si veillesse pouvait”.
So for the aging person Jung considers it a duty and a necessity to give serious attention to himself.
“The afternoon of life must also have a significance of its own and cannot be merely a pitiful appendage to life’s morning.”
“Whoever carries over into the afternoon the laws of the morning will pay for doing so by damaging his soul. So the role of the elders, rather than trying to compete with the young, should be in culture, wisdom and the guardians of the tribe’s mysteries. No need to approach old age looking backward, with too much life unlived and potentialities remaining left over.”
Jung believes in the continuance of life : “This is why all great religions promise a life beyond. It makes it possible for mortal man to live in the second half of life with as much perseverance and aim as the first.”
Returning to the four quadrants of the rising and setting sun
· Quadrant 1 : Childhood : We are problems for others, no conscience of our own
· Quadrant 2 & 3 : Youth & Middle Age : We have conscious problems (hence the need for psychotherapy!)
· Quadrant 4 : Old age : Unworried by our consciousness, we become a problem for others
The child and old age share in common a submersion in unconscious psychic happenings
Overall Conclusion
This book is exactly what the title implies, especially the chapter on the spiritual problem of modern man. It is very rich and entirely relevant still today and a brilliant look into the human psyche. Although occasionally overly speculative and vague, Jung puts in perspective modern man compared to his ancestors of hundreds and even thousands of years ago. It dispels myths that ancient men believed in spirits and superstitions because they were less informed than we are, but instead postulates that they were informed differently, and not necessarily worse. It explains the differences between the masses, and their traditional beliefs, and so-called modernists, who, despite their superior grasp of history and science, encounter great troubles when in search for the kind of spiritual existence that was commonplace for our ancestors. Jung corrects a lot of Freud by placing some of his theories on sexuality and the unconscious in a larger, more mystical context, and also by seeing around Freud's myopic view of religion.
The book was an inspiration to read, especially at a moment at the “afternoon” of my own life in which there is a search for deeper meaning.