Carl Gustav Jung

“ In every neurotic we see how the constellation of the infantile milieu influences not only the character of the neurosis, but also life's destiny, even in its minute details. The unhappy choice of a profession, and innumerable matrimonial failures can be traced to this constellation. There are, however, cases where the profession has been well chosen, where the husband or wife leaves nothing to be desired, and where still the person does not feel well but works and lives under constant difficulties. ”

“ I wish to impress firmly upon parents and educationists this instructive example of child psychology. In the learned psychological discussions on the child's psyche we hear nothing about those parts which are so important for the health and naturalness of our children, nor do we hear more about the child's emotions and conflicts; and yet they play a most important role.
It very often happens that children are erroneously treated as quite imprudent and irrational beings. ”

“ Unfortunately, our knowledge of the finer mental processes in the child is so meagre that we are not yet in any position to say where the greatest trouble lies, whether in the parents, in the child, or in the conception of the milieu. Only psychoanalyses of the kind that Professor Freud has published in the Jahrbuch, 1909, [6] will help us out of this difficulty. Such comprehensive and profound observations should act as a strong inducement to all teachers to occupy themselves with Freud's psychology. ”

“ After examining the reaction times I turn my attention to the type of the association to ascertain with what type I am dealing. If it is a predicate type I draw the conclusions which I have detailed above; if it is a complex type I try to ascertain the nature of the complex. With the necessary experience one can readily emancipate one's judgment from the test-person's statements and almost without any previous knowledge of the test-persons it is possible under certain circumstances to read the most intimate complexes from the results of the experiment. ”

“ Just as the parents adapt themselves to the world, so does the child. At the age of puberty when it begins to free itself from the spell of the family, it enters into life with, so to say, a surface adaptation entirely in keeping with that of the father and mother. The frequent and often very deep depressions of puberty emanate from this; they are symptoms which are rooted in the difficulty of new adjustment. The youthful person at first tries to separate himself as much as possible from his family ”

“ Anna, too, could get a child in the same way if she were big. Why did not the mother become such a nurse, that is to say, how did she get a child if not in the same way as the nurse? Like the nurse, Anna, too, could get a child, but how that fact might be changed in the future or how she might come to resemble her mother in the matter of getting children is not clear to her. From this resulted the thoughtful question, “Indeed, shall I be a lady like you? Shall I be quite different?” The stork theory evidently had come to naught, the dying theory met a similar fate ”

“ The father is a drunkard and a demoralised creature. We can thus readily understand that his wife experiences an emotional voidness which she naturally betrays by her enhanced predicate type. The same causes cannot, however, operate in the case of the daughter, for, in the first place, she is not married to a drunkard, and, in the second, life with all its hopes and promises still lies before her. It is distinctly unnatural for the daughter to show an extreme predicate type expressing personal judgment. She responds to the stimuli of the environment just like her mother. ”

“ Thus on indulgently remarking to an intelligent father, whose four-year-old daughter masturbated excessively, that care should be exercised in the presence of the child who slept in the same room as the parents, I received the indignant reply, “I can absolutely assure you that the child knows nothing about sexual matters.” This recalls that distinguished old neurologist who wished to deny the attribute “sexual” to a childbirth phantasy which was represented in a dreamy state.
On the other hand, a child evincing neurotic talent exaggerated by neurosis may be urged on by solicitous parents. ”

“ The result of my stimulus words would thus undoubtedly approach infinitely nearer perfection. But as we are not magicians, we must be contented with the linguistic substitutes for reality; at the same time we must not forget that the stimulus word will almost without exception conjure up its corresponding situation. All depends on how the test-person reacts to this situation. The word “bride” or “bridegroom” will not evoke a simple reaction in a young lady; but the reaction will be deeply influenced by the strong feeling tones evoked, the more so if the experimenter be a man. ”

“ But whereas in the mother the type is in a way a natural consequence of her unhappy condition of life, this condition is entirely lacking in the daughter. The daughter simply imitates the mother; she merely appears like the mother. Let us consider what this can signify for a young girl. If a young girl reacts to the world like an old woman, disappointed in life, this at once shows unnaturalness and constraint. But more serious consequences are possible. As you know the predicate type is a manifestation of intensive emotions; the emotions are always involved. ”

“ For, by favouring sublimation at this age one is merely strengthening manifestation of neurosis. The root of the eager desire for knowledge is fear, and fear is the expression of converted libido; that is, it is the expression of an introversion which has become neurotic, which at this age is neither necessary nor favourable for the development of the child. ”

“ One can make use of many special methods of computing, but they are not all equally good and equally exact. (One must always resort to calculation, as appearances are enormously deceptive.) The method which is most to be recommended is that of the probable average of the reaction time. It shows at a glance the difficulties which the person in the experiment had to overcome in the reaction. ”

“ The important heuristic axiom of every psychoanalysis reads as follows: If a person develops a neurosis this neurosis contains the counter-argument against the relation of the patient to the individual with whom he is most intimately connected. A neurosis in the husband loudly proclaims that he has intensive resistances and contrary tendencies against his wife; if the wife has a neurosis she has a tendency which diverges from her husband. If the person is unmarried the neurosis is then directed against the lover or the sweetheart or against the parents. ”

“ Yet another sign of impeded adaptation is the often occurring repetitions of the stimulus words. The test-persons repeat the stimulus word as if they had not heard or understood it distinctly. They repeat it just as we repeat a difficult question in order to grasp it better before answering. This same tendency is shown in the experiment. The questions are repeated because the stimulus words act on hysterical individuals in much the same way as difficult personal questions. In principle it is the same phenomenon as the subsequent completion of the reaction. ”

“ The difficulties on the part of the child are very great. They should not, however, be so great on the part of the parents. In many ways the parents could manage the love of children more carefully, more indulgently, and more intelligently. The sins committed against favourite children by the undue love of the parents could perhaps be avoided through a wider knowledge of the child's mind. For many reasons I find it impossible to say anything of general validity concerning the bringing up of children as it is affected by this problem. ”

“ Attempts to make her talk and to draw out the truth by means of artful questions were futile, so resistance is placed against resistance, and the introversion of love begins. It is evident that the capacity for sublimation in a four-year-old child is still too slightly developed to be capable of performing more than symptomatic services. The mind, therefore, depends on another compensation, namely, it resorts to one of the relinquished infantile devices for securing love by force, preferably that of crying and calling the mother at night. ”

“ The child imitates the gesture, and just as the gesture of the parent is the expression of an emotional state, so in turn the gesture gradually produces in the child a similar feeling, as it feels itself, so to speak, into the gesture. ”

“ If we manifest emotions, we can with certainty expect to receive emotions in return. That is the feeling of the predicate type. What the 45-year-old woman lacks in emotions, i.e. in love in her marriage relations she seeks to obtain in the outside world, and for that reason she is an ardent participant in the Christian Science movement. If the daughter imitates this situation she copies her mother, she seeks to obtain emotions from the outside. But for a girl of sixteen such an emotional state is, to say the least, quite dangerous ”

“ In normal persons we usually find a limited number of false reproductions, seldom more than 19-20 per cent., while in abnormal persons, especially in hysterics, we often find from 20-40 per cent. of false reproductions. The reproduction certainty is therefore in certain cases a measure for the emotivity of the test-person.
By far the larger number of neurotics show a pronounced tendency to cover up their intimate affairs in impenetrable darkness, even from the doctor, so that he finds it very difficult to form a proper picture of the patient's psychology. ”

“ The first attempts to assume friendship and love are constellated in the strongest manner possible by the relation to parents, and here one can usually observe how powerful are the influences of the familiar constellations. It is not rare, for instance, for a healthy man whose mother was hysterical to marry a hysteric, or for the daughter of an alcoholic to choose an alcoholic for her husband. I was once consulted by an intelligent and educated young woman of twenty-six who suffered from a peculiar symptom. ”

“ The test-person was of the opinion that it was an examination in intelligence, and therefore directed most of his attention to the significance of the stimulus words; his associations, therefore, looked like those of an idiot. All idiots, however, do not react with definitions; probably only those react in this way who would like to appear smarter than they are, that is, those to whom their stupidity is painful. I call this widespread complex the “intelligence-complex.” A normal test-person reacts in a most overdrawn manner as follows:
anxiety—heart anguish ”

“ This application of the experiment shows that it is possible to strike a concealed, indeed an unconscious complex by means of a stimulus word; and conversely we may assume with great certainty that behind a reaction which shows a complex indicator there is a hidden complex, even though the test-person strongly denies it. One must get rid of the idea that educated and intelligent test-persons are able to see and admit their own complexes. Every human mind contains much that is unacknowledged and hence unconscious as such ”

“ When the experiment is finished, I first look over the general course of the reaction times. I see a great many very prolonged intervals; this means that the patient can only adjust himself with difficulty, that his psychological functions proceed with marked internal friction, with resistances. The greater number of neurotics react only under great and very definite resistances; there are, however, others in whom the average reaction times are as short as in the normal, and in whom the other complex indicators are lacking, but, despite that fact, they undoubtedly present neurotic symptoms. ”

“ It is not merely a small and unimportant subsidiary manifestation demonstrable in an insignificant experiment, but rather an elemental and universal manifestation which plays a rôle in other ways in the psychic life of neurotics.
By his desire to supplement, the test-person betrays a tendency to give the experimenter more than he wants, he actually makes great efforts to find further mental occurrences in order finally to discover something quite satisfactory. ”

“ Because the Freudian investigations apparently involve a discussion of the most intimate secrets of sexuality many people have had a feeling of repulsion against them, and have therefore rejected everything as a matter of course without any real disproof. This, unfortunately, has almost always been the fate of Freud's doctrines up to the present. One must not come to the consideration of these matters with the firm conviction that they do not exist, for it may easily happen that for the prejudiced they really do not exist. ”

“ At such a time the youth begins to replace what is lacking with poetic fancies in order to compensate for the deficiency. To approximate the psychology of a four-year-old child to that of the youth approaching puberty will at first sight seem paradoxical, the relationship lies, however, not in the age but rather in the mechanism. ”