Carl Gustav Jung

“ I can scarcely believe that suggestion can be altogether avoided till the patient feels himself really free. Such freedom, it goes without saying, is the main thing to strive for, and it must be active. The sick man who simply obeys a suggestion, obeys it only just so long as the "transference to the doctor" remains potent. ”

“ Accordingly, we shall never know more than an approximate truth. Should now relationships be discovered, new combinations built up, then the picture changes, and with it the entire possibilities in knowledge and power. To what revolutions in daily life does not every new scientific discovery lead: how absurdly little was the beginning of our first ideas of electricity, how inconceivably great the results! ”

“ We deceive ourselves greatly if we suppose that many married women are neurotic only because they are unsatisfied sexually or because they have not found the right man, or because they still have a fixation to their infantile sexuality. The real ground of the neurosis is, in many cases, the inability to recognise the work that is waiting for them, of helping to build up a new civilisation. We are all far too much at the standpoint of the "nothing-but" psychology; we persist in thinking we can squeeze the new future which is pressing in at the door, into the framework of the old and the known. ”

“ What is Truth? I think clear definitions of fundamental ideas are most necessary. How shall we contrive a working definition of the conception "Truth"? Perhaps an allegory may help us.
Imagine a gigantic prism extending in front of the sun, so that its rays are broken up, but suppose man entirely ignorant of this fact. I exclude the invisible, chemical and ultra-violet rays. Men who live in a blue-lit region will say: "The sun sends forth blue light only." They are right and yet they are wrong: from their standpoint they are capable of perceiving only a fragment of truth. ”

“ One might almost say practice must first and foremost submit to the laws of opportunism. The scientist does great injustice to the practitioner if he reproaches him for not using the "one true" scientific method. As I said to you in my last letter: "A truth is a truth, when it works." But on the other hand, the practitioner must not reproach the scientist if in his search for truth and for newer and better methods, he makes trial of unusual ways. After all, it is not the practitioner but the investigator, and the latter's patient, who will have to bear any injury that may arise. ”

“ Agreed, as regards older people, or adults, who have to live in an unenlightened milieu. But if one is dealing with children, the seed of the future, is it not a sacred duty to enlighten them as to the shaky foundations of the so-called "moral" conceptions of the past, which have only a dogmatic basis; is it not a duty to educate them into full freedom by courageously unveiling Truth? I ask this not so much with regard to the analysing doctor as to the teacher. May not the creation of free schools be looked for as one task for the psychoanalyst? ”

“ The selfsame passion for truth possesses us both when we think of pure research, and the same desire to cure when we are considering therapy. For the scientist, as for the doctor, we desire the fullest freedom in all directions, fullest freedom to select and use the methods which promise the best fulfilment of their ends at any moment. ”

“ Now comes the ticklish point: the augur can remain an augur so long as he himself believes the will of the gods is made manifest by the entrails of the sacrificial beast. When he no longer believes, he has to ask himself: Shall I continue to use my augur's authority to further the welfare of the State, or shall I make use of my newer, and (I hope) truer convictions of to-day? ”

“ One does indeed say to the patient: "First we must stir up, then afterwards comes peace." And it does come. But does it not come in spite of the stirring-up process, because gradually, by means of frequent talks under light hypnosis, the patient gets such confidence in the doctor that he becomes susceptible to direct suggestion, and that produces at first improvement and finally, cure? I go still further: in an analysis in the waking-state, is not the patient's belief that the method employed will cure him, coupled with his ever-growing trust in the doctor, a main cause of his cure? ”

“ And they will all scourge and slay one another to force their belief in their fragment upon the others—till, grown wiser through travelling in each others' regions, they come to the harmonious agreement that the sun sends out light of varying colours. ”

“ If the doctor demands that his patient shall get well from love of himself, the patient may easily reckon on reciprocal services and will without doubt try to extort them. I can but utter a warning against any such method. A far stronger motive for recovery—also a far healthier and ethically more valuable one—consists in the patient's thorough insight into the real state of affairs, the recognition of how things are now and how they ought to be. The man of any sort of worth will then discern that he can hardly sit down at ease in the quagmire of his neurosis. ”

“ He must rather be put in such a position as will enable him to take control of his own life. It is the art of the psychoanalyst to follow the patient's apparently mistaken paths without prejudice, and thus to discover his strayed and separated sheep. Working on a system, according to a preconceived scheme, we spoil the best results of the analysis. So I hold fast to the maxim you quote from me: "Every interference on the part of the analyst is a gross mistake in technique. So-called chance is the law and the order of psychoanalysis." ”

“ From your letter of 16th February I want first to single out the end, where you so admirably assign to its proper place the power of suggestion in psychoanalysis: "The patient is no empty sack, into which you can cram what you will; he brings his own predetermined content with him, with which one has always to reckon afresh." ”

“ And the doctor who lives in the white light of the sun, must take into consideration the past experiences of his patients from the yellow or blue region, in spite of, or perhaps rather because of, his own wider knowledge. In such cases the way to healing will be long and difficult, may indeed lead more easily into a cul-de-sac, than in cases where he has to do with patients who, like himself, have already come to a knowledge of the white sunlight, or, one might say, when his patient-material has "already sorted itself out." ”

“ Painful activity by itself leads to no result but exhaustion. Man must be able to take pleasure in his life, or the struggle of life has no reward. What direction the patient's future life should take is not ours to judge. We must not imagine we know better than his own nature—or we prove ourselves educators of the worst kind. Psychoanalysis is but a means of removing stones from the path, and in no way a method (as hypnotism often pretends to be) of putting anything into the patient which was not there before. ”

“ None the less, we do our neurotic patients a grievous wrong if we try to force them all into the category of the unfree. Among neurotics, there are not a few who do not require any reminders of their social duties and obligations; rather are they born or destined to become the bearers of new social ideals. They are neurotic so long as they bow down to authority and refuse the freedom to which they are destined. ”

“ He has to come to an understanding of the development of the hostile automatisms of his personality, and by means of this understanding he must gradually learn to free himself from them; he must learn, too, how to employ and strengthen the favourable automatisms. He must learn to make his self-knowledge real, and of practical use, to control his soul's workings so that a balance may be established between the spheres of emotion and reason. And what share in all this has the physician's suggestion? ”

“ This reference to the existence of an exceedingly complicated and significant problem, may suffice to explain why we by no means seldom meet with individuals among our patients who are quite specially called, because of their spiritual and social gifts, to take an active part in the work of civilisation—for this they are biologically destined. We must never forget that what to-day is deemed a moral law will to-morrow be cast into the melting-pot and transformed, so that in the near or distant future it may serve as the basis of a new ethical structure. ”

“ That is the road to freedom which the doctor must show his patient.
Here indeed I must not omit to say that the obstinate clinging to the sexual valuation would not be maintained so tenaciously if it had not also a very deep significance for that period of life in which propagation is of primary importance. The discovery of the value of human personality belongs to a riper age. For young people the search for the valuable personality is very often merely a cloak for the evasion of their biological duty. ”

“ Of course, every one admits the truth of this platitude so long as it is a matter of "academic" discussion, but only so long; just as soon as a concrete case has to be considered, sympathies and antipathies rush into the foreground and darken judgment. And therefore the scientist must fight tirelessly, appealing to logic and honour, for freedom of research in every field, and must not permit authority, of no matter what political or religious tinge, to advance reasons of opportunism to destroy or restrict this freedom ”

“ Psychoanalysis is primarily just a method—but a method complying with all the rigorous demands insisted upon to-day by the conception "method." Let it be made plain at once that psychoanalysis is not an anamnesis, as those who know everything without learning are pleased to believe. ”

“ I have many colleagues whose experience is the same, even men engaged altogether in practice. It is scarcely to be supposed that a method altogether contemptible would meet with so much support.
When once psychoanalysis has been applied in a suitable case, it is imperative that rational solutions of the conflicts should be found. The objection is at once advanced that many conflicts are intrinsically incapable of solution. That view is sometimes taken because only an external solution is thought of—and that, at bottom is no real solution at all. ”

“ The medical exorcist's whole behaviour betrays his full valuation of the psychic element when he gives the patient the opportunity of fixing his faith firmly upon the doctor's mysterious personality. Thus does he win the sick man's mind, which henceforth helps him indeed to restore his body also to health. The cure works best when the doctor really believes in his own formulæ, otherwise he may be overcome by scientific doubt and so lose the correct, convincing tone. I, too, for a time practised hypnotic suggestion enthusiastically. ”

“ On the other hand, an older person's exaggerated looking back towards the sexual valuation of youth, is an undiscerning and often cowardly and convenient retreat from a duty which demands the recognition of personal values and his own enrolment among the ranks of the priesthood of a newer civilisation. The young neurotic shrinks back in terror from the extension of his tasks in life, the old from the dwindling and shrinking of the treasures he has attained. ”

“ With such sorted-out material the psychoanalyst can employ psychoanalysis exclusively; and may deem himself happy in that he need not "play the augur." Now, what are these psychoanalytic methods? If I understand you aright, from beginning to end it is a question of dealing directly and openly with the basic forces of the human soul, so that the analysed person, be he sick or sound or in some stage between for health and sickness flow over by imperceptible degrees into one another shall gradually have his eyes opened to the drama that is being acted within him. ”

“ But perhaps you will say I am paradoxical and that the instincts, egoistic or altruistic, arise together in the heart of man, and that every instinct is ambivalent in nature. But I have to ask if the feelings and instincts are really ambivalent? Are they exactly bipolar? Are the qualities of all emotions altogether comparable? Is love really the opposite of hate?
However that may be, in any case it is well that man bears the social law within himself, as an inborn imperative ”

“ You write that a solid knowledge of the psychoanalytic literature is necessary for an initiation into psychoanalysis. I should agree, but with a certain reservation: the more one reads the more one notices how many contradictions there are among the different writers, and less and less does one know until one has had sufficient personal experience to which view to give adherence, since quite frequently assertions are made without any proof. ”

“ The way is difficult, and in the end all man ever attains to is relative truth. But such relative truth suffices for the time being, if it serves to explain the most important actual concatenations of the past, to light up present problems, to predict those of the future, so that we are then in a position to achieve adaptation through our knowledge. ”

“ This much we ought to have learnt from the history of civilisation, that the forms of morality belong to the category of transitory things. The finest psychological tact is required with these critical natures, so that the dangerous corners of infantile irresponsibility, indolence and uncontrolledness may be turned, and a pure, untroubled vision of the possibility of a moral autonomous activity made possible. Five per cent, on money lent is fair interest, twenty per cent, is despicable usury. ”

“ If a man cannot get on with his wife he naturally thinks the conflict would be solved if he were to marry some one else. If such marriages are examined they are seen to be no solution whatsoever. The old Adam enters upon the new marriage and bungles it just as badly as he did the earlier one. A real solution comes only from within, and only then because the patient has been brought to a new standpoint.
Where an external solution is possible no psychoanalysis is necessary; in seeking an internal solution we encounter the peculiar virtues of psychoanalysis. ”

“ The first is called opportunism; the second the pursuit of truth, and scientific honour. For a doctor, the first way brings perhaps therapeutic success and fame; the second, reproach: such a man is not taken seriously. What I esteem most highly in Freud and his school is just this passionate desire for truth. But again, it is precisely here that people pronounce a different verdict: "It is impossible for the busy practitioner to keep pace with the development of the views of this investigator and his initiates." ”

“ For many it is a biological duty to work for the solution of this question, to discover some sort of practical solution. (Nature, it is well known, does not content herself with theories.) To-day we have no real sexual morality, only a legal attitude towards sexuality; just as the early Middle Ages had no genuine morality for financial transactions, but only prejudices and a legal standpoint. We are not yet sufficiently advanced in the domain of free sexual activity to distinguish between a moral and an immoral relationship. ”

“ Whatever is still unanswered, let me now repeat: light hypnosis and complete hypnosis are but varying grades of intensity of unconscious attraction towards the hypnotist. Who can here venture to draw sharp distinctions? To a critical intelligence it is unthinkable that suggestibility and suggestion can be excluded in the cathartic method. ”

“ There are cases in which psychoanalysis operates less effectively than any other known method. But who has ever claimed psychoanalysis should be employed in every sort of case, and on every occasion? Only a fanatic could maintain such a view. Patients for whom psychoanalysis is suitable have to be selected. I unhesitatingly send cases I think unsuitable to other doctors. As a matter of fact this does not happen often, because patients have a way of sorting themselves out. Those who go to an analyst usually know quite well why they go to him and not to some one else. ”