Carl Gustav Jung

“ We no longer imagine we are unearthing the end-root of the disease, but we have to pull up the sexual phantasies because the energy which the patient needs for his health, that is, for his adaptation, is attached to them. By means of psychoanalysis the connexion between the conscious and the libido in the unconscious is re-established. Thus you restore this unconscious libido to the command of conscious intention. Only in this way can the formerly split-off energy become again applicable to the accomplishment of the necessary tasks of life. ”

“ But if the obstacle seems to be insurmountable, and the individual renounces the overcoming of it, the stored-up libido makes a regression. In place of being employed in the increased effort, the libido now gives up the present task and returns to a former and more primitive way of adaptation. We meet with the best examples of such regressions very frequently in hysterical cases where a disappointment in love or marriage gives rise to the neurosis. There we find the well-known disturbances of nutrition, resistance against eating, dyspeptic symptoms of all sorts, etc. ”

“ If we examine persons who have been neurotic from infancy it seems to be confirmed, for we see the nucleus-complex as a permanent and powerful activity throughout the whole life. But if we take cases which never show any considerable traces of neurosis except at the particular time when they break down, and there are many such, this principle becomes doubtful. ”

“ It soon became obvious that the sexual trauma could not be the real cause of a neurosis, since this is found so universally; there is scarcely a human being who has not had some sexual shock in early youth, and yet comparatively few have incurred a neurosis in later life. ”

“ Similar effects of regression are to be found in cases where there are no troubles in the function of nutrition, and here we readily find a regressive revival of reminiscences of a time long past. We find a revival of the images of the parents, of the Œdipus-complex. Here things and events of infancy—never before important—suddenly become so. They are regressively reanimated. Take away the obstacle in the path of life and this whole system of infantile phantasies at once breaks down and becomes again as inactive and as ineffective as before. ”

“ It is perfectly true, as Freud states, that infantile phantasies determine the form and further development of neurosis, but this is not ætiology. Even when we find perverted sexual phantasies of which we can prove the existence in childhood, we cannot consider them of ætiological significance. A neurosis is not really originated by infantile sexual phantasis, and the same must be said of the sexualism of neurotic phantasy in general. ”

“ If there is such a thing as fixation, it is not permissible to base upon it a new hypothesis, claiming that at times during certain epochs of life the fixation becomes loosened and ineffective, while at others it suddenly becomes strengthened and effective In such cases we find the nucleus-complex as active and as potent as in those which apparently support the theory of fixation. ”

“ And if we carefully examine the kind of infantile phantasies and events to which the neurotic individual is attached, we shall be obliged to agree that there is nothing in them specific for neurosis. Normal individuals have pretty much the same kind of internal and external experiences, and are attached to them to an even astonishing degree, without developing a neurosis. You will find primitive people especially, very much bound to their infantility. ”

“ For the neurotic there is no established way, for his aims and tasks are apt to be of a highly individual character. He tries to follow the more or less uncontrolled and half-conscious way of normal people, not fully realizing his own critical and very different nature, which imposes upon him more effort than the normal person is required to exert. There are neurotics who have shown their increased sensitiveness and their resistance against adaptation in the very first weeks of life, in their difficulty in taking the mother’s breast, and in their exaggerated nervous reactions, &c. ”

“ The manifold statements of the existence of infantile sexual phantasies in neurotic cases are worthless, in so far as they attribute an ætiological value to them, for the same phantasies can be found in normal individuals as well, a fact which I have often proved personally. It is only the fixation which seems to be characteristic. It is important to demand the nature of the proofs of the real existence of this infantile fixation. ”

“ Considered from this standpoint, psychoanalysis no longer appears to be a mere reduction of the individual to his primitive sexual wishes, but it becomes clear that, if rightly understood, it is a highly moral task of immense educational value. ”

“ Moreover, on further investigation it became quite obvious that even a trauma which had actually occurred was not always responsible for the whole of the neurosis, although it does sometimes look as if the structure of the neurosis depended entirely upon the trauma. If a neurosis were the inevitable consequence of a trauma it would be quite incomprehensible why neurotics are not incomparably more numerous. ”

“ In so far as infantile impressions and desires are of obvious importance in normal people, they are equally influential in neurosis, but they have here no ætiological significance, they are reactions merely, being chiefly secondary and regressive phenomena. ”

“ He supposes that a real incestuous desire has led the primitive man to the invention of a protective law; while to me it looks as if the incest-taboo is one among numerous taboos of all sorts, and due to the typical superstitious fear of primitive man, a fear existing independently of incest and its interdiction. ”

“ It now begins to look as if this so-called fixation were a normal phenomenon, and that the importance of infancy for the later mental attitude is natural and prevails everywhere. The fact that the neurotic seems to be markedly influenced by his infantile conflicts, shows that it is less a matter of fixation than of a peculiar use which he makes of his infantile past. ”

“ The fact that they are exaggerated and put into the foreground in neurosis is a consequence of the stored-up energy or libido. The psychological trouble in neurosis, and neurosis itself, can be considered as an act of adaptation that has failed. ”

“ From a broader standpoint libido can be understood as vital energy in general, or as Bergson’s élan vital. The first manifestation of this energy in the suckling is the instinct of nutrition. From this stage the libido slowly develops through manifold varieties of the act of sucking into the sexual function. ”

“ We must admit that this conception is a very plausible one, because the hypothesis of fixation is based upon the well-known fact, that certain periods of human life, and particularly infancy, do sometimes leave determining traces for ever. ”

“ A sensitive and somewhat inharmonious character, as a neurotic always is, will meet special difficulties and perhaps more unusual tasks in life than a normal individual, who as a rule has only to follow the well-established line of an ordinary life. ”