Introversiveness

“ The psychology of the neuroses has led to the concept of introversion, a province, therefore, which principally treats of morbid forms and functions of introversion. The sinking of oneself into one's own soul also appears exactly as a morbid losing of oneself in it. We can speak of introversion neuroses. Jung regards dementia precox as an introversion neurosis. Freud, who has adopted the concept of introversion [with some restrictions] regards the introversion of the libido as a regular and necessary precondition of every psychoneurosis. ”

“ So we see how generally [pg 244] self-chastisement, introversion and autoerotism are connected.
The turning away from the outer world and turning in to the inner, is required by all those methods which lead to intensive exercise of religion and a mystic life. The experts in mysteries provide for opportunities that should encourage introversion. Cloisters and churches are institutions of introversion. The symbolism of religious doctrine and rite is full of images of introversion, which is, in short, one of the most important presuppositions of mysticism. ”

“ When such persons are compelled to a moral introversion, to a turning from the glittering exterior of earthly things, to fast-fading impressions on their own minds,—from the gay dissonance of outward but hollow mirth to the still solemn voice of their own hearts, echoing "All is vanity!"—then do they accuse of needless melancholy the cause that has been instrumental in arresting for a moment their thoughtful attention. ”

“ They talk of the theaters, the opera, books, pictures, the glittering press of life, as though a ticket to New York insured one these things. I talk of loneliness and discomfort, of the pinch of poverty. They speak of enlarged horizons; and I of the hall bedrooms which would bound the outlook of most of them. They glow with the thought of new friendships; and I dash their ardor with tales of isolation, of snubs in the effort to escape isolation, of tawdry relationships begun for the sake of mere companionship. But their eyes are always full of incredulity. ”

“ It comes from the powerful attraction for us of that world which is opened to us through introversion. We descend there to whet our arms for fresh battles, but we lay them down; for we feel ourselves embraced by soft caressing arms that invite us to linger, to dream enchanting dreams. ”

“ There is a power in some minds of utterly shutting out externals— of withdrawing, the common functions from the organs of sense to assist the concentration of the introverted mind. At such a time the open eye is blind—it has become a mere lens, reflecting but not perceiving ”

“ He had very little power of introversion, but he was sensible that his temperament was changing,—that he grew more cheerful and contented with life,—that a chasm somewhere was filling up,—just in proportion as his acquaintance with the old music-master and his daughter became more familiar. ”

“ The instant we got Introverted, everything that ordinarily leaks into the Place, wake or sleep, had stopped coming, and we were nothing but ourselves and what we meant to each other and what we could make of that, an awfully lonely, scratchy situation. ”

“ By this avoidance of total concentration on the sense world—though material obtained from it must as a matter of fact enter into all, even his most "spiritual" creations—he seems able to attend to the messages which intuition picks up from other levels of being. It is significant that nearly all spiritual writers use this very term of introversion, which psychology has now adopted as the most accurate that it can find, in a favourable, indeed laudatory, sense. ”

“ This temporary withdrawal into one’s self, which, as we have already seen, signifies a regression to the childish bond to the parent, seems to act favorably, within certain limits, in its effect upon the psychologic condition of the individual. It is in general to be expected that the two fundamental mechanisms of the psychoses, transference and introversion, are to a wide extent extremely appropriate methods of normal reaction against complexes; transference as a means of escaping from the complex into reality; introversion as a means of detaching one’s self from reality through the complex. ”

“ His introverted gaze analyses with elaborate minuteness the various motives at the confluence of which his active powers receive their impulse, and, with perverted sagacity, pursues the self-examination, until, bewildered in the dark labyrinth of his own nature, he escapes to the cheerful light of day by locking up his journal. ”

“ In introversion the libido sinks into “its own depths” (a figure that Nietzsche likes to use) , and [pg 270] finds there below in the shadows of the unconscious, the equivalent for the world above which it has left, namely the world of phantasy and memories, of which the strongest and most influential are the early infantile memory images. It is the child's world, the paradise of early childhood, from which a rigorous law has separated us. In this subterranean realm slumber sweet domestic feelings and the infinite hopes of all “becoming.” ”

“ What for the extrovert is a phantastic and disturbing admixture in the unconscious picture, is for the introvert precisely that which has the most value, for it is the germ of the pure idea, and vice versâ; what for the introvert are merely concretistical "imperfections," survivals of a physical origin, are for the extrovert a most valuable hint, the bridge by which the unconscious can be united with the object. ”

“ The introvert is always concerned with the endeavour to preserve the integrity of his ego, which results in a different attitude towards his own person from that of the extrovert, whose adaptation is made through his feelings, even at the cost of his own person. These few sentences indicate into what an extraordinarily difficult situation we should have been led had we considered our problem from the standpoint of the types. ”

“ Then, although seeming alone, it has companionship, it is not lonely. And there are hours of heart-felt loneliness, though surrounded by a crowd, when no look, word or touch of another can reach our hearts, so separated are we. ”

“ The born extrovert adapts by means of feeling, thought being under repression and relatively infantile. The introvert's natural adaptation is by means of thought; feeling being more or less repressed remains undeveloped. In either type the neglected co-function is behind the adapted function. This inequality operating in the unconscious, brings about a conflict, which in certain subjects amounts to a neurosis, and in others produces a limitation of individual development. ”

“ Yet, notwithstanding this exemplary moderation, so universal is the dread of uncommon powers, and such the unwillingness of mankind to be made wiser, that I have now for some days found myself shunned by all my acquaintance. If I knock at a door, nobody is at home; if I enter a coffee-house, I have the box to myself. I live in the town like a lion in his desert, or an eagle on his rock, too great for friendship or society, and condemned to solitude by unhappy elevation and dreaded ascendency. ”

“ Why, in the name of mystery, should he, who had not enjoyed companionship in his home since his sister had left it, who had not, save in a vague fashion when she left him solitary after one of her brief return visits, felt the need of companionship, be suddenly gripped with this desolating sense of loneliness? He could not understand it; and it was the more disconcerting on account of his inability to comprehend this obsession which fretted him, and prevented him from settling calmly to the ordinary routine of the lay. ”

“ There was no society for me to enjoy—no friends, male or female, for me to visit, or with whom I could have any social intercourse, so absolute was my isolation.* Indeed, I had friends who often visited me, but they did so only when the weather was favorable. In the winter season, when nature, usually so attractive, presented nothing to amuse or dispel one's gloom, and when, therefore, something or some one suited for that purpose was so desirable, no one of course visited me. ”

“ This class includes the thinkers, the men who are in advance of their time. An introvert is never popular with the crowd because the crowd never understands him. He can never get away from himself, and he sums up events according to the personal effect they have on himself. ”

“ The more I mingled with the crowds, the more intoxicated I became with this uproar, the more I saw multitudes of human lives pass by, brushing one another, indifferent to one another, without apparent attachment, and saw others surge forward, disappear and emerge again and so on forever—the more I felt the overwhelming sense of inexorable loneliness. ”

“ They lack anything individual and original, and are just as lukewarm and colourless as the conventional feelings of the introvert. Under these conventional disguises, quite other things are slumbering in both, which occasionally when awakened by some overpowering effect, suddenly break out to the astonishment and horror of the environment.
Most civilised people incline more to one type than the other. ”

“ You must not remain longer in this out-of-the-way corner of Paris, scarcely daring to go out, and wholly ignorant of the world. You must return to the every-day life of humanity, lest in the future you should bitterly regret your loneliness. You yourself have no idea how the effects of your isolation are beginning to tell on you, but your friends remark your pallor, and feel uneasy. ”

“ Work that is in the main lonely, and work that on the whole leaves the mind free, leads almost inevitably to daydreaming and introspection. These are essentials, in the housework,—monotony, daydreaming, and introspection.
Let us consider monotony and its effects. The need of new stimuli is a paramount need of the human being. Solitary confinement is the worst punishment, so cruel that it is prohibited in some communities. We need the cheerful noises of the world, we need as releasers of our energies the sights, sounds, smells of the earth ”

“ I was accustomed to isolation and thought I was content with it, but I find it more pleasant than I can make you understand to know there is one place in the world to which I can come, not as a stranger to an inn, but as one that is received for other than business considerations. ”

“ I get frightfully lonely there, sometimes."
"I didn't allow thet a man could git lonely in the city," replied Jerry.
"'In the city?' My dear man, one can be twice as lonely there as any place I know of. The very life makes for shut-inness, in mind as well as body, and there are thousands and thousands of men, and women, too, there, who know scarcely a soul outside of the very few with whom their daily work brings them in contact; and they are mere acquaintances, not friends. They see only the four walls of the rooms in which they work and sleep, and the walled-in streets between the two. ”

“ The elegiac reveries express the fact that a part of that love which formerly belonged, and should belong, to a real object, is now introverted, that is, it is turned unward into the subject and there produces an increased imaginative activity. ”

“ How many plod onward, with eyes fixed on the ground, when they might be raised to the skies, seeing the glory of the Lord, which He has spread abroad over hill and meadow, for all eyes to behold! How many walk with introverted gaze, seeing only themselves, while their neighbor walks beside them, unseen, and needing their ministration! ”

“ To crave solitude is thus not a sign of man's unsociability, but a sign merely that sociability, like any other human tendency, becomes annoying, if too long or too strenuously indulged. Much of the neurasthenia of city life has been attributed to the continual contact with other people, and the total inability of most city dwellers to secure privacy for any considerable length of time. In some people a lifelong habit of close contact with large numbers of people makes them abnormally gregarious, so that solitude, the normal method of recuperation from companionship, becomes unbearable. ”

“ All the crowds and jams of people we see are merely, for the most part, huddling together, as an unconscious compensation for the sickening loneliness they feel in their heart of hearts. We see them in amusement parks, and in all places where hordes of people congregate; and undoubtedly a part of the impulse which moves them is their unconscious solitude for which they get only consciously perceptible consolation in the sight of each other and rubbing of elbows and treading on each other’s feet. ”

“ Introversion is no child's play. It leads to abysses, by which we may be swallowed up past recall. Whoever submits to introversion arrives at a point where two ways part; and there he must come to a decision, than which a more difficult one cannot be conceived. The symbol of the abyss, of the parting of the ways, both were clearly contained in our parable. The occurrence of the similar motive in myths and fairy tales is familiar. ”

“ It is terrible to be condemned to silence, when one has so many things to say. Am I created for solitude, never to find any one [Pg 315] with whom I may make myself understood? Incommunicability is in truth the most awful of solitudes, to be different, to wear a mask of brass harder than any mask of brass—perfect friendship is only possible inter pares. Inter pares! a phrase which intoxicates me: what confidence, what hope, what perfume, what beatitude it promises the man who necessarily and constantly lives alone; to a man who is different—who has never met any one of his race. ”

“ In solitude and only in solitude can you know yourself as a neighbour; and so long as you do not know yourself as a neighbour, you can never hope to see in your neighbours other I’s. If you want to learn to love others, withdraw into yourself. ”

“ No one greets us, no one holds our fumbling hands. By dirty ways we slink to dirty tenement houses to hide ourselves—where disloyalty is the air we breath, discomfort our bed, and robbery our experience—robbed by the very friends who preceded us. Half-cowed, lonely, cursing in silence the drudgery that faces us, we learn to live for ourselves alone. ”