X

_From Dr. Jung._

March, 1913.

At various places in your letters it has struck me that the problem of "transference" seems to you particularly critical. Your feeling is entirely justified. The transference is indeed at present the central problem of analysis.

You know that Freud regards the transference as the projection of infantile phantasies upon the doctor. To this extent the transference is an infantile-erotic relationship. All the same, viewed from the outside, superficially, the thing by no means always looks like an infantile-erotic situation. As long as it is a question of the so-called "positive" transference, the infantile-erotic character can usually be recognised without difficulty. But if it is a "negative" transference, you can see nothing but violent resistances which sometimes veil themselves in seemingly critical or sceptical dress. In a certain sense the determining factor in such circumstances is the patient's relation to authority, that is, in the last resort, to the father. In both forms of transference the doctor is treated as if he were the father--according to the situation either tenderly or with hostility. In this view the transference has the force of a resistance as soon as it becomes a question of resolving the infantile attitude. But this form of transference must be destroyed, inasmuch as the object of analysis is the patient's moral autonomy. A lofty aim, you will say. Indeed lofty, and far off, but still not altogether so remote, since it actually corresponds to one of the predominating tendencies of our stage of civilisation, namely, that urge towards individualisation by which our whole epoch deserves to be characterised. (Cf. Müller-Lyer: "Die Familie.") If a man does not believe in this orientation and still bows before the scientific causal view-point, he will, of course, be disposed merely to resolve this hostility, and to let the patient remain in a positive relationship towards the father, _thus expressing the ideal of an earlier epoch of civilisation_. It is commonly recognised that the Catholic Church represents one of the most powerful organisations based upon this earlier tendency. I cannot venture to doubt that there are very many individuals who feel happier under compulsion from others than when forced to discipline themselves. (Cf. Shaw: "Man and Superman.") 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. Whilst we look at life only retrospectively, as is the case in the Viennese psychoanalytic writings, we shall never do justice to this type of case and never bring the longed-for deliverance. For in that fashion we can only educate them to become obedient children, and thereby strengthen the very forces that have made them ill--their conservative retardation and their submissiveness to authority. Up to a certain point this is the right way to take with the infantile resistance which cannot _yet_ reconcile itself with authority. But the power which edged them out from their retrograde dependence on the father is not at all a childish desire for insubordination, but the powerful urge towards the development of an individual personality, and this struggle is their imperative life's task. Adler's psychology does much greater justice to this situation than Freud's.

In the one case (that of infantile intractability) the positive transference signifies a highly important achievement, heralding cure; in the other (infantile submissiveness) it portends a dangerous backsliding, a convenient evasion of life's duty. The negative transference represents in the first case an increased resistance, thus a backsliding and an evasion of duty, but in the second it is an advance of healing significance. (For the two types, cf. Adler's "Trotz und Gehorsam.")

The transference then is, as you see, to be judged quite differently in different cases.

The psychological process of "transference"--be it negative or positive--consists in the libido _entrenching itself_, as it were, round the personality of the doctor, the doctor accordingly representing certain emotional values. (As you know, by _libido_ I understand very much what Antiquity meant by the cosmogenic principle of _Eros_; in modern terminology simply "psychic energy.") The patient is bound to the doctor, be it in affection, be it in opposition, and cannot fail to follow and imitate the doctor's psychic adaptations. To this he finds himself urgently compelled. And with the best will in the world and all technical skill, the doctor cannot prevent him, for intuition works surely and instinctively, in despite of the conscious judgment, be it never so strong. Were the doctor himself neurotic, and inadequate in response to the demands of the external life, or inharmonious within, the patient would copy the defect and build it up into the fabric of his own presentations: you may imagine the result.

Accordingly I cannot regard the transference as merely the transference of infantile-erotic phantasies; no doubt that is what it is from one standpoint, but I see also in it, as I said in an earlier letter, the process of the _growth of feeling_ and _adaptation_. From this standpoint the infantile erotic phantasies, in spite of their indisputable reality, appear rather as material for comparison or as analogous pictures of something not understood as yet, than as independent desires. This seems to me the real reason of their being unconscious. The patient, not knowing the right attitude, tries to grasp at a right relationship to the doctor by way of comparison and analogy with his infantile experiences. It is not surprising that he gropes back for just the most intimate relations of his childhood, to discover the appropriate formula for his attitude to the doctor, for this relationship also is very intimate, and to some extent different from the sexual relationship, just as is that of the child towards its parents. This relationship--child to parent--which Christianity has everywhere set up as the symbolic formula for human relationships, provides a way of restoring to the patient that directness of ordinary human emotion of which he had been deprived through the inroad of sexual and social values (from the standpoint of power, etc.). The purely sexual, more or less primitive and barbaric valuation, operates in far-reaching ways against a direct, simple human relationship, and thereupon a blocking of the libido occurs which easily gives rise to neurotic formations. By means of analysis of the infantile portion of the transference-phantasies, the patient is brought back to the remembrance of his childhood's relationship, and this--stripped of its infantile qualities--gives him a beautiful, clear picture of direct human intercourse as opposed to the purely sexual valuation. I cannot regard it as other than a misconception to judge the childish relationship retrospectively and therefore as exclusively a sexual one, even though a certain sexual content can in no wise be denied to it.

Recapitulating, let me say this much of the positive transference:--

The patient's libido fastens upon the person of the doctor, taking the shape of expectation, hope, interest, trust, friendship and love. Then the transference produces the projection upon the doctor of infantile phantasies, often of predominatingly erotic tinge. At this stage the transference is usually of a decidedly sexual character, in spite of the sexual component remaining relatively unconscious. But this phase of feeling serves the higher aspect of the growth of human feeling as a bridge, whereby the patient becomes conscious of the defectiveness of his own adaptation, through his recognition of the doctor's attitude, which is accepted as one suitable to life's demands, and normal in its human relationships. By help of the analysis, and the recalling of his childish relationships, the road is seen which leads right out of those exclusively sexual or "power" evaluations of social surroundings which were acquired in puberty and strongly reinforced by social prejudices. This road leads on towards a purely human relation and intimacy, not derived solely from the existence of a sexual or power-relation, but depending much more upon a regard for personality. 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. 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.

This conception of the transference is, you will have noted, most intimately connected with the acceptance of the idea of biological "_duties_." By this term you must understand those tendencies or motives in human beings giving rise to civilisation, as inevitably as in the bird they give rise to the exquisitely woven nest, and in the stag to the production of antlers. The purely causal, not to say materialistic conception of the immediately preceding decades, would conceive the organic formation as the reaction of living matter, and this doubtless provides a position heuristically useful, but, as far as any real understanding goes, leads only to a more or less ingenious and _apparent_ reduction and postponement of the problem. Let me refer you to Bergson's excellent criticism of this conception. From external forces but half the result, at most, could ensue; the other half lies within the individual disposition of the living material, without which it is obvious the specific reaction-formation could never be achieved. This principle must be applied also in psychology. The psyche does not only _react_; it also gives its own individual reply to the influences at work upon it, and at least half the resulting configuration and its existing disposition is due to this. Civilisation is never, and again never, to be regarded as merely reaction to environment. That shallow explanation we may abandon peacefully to the past century. It is just these very dispositions which we must regard as imperative in the psychological sphere; it is easy to get convincing proof daily of their compulsive power. What I call "biological duty" is identical with these dispositions.

In conclusion, I must deal with a matter which seems to have caused you uneasiness, namely, the _moral_ question. Among our patients we see many so-called immoral tendencies, therefore the thought involuntarily forces itself upon the psychotherapist as to how things would go if all these desires were to be gratified. You will have discerned already from my earlier letters that these desires must not be estimated too literally. As a rule it is rather a matter of unmeasured and exaggerated demands, arising out of the patient's stored-up libido, which have usurped a prominent position, usually quite against his own wish. In most cases the canalisation of the libido for the fulfilment of life's simple duties, suffices to reduce these exaggerated desires to zero. But in some cases it must be recognised that such "immoral" tendencies are in no way removed by analysis; on the contrary, they appear more often and more clearly, hence it becomes plain that they belong to the individual's biological duties. And this is particularly true of certain sexual claims, whose aim is an individual valuation of sexuality. This is not a question for pathology, it is a social question of to-day which peremptorily demands an ethical solution. 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. We have a clear expression of this in the customary treatment, or rather ill-treatment, of unmarried motherhood. For a great deal of sickening hypocrisy, for the high tide of prostitution, and for the prevalence of sexual diseases, we may thank both our barbarous, undifferentiated legal judgments about the sexual situation, and our inability to develop a finer moral perception of the immense psychologic differences that may exist in free sexual activity.

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. 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. That point of view we have to apply equally to the sexual situation.

So it comes about that there are many neurotics whose innermost delicacy of feeling prevents their being at one with present-day morality, and they cannot adapt themselves to civilisation as long as their moral code has gaps in it, the filling up of which is a crying need of the age. 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. And thus the view is only of the present, never of the future. But it was of most profound psychological significance when Christianity first discovered, in the orientation towards the future, a redeeming principle for mankind. In the past nothing can be altered, and in the present little, but the future is ours and capable of raising life's intensity to its highest pitch. A little space of youth belongs to us, all the rest of life belongs to our children.

Thus does your question as to the significance of the loss of faith in authority answer itself. The neurotic is ill not because he has lost his old faith, but because he has not yet found a new form for his finest aspirations.