FOREWORD TO CHAPTER XIV

This essay was originally written in 1913, when I limited myself entirely to presenting an essential part of the psychological point of view inaugurated by _Freud_. A few months ago my Swiss publisher asked for a second and revised edition. The many and great changes which the last few years have brought about in our understanding of the psychology of the unconscious necessitated a substantial enlargement of my essay. In this new edition some expositions about _Freud's_ theories are shortened, whilst _Adler's_ psychological views are more fully considered, and--so far as the scope of this paper permits--a general outline of my own views are given. I must at the outset draw the reader's attention to the fact that this is no longer an easy "popular" scientific paper, but a presentation making great demands upon the patience and attention of the reader. The material is extremely complicated and difficult. I do not for a moment deceive myself into thinking this contribution is in any way conclusive or adequately convincing. Only detailed scientific treatises about the various problems touched upon in these pages could really do justice to the subject. Any one who wishes to go deeply into the questions that are raised here must be referred to the special literature of the subject. My attention is solely to give the orientation in regard to the newest concepts of the inner nature of unconscious psychology. I consider the subject of the unconscious to be specially important and opportune at this moment. In my opinion, it would be a great loss if this problem, concerning every one so closely as it does, were to disappear from the horizon of the educated lay public, by being interned in some inaccessible specialised scientific journal. The psychological events that accompany the present war--the incredible brutalisation of public opinion, the epidemic of mutual calumnies, the unsuspected mania for destruction, the unexampled flood of mendacity, and man's incapacity to arrest the bloody demon--are they not, one and all, better adapted than anything else, to force obtrusively the problem of the chaotic unconscious--which slumbers uneasily beneath the ordered world of consciousness,--before the eyes of every thinking individual? This war has inexorably shown to the man of culture that he is still a barbarian. It testifies also what an iron scourge awaits him, if ever again it should occur to him to make his neighbour responsible for his own bad qualities. The psychology of the individual corresponds to the psychology of nations. What nations do, each individual does also, and as long as the individual does it, the nation will do it too. A metamorphosis in the attitude of the individual is the only possible beginning of a transformation in the psychology of the nation. The great problems of humanity have never been solved by universal laws, but always and only by a remodelling of the attitude of the individual. If ever there was a time when self-examination was the absolutely indispensable and the only right thing, it is now, in the present catastrophic epoch. But he who bethinks himself about his own being strikes against the confines of the unconscious, which indeed contains precisely that which it is most needful for him to know.