I have still to draw the reader's attention to an important fact. Throughout the course of this paper, I have seemed to associate the idea of disturbance or even of peril with the unconscious. But it would give a false impression if we were only to emphasize the dangerous side of the unconscious. _The unconscious is a source of danger when the individual is not at one with it._ If we succeed in establishing the function or attitude that I call transcendental, the disharmony ceases, and we are permitted to enjoy the favourable side of the unconscious. In such case the unconscious vouchsafes us that furtherance and assistance which bountiful Nature is always ready to give to man in overflowing abundance. The unconscious possesses possibilities of wisdom that are completely closed to consciousness, for the unconscious has at its disposal not only all the psychic contents that are under the threshold because they had been forgotten or overlooked, but also the wisdom of the experience of untold ages, deposited in the course of time and lying potential in the human brain. The unconscious is continually active, creating combinations of its materials; these serve to indicate the future path of the individual. It creates prospective combinations just as our consciousness does, only they are considerably superior to the conscious combinations both in refinement and extent. The unconscious may therefore be an unparalleled guide for human beings.
The reader must on no account suppose that the complicated psychological changes described must all be passed through in every individual case. In practice the treatment is adjusted according to the therapeutic result attained. The particular result arrived at may be reached at any stage of the treatment, quite apart from the seriousness or duration of the malady. The treatment of a serious case may last a long time, without the higher phases of the evolution ever being reached, or needing to be reached. There are comparatively few people who, after attaining the desired therapeutical result, pursue the further stages of evolution for the sake of their own development. It is, therefore, not the seriousness of the case which obliges one to pass through the whole development. In any case, only those people attain a higher degree of differentiation who are by nature destined and called to it, that is, who have both a capacity and tendency towards the higher differentiation. This is a matter in which people are extremely different, just as among species of animals there are some that are stationary and conservative, and others that are evolutionary. Nature is aristocratic, but not in the sense of having reserved the possibility of differentiation exclusively for those species that stand high. Similarly, the possibility of the psychological development of human beings is not reserved for specially _gifted_ individuals. In other words: neither special intelligence nor any other talent is necessary in order to achieve a far-reaching psychological development, inasmuch as in this development moral qualities step in to supplement where intellect does not suffice. But it must not be supposed under any circumstances that the treatment consists in grafting general formulas and complicated doctrines on to people; this is not so. Each one can acquire that which he needs, after his own fashion and in his own language. What I have here presented is only the intellectual formulation of the subject, founded upon preliminary scientific study of an empirical as well as a theoretical nature; but this formulation does not become a subject of discussion in the ordinary practical analytical work. The brief notes of cases that I have inserted give an approximate idea of the practical side of analysis.
The reader should realize that our new understanding of psychology has a side that is entirely practical, and another that is entirely theoretical. It is not merely a practical method of treatment or education, but it is also a scientific theory, that is closely related to other co-ordinated sciences.
