Churchill's Black Dog and Other Phenomena of the Human Mind

by Anthony Storr

  This optimum development tends toward a goal called “wholeness” or “integration”; a condition in which the different elements of the psyche, both conscious and unconscious, are welded together indissolubly; a condition which might be described as the opposite of the fragmentation and splitting found in schizophrenia. The person who approaches this goal, which can never be entirely or once and for all achieved, possesses what Jung called “an attitude that is beyond the reach of emotional entanglements and violent shocks—a consciousness detached from the world.”17

  This search for integration is essentially a religious quest, though not one which is concerned with any recognized creed. It is religious because it involves a change within the individual from one in which ego and will are paramount to one in which he acknowledges that he is guided by an integrating factor which is not of his own making. Jung describes people as achieving peace of mind after “long and fruitless struggles”:

  If you sum up what people tell you about their experiences, you can formulate it this way: They came to themselves, they could accept themselves, they were able to become reconciled to themselves, and thus were reconciled to adverse circumstances and events. This is almost like what use to be expressed by saying: He has made his peace with God, he has sacrificed his own will, he has submitted himself to the will of God.18

  Jung described the symbols in which this change of attitude and new unity of personality expressed itself; circular forms indicating wholeness which are comparable with the so-called “mandalas” used in Tibetan Buddhism as ritual instruments to assist meditation.

  If the unconscious can be recognized as a co-determining factor along with consciousness, and if we can live in such a way that conscious and unconscious demands are taken into account as far as possible, then the centre of gravity of the total personality shifts its position. It is then no longer in the ego, which is merely the centre of consciousness, but in the hypothetical point between conscious and unconscious. This new centre might be called the “self.”19

  The self, of which the mandala is a symbol, is the archetype of unity and totality. Jung believed that this archetype was the underlying reality manifesting itself in the various forms of monotheism. The self, therefore, is the God within; and the individual, in seeking self-realization and unity, becomes the means through which, as Jung put it, “God seeks his goal.”20

  In the biographical sketch of Jung at the beginning of this chapter, I mentioned that he was the son of a pastor in the Swiss Reformed Church. Two of his paternal uncles were also clergymen, and there were no less than six parsons in his mother’s family. However, at an early age, Jung developed serious doubts about the conventional faith in which he was brought up. He began to think of religion as a personal matter which had little to do with accepted creeds. He tried to discuss some of these doubts with his father, but found the latter unwilling to enter into argument. Jung found himself in the position of being unable to subscribe to the faith in which he had been reared, while at the same time continuing to believe that individuals could neither be happy nor healthy unless they acknowledged their dependence upon some higher power than that of the ego.

  In the letters between himself and Freud, the question of whether or not they should join a new International Fraternity for Ethics and Culture is discussed:

  Is there perchance a new saviour in the I.F? What sort of new myth does it hand out for us to live by? Only the wise are ethical from sheer intellectual presumption, the rest of us need the eternal truth of myth. You will see from this string of associations that the problem does not leave me simply apathetic and cold. The ethical problem of sexual freedom really is enormous and worth the sweat of all noble souls. But 2000 years of Christianity can only be replaced by something equivalent.21

  A critic might allege that the whole of Jung’s later work represents his attempt to find a substitute for the faith which he lost when he was a child. He might go on to say that Jung substituted the analysis of dreams and fantasies for prayer. Jung urged his patients to draw and paint their dreams and fantasies. Moreover, he encouraged them deliberately to set aside part of the day for reverie; for what, in Jungian technique, became known as “active imagination.” This is a state of mind not unlike that described in some forms of meditation, in which judgment is suspended but consciousness is preserved. The patient was enjoined to notice what fantasies occurred to him. In this way, the patient might be able to rediscover hidden parts of himself as well as portray the psychological journey upon which he was embarking. The parallels with the processes of Recollection, Quiet, and Contemplation described by the mystics are striking.

  The state of reverie is also one in which most creative discoveries are made. A few artists and scientists have left accounts of inspiration being directly derived from a dream. R. L. Stevenson, for example, said that the plot of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde came to him in a dream. But most new ideas or solutions to problems appear during states of mind intermediate between waking and sleeping which are the same as, or closely similar to, “active imagination” as described by Jung. Jung himself said that his aim was to bring about a state of mind in which the use of creative imagination would allow the subject to experiment with his own nature instead of remaining in a condition of fixed sterility.

  In spite of this, Jung was particularly insistent that his patients should not regard their fantasies as anything to do with art, although some produced paintings which were worthy of display. In my paper “Individuation and the Creative Process,”22 I discussed some of the reasons for this attitude.

  Jung was apparently concerned to distinguish spontaneous, natural fantasies emanating directly from the unconscious from artistic fantasies which he regarded as arbitrary inventions. This distinction cannot ultimately be maintained. Although artists consciously apply themselves to refining and shaping their fantasies, and scientists set about trying to prove their hypotheses, both artists and scientists attribute many of their inspirations and discoveries to a source beyond conscious striving. Jung’s patients, even if not gifted artistically, were often dealing with the raw material of art; the stuff from which novels or paintings are eventually constructed.

  The individuation process, as described by Jung, and the creative process, as described by both scientists and artists, have much in common. We have already noted that the state of mind which Jung encouraged his patients to cultivate is the same as that in which inspiration most commonly occurs. The process of individuation is a lifetime’s task which is never completed; a journey upon which the individual hopefully embarks toward a destination at which he never arrives. Jung himself wrote: “The new attitude gained in the course of analysis tends sooner or later to become inadequate in one way or another, and necessarily so, because the constant flow of life again and again demands fresh adaptation. Adaptation is never achieved once and for all.”23

  The creative quest, whether in science or in the arts, is also a journey without a final destination. No scientist or artist is ever satisfied for long with what he has discovered or accomplished. There is always a next step to be taken, a new problem demanding solution.

  Jung described integration in terms of uniting opposites; of finding a new balance between extraversion and introversion, or between conscious and unconscious. As Koestler demonstrated in his book The Act of Creation, “bisociation,” the essential creative perception, is concerned with linking situations or ideas which have hitherto been conceived as incompatible; in other words, with forming new unions between opposites.24 In science, a new hypothesis characteristically reconciles and supersedes previously incompatible hypotheses. In the arts, balance and contrast between opposites is usually an essential part of creating an aesthetic pattern.

  Jung’s concentration upon changing dynamics within the charmed circle of the individual psyche is interesting, partly because it is so unfashionable. During the last thirty years, we have witnessed the rise of the so-called “object-relations” school of psychoanalysis, do
minated by Melanie Klein, Ronald Fairbairn, and Donald Winnicott, and later reinforced by John Bowlby. Whatever disagreements still divide the psychoanalytic camps, there has been a consensus of opinion that, if one wants to understand the growth and development of human beings, one must first study their interpersonal relationships. From the baby’s earliest relation with its mother onwards, it has been assumed that human happiness and fulfillment depend upon interpersonal relationships, and that treatment of neurotic problems largely consists in helping patients to improve their relationships by means of understanding and improving the way in which they relate to the therapist.

  Yet, here is Jung saying that what really matters is the patient’s relationship with the unconscious, together with the dynamic changes which take place within the individual psyche as a consequence of the process of individuation. Jung was perfectly well aware of the significance of interpersonal relationships, but his emphasis is quite different from that of contemporary analysts. Perhaps our present elevation of interpersonal relationships into the be-all and end-all of human existence has been overdone. Jung’s point of view might be a starting point for a compensatory swing of the pendulum away from object-relations.

  Jung’s later work is chiefly concerned with the process of individuation and the symbols in which that process is expressed. His interest in alchemy, which often seems to puzzle people, arose because he found parallels between the alchemists’ description of their “work” with what seemed to be happening in his patients. Jung believed that the alchemists’ quest for the Philosopher’s Stone, or for means of transforming other substances into gold, was not so much a series of chemical experiments as a spiritual journey. More particularly, the alchemists were concerned with the transformation and combination of opposites, using chemical interaction as a symbol of psychic processes. Because there was nothing in alchemy scientifically, it acted as a gigantic projection test; a kind of Rorschach inkblot in which anything that was seen actually originated in the mind of the observer.

  Part of Jung’s rejection of conventional Christianity seems to have been based upon his impatience with what might be called the Pangloss element. He felt that orthodox Christians were disinclined to accept the reality of evil. In adolescence, therefore, it was reassuring for him to encounter Schopenhauer:

  Here at last was a philosopher who had the courage to see that all was not for the best in the fundaments of the universe. He spoke neither of the all-good and all-wise providence of a Creator, nor of the harmony of the cosmos, but stated bluntly that a fundamental flaw underlay the sorrowful course of human history and the cruelty of nature: the blindness of the world-creating Will.25

  The problem of evil continued to preoccupy Jung throughout his life. His insistence upon the equal reality of evil and good led to an interesting series of exchanges with Father Victor White, a Dominican priest who was professor of dogmatic theology at Blackfriars, Oxford. Father White was a close friend of Jung; but the differences between them on the problem of evil led to an estrangement. Victor White maintained the Catholic doctrine of the privatio boni, which alleges that evil is the absence of good and has no substance or reality of its own. Jung strongly objected to this view. For him, good and evil were equally real as polar opposites.

  A good deal of Jung’s thought seems to be directly derived from Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer considered that individuals were the embodiment of an underlying Will which was outside space and time. Jung endorses a similar view when, at the beginning of his autobiography, he writes, “My life is a story of the self-realization of the unconscious.”26

  Jung took the term “individuation” from Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer considered that the very notion of individuality, the principium individuationis, is dependent upon the human categories of space and time which force us to be conscious of individual objects and which prevent us from seeing the original unity of the Will of which individuals are a manifestation.

  Jung also believed in a realm outside space and time from which individuals became differentiated. Borrowing the Gnostic term, he referred to this spiritual realm transcending consciousness as the “pleroma.” In the pleroma, all is one. There is no differentiation between opposites like good and evil, light and dark, time and space, or force and matter.

  But, whereas Schopenhauer’s philosophy is governed by the ideal of deliverance from the bonds of individuality by means of denial and asceticism, Jung’s philosophy is governed by the idea of affirmation and realization of individuality.

  Jung’s belief in the underlying unity of all existence led him to believe that physical and mental, as well as spatial and temporal, were human categories imposed upon reality which did not accurately reflect it. Through his collaboration with the physicist Wolfgang Pauli, also his analysand, Jung came to think that the physicist’s investigation of matter and the psychologist’s investigation of mind might be different ways of approaching the same underlying reality. Perhaps mind and body were simply different aspects of a single reality viewed through different frames of reference.

  Jung claimed that there were “sufficient reasons” for believing that “the psychic lies embedded in something that appears to be of a non-psychic nature.”27 Pauli postulated “a cosmic order independent of our choice and distinct from the world of phenomena.”28 Jung wrote: “The background of microphysics and depth-psychology is as much physical as psychic and therefore neither, but rather a third thing, a neutral nature which at most can be grasped in hints since in essence it is transcendental.”29

  Whatever one may think of the further reaches of Jung’s later thought, there can be no doubt of his originality, of his creative power, of his contribution to the understanding of the development of personality, and of the value of the innovations which he introduced into the technique and practice of analytical psychotherapy.

  NOTES

  References are to Jung’s works unless otherwise noted.

  1. “Mental Disease and the Psyche,” in Collected Works, 20 vols., trans. R. F. C. Hull (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1953–79), vol. 3, para. 498 (cited hereafter as CW, by volume and paragraph number).

  2. “The Tavistock Lectures” (Lecture 2), CW 18:105.

  3. “A Review of the Complex Theory,” CW 8:201.

  4. Ibid., para. 202.

  5. “On the Nature of the Psyche,” CW 8:435.

  6. “The Structure of the Psyche,” CW 8:317–18.

  7. “Psychoanalysis and Neurosis,” CW 4:317–18, 570.

  8. William McGuire, ed., The Freud/Jung Letters, trans. Ralph Manheim and R. F. C. Hull (London: Hogarth Press/Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974).

  9. Memories, Dreams, Reflections (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963), p. 170.

  10. Ibid., p. 191.

  11. “The Psychology of the Unconscious,” CW 7:57.

  12. “The Practical Use of Dream-Analysis,” CW 16:297–300.

  13. Ibid., para. 330.

  14. “The Relations Between the Ego and the Unconscious,” CW 7:236.

  15. “The Development of Personality,” CW 17:289.

  16. Ibid.

  17. “Commentary on ‘The Secret of the Golden Flower,’” CW 13:68.

  18. “Psychology and Religion,” CW 11:138.

  19. “Commentary on ‘The Secret of the Golden Flower,’” CW 13:67.

  20. “The Undiscovered Self,” CW 10:588.

  21. McGuire, Freud/Jung Letters, Letter 178J, p. 294.

  22. Anthony Storr, “Individuation and the Creative Process,” Journal of Analytical Psychology 28 (1983):329–43.

  23. “The Transcendent Function,” CW 8:143.

  24. Arthur Koestler, The Act of Creation (London: Hutchinson, 1964).

  25. Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p. 76.

  26. Ibid., p. 17.

  27. “On the Nature of the Psyche,” CW 8:437.

  28. Wolfgang Pauli, “The Influence of Archetypal Ideas on the Scientific Theories of Kepler,” in The Interpretation of Nature and the Psyche, C
. G. Jung and Wolfgang Pauli (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1955), p. 152.

  29. “Mysterium Coniunctionis,” CW 14:768.

  10

  Why Psychoanalysis

  Is Not a Science

  THE PURPOSE OF this chapter is to affirm that, although Freud continued to hope that psychoanalysis was, or might become, a science, that hope was doomed to disappointment.

  Although some of the hypotheses of psychoanalysis can be treated scientifically, that is, subjected to objective assessment and proved or disproved in the same fashion as scientific hypotheses in other fields, this is only true of a minority. For most of the hypotheses of psychoanalysis are based upon observations made during the course of psychoanalytic treatment, and psychoanalytic treatment cannot be regarded as a scientific procedure. Observations made during the psychoanalytic encounter are inevitably contaminated with the subjective experience and prejudice of the observer, however detached he tries to be, and cannot therefore be regarded in the same light as observations made during the course of a chemical or physical experiment.

  It is certainly possible to study human beings as if they were objects merely responding to the stimuli impinging upon them. This is the aim of experimental psychology. But it is not possible to conduct psychoanalysis or any other form of psychotherapy in this fashion, for reasons which I shall proceed to outline.

  To my mind, Freud’s wish to be thought a scientist, and his reluctance to admit that he abandoned this role at an early stage in his career, have had an unfortunate effect. If no one had ever claimed that psychoanalysis was a science, dispute about its status would not have been so intemperate. John Bowlby, perhaps the most influential psychoanalyst in Britain during the last three decades, once said that he thought that Freud’s attitude had held up the development of psychotherapy by fifty years. Yet Bowlby would the first to acknowledge the originality of Freud’s genius. In order to understand this paradox, it is necessary to glance at some aspects of the development of Freud’s thought.