The causes of a neurosis lie in the present and the past
Carl Jung Depth Psychology Facebook Group
The causes of a neurosis lie in the present as much as in the past, and only a cause actually existing in the present can keep a neurosis active.
“If we closely examine an individual case of this sort( a neurosis ), we do discover peculiar disturbances in the sexual sphere as well as in the sphere of unconscious impulses in general. Freud sees in the presence of these disturbances an explanation of the psychic disturbance as a whole; he is interested only in the causal interpretation of the sexual symptoms.
He completely overlooks the fact that, in certain cases, the supposed causes of the neurosis were always present, but had no pathological effect until a disturbance of the conscious attitude set in and led to a neurotic upset.
It is as though, when a ship was sinking because of a leak, the crew interested itself in the chemical constitution of the water that was pouring in, instead of stopping the leak. The disturbance of the instinctual sphere is not a primary but a secondary phenomenon.
When conscious life has lost its meaning and promise, it is as though a panic had broken loose: “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die!” It is this mood, born of the meaninglessness of life, that causes the disturbance in the unconscious and provokes the painfully curbed instincts to break out anew.
The causes of a neurosis lie in the present as much as in the past, and only a cause actually existing in the present can keep a neurosis active.
A man is not tubercular because he was infected twenty years ago with bacilli, but because active foci of infection are present now.
The questions when and how the infection occurred are totally irrelevant.
Even the most accurate knowledge of the previous history cannot cure the tuberculosis. And the same holds true of the neuroses.” ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 517
