Carl Jung Introduction to The Inner World of the Child
What this book provides is not theory, but experience.
That is just what gives it its special value for anyone really interested in child psychology.
We cannot fully understand the psychology of the child or that of the adult if we regard it a s the subjective concern of the individual alone, for almost more important than this is his relation to others.
Here, at all events, we can begin with the most easily accessible and, practically speaking, the most important part of the psychic life of the child.
Children are so deeply involved in the psychological attitude of their parents mat
it is no wonder that most of the nervous disturbances in childhood can be traced back to a disturbed psychic atmosphere in t he home.
This book shows, from a series of remarkable examples, just how disastrous the parental influence an be for the child.
Probably no father or mother will be able to read these chapters without realizing the devastating truths of this book. Exempla docent — example is the best teacher! Once more this proves to be a wellworn yet pitiless truth.
It is not a question of good an wise counsels, but solely of deeds, of the actual life of the parents.
Nor is it a matter of living in accordance with accepted moral values, for the observance of customs and laws can very easily be a cloak for a lie so subtle that our
fellow human beings are unable to detect it.
It may help us to escape all criticism, we may even be able to deceive ourselves in the belief of our obvious righteousness.
But deep down, below the surface of the average man’s conscience, he h ears a voice whispering, “There is something not right,” no matter how much his rightness is supported by public opinion or by the moral code.
Certain instances in this book show very clearly that there exists a terrible law which stands beyond man’s morality and his ideas of rightness — a law which cannot be cheated.
Besides the problem of environmental influence, the book also gives due weight to psychic factors which have more to do with the irrational values of the child than
with his rational psychology.
The latter can be made the object of scientific research, while the spiritual values, the qualities of the soul, elude purely intellectual treatment.
It is no good having skeptical ideas about this — nature does not care a pin for our ideas.
If we have to deal with the human soul we can meet it on its own ground, and we are bound to do so whenever we are confronted with the real and crushing problems of life.
I am glad the author has not shrunk from opening the door to intellectual criticism.
Genuine experience has nothing to fear from objections, whether justified or unjustified, for i t always holds the stronger position.
Although this book does not pretend to be “scientific,” it is scientific in a higher sense, because it gives a true picture of t he difficulties that actually occur in the upbringing of children.
It merits the serious attention of everybody who has anything to do with children, either by vocation or from duty.
But it will also be of interest to those who, neither for reasons of duty nor from educational inclination, wish to know more about the beginnings of human
consciousness.
Even though many of the views and experiences set forth in this book have nothing fundamentally new to offer to the doctor and psychological educator, the curious reader will now and then come upon cases which are strange and will give pause to his critical understanding—cases and facts which the author, with hei essentially
practical turn of mind, does not pursue in all their complexities and theoretical implications.
What is the thoughtful reader to make, for instance, of the puzzling but undeniable fact of the identity of the psychic state of the child with the unconscious of the parents?
One is dimly aware here of a region full of incalculable possibilities, a hydraheaded
monster of a problem that is as much the concern of the biologist and psychologist as the philosopher.
For anyone acquainted with the psychology of primitives there is an obvious connection between this “identity” and Levy-Bruhl’s idea of “participation mystique.”
Strange to say, there are not a few ethnologists who still kick against this brilliant idea, for which the unfortunate expression “mystique” may have to shoulder no small part of the blame.
The word “mystical” has indeed become the abode of all unclean spirits, although it was not meant like that originally, but has been debased by sordid usage.
There is nothing “mystical” about identity, any more than there is anything mystical about the metabolism common to mother and embryo.
Identity derives essentially from the notorious unconsciousness of the small child.
Therein lies the connection with the primitive, for the primitive is as unconscious as a child.
Unconsciousness means non-differentiation.
There is as yet no clearly differentiated ego,
only events which may belong to me or to another.
It is sufficient that somebody should be affected by them.
The extraordinary infectiousness of emotional reactions then makes it certain that everybody in the vicinity will involuntarily be a ffected.
The weaker ego-consciousness is, the less it matters who is affected, and the less the individual is able to guard against it.
He could only do that if he could say: you are excited or angry, but I am not, for I am not you.
The child is in exactly the same position in the family: he is affected to the same degree and in the same way as the whole group.
For all lovers of theory, the essential fact behind all this is that the things which have the most powerful effect upon children do not come from the conscious state of the parents but from their unconscious background.
For the ethically minded person who may be a father or mother this presents an almost frightening problem, because the things we can manipulate more or less, namely consciousness and its contents, are seen to be ineffectual in comparison
with these uncontrollable effects in the background, no ^matter how hard we may try.
One is afflicted with a feeling of e xtreme moral uncertainty when one takes these unconscious processes with the seriousness they deserve.
How are we to protect our children from ourselves, if conscious will and conscious effort are of no avail?
There can be no doubt that it is of the utmost value for parents to view their children’s symptoms in the light of their own problems and conflicts.
It is their duty as parents to do so.
Their responsibility in this respect carries with it the obligation to do everything in their power not to lead a life that could harm the children.
Generally far too little stress is laid upon how important the conduct of the parents is for the child, because it is not words that count, but deeds.
Parents should always be conscious of the fact that they themselves are the principal cause of neurosis in their children.
We must not, however, exaggerate the importance of unconscious effects, even though the mind’s love of causes finds dangerous satisfaction in doing precisely this.
Nor should we exaggerate the importance of causality in general.
Certainly causes exist, but the psyche is not a mechanism that reacts of necessity and in a regular way to a specific stimulus.
Here as elsewhere in practical psychology we are constantly coming up against the experience that in a family of several children only one of them will react to the unconscious of the parents with a marked degree of identity, while the others show no such reaction.
The specific constitution of the individual plays a part here that is practically decisive.
For this reason, the biologically trained psychologist seizes upon the fact of organic heredity and is far more inclined to regard the whole mass of genealogical inheritance as the elucidating factor, rather than the psychic causality of the moment.
This standpoint, however satisfying it may be by and large, is unfortunately
of little relevance to individual cases because it offers no practical clue to psychological treatment.
For it also happens to be true that psychic causality exists between parents and children regardless of all the laws of heredity; in fact, the heredity point of view, although undoubtedly justified, diverts the interest of the educator or therapist away from the practical importance of parental influence to some generalized and more or less fatalistic regard for the dead hand of heredity, from the consequences of which there is no escape.
It would be a very grave omission for parents and educators to i gnore psychic causality, just as it would be a fatal mistake to attribute all the blame to this factor alone.
In every case both factors have a part to play, without the one excluding the other.
What usually has the strongest psychic effect on the child is the life which the parents (and ancestors too, for we are dealing here with the age-old psychological phenomenon of o riginal sin) have not lived.
This statement would be rather too perfunctory and superficial if we did not add by way of qualification: that oart of their lives which might have been lived had not certain somewhat threadbare excuses prevented the parents from doing so.
To put it bluntly, it is that part of life which they have always shirked, probably by means of a pious lie.
That sows the most virulent germs.
Our author’s exhortation to clear-eyed self-knowledge is therefore altogether appropriate.
The nature of the case must then decide how much of the blame really rests with
the parents.
One should never forget that it is a question of “original sin,” a sin against life and not a contravention of man-made morality, and that the parents must therefore
be viewed as children of the grandparents.
The curse of the House of Atreus is no empty phrase.
Nor should one fall into the error of thinking that the form or intensity of the child’s reaction necessarily depends upon the peculiar nature of the parent’s problems.
Very often these act as a catalyst and produce effects which could be better explained by heredity than by psychic causality.
The causal significance of parental problems for the psyche of the child would be seriously misunderstood if they were always interpreted in an exaggeratedly personal way as moral problems.
More often we seem to be dealing with some fate-like ethos beyond the reach of our conscious judgment.
Such things as proletarian inclinations in the scions of noble families, outbursts of criminality in the offspring of the respectable or overvirtuous, a paralyzing or impassioned laziness in the children of successful businessmen, are not just bits of life that have been left deliberately unlived, but compensations wrought by fate,
functions of a natural ethos which casts down the high and mighty and exalts the humble.
Against this neither education nor psychotherapy is of any avail.
The most they can do, if reasonably applied, is to encourage the child to fulfill the task imposed upon him by the natural ethos.
The guilt of the parents is impersonal, and the child should pay for it no less impersonally.
Parental influence only becomes a moral problem in face of conditions which might have been changed by the parents, but were not, either from gross negligence, slothfulness, neurotic anxiety, or soulless conventionality.
In this matter a grave responsibility often rests with the parents.
And nature has no use for the plea that one “did not knNoowt. ” knowing acts like guilt.
Frances Wickes’s book also raises the following problem in the mind of the thoughtful reader:
The psychology of “identity,” which precedes ego-consciousness, indicates what the child is by virtue of his parents.
But what he is as an individuality distinct from his parents can hardly be explained by the causal relationship to the parents.
We ought rather to say that it is not so much the parents as their ancestors — the grandparents and great-grandparents — who are the true progenitors, and that these explain the individuality of the children far more than the immediate and, so to speak, accidental parents.
In the same way the true psychic individuality of the child is something new in respect of the parents and cannot be derived from their psyche.
It is a combination of collective factors which are only potentially present in the parental psyche, and are sometimes wholly invisible.
Not only the child’s body, but his soul, too, proceeds from his ancestry, in so far as it is individually distinct from the collective psyche of mankind.
The child’s psyche, prior to the stage of ego-consciousness, is v ery far from being empty and devoid of content.
Scarcely has speech developed when, in next to no time, consciousness is present; and this, with its momentary contents and its memories, exercises an intensive check upon the previous collective contents.
That such contents exist in the child who has not yet attained to ego-consciousness
is a well-attested fact.
The most important evidence in this respect is the dreams of three- and four-year-old children, among which there are some so strikingly mythological and so fraught with meaning that one would take them at once for the dreams of grown-ups, did one not know who the dreamer was.
They are the last vestiges of a dwindling collective psyche which dreamingly reiterates the perennial contents of the human soul.
From this phase there spring many childish fears and dim, unchildlike premonitions which, rediscovered in later phases of life, form the basis of the belief in reincarnation.
But from this sphere also spring those flashes of insight and lucidity which give rise
to the proverb: Children and fools speak the truth.
Because of its universal distribution the collective psyche, which is still so close to the small child, perceives not only the background of the parents, but, ranging further afield, the depths of good and evil in the human soul.
The unconscious psyche of the child is truly limitless in extent and of incalculable age.
Behind the longing to be a child again, or behind the anxiety dreams of children,
there is, with all due respect to the parents, more than the joys of the cradle or a bad upbringing.
Primitive peoples often hold the belief that the soul of the child is the incarnation of an ancestral spirit, for which reason it is dangerous to punish children, lest the
ancestral spirit be provoked.
This belief is only a more concrete formulation of the views I have outlined above.
The infinity of the child’s preconscious soul may disappear with it, or it may be preserved.
The remnants of the child-soul in the adult are his best and worst qualities; at all events they are the mysterious spirit us rector of our weightiest deeds and of our individual destinies, whether we are conscious of it or not.
It is they which make kings or pawns of the insignificant figures who move about on
the checkerboard of life, turning some poor devil of a casual father into a ferocious tyrant, or a silly goose of an unwilling mother into a goddess of fate.
For behind every individual father there stands the primordial image of the Father, and behind the fleeting personal mother the magical figure of the Magna Mater.
These archetypes of the collective psyche, whose power is magnified in immortal
works of art and in the fiery tenets of religon, are the dominants that rule the preconscious soul of the child and, when projected upon the human parents, lend them a fascination which often assumes monstrous proportions.
From that there arises the false aetiology of neurosis which, in Freud, ossified into a system: the Oedipus complex.
And that is also why, in the later life of the neurotic, the images of the parents can be criticized, corrected, and reduced to human dimensions, while yet continuing to
work like divine agencies.
Did the human father really possess this mysterious power, his sons would soon liquidate him or, even better, would refrain from becoming fathers themselves.
For what ethical person could possibly bear so gigantic a responsibility?
Far better to leave this sovereign power to the gods, with whom it had always
rested before man became “enlightened.” ~C. G. Jung
Francis G. Wickes, The Inner World of the Child, Page xvii-xxii
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