As my work is largely based on experimental researches
FOREWORD
This work is the fruit of three years’ experimental researches
and clinical observations.
In view of the complexity and magnitude
of the material, my work cannot and does not lay claim
either to finality of treatment or to absolute certainty of the
statements and conclusions.
On the contrary, it combines all the
disadvantages of eclecticism, which to many a reader may seem
so striking that he will call my work a confession of faith rather
than a scientific treatise.
Peu importe!
The important thing is
that I should be able to show the reader how, through psychological
investigation, I have been led to certain views which I
think will provoke new and fruitful questions concerning the
individual psychological basis of dementia praecox.
My views are not contrivances of a roving fancy, but thoughts
which matured in almost daily conversation with my respected
chief, Professor Bleuler.
I owe special thanks to my friend
Dr. Riklin, of Rheinau, for adding considerably to the empirical
material.
Even a superficial glance at my work will show how
much I am indebted to the brilliant discoveries of Freud.
As
Freud has not yet received the recognition and appreciation he
deserves, but is still opposed even in the most authoritative
circles,
I hope I may be allowed to define my position towards
him
. My attention was drawn to Freud by the first book of his
I happened to read,
The Interpretation of Dreams, after which I
also studied his other writings.
I can assure you that in the beginning
I naturally entertained all the objections that are customarily
made against Freud in the literature.
But, I told myself,
Freud could be refuted only by one who has made repeated use
of the psychoanalytic method and who really investigates as
Freud does; that is, by one who has made a long and patient
study of everyday life, hysteria, and dreams from Freud’s point
of view.
He who does not or cannot do this should not pronounce
judgment on Freud, else he acts like those notorious men of
science who disdained to look through Galileo’s telescope.
Fairness
to Freud, however, does not imply, as many fear, unqualified
submission to a dogma; one can very well maintain an independent
judgment.
If I, for instance, acknowledge the complex
mechanisms of dreams and hysteria, this does not mean that I
attribute to the infantile sexual trauma the exclusive importance
that Freud apparently does.
Still less does it mean that
I place sexuality so predominantly in the foreground, or that I
grant it the psychological universality which Freud, it seems,
postulates in view of the admittedly enormous role which sexuality
plays in the psyche.
As for Freud’s therapy, it is at best but
one of several possible methods, and perhaps does not always
offer in practice what one expects from it in theory.
Nevertheless,
all these things are the merest trifles compared with the psychological
principles whose discovery is Freud’s greatest merit; and
to them the critics pay far too little attention.
He who wishes to
be fair to Freud should take to heart the words of Erasmus:
“Unumquemque move lapidem, omnia experire, nihil intentatum
relinque.”
As my work is largely based on experimental researches, I
trust the reader will bear with me if he finds a great many references
to the Diagnostische Assoziationsstudien, which appeared
under my editorship. 1 ~C. G. Jung ~Carl Jung, CW 3, Page 3-4
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