FREUD AND JUNG: CONTRASTS
E D I T O R I A L NOTE
For about six years, from 1907 to 1912, Jung practiced and wrote and presumably thought as a psychoanalyst, in close association with Freud.1 The work that was to be his major statement, Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido, proved instead to be a declaration of heresy, or at any rate of independence.
When its relatively brief Part I appeared in 1911, Freud complimented it; but the very extensive Part II, published the next year, left no question of Jung’s position, though he still professed himself an adherent of the psychoanalytic movement.
In autumn 1912, he visited the United States to lecture in various cities. His chief appearance was at the Medical School of Fordham University, in the Bronx, New York, where he gave a series of nine lectures as an extension course to doctors—”a critical account of the development of the theory of psychoanalysis,” he wrote Freud upon returning. ”
Naturally I also made room for those of my views which deviate in places from the hitherto existing conceptions, particularly in regard to the libido theory.
I found that my version of psychoanalysis won over many people who until now had been put off by the problem of sexuality in neurosis. . . . I shall take pleasure in sending you a copy of my lectures in the hope that you will gradually come to accept certain innovations already hinted at in my libido paper. . . .
I hope this letter will make it plain that I feel no need at all to break off personal relations with you.”2 The break nevertheless came, scarcely two months later. Freud’s last letter was written on 27 January 1913.
The chief content of the present volume is the Fordham Lectures, entitled “The Theory of Psychoanalysis” though actually a presentation of Jung’s version of psychoanalysis and a criticism of the orthodox view. It is followed by four shorter works that carry forward Jung’s critique and the evolution of
his own system.
In the paper “Psychoanalysis and Neurosis” (actually first read also in New York in 1912, as was recently discovered) and the other two of 1913, Jung’s term is still “psychoanalysis”; by 1916, when he published his Collected Papers, the term “analytical psychology” had become current for the
doctrines of the Zurich School, and Jung’s prefaces to that collection
pursue the reformulation of his theories.3
The volume also contains two later critical papers, of 1930 and 1931, and a statement written to the New York Times in 1953 rehearsing, forty years after the break, Jung’s critique of psychoanalysis. W.M. Page v-vi
FREUD AND JUNG: CONTRASTS1
The difference between Freud’s views and my own ought really to be dealt with by someone who stands outside the orbit of those ideas which go under our respective names. Can I be credited with sufficient impartiality to rise above my own ideas? Can any man do this? I doubt it. If I were told that someone had rivalled Baron Munchausen by accomplishing such a feat,
I should feel sure that his ideas were borrowed ones. It is true that widely accepted ideas are never the personal property of their so-called author; on the contrary, he is the bondservant of his ideas.
Impressive ideas which are hailed as truths have something peculiar about them. Although they come into being at a definite time, they are and have always been timeless; they arise from that realm of creative psychic life
out of which the ephemeral mind of the single human being grows like a plant that blossoms, bears fruit and seed, and then withers and dies. Ideas spring from something greater than the personal human being. Man does not make his ideas; we could say that man’s ideas make him.
Ideas are, inevitably, a fatal confession, for they bring to light not only the best in us, but our worst insufficiencies and personal shortcomings as well. This is especially the case with ideas about psychology.
Where should they come from except from our most subjective side? Can our experience of the objective world ever save us from our subjective bias? Is not every experience, even in the best of circumstances, at least fifty-per cent subjective interpretation? On the other hand, the subject is also an objective fact, a piece of the world; and what comes from him comes, ultimately, from the stuff of the world itself, just as the rarest and strangest organism is none the less supported and nourished by the earth which is common to all.
It is precisely the most subjective ideas which, being closest to nature and to our own essence, deserve to be called the truest. But: “What is truth?”
771 For the purposes of psychology, I think it best to abandon the notion that we are today in anything like a position to make statements about the nature of the psyche that are “true” or “correct.”
The best that we can achieve is true expression. By true expression I mean an open avowal and detailed presentation of everything that is subjectively observed. One person will stress the forms into which he can work this material, and will therefore believe that he is the creator of what he finds
within himself. Another will lay most weight on what is observed; he will therefore speak of it as a phenomenon, while remaining conscious of his own receptive attitude.
The truth probably lies between the two: true expression consists in giving
form to what is observed.
772 The modern psychologist, however ambitious, can hardly claim to have achieved more than this. Our psychology is the more or less successfully formulated confession of a few individuals, and so far as each of them conforms more or less to a type, his confession can be accepted as a fairly valid description of a large number of people. And since those who conform to other types none the less belong to the human species, we may conclude that this description applies, though less fully, to them too.
What Freud has to say about sexuality, infantile pleasure, and their conflict with the “reality principle,” as well as what he says abut incest and the like, can be taken as the truest expression of his personal psychology. It is the successful formulation of what he himself subjectively observed. I am no opponent of Freud’s; I am merely presented in that light by his own
short-sightedness and that of his pupils. No experienced psychiatrist
can deny having met with dozens of cases whose psychology answers in all essentials to that of Freud.
By his own subjective confession, Freud has assisted at the birth of a great
truth about man. He has devoted his life and strength to the construction of a psychology which is a formulation of his own being.
Our way of looking at things is conditioned by what we are. And since other people have a different psychology, they see things differently and express themselves differently. Adler, one of Freud’s earliest pupils, is a case in point. Working with the same empirical material as Freud, he approached it from a totally different standpoint. His way of looking at things is at least as convincing as Freud’s, because he too represents a psychology of a well-known type.
I know that the followers of both
schools flatly assert that I am in the wrong, but I may hope that
history and all fair-minded persons will bear me out. Both schools, to my way of thinking, deserve reproach for overemphasizing the pathological aspect of life and for interpreting man too exclusively in the light of his defects. A convincing example of this in Freud’s case is his inability to understand religious experience, as is clearly shown in his book The Future
of an Illusion.
774 For my part, I prefer to look at man in the light of what in him is healthy and sound, and to free the sick man from just that kind of psychology which colours every page Freud has written. I cannot see how Freud can ever get beyond his own psychology and relieve the patient of a suffering from which the doctor himself still suffers.
It is the psychology of neurotic states of mind, definitely one-sided, and its validity is really confined to those states. Within these limits it is true and valid even when it is in error, for error also belongs to the picture and carries the truth of a confession. But it is not a psychology of the healthy mind, and—this is a symptom of its morbidityit is based on an uncriticized, even an unconscious, view of the world which is apt to narrow the horizon of experience and limit one’s vision.
It was a great mistake on Freud’s part to turn his back on philosophy. Not once does he criticize his assumptions or even his personal psychic premises. Yet to do so was necessary, as may be inferred from what I have said above; for had he critically examined his own foundations he would never have been able to put his peculiar psychology so naively on view as he did in The Interpretation of Dreams.
At all events, he would have had a taste of the difficulties I have met with. I
have never refused the bitter-sweet drink of philosophical criticism, but have taken it with caution, a little at a time. All too little, my opponents will say; almost too much, my own feeling
tells me. All too easily does self-criticism poison one’s naivete, that priceless possession, or rather gift, which no creative person can do without. At any rate, philosophical criticism has helped me to see that every psychology—my own included—has the character of a subjective confession.
And yet I must prevent my critical powers from destroying my creativeness. I know well enough that every word I utter carries with it something of myself—of my special and unique self with its particular history and its own particular world. Even when I deal with empirical data I am necessarily speaking about myself.
But it is only by accepting this as inevitable that I can serve the cause of man’s knowledge of man—the cause which Freud also wished to serve
and which, in spite of everything, he has served. Knowledge rests not upon truth alone, but upon error also.
775 It is perhaps here, where the question arises of recognizing that every psychology which is the work of one man is subjectively coloured, that the line between Freud and myself is most sharply drawn.
776 A further difference seems to me to consist in this, that I try to free myself from all unconscious and therefore uncriticized assumptions about the world in general. I say “I try,” for who can be sure that he has freed himself from all of his unconscious assumptions?
I try to save myself from at least the crassest prejudices, and am therefore disposed to lecognize all manner of gods provided only that they are active in the human psyche. I do not doubt that the natural instincts or drives are forces of propulsion in psychic life, whether we call them sexuality or
the will to power; but neither do I doubt that these instincts come into collision with the spirit, for they are continually colliding with something, and why should not this something be called “spirit”?
I am far from knowing what spirit is in itself, and equally far from knowing what instincts are. The one is as mysterious to me as the other; nor can I explain the one as a misunderstanding of the other.
There are no misunderstandings
in nature, any more than the fact that the earth has only one
moon is a misunderstanding; misunderstandings are found only
in the realm of what we call “understanding.” Certainly instinct
and spirit are beyond my understanding. They are terms which
we posit for powerful forces whose nature we do not know
My attitude to all religions is therefore a positive one. In
their symbolism I recognize those figures which I have met with
in the dreams and fantasies of my patients. In their moral teachings
I see efforts that are the same as or similar to those made
by my patients when, guided by their own insight or inspiration,
they seek the right way to deal with the forces of psychic
life.
Ceremonial ritual, initiation rites, and ascetic practices, in
all their forms and variations, interest me profoundly as so
many techniques for bringing about a proper relation to these
forces.
My attitude to biology is equally positive, and to the
empiricism of natural science in general, in which I see a herculean
attempt to understand the psyche by approaching it from
the outside world, just as religious gnosis is a prodigious attempt
of the human mind to derive knowledge of the cosmos from
within.
In my picture of the world there is a vast outer realm
and an equally vast inner realm; between these two stands man,
facing now one and now the other, and, according to temperament
and disposition, taking the one for the absolute truth by
denying or sacrificing the other.
778 This picture is hypothetical, of course, but it offers a hypothesis
which is so valuable that I will not give it up. I consider
it heuristically and empirically justified and, moreover, it
is confirmed by the consensus gentium. This hypothesis certainly
came to me from an inner source, though I might imagine
that empirical findings had led to its discovery. Out of it has
grown my theory of types, and also my reconciliation with views
as different from my own as those of Freud.
779 I see in all that happens the play of opposites, and derive
from this conception my idea of psychic energy. I hold that
psychic energy involves the play of opposites in much the same
way as physical energy involves a difference of potential, that is
to say the existence of opposites such as warm and cold, high
and low, etc.
Freud began by taking sexuality as the only psychic driving force, and only after my break with him did he take other factors into account. For my part, I have summed up the various psychic drives or forces—all constructed more or less ad hoc—under the concept of energy, in order to eliminate the
almost unavoidable arbitrariness of a psychology that deals purely with power-drives. I therefore speak not of separate
drives or forces but of “value intensities.” 2 By this I do not mean to deny the importance of sexuality in psychic life, though Freud stubbornly maintains that I do deny it. What I seek is to set bounds to the rampant terminology of sex which vitiates all discussion of the human psyche, and to put sexuality itself in its proper place.
78° Common-sense will always return to the fact that sexuality is only one of the biological instincts, only one of the psychophysiological functions, though one that is without doubt very far-reaching and important. But—what happens when we can no longer satisfy our hunger? There is, quite obviously, a marked disturbance today in the psychic sphere of sex, just as, when a tooth really hurts, the whole psyche seems to consist of nothing
but toothache.
The kind of sexuality described by Freud is that unmistakable sexual obsession which shows itself whenever a patient has reached the point where he needs to be forced or tempted out of a wrong attitude or situation.
It is an overemphasized sexuality piled up behind a dam, and it shrinks at
once to normal proportions as soon as the way to development is opened. Generally it is being caught in the old resentments against parents and relations and in the boring emotional tangles of the “family romance” that brings about the damming up of life’s energies, and this stoppage unfailingly manifests itself in the form of sexuality called “infantile.”
It is not sexuality proper, but an unnatural discharge of tensions that really belong to quite another province of life. That being so, what is the use of paddling about in this flooded country? Surely, straight thinking will grant that it is more important to open up drainage canals, that is, to find a new attitude or way of life which will offer a suitable gradient for the pent-up energy.
Otherwise a vicious circle is set up, and this is in fact what Freudian psychology appears to do. It points no way that leads beyond the inexorable cycle of biological events. In despair we would have to cry out with St. Paul: “Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from the body of this death?”
And the spiritual man in us comes forward, shaking his head, and says in
Faust’s words: “Thou art conscious only of the single urge,” namely of the fleshly bond leading back to father and mother or forward to the children that have sprung from our flesh—”incest” . with the past and “incest” with the future, the original sin of perpetuation of the “family romance.”
There is nothing that can free us from this bond except that opposite urge of life, the spirit. It is not the children of the flesh, but the “children oi
God,” who know freedom. In Ernst Barlach’s tragedy The Dead Day, the mother-daemon says at the end: “The strange thing is that man will not learn that God is his father.”
That is what Freud would never learn, and what all those who share his outlook forbid themselves to learn. At least, they never find the key to this knowledge. Theology does not help those who are looking for the key, because theology demands faith, and faith cannot be made: it is in the truest sense a gift of grace.
We moderns are faced with the necessity of rediscovering the life of the spirit; we must experience it anew for ourselves. It is the only way in
which to break the spell that binds us to the cycle of biological events.
T8′ My position on this question is the third point of difference between Freud’s views and my own. Because of it I am accused of mysticism. I do not, however, hold myself responsible for the fact that man has, always and everywhere, spontaneously developed a religious function, and that the human psyche from time immemorial has been shot through with religious feelings and ideas.
Whoever cannot see this aspect of the human psyche is blind, and whoever chooses to explain it away, or to “enlighten” it away, has no sense of reality. Or should we see in the father-complex which shows itself in all members of the Freudian school, and in its founder as well, evidence of a notable
release from the fatalities of the family situation? This fathercomplex,
defended with such stubbornness and oversensitivity, is a religious function misunderstood, a piece of mysticism expressed in terms of biological and family relationships.
As for Freud’s concept of the “superego,” it is a furtive attempt to smuggle the time-honoured image of Jehovah in the dress of psychological theory. For my part, I prefer to call things by the names under which they have always been known.
782 The wheel of history must not be turned back, and man’s advance toward a spiritual life, which began with the primitive rites of initiation, must not be denied. It is permissible for science to divide up its field of inquiry and to operate with limited hypotheses, for science must work in that way; but the human psyche may not be so parcelled out.
It is a whole which embraces consciousness, and it is the mother of consciousness. Scientific thought, being only one of the psyche’s functions, can never exhaust all its potentialities.
The psychotherapist must not allow his vision to be coloured by pathology, he must never allow himself to forget that the ailing mind is a human mind
and that, for all its ailments, it unconsciously shares the whole psychic life of man.
He must even be able to admit that the ego is sick for the very reason that it is cut off from the whole, and has lost its connection not only with mankind but with the spirit. The ego is indeed the “place of fears,” as Freud says in
The Ego and the Id, but only so long as it has not returned to its “father” and “mother.”
Freud founders on the question of Nicodemus: “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb, and be born?” (John 3:4). History repeats itself, for—to compare small things
with great—the question reappears today in the domestic quarrel of modern psychology.
783 For thousands of years, rites of initiation have been teaching rebirth from the spirit; yet, strangely enough, man forgets again and again the meaning of divine procreation. Though this may be poor testimony to the strength of the spirit, the penalty for misunderstanding is neurotic decay, embitterment, atrophy, and sterility. It is easy enough to drive the spirit out of the door, but when we have done so the meal has lost its savour—the salt
of the earth.
Fortunately, we have proof that the spirit always renews its strength in the fact that the essential teaching of the initiations is handed on from generation to generation. Ever and again there are human beings who understand what it means that God is their father. The equal balance of the flesh and the spirit is not lost to the world.
784 The contrast between Freud and myself goes back to essential differences in our basic assumptions. Assumptions are unavoidable,
and this being so it is wrong to pretend that we have no assumptions. That is why I have dealt with fundamental questions; with these as a starting-point, the manifold and detailed differences between Freud’s views and my own can best be understood. ~Carl Jung, Critique of Psychoanalyis, Para 768-784
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