Jung contra Freud

The 1912 New York Lectures on the Theory of Psychoanalysis

C. G. Jung, R. F.C. Hull

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781400839841
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Jungian Psychology
• Index: Psychology

In the autumn of 1912, C. G. Jung, then president of the International Psychoanalytic Association, set out his critique and reformulation of the theory of psychoanalysis in a series of lectures in New York, ideas that were to prove unacceptable to Freud, thus creating a schism in the Freudian school. Jung challenged Freud's understandings of sexuality, the origins of neuroses, dream interpretation, and the unconscious, and Jung also became the first to argue that every analyst should themselves be analyzed. Seen in the light of the subsequent reception and development of psychoanalysis, Jung's critiques appear to be strikingly prescient, while also laying the basis for his own school of analytical psychology.
This volume of Jung's lectures includes an introduction by Sonu Shamdasani, Philemon Professor of Jung History at University College London, and editor of Jung's Red Book.

1. A REVIEW OF THE EARLY HYPOTHESES

203

It is no easy task to lecture on psychoanalysis at the present time. I am not thinking so much of the fact that this whole field of research raises—I am fully convinced—some of the most difficult problems facing present-day science. Even if we put this cardinal fact aside, there remain other serious difficulties which interfere considerably with the presentation of the material. I cannot offer you a well-established, neatly rounded doctrine elaborated from the practical and the theoretical side. Psychoanalysis has not yet reached that point of development, despite all the labour that has been expended upon it. Nor can I give you a description of its growth ab ovo, for you already have in your country, dedicated as always to the cause of progress, a number of excellent interpreters and teachers who have spread a more general knowledge of psychoanalysis among the scientifically-minded public. Besides this, Freud, the true discoverer and founder of the movement, has lectured in your country and given an authentic account of his views. I, too, have already had the great honour of lecturing in America, on the experimental foundation of the theory of complexes and the application of psychoanalysis to education.¹

204

In these circumstances you will readily appreciate that I am afraid of repeating what has already been said or already been published in scientific journals. Another difficulty to be considered is the fact that quite extraordinary misconceptions prevail in many quarters concerning the nature of psychoanalysis. At times it is almost impossible to imagine what exactly these erroneous conceptions might be. But sometimes they are so preposterous that one is astonished that anyone with a scientific background could ever arrive at ideas so remote from reality. Obviously it would not be worth while to cite examples of these curiosities. It will be better to devote time and energy to discussing those problems of psychoanalysis which by their very nature give rise to misunderstandings.

THE TRAUMA THEORY

205

Although it has been pointed out on any number of occasions before, many people still do not seem to know that the theory of psychoanalysis has changed considerably in the course of the years. Those, for instance, who have read only the first book, Studies on Hysteria,² by Breuer and Freud, still believe that, according to psychoanalysis, hysteria and the neuroses in general are derived from a so-called trauma in early childhood. They continue senselessly to attack this theory, not realizing that it is more than fifteen years since it was abandoned and replaced by a totally different one. This change is of such great importance for the whole development of the technique and theory of psychoanalysis that we are obliged to examine it in rather more detail. So as not to weary you with case histories that by now are well known, I shall content myself with referring to those mentioned in Breuer and Freud’s book, which I may assume is known to you in its English translation. You will there have read that case of Breuer’s to which Freud referred in his lectures at Clark University,³ and will have discovered that the hysterical symptom did not derive from some unknown anatomical source, as was formerly supposed, but from certain psychic experiences of a highly emotional nature, called traumata or psychic wounds. Nowadays, I am sure, every careful and attentive observer of hysteria will be able to confirm from his own experience that these especially painful and distressing occurrences do in fact often lie at the root of the illness. This truth was already known to the older physicians.

206

So far as I know, however, it was really Charcot who, probably influenced by Page’s theory of “nervous shock,”⁴ first made theoretical use of this observation. Charcot knew, from his experience of the new technique of hypnotism, that hysterical symptoms can be produced and also be made to disappear by suggestion. He believed something of the kind could be observed in those increasingly common cases of hysteria caused by accidents. The traumatic shock would be comparable, in a sense, to the moment of hypnosis, since the emotion it produced would cause, temporarily, a complete paralysis of the will during which the trauma could become fixed as an auto-suggestion.

207

This conception laid the foundations for a theory of psychogenesis. It was left for later aetiological researches to find out whether the same mechanism, or a similar one, existed in cases of hysteria which could not be called traumatic. This gap in our knowledge of the aetiology of hysteria was filled by the discoveries of Breuer and Freud. They showed that even in cases of ordinary hysteria which had not been regarded as traumatically conditioned the same traumatic element could be found, and that it seemed to have an aetiological significance. So it was very natural for Freud, himself a pupil of Charcot, to see in this discovery a confirmation of Charcot’s views. Consequently, the theory elaborated out of the experience of that period, mainly by Freud, bore the imprint of a traumatic aetiology. It was therefore fittingly called the trauma theory.

208

The new thing about this theory, apart from the truly admirable thoroughness of Freud’s analysis of hysterical symptoms, is the abandonment of the concept of auto-suggestion, which was the dynamic element in the original theory. It was replaced by a more detailed conception of the psychological and psychophysical effects produced by the shock. The shock or trauma causes an excitation which, under normal conditions, is got rid of by being expressed (“abreacted”). In hysteria, however, the trauma is incompletely abreacted, and this results in a “retention of the excitation,” or a “blocking of affect.” The energy of the excitation, always lying ready in potentia, is transmuted into the physical symptoms by the mechanism of conversion. According to this view, the task of therapy was to release the accumulated excitation, thereby discharging the repressed and converted affects from the symptoms. Hence it was aptly called the “cleansing” or “cathartic” method, and its aim was to “abreact” the blocked affects. That stage of the analysis was therefore bound up fairly closely with the symptoms—one analysed the symptoms, or began the work of analysis with the symptoms, very much in contrast to the psychoanalytical technique employed today. The cathartic method and the theory on which it is based have, as you know, been taken over by other professional people, so far as they are interested in psychoanalysis at all, and have also found appreciative mention in the text-books.

209

Although the discoveries of Breuer and Freud are undoubtedly correct in point of fact, as can easily be proved by any case of hysteria, several objections can nevertheless be raised against the trauma theory. The Breuer-Freud method shows with wonderful clearness the retrospective connection between the actual symptom and the traumatic experience, as well as the psychological consequences which apparently follow of necessity from the original traumatic situation. All the same, some doubt arises as to the aetiological significance of the trauma. For one thing, the hypothesis that a neurosis, with all its complications, can be related to events in the past—that is, to some factor in the patient’s predisposition—must seem doubtful to anyone who knows hysteria. It is the fashion nowadays to regard all mental abnormalities not of exogenous origin as consequences of hereditary degeneration, and not as essentially conditioned by the psychology of the patient and his environment. But this is an extreme view which fails to do justice to the facts. We know very well how to find the middle course in dealing with the aetiology of tuberculosis. There are undoubtedly cases of tuberculosis where the germ of the disease proliferates from early childhood in soil predisposed by heredity, so that even under the most favourable conditions the patient cannot escape his fate. But there are also cases where there is no hereditary taint and no predisposition, and yet a fatal infection occurs. This is equally true of the neuroses, where things will not be radically different from what they are in general pathology. An extreme theory about predisposition will be just as wrong as an extreme theory about environment.

THE CONCEPT OF REPRESSION

210

Although the trauma theory gave distinct prominence to the predisposition, even insisting that some past trauma is the conditio sine qua non of neurosis, Freud with his brilliant empiricism had already discovered, and described in the Breuer-Freud Studies, certain elements which bear more resemblance to an “environment theory” than to a “predisposition theory,” though their theoretical importance was not sufficiently appreciated at the time. Freud had synthesized these observations in a concept that was to lead far beyond the limits of the trauma theory. This concept he called “repression.” As you know, by “repression” we mean the mechanism by which a conscious content is displaced into a sphere outside consciousness. We call this sphere the unconscious, and we define it as the psychic element of which we are not conscious. The concept of repression is based on the repeated observation that neurotics seem to have the capacity for forgetting significant experiences or thoughts so thoroughly that one might easily believe they had never existed. Such observations are very common and are well known to anyone who enters at all deeply into the psychology of his patients.

211

As a result of the Breuer-Freud Studies, it was found that special procedures were needed to call back into consciousness traumatic experiences that had long been forgotten. This fact, I would mention in passing, is astonishing in itself, inasmuch as we are disinclined from the start to suppose that things of such importance could ever be forgotten. For this reason it has often been objected that the reminiscences brought back by hypnotic procedures are merely “suggested” and bear no relation to reality. Even if this doubt were justified, there would certainly be no justification for denying repression in principle on that account, for there are plenty of cases where the actual existence of repressed memories has been verified objectively. Quite apart from numerous proofs of this kind, it is possible to demonstrate this phenomenon experimentally, by the association test. Here we discover the remarkable fact that associations relating to feeling-toned complexes are much less easily remembered and are very frequently forgotten. As my experiments were never checked, this finding was rejected along with the rest. It was only recently that Wilhelm Peters, of the Kraepelin school, was able to confirm my earlier observations, proving that “painful experiences are very rarely reproduced correctly.”⁵

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As you see, then, the concept of repression rests on a firm empirical basis. But there is another side of the question that needs discussing. We might ask if the repression is due to a conscious decision of the individual, or whether the reminiscences disappear passively, without his conscious knowledge? In Freud’s writings you will find excellent proofs of the existence of a conscious tendency to repress anything painful. Every psychoanalyst knows dozens of cases showing clearly that at some particular moment in the past the patient definitely did not want to think any longer of the content to be repressed. One patient told me, very significantly: “Je l’ai mis de côté.” On the other hand, we must not forget that there are any number of cases where it is impossible to show, even with the most careful examination, the slightest trace of “putting aside” or of conscious repression, and where it seems as if the process of repression were more in the nature of a passive disappearance, or even as if the impressions were dragged beneath the surface by some force operating from below. Patients of the first type give us the impression of being mentally well-developed individuals who seem to suffer only from a peculiar cowardice in regard to their own feelings. But among the second you may find cases showing a more serious retardation of development, since here the process of repression could be compared rather to an automatic mechanism. This difference may be connected with the question discussed above, concerning the relative importance of predisposition and environment. Many factors in cases of the first type appear to depend on the influence of environment and education, whereas in the latter type the factor of predisposition seems to predominate. It is pretty clear where the treatment will be more effective.

213

As I have indicated, the concept of repression contains an element which is in intrinsic contradiction with the trauma theory. We saw, for instance, in the case of Miss Lucy R., analysed by Freud,⁶ that the aetiologically significant factor was not to be found in the traumatic scenes but in the insufficient readiness of the patient to accept the insights that forced themselves upon her. And when we think of the later formulation in the Schriften zur Neurosenlehre,⁷ where Freud’s experience obliged him to recognize certain traumatic events in early childhood as the source of the neurosis, we get a forcible impression of the incongruity between the concept of repression and that of the trauma. The concept of repression contains the elements of an aetiological theory of environment, while the trauma concept is a theory of predisposition.

214

At first the theory of neurosis developed entirely along the lines of the trauma concept. In his later investigations Freud came to the conclusion that no positive validity could be attributed to the traumatic experiences of later life, as their effects were conceivable only on the basis of a specific predisposition. It was evidently there that the riddle had to be solved. In pursuing the roots of hysterical symptoms, Freud found that the analytical work led back into childhood; the links reached backwards from the present into the distant past. The end of the chain threatened to get lost in the mists of earliest infancy. But it was just at that point that reminiscences appeared of certain sexual scenes—active or passive—which were unmistakably connected with the subsequent events leading to the neurosis. For the nature of these scenes you must consult the works of Freud and the numerous analyses that have already been published.

THE THEORY OF SEXUAL TRAUMA IN CHILDHOOD

215

Hence arose the theory of sexual trauma in childhood, which provoked bitter opposition not because of theoretical objections against the trauma theory in general, but against the element of sexuality in particular. In the first place, the very i...