CHAPTER V

ORGANIC ANALYSIS OF REPRESSION AND OF THE FACTOR OF RESISTANCE FROM THE INDIVIDUAL VIEWPOINT

As the causative element in the neuroses is societal or subjective, an analysis that proceeds upon the objective tack of uncovering a patient’s complexes is futile. If I am objectively interested in a patient’s separative, dissociative expressions--in the infinite variety of his sexualities or infantilisms, it is traceable alone to the retention of this same unconscious mode within my own personality. In this situation the analytic procedure is such as bids fair to extend to an indefinite duration. But if, on the contrary, my own mode is organic and inclusive, my interest in the patient and my whole relationship to him will rest upon an organic, confluent basis. I shall be interested not in the dark secrets of sexuality which he may bring himself to divulge but in the delusion of separateness that leads him to suppose that my own sexuality or the desperate recourses of separatism and repression within myself are less dark than his own. Indeed, arguing merely from presumptive evidence, my absorbing interest in the subject of the neurosis would of itself make it a safe conjecture that my own reaction to the societal repression or my own sexual conflicts must have been by far the greater of the two. But neither is this the point. The point is that our sins are common because our lives are not common, and that the patient’s sole need is his understanding of the causative factor in the reaction of separation and repression of the collective mind as it may be realized by him in the relationship of his personality to my own. My sole endeavour, then, will be directed to an understanding on his part of the cause of his neurotic separatism or of the societal repression which, in dissociating him from the congeneric consciousness common to us both, artificially creates his illusion of difference between us.

Lacking this realization of the societal involvement of the neurosis, there necessarily ensues a personal involvement in the analysis that invites situations which not infrequently attain to an acute crisis. The only remedy is the realization through one’s own analysis of one’s own societal disaffection. The only recourse is the complete reversal of one’s own pictorial or introverted habits of experience. It will not be easy. To accept voluntary subjection to conditions involving involuntary pain will not become a popular pastime. But it is the only way in which we may be made aware of our social involvement in the societal neurosis about us. It is the only way by which we may come to take a conscious part in and not be an unconscious part of the analysis.

Never in the drama of human vicissitude has there been staged anything more ironical than the spectacle of an analyst’s perplexity when the patient, having become by implication a “cure,” fails to acquiesce in the principle she is now understood to illustrate. For presumably the time has arrived at which she (for the sake of dramatic interest let us say “she”) should naturally wish to withdraw from treatment. Unhappily, however, she entertains no such intention. On the contrary, in implacable defiance of analytical canons, she still stoutly maintains the unabated actuality of her neurosis and offers forthwith irrefutable vindication of her position in the sudden recrudescence of her incipient symptoms. In face of the undeniable testimony, the situation is untoward in the extreme. For at this point the patient’s attitude toward the analyst is such as can be only adequately expressed by her in the language of the poet who wrote: “All the current of my being sets to thee,” and in the interest of a busy practice, if to no other end, it is urgent that a channel be promptly provided into which to divert the stream! This is the real climax of the situation. Its tenseness is further heightened at this point by the introduction of that most delicate and difficult process in the technique called “analyzing the transference”! The fact is the transference will not analyze. It never does. That is the difficulty of this very delicate phase. At this juncture we cast frantically about for an “interest” for the patient, that is, an interest other than ourselves--marriage, art, social service, something, anything! The truth is, our analysis has failed of its aim, and in our extremity we are driven to seek shelter under the cover of a subterfuge. It is this subterfuge which consists in an effort toward what is called, in scientific phraseology, “the sublimation of the patient’s sexuality” and is the closing act of our little comedy. As the curtain is finally rung down (the management is fortunate if it drops without a hitch), it descends upon a much perplexed psychoanalyst. He feels distinctly that something went wrong. He is not certain just what it was, but knows that, whatever it was, the fault lay entirely with the patient. But the circumambient gods, as one’s fancy pictures, who from their remote recesses have witnessed until now with unsubdued mirth the transient episode of our unconscious charade, observing the wretched fate of the patient in her unanswered need, suddenly alter their mood from levity to grave concern as they thoughtfully remark one to another in their own wise way that the essential catastrophe, after all, is the unconscious of the analyst and that the real drama has but just begun.

However unpalatable the admission, here is the whole crux of the matter. We have dealt objectively with an inherently subjective situation. Our approach has been cognitive, not affective. It has been personal, not inclusive. Again we have merely looked out, not in. Again it is the illusion of the organic interval, and our problem has eluded us in the common fallacy of objective reference.

In a list of precepts for psychoanalysts (“precepts” for the elimination of repressions scarcely requires comment!) there is offered this naïve word of admonition: “Don’t forget that the neurotic’s chief dictum is: ‘I am not as other men are.’” But here again the analyst characteristically fails to recognize that such a dictum is by no means the private monopoly of the “neurotic.” He overlooks the fact that it is equally the tendency of us all and (what is of crucial importance) most especially of the analyst himself in the very utterance of his dictum. For in imputing to others this unconscious fallacy of self-distinction, he is in the same breath necessarily assuming the same distinction for himself--the distinction, namely, that he is himself in so far “not like other men” as to be privileged to tell them of the presence of this fallacy within themselves. Of course the analyst will say: “Well with me, you see, it is different.” But this is precisely what the patient says, as it is what every one says. And here we come once more to the heart of the matter, namely, that as the neurosis is societal the self-distinction underlying it is necessarily the particular claim of every individual within the societal body. In this situation the analyst inevitably regards only the disparity of “the other fellow,” a result which I feel to be typical of the error of the Freudian analysis. But “who decries the loved decries the lover.” In the true sense--in the sense of our organic life--there is no other fellow. Our interpretation of his apparent differentiation from us is but our own projection of the differentiation within ourselves, just as his interpretation of our apparent differentiation from him is but his projection of the division within himself. It is this unadmitted division within each of us that has created the illusion of our organic separateness from one another. For this reason it is only as we accept the subjective task of realizing the spurious fabric of our own separateness and self-sufficiency that we may come to realize it within our patient by virtue of our inherent identification with him. Thus, to realize our division through participation with another is to pierce the delusion of our mutual separateness and unconsciousness and so to become mutually united again through the acceptance of our common organic life.

Based upon the organismic conception here outlined, clearly this subjective recourse can be the only logical position of the analyst. For, in the light of this conception, the neurosis or the separate mode was originally induced in the immature organism through the external suggestion of the individual in closest contact with it operating to dissociate it from its primary, organic mode. In consequence, the dissociated consciousness thus artificially induced can be restored to the mode of unification and confluence only by substituting for the superimposed suggestive contact--the predominant social repression embodied in the parent--the presence of a personality whose tendency is preponderantly of the confluent, societal mode. It is clear that in this conception the analysis of a patient, in the sense of his realization and acceptance of life, presupposes as a rigid organic condition the prior analysis and acceptance of life on the part of the analyst. In impaling the cause of this separatism, delusionally assumed by the patient to reside within himself alone but in reality having its residence in our common social repression, the analyst’s preoccupation can only be with this same delusional arrogation of separateness as it occurs within himself. This means nothing less than that the life of the analyst must in its consciousness completely encompass the life of the analysand in its unconsciousness. This, I know, is a large demand. It is to realize in oneself a breadth of consciousness that embraces in its scope nothing less than the totality of unconsciousness in its entire social aspect. It is to include within oneself the collective unconscious or the far span of normality in all its separateness and sexuality. In brief, it is to open the way to a reversal of the unconscious situation now prevailing in which societal men encompass individual man, and to achieve the mode of consciousness in which societal man encompasses individual men.

I remember a young woman journalist coming one day into my study on the pretext of illness but in reality to look me over. She had been the rounds of the New York analysts, she said, having been “analyzed” by first one and then another, though I doubt whether any of the able physicians cited by her would have dignified the interviews in any such terms. But while herself unconscious, indeed quite paranoid, she made a remark which has since seemed to me highly significant. She said that we psychoanalysts appear actuated by an unconscious attitude of antagonism toward our patients, that we seem motivated by a determination “to get even.” In the spirit in which it was made, the remark was obviously a projection and not a judgment, but I think the criticism is in general true--certainly it has proved true in my own case. For the analyst is either unconsciously pleased with the patient who gives him his confidence or he is unconsciously displeased at his withholding it. In other words, the attitude of the analyst is not uninfluenced by personal or egoistic predilection. Here, then, is straightway the factor of unconsciousness, of separation and hence antagonism in the analyst.

But if the analyst consciously senses the patient’s situation, he sees without bias that the patient--being of a separative, unconscious mode--will, and inevitably must, act in every instance from motives of unconsciousness. If he confides in the analyst, he does so solely in the hope of winning for himself the good-will of the analyst (positive infantile affect or suggestion); if he is silent or evasive, it is because he doubts the advantage to himself of sharing his confidence (negative infantile affect or repression). The psychoanalyst who would reckon consciously with a patient’s life may be moved by neither one nor the other manifestation. Both are outside the mode of reality. Both are expressions of dissociation. Neither attitude will touch the analyst affectively if he is truly within his own life. If, on the other hand, he is himself dissociated, whether normally or neurotically--in the collusion of the group-expression or in single isolation--and is ever seeking to reinstate in the present moment the mother-comfort of his own childhood, he will necessarily either receive the unconsciously motivated confidence of his patient with the unconscious satisfaction of self-interest (infantile egotism) or he will respond to his patient’s unconsciously withheld confidence with the no less unconscious dissatisfaction of self-interest defeated (infantile egotism thwarted). In one case he manifests the sentimentality of unconscious sympathy and approbation, in the other the equally sentimental reaction of unconscious resentment and hate. In either case it is to be partisan, separative, personal, unconscious. This unsuspected personalism or unconsciousness within ourselves makes it easier for us to condone the personalism or unconsciousness in another, rather than understand it. Because of the greater significance to us of our own personal grievance as compared with our understanding of the impersonal needs of life as a unitary experience, our sympathy is automatically enlisted on the side of the patient’s personal grievance. In brief, we prefer to sympathize with the suffering of an organism rather than with the organism that suffers. This characterological weakness in our analytic system renders the analyst an easy mark for the sentimentalizing reveries of the neurotic patient. It is thus a far cry from “Freud,” the psychological conception as it tends toward the more unitary formulation and co-ordination of the problem of neurotic disharmonies, to “Freud” the father-complex as it tends unconsciously to dominate the consciousness of patient as of follower.

The admission that has eventually to be made without qualifying reservation is that the transference upon which we have laid such stress as an objective scientific phenomenon is in truth a state of mind subjectively induced in the patient in direct response to the attitude of unconsciousness on the part of the analyst himself. It is just here, in the dissociated attitude of analyst toward analysand, that there stands the inevitable impasse to the personal or individualistic analysis of Freud. Here is the futile revolution within a vicious circle that is the fallacy of its individualistic viewpoint. It needs to be repeated that the sexual or the personal, in the sense of the separative, is itself unconscious. Its primary source is the reaction originally induced in the organism by the disunity of the social unconscious as voiced by the parent. We shall be helped if we keep in mind that much of the confusion of psychoanalysis is due to the failure of psychoanalysts to realize that there is a distinction between the mother-image and the mother-organism. We must ultimately come to see that, due to the dissociative or bidimensional attitude on the part of the mother, the child automatically replaces the biological reality of the parent organism with the artificial image of the parent induced by the parental command. Following the investigations of the last years it has come to be my definite conviction that it is this element of the pictorial and statutory, as reflected in the parent-image, that is the real impediment to consciousness and the sole meaning of “unconsciousness.”

The suggestive instance (image) of the parental organism, due to the early influence of separatism operating upon it, savours wholly of a repressive, non-confluent attitude. It necessarily tends, therefore, through the gradual inculcation of the ulterior, separative, behaviouristic mode, to dissociate more and more from its original biology, the immature organism within its range. As the neurotic diathesis is induced through the surface diversifications of external suggestion infringing upon the original consonance of the organism, as unconsciousness is diversity of outer aspect in contrast with the concentration of consciousness and personality in its inner confluence, the resolving of the neurotic conflict lies in recalling the personality from its precipitation into the manifold quests of external compensations to the original integrity of its essential unitary life. In this process of rehabilitation there is abrogated the ceaseless urge toward the unconscious fulfilment of the wish, through the restoration of the native impetus of life in a conscious fulfilment of function. It cannot be too strongly emphasized that the original incitement to the neurosis is, from an individualistic basis, external. This reaction within the individual to a prohibition acting from without constitutes the whole significance of the attitude of separatism, of self-seeking and of self-defence that are synonymous with the repressed sexuality of the neurotic personality. But there is the need to recognize that this same attitude is also synonymous with the released sexuality which is “normally” regarded at the present time as a true expression of life. This so-called normal expression, however, in its obsessive self-seeking and in its obvious kinship with secondary dissociative reactions, stands at the very opposite pole to sex as the instinct of life in its organic significance.

The automatic release of the reaction of self-defence that is the reflex response to the irritant of organic prohibition is biologically significant. For with the extraneous interception of the organic mode or at the instance of prohibition, the individual is reflexly stimulated to a compensatory effort to replace this mode with the vicarious mode of self-defence. There is here the psychological concomitance between organic interdiction and organic recoil, between repression or curtailment of personality and sexuality or the retroactive impulse to individual aggression. In this connection it is interesting to note the etymological agreement of the ideas of defence and prohibition in the French word défense meaning prohibition. There is psychological warrant for assuming that the relation between these two words is more innate than accidental.

This psychological parallelism between repression or self-love and sexuality or self-defence, between the egoistic wish and the suspicion of interference with its fulfilment, underlies the identity of the phenomenon of homosexuality and that of paranoia. Students of psychoanalysis have tended to regard the reflections of these reactions as distinct manifestations, viewing them as contradictions rather than as concomitants, as opposites rather than as alternatives, as different phases of reaction rather than as different aspects of the same phase. Freud, for example, lays emphasis upon the factor of sexuality, giving it the place of dominant importance in the neurotic conflict, while Adler asserts that it is the factor of the individual’s egotism that is of central importance in the causation of the disharmony. These seemingly opposed views are, in reality, the same. One envisages the somatic, the other the psychic aspect of a condition that is nuclear and common. Their seeming difference is merely the inevitable limitation of an objective and absolute mode of approach. In either case it is the symbolic manifestation that is confronted. Whether the reaction is represented in lust of body (homosexuality) or in pride of mind (paranoia), in both conditions the aspect contemplated is again the mere symptomatic index. In each is expressed but the secondary response to a deeper, more encompassing factor that has its substrate in our common consciousness. In each it is the semblance of the individual personality replacing the actuality of the societal personality. Each is the objective resultant of a subjective impediment to the confluent, organic life. In both there is represented but the superficial aspect, one expressing itself clinically in the symbolic anomaly of homosexuality, the other, in the symbolic anomaly of paranoia.

Thus far the interest of these anomalies, as far as psychoanalysts are concerned, has been their implication as it touches the psychopathology of the isolated or neurotic personality. Far more significant, however, is the bearing of these manifestations upon the psychobiology of the social organism as a whole. That these distortions of personality exist in a larval stage in the group-neurosis of “normality” is a circumstance with which the psychopathologist needs yet to reckon in his wider office of clinical sociologist. Naturally we have not yet begun to suspect the presence of these unsavoury elements, homosexuality and paranoia, in the unconscious of “normality,” and as normality enjoys the security of mutual protective agreement among its constituents, the existence of these unseemly maladjustments within its ranks will long be treated by us with stolid disavowal. It is the distinguishing feature of the naïve countenance of normality that it experiences no need of self-questioning. A delusion that has become socially buttressed in the mutual reciprocities of its unconscious adherents is indeed impregnable.

Human consciousness, however, will not be understood nor a clearer, saner life opened to man until he has repudiated the unconscious, vicarious or separative as it exists in its securest, most widespread and most aggressive form, that is, in the socially systematized delusion comprising the collective unconscious of our vaunted “normality.” For if normality, so-called, is in reality a dissociation existing under the protective mask of society, how can we who are normal or collectively dissociated comprehend dissociation in the neurotic personality? How can the actor be at the same time onlooker? How can subject and object co-exist in the selfsame content? How, in brief, is it possible for unawareness to envisage unawareness? Surely it is clear that the dreamer is of necessity partisan to his dream, and that the contemplation of a dream from within a dream is subversive of the very principle of consciousness. For knowledge being awareness of or in regard to, demands as its condition the two contrasting factors of a subject looking upon and an object looked upon. If normality is mere collective unconsciousness and therefore itself an artificially induced neurosis--if it is a condition of unconsciousness produced through the influence of external suggestion and therefore represents in itself a secondary dissociative state, how is it possible to fulfil the requisite condition of consciousness in respect to the two factors of subject and object in the matter of our consideration of the dreams of our patients? As my own work has in the last years come to adopt a more and more inclusive organismic viewpoint, I have become convinced that what we psychoanalysts in our present personal and objective interpretation consider “dream-analysis,” and in regard to which we have taken ourselves and our patients so seriously, is utterly futile and invalid. I am convinced that, in the mood in which dream-analysis is now applied, it is itself the expression of an hysterical symptom--a cognitive replacement within the social unconscious comprising the arbitrarily assumed group-differentiation “psychoanalyst.”