اولین سایت نشانه شناسی شوهر آهو خانم

Ill

KNOWING AND EXPERIENCING

"As the fish does not live outside of the dark abyss. So man should never strive for knowledge regarding his own essence."

Lao-Tse

Since we have come back to our original point of departure, the overcoming of external force through the inner freedom of will, we have now to indicate in a general way how we conceive the outline of a philosophy of the psychic after this'neo-Copernican reversaf'to canscious will as the central point of psychology, jf not of world history. Consciousness, as an mstrument of knowledge turned toward the inside seeks truth, that is, inner actuality in contrast to the outer truth of the senses, the so-called "reality." Instinct lifted into the ego sphere by consciousness is the power of will, and at the same time a tamed, directed, controlled instinct, which manifests itself freely within the individual personality, that is, creatively. Indeed it is as free toward the outer as toward the inner. But only the inner effects interest us here, first upon the id, the instinct life itself, and next upon the higher super-ego aspects and ideal formations of the self. Just as the creative will represents the conscious expression of instinct, in a banal sense the act, so emotion represents the conscious awareness of instinct, that is, the emotional tone is an index of the "what" of the will. In both cases, however, it is consciousness which lends to the phenomenon ils authentic psychological significance. The influence of the power of consciousness on the ego-ideal formation has a double effect in the ethical sphere likewise, an active and passive one, corresponding to the act of will and the emotional perception in the purely psychic sphere ;active in the creative expression of the momentary ego ideal as it manifests itself in work; passive in the formation of definite ethical, aesthetic, and logical norms for doing and making, without whose concurrence no kind of action is possible. Nay more, these norms modify still further the content of the original pure instinctual drives, which were already modified by consciousness and indeed go beyond content into form, since they prescribe the only possible form in which this particular individual can realize and objectify the content of the momentary instinctual drive. In a word, in the perceptual sphere of emotional life the ego modifies the instincts (hfted into the sphere of wiU by being made conscious) into definite interests or desires whose carrying over into deed or work again depends on the spiritual forms, if you will, the psychological categories, created from the individual's ego-ideal formation. This is the schema of a_constructive will psyiholegy, in the center of which we again place the conscious ego, with its old rights and newly won prerogatives. From this constructive psychology it is only a step to a widely comprehensive point of view which I designate as a philosophy of the psychic because it includes not only the psychological problem of "Will and Force" but also the epistemological problem of "Truth and Reality," the ethical problem of "Creation and Guilt" and finally, the religious problem of "Happiness and Salvation." And I believe it is impossible to handle or to understand any one without the others. For at the moment when we perceive the mechanism of the instinctive drive set in motion, molded into ethical willing by the conscious ego (and this has been abstracted from a wealth of observation and experience), a reaction results with hitherto incomprehensible inexorableness, a reaction which psychoanalysis has designated as guilt feeling. This guilt feeling in spite of all the efforts of psychoanalysis remains not only an unsolved riddle, but in my opinion has led the whole of psychology astray, including psychoanalysis. For this guilt feeling which seems to enter so inevitably into the functioning of the psychic mechanism like the friction in the operation of a machine, leads to the rationalization of our motives, to the interpretation of our emotions, to the falsifying of truth, and to the doubting of the justification of our will. However, as soon as we restore to the will its psychological rights, the whole of psychology becomes of necessity a psychology of consciousness, which it is anyway according to its nature, and the "psychology of the unconscious" unveils itself to us as one of the numerous attempts of mankind to deny the will in order to evade the conscious responsibility following of necessity therefrom. The unavoidable guilt feeling shows the failure of this attempt, is as it were the "neurotic" throw-back of the denied responsibility. This enthroning of the conscious will upon its natural rights is no backward step from psychoanalytic knowledge, but a necessary step forward and beyond it to include the psychological understanding of the psychoanalytic world view itself. Freud's presentation of the "Ego and the Id" presents a developmental level of our mental life as it may have existed once and perhaps in the child's development it returns to that level to a certain degree, where the ego, as it were, shyly hfts its head out of the id, perhaps even then against it, and comes upon the moralistic super-ego factors as they are represented by the parent authorities externally. But from this birth hour of the ego from the womb of the id to the self conscious pride— yes, analytic super-pride — of the achieved ego consciousness is a long and highly complicated path which Freud does not follow through, and has not even seen, as he still insists on understanding the modern individual from the earlier level. The conscious ego of the individual since the time of the setting up of father rule, although this still exists formally, has itself become a proud tyrant, who, like Napoleon is not satisfied with the position of a leading general or first consul, nor even with the role of an emperor among kings, but would become ruler of the whole world kingdom. Herein lies the unavoidable tragedy of the ego and from this springs its guilt also. Speaking purely psychologically, as we presented it in our schema of a constructive psychology, the ego had gradually become the conscious interpreter and executor of the impulsive self and as long as it was or could be only that, it found no hindrance in the ethical norms of the ideal ego. Man was one with himself as he had been one with nature before the development of the conscious ego. The inner tragedy, which we designate as conflict, and the gudt necessarily inhering in it, appear only when to the purely mterpretative "I will" (which I must do anyway) is added the "It is not so" which denies the necessity.

.This goes along with an alteration of consciousness as well as the power of will. Consciousness, which primarily had been only an expression and tool of the will, soon becomes a self dependent power, which can not only support and strengthen the will by rationalization, but also is able to repress it through denial. On the other hand, the will which up to then had been only executive now becomes creative, but at first only negatively so, that is, in the form of a denial. The next step serves to justify and maintain this denial and leads to the positive creation of that which should be, that is, to that which is as the ego wills it in terms of its own ideal formation. Psychologically speaking, this means, as the ego wants the id. I believe, however, that this ego-ideal formation not only works transformingly upon the id, but is itself the consequence of an id already influenced bj' the will. Perhaps these last statements of process may seem to many a mere playing with words, an accusation to which most philosophic discussions as well as psychological formulations are easily open, language, which is the only material of psychological research and philosophic presentation, is rightly famed for a sheer uncreative psychological profundityj Certainly it seems to me that verbal expression itself represents a psychological formulation if not actually an interpretation. Instead of turning to a "philosophy of grammar" to which Freud's opposition of "I and it" would indeed give occasion, we will illustrate the thoughts we have just formulated in psychological terminology with the plastic picture speech of mythical religious symbolism, n'he nucleus of all mythical religious tradition is the nobility and tragic fall of the hero who comes to grief through his own presumption and the guilt arising therefrom. That is the myth of humanity^jever recurring in the various levels of development involving man in his two aspects as a willing and a self-conscious individual. The hero myth shows man more as willing, the religious myth shows him more as an ethical individual. In relation to the portentous advance of the power of consciousness, the biblical myth of the fall has presented the human tragedy in its noblest form. Man, who advances like God in his omniscience, falls away from nature through consciousness, becomes unfortunate in that he loses his naive unity with the unconscious, with nature. Here we see for the first time in our presentation, but by no means for the first time in the history of mankind, unconsciousness, oneness with nature, identified with the wholesome, the good, and consciousness with fate.^ Psychoanalysis notoriously preaches just the opposite, but only in its therapy, while theoretically it must enthrone the unconscious in order to unburden consciousness. Without going into the broader meaning of the myth of the fall at this point, I should like to illustrate its difference from the hero myth as classic Greece represents it. There man, the hero, appears as creator, as actor, and his likeness to God comes to expression in his deeds, as for example with Prometheus, who, like the Gods, presumes to create men. The biblical myth on the contrary represents this Godlikeness, not on the creative level, but on the level of consciousness, that is, it consists in knowing, in self-consciousness. The contrast between these two myths, the religious and the heroic, signifies not only a contrast between different races, times, and developmental levels, but between two world views, or better said, between two great principles, which we here seek to comprehend as experience and knowledge, living and knowing. The hero myth represents experience (living), the deed, the will, which consciousness could only restrict, as we find it expressed in the Edipus story " but the hero comes to grief and must come to grief in the fact that he cannot know beforehand and does not even want to know so that he can act. The religious myth represents "knowing," the knowledge of God, that is, self knowledge, and here man suffers again in that, knowledge about himself interferes with naive action, restrains him and torments without affording him the satisfaction and liberation which the deed grants. He cannot accomplish through action any more because he thinks, because he knows too much.

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1 See in this connection the literary remains of Alfred Seidel who committed suicide, published by Prinzhorn under tliis title, "Bewusztsein als Vcrhangnis," Bonn 1927. -

2 See also "Will Tlierapy," Book I, chap. v.

Now man longs for naive unconsciousness as the source of happiness, and curses the knowledge bought so dearly. In the heroic myth the moral runs that with a little insight into pride of will, the fall could have been avoided, which is not correct, but at all events it represents knowledge as the source of salvation and the strong active will as fate. Here is shown again the fact that there is no criterion for what is good or bad, as there is no absolute criterion for true or false, since it is one thing at one time, and another at another. The psychological problem which has been raised by this way of understanding myths is in my opinion the basic problem of all psychology which I should hke to formulate thus: Why must we always designate one side as bad or false and the other as good or right? This primary psychological problem cannot be answered by saying that we do it because it has been learned from our parents and they again from their parents and so on, back to the original pair. That is the explanation which the Bible gives and Freud also in his primal horde h^^pothesis. Our individualistic ethics is explicable psychologically but not historically. It is not a cumulative phenomenon of morals piled one upon the other for centuries, nor could it be propagated through centuries if something in the individual himself did not correspond to it, which all great minds have recognized and Kant has presented so admirably. At all events, we can expect to find the answer only in the individual himself and not in the race or its history. This basic problem appears also in all mythology and rehgion that undertake to explain how evil, sin, guilt came into the world, that is, psychologically speaking, why we must form these ideas. Both mythology and religion answer the question finally by saying that the conscious will, human willing in contrast to natural being, is the root of the arch evil which we designate psychologically as guilt feeling. In the oriental religious systems it is known as evil, in the Jewish as sin, in the Christian as guilt. This transformation is related to the development of conscious willing just outlined whose first externalization we recognized as a denial, a negation. On account of its negative origin the will is always evil as, for example, with Schopenhauer who harks back to the corresponding oriental teachings. The idea of sin as the biblical presentation teaches, is related to the next developmental level where will, consciously defiant, is affirmed, that is, where knowledge thereof already introduces pride. Finally the Christian idea of guilt under whose domination we still live just as under that of the Jewish idea of sin, is the reaction to the positively creative will tendencies of man, to his presumption in wanting to be not only omniscient like God, but to be God himself, a creator. Here one might be tempted to think of Freud's "father complex" and to derive this creative will from the CEdipus complex. This, however, would be to leave the actually creative unexplained, a lack of psychoanalytic comprehension which Freud himself has seen and admitted. For Freud, that which we call "will" originates, as it were, in the father identification, in the wish to be in the father's place. But this conception itself in my opinion is nothing other than a denial of the own will, which is ascribed to the father (identification) or to God. For Adler again, the will, crudely put, is not father identification, but father protest, the wanting to be otherwise, which again is only a method of interpretation— even if a correct one. Actually the will is both, or rather neither. It is indeed positive and negative, will and counter-will, in the same individual at the same time, as I have already expressed it, principally in "Der Kiinstler." The will, in a certain stage of development is projected upon the father, is objectified in him, because the father represents a strong will, because he in actuality represents a symbol of the will or resistance to it. The real problem lies in man himself, beyond identification, beyond the biological, and guilt feeling comes not primarily because one wants to put himself in the father's place which one ought not to do, but because in developing, one vmst become father, creator, and will not. The authentic psychological problem, therefore, lies in this, whence the "ought not" on the one side, and the "will not" on the other. Just as the father is not the prototype of will but only its symbolic representative—and not the first even then — so God too is not simply a deified fatlier as Freud will have it, but an ideal created in man's image, in a word, a projection of the consciously willing ego. This religious justification turns out much more nobly just because the actual father, who is only a weak representative of the will is thereby ignored, and does not disturb the nobility of the ego projection. The father, therefore, is only a first modest personification of conscious will which soon is not satisfied with this real representative but symbolizes its next great developmental step in the creative, all powerful and all knowing God. In the religious myths, the creative will appears personified in God, and man already feels himself guilty when he assumes himself to be like God, that is, ascribes this will to himself. In the heroic myths on the contrary, man appears as himself creative and guilt for his suffering and fall is ascribed to God, that is, to his own will. Both are only extreme reaction phenomena of man wavering between his Godlikeness and his nothingness, whose will is awakened to knowledge of its power and whose consciousness is aroused to terror before it. The heroic myth strives to justify this creative will through glorifying its deeds, while religion reminds man that he himself is but a creature dependent on cosmic forces. So the creative will autamatically brings the guilt reaction with it, as the self reducing depression follows the manic elation. In a word, will and guilt are two complementary sides of one and the same phenomenon, which Schopenhauer, resting on the Hindoo teachings, has perceived and comprehended most deeply of all moderns. A philosophy of will accordingly must either be deeply pessimistic if itl emphasizes the guilt side, or extremely optimistic like Nietzsche! if it affirms its creative power. In psychoanalysis we find both aspects but not harmoniously united, rather they stand side by side as one of the numerous unreconciled contradictions. As therapy, analj'sis is optimistic, believes as it were in the good in men and in some kind of capacity for and possibility of salvation. In theory it is pessimistic ;man has no will and no creative power, is driven by the id and repressed by the super-ego authorities, is unfree and still guilty. Here lies before us so transparent a contradiction that one can only wonder how it was possible and must again recognize therein a psychological problem so fundamental that it leads far bej'ond a critique of psychoanalysis, free will belongs to the idea of guilt or sin as inevitably as day to nighK and even if there were none of the numerous proofs for the inner freedom of the conscious will, the fact of human consciousness of guilt alone would be sufficient to prove the freedom of will as we understand it psychologically beyond a doubt. We say man reacts as if he were guilty, but if he reacts so it is because he is guilty psychologically, feels himself responsible, consequently no psychoanalysis in the world can relieve him of this guilt feeling by any reference to complexes however archaic. Therefore one should not only permit the individual to will but actually guide him to willing in order at least to justify constructively the guilt feeling which he can by no means escape. I do not mean by rationalizations, religious, pedagogic or therapeutic, but through his own creative action, througli the deed itself. At this point we can formulate whence the guilt feeling arises and what it means. We have contrasted will and consciousness previously and have seen that now the one, now the other is interpreted as "bad" or "false," according to whether the experience side or the knowledge side is emphasized, and depending upon the momentary overweighting of the one sphere by the other. In the conscious perception of will phenomena the knowledge side is emphasized; in the immediate content of willing, it is the experience side. Only when the moral evaluation "bad," which restrains the individual in the experience of childhood, is transferred from the content of willing to the will itself, does the ethical conflict within the individual arise out of the external will conflict and this, through the denial of the own will, finally leads to consciousness of guilt. However, guilt is also determined on the will side and this double source makes it a strong invincible power. For against this supremacy of consciousness which sets up for the individual himself the ethical norms of right and wrong (not the moral ones of good and bad) the will reacts with a condemnationoTconsciousness, whicITit perceives as restriction, and this is the state of affairs which we describe as consciousness of guilt. In this sense guilt consciousness is simply a consequence of conciousness, or more correctly, it is the self-consciousness of the individual as of one willing consciously. As the Fall presents it—knowing is sin, knowledge creates guilt. Consciousness, which restrains the will through its ethical norms, is perceived by the latter to be just as bad as the individual's own will is seen to be by consciousness. Guilt consciousness is therefore actually a consequence of increased self-consciousness, yes at bottom is just this in its most fateful working out as conscience.

We cannot occupy ourselves here with the different possibihties and forms of the restriction of consciousness upon the one side and the repression of will upon the other, although this makes comprehensible the different forms and degrees of the so-called neurotic reactions.It is important here to recognize that the neurotic tvpe represents not a form of illness but the most individualistic beings of our age in whom awareness of the concepts, badness, sin, guilt, has finally developed into tormenting selfconsciousness of this relationship. The neurotic tvpe of our age, whom we meet in places other than the consulting room of the neurologist and the treatment room of the analyst, is therefore only the further development of that negative human type which has existed as long as the will has existed in our mental lives, and shows one side of this conflict in extreme form. It is the man in whom is manifested a will as strong as that of the creative man of action, only in the neurotic patient this will expresses itself in its original negative character, as counter-will, and at the same time is perceived through the medium of conscious knowledge as consciousness of guilt. The so-called neurotics, therefore, do not represent a class of sick people upon the cure of whom society must concentrate^; they represent rather the extreme outgrowth of the modern type of man, whose cure both individually and socially is possible only in one and the same way no matter whether this ensues in the form of an individual therapy, a general educational reform or finally on the ground of a world view, the basis of which is formed by knowledge of the state of affairs just described. At all events, for individual as for social therapy, a world view is indispensable and the more one strives against this presupposition the less prospect one has of finding a solid basis for educational reforms or therapeutic results.) Yes, one is surprised how this comes to pass of itself if one does not set out to want to make the person other than he is, but permits him to be what he is, without his needing to feel guilty or inferior on account of it. The neurotic type, which we all represent to a certain extent, suffers from the fact that he cannot accept himself, cannot endure himself and will have it otherwise.

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1 See also in this connection the chapter "Likeness and Difference" in Book I of "Will Therapy."

The therapy accordingly cannot be corrective but only affirmative; it must transform him from a negative person of suffering and guilt to a positive man of will and action, which he was in the beginning even if his soul life has become ever more complicated and painful with the increase of consciousness. We are, therefore, human beings, who through consciousness, through too much self-knowledge are restricted or hindered in living, a type which Shakespeare pictured psj'chologically in such a masterly fashion in Hamlet, who in our age for the first time has found complete recognition. We must not forget, however, that knowledge also has a creative side, as for example, Shakespeare himself shows in the creation of the Hamlet figure. Evidently he himself represented the Hamlet type, which did not hinder him, unlike his hero, from using his conflict creatively instead of perceiving it merely as a restriction. Knowing, therefore, when it works creatively, can be a substitute for living, yes itself a form of experiencing. It becomes then an inner victory of will if one may speak thus, instead of an outer, but it is a victory of will which the individual must pay for in every case with some kind of deficit. The active hero who represents the conscious power of will can act because he knows only his will, not its origin and motives he comes to grief just in this, that he cannot foresee the consequences of his act. The passive man of suffering cannot act because his self-consciousness restricts his will which manifests itself as guilt feeling in the face of the deed. The spiritually creative type which I have characterized as "artist," lives in constant conflict between these two extreme possibilities. The artist solves it for himself and others since he transposes tlie will affirmation creatively into knowledge, that is, expresses his will spiritually and changes the unavoidable guilt feeling into ethical ideal formation, which spurs him on and qualifies him for ever 'higher performance in terms of self-development.