Neurosis and Genius
That very desire may often lie behind religious feeling when people seek a substitute for the mother in God or in the Mother Church, but it would be absurd to suggest that such desires are the raison d’être of religion. The suggestion is rather that genuine religion is difficult to achieve until these conflicts have been recognized, for religion becomes too easily an escape from the awareness of the war in the soul. This is why it is most important for us to be careful when our culture is being invaded by new and captivating religious forms from the Orient. If we are to make proper use of those forms it is essential that we use them for their correct purpose—to resolve the conflict, not to hide it—and this is more important than ever in an age which is particularly blind to its gods and demons.
But now as to practical ways and means, how is this recognition of the inner conflict to be achieved, and how is it to be resolved? Should we turn from priest and philosopher to doctor and psychologist, should we watch our dreams and fantasies, learn the meaning of their symbols, and become intimately acquainted with the unconscious universe? In the present state of psychological practice I would hesitate very much to advise any great reliance upon its technique except in cases of a specific psychological difficulty or an insupportable neurosis. In dealing with such matters it is of the greatest use, but beyond this its technique is at present somewhat inadequate and unless supported by other factors, such as religion, might well do more harm than good. In any case, no competent psychologist will allow his patient to “indulge” in analysis as a substitute for actual life.
From one point of view it is true that almost everyone suffers from some form of neurosis, however mild, but the cure of neurosis by itself is not generally desirable unless one of two other conditions is involved: first, that the neurosis is unbearable, and second, that the psychology can supply a source of creative energy to take the place of the neurosis. In fact, we have neurosis to thank for some of the greatest human genius, for the very motive of escape from conflict has provided a driving force for artistic and scientific accomplishments very worthwhile in themselves, and possession by unconscious forces is the secret of many a creative genius. It may indeed be possible to attribute the masterpieces of Leonardo da Vinci2 to unresolved problems of infantile sexuality, and maybe the sonnets of Shakespeare were the work of a homosexual. It is also possible that if they had been psychoanalyzed their names would never have been remembered, and some of us would prefer all manner of secret vices to cultural and spiritual impotence. Almost everyone can number among his friends people who have achieved greatness out of an “inferiority complex” or repressed sexuality; such greatness is not invariably beneficial, but who would see the world deprived of its great saints and its great sinners just for the sake of “normality”? It is true, of course, that in later years many of the world’s geniuses have been overtaken and ruined by the conflict they struggled so hard to escape; yet it should be remembered that we pay for the beauty of the rose with the rottenness of the manure. It is the old story of the pairs of opposites.
Jung’s Analytical Psychology
But, on the other hand, there have lived men of genius who in some way resolved this opposition, whose creative power had no roots in neurosis. Can the psychology of the unconscious reveal their secret? Does it offer any source of energy to take the place of the neurosis it cures? So far the most serious attempt to tackle this problem is the work of Jung. Others, partly allied to his school and partly independent, have contributed—notably Heyer and Prinzhorn in Germany, Assagioli in Italy, Hadfield, Graham Howe, and the Pastoral Psychologists in England, and Beatrice Hinkle in America.3 The system of Jung in particular deserves careful attention because it provides an important link with the psychology of the Orient. Generally speaking, we may say that his system of analytical psychology falls into two departments which, to some extent, overlap. One is the cure of neurosis and the other the re-creation of the individual. In many cases the one follows the other, so that a Jungian analysis is more than often not just the solution of a particular problem but a radical “overhauling” and remaking of the personality, and I have known cases where the analysis has been carried on for from ten to twenty years. This is not surprising, for radical changes in the spiritual life are not achieved in from ten to twenty months; often it is the work of a lifetime.
There is no hard-and-fast technique for the re-creation of the individual on Jungian lines, but the process usually follows certain general principles.4 By various means, including attention to dreams and fantasies and discussion with the analyst, the symbols of the unconscious are brought to light and the individual endeavors to discover their meaning for himself and define his attitude to them. These symbols are the forms or “archetypes” under which the gods and demons appear, and as the individual comes to terms with them he brings about certain psychological changes in himself. There appears to be almost a hierarchy of these archetypes, for when one is consciously assimilated another appears, and the situations resulting from this assimilation are represented in key dreams. These key dreams differ from ordinary dreams in their obviously symbolic character, for the figures which appear bear the closest resemblance to archaic religious and mythological forms. Frequently the dreamer witnesses forms and symbols of which he has never had any conscious knowledge, and it is not uncommon for a series of key dreams to bear close resemblance to the stages of ancient initiation rites.
But the process does not consist simply in watching over one’s dreams; it is fundamentally a question of the conscious assimilation and acceptance of hitherto unconscious processes, in spite of their seeming irrationality and independence of the ego. When this has been carried out successfully for some time, a fundamental change is said to take place in the psyche. This Jung describes as a shifting of the center of personality from the ego to the self, a term which, in his system, has the special meaning of the center of the whole psyche as distinct from the center of consciousness, which is the ego. He explains the self as a “virtual point” between the conscious and the unconscious which gives equal recognition to the demands of both. Dreams representing this situation usually appear in the form of the mandala, the magic circle, the golden flower, the rose at the center of the cross and similar figures representing wholeness, balance, and attainment of a spiritual center.5
An interesting feature of these mandala is that the divisions of the circle or the petals of the flower are usually four or multiples of four. This is explained as a sign of the complete development of the individual in all his four faculties or functions—intuition, sensation, intellect, and feeling. Jung maintains that generally speaking only one, two, or three of these faculties are active; the dormant faculties are “contaminated” by the unconscious, which is to say identified with an archetypal form. (Of course, those who pay no attention to their dreams see no archetypal forms with which their dormant faculties can be identified. For them we may say that the faculty is just undeveloped and so unconscious.) Thus in dreams the inferior faculty is often personified by the anima figure in men, which is to say the female image (usually a goddess) in whose form the unconscious is liable to appear and make its pronouncements. In women its place is taken by the animus—a male figure.