The Content of the Unconscious

The Theory of Psychoanalysis by C. G. Jung, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here. CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VII

The Content of the Unconscious

The phantasies of adults are, in so far as they are conscious, of great diversity and strongly individual. It is therefore nearly impossible to give a general description of them. But it is very different when we enter by means of analysis into the world of his unconscious phantasies. The diversities of the phantasies are indeed very great, but we do not find those individual peculiarities which we find in the conscious self. We meet here with more typical material which is not infrequently repeated in a similar form in different people. Constantly recurring, for instance, are ideas which are variations of the thoughts we encounter in religion and mythology. This fact is so convincing that we say we have discovered in these phantasies the same mechanisms which once created mythological and religious ideas. I should have to enter very much into detail in order to give you adequate examples. I must refer you for these problems to my work, “Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido.” I will only mention that, for instance, the central symbol of Christianity—self-sacrifice—plays an important part in the phantasies of the unconscious. The Viennese School describes this phenomenon by the ambiguous term castration-complex. This paradoxical use of the term follows from the particular attitude of this school toward the question of unconscious sexuality. I have given special attention to the problem in the book I have just mentioned; I must here restrict myself to this incidental reference and hasten to say something about the origin of the unconscious phantasy.

In the child’s unconsciousness, the phantasies are considerably simplified, in relation to the proportions of the infantile surroundings. Thanks to the united efforts of the psychoanalytic school, we discovered that the most frequent phantasy of childhood is the so-called Œdipus-complex. This designation also seems as paradoxical as possible. We know that the tragic fate of Œdipus consisted in his loving his mother and slaying his father. This conflict of later life seems to be far remote from the child’s mind. To the uninitiated it seems inconceivable that the child should have this conflict. After careful reflection it will become clear that the tertium comparationis consists just in this narrow limitation of the fate of Œdipus within the bounds of the family. These limitations are very typical for the child, for parents are never the boundary for the adult person to the same extent. The Œdipus-complex represents an infantile conflict, but with the exaggeration of the adult. The term Œdipus-complex does not mean, naturally, that this conflict is considered as occurring in the adult form, but in a corresponding form suitable to childhood. The little son would like to have the mother all to himself and to be rid of the father. As you know, little children can sometimes force themselves between the parents in the most jealous way. The wishes and aims get, in the unconscious, a more concrete and a more drastic form. Children are small primitive people and are therefore quickly ready to kill. But as a child is, in general, harmless, so his apparently dangerous wishes are, as a rule, also harmless. I say “as a rule,” as you know that children, too, sometimes give way to their impulses to murder, and this not always in any indirect fashion. But just as the child, in general, is incapable of making systematic projects, as little dangerous are his intentions to murder. The same holds good of an Œdipus-view toward the mother. The small traces of this phantasy in the conscious can easily be overlooked; therefore nearly all parents are convinced that their children have no Œdipus-complex. Parents as well as lovers are generally blind. If I now say that the Œdipus-complex is in the first place only a formula for the childish desire towards parents, and for the conflict which this craving evokes, this statement of the situation will be more readily accepted. The history of the Œdipus-phantasy is of special interest, as it teaches us very much about the development of the unconscious phantasies. Naturally, people think that the problem of Œdipus is the problem of the son. But this is, astonishingly enough, only an illusion. Under some circumstances the libido-sexualis reaches that definite differentiation of puberty corresponding to the sex of the individual relatively late. The libido sexualis has before this time an undifferentiated sexual character, which can be also termed bisexual. Therefore it is not astonishing if little girls possess the Œdipus-complex too. As far as I can see, the first love of the child belongs to the mother, no matter which its sex. If the love for the mother at this stage is intense, the father is jealously kept away as a rival. Of course, for the child itself, the mother has in this early stage of childhood no sexual significance of any importance. The term “Œdipus-complex” is in so far not really suitable. At this stage the mother has still the significance of a protecting, enveloping, food-providing being, who, on this account, is a source of delight. I do not identify, as I explained before, the feeling of delight eo ipso with sexuality. In earliest childhood but a slight amount of sexuality is connected with this feeling of delight. But, nevertheless, jealousy can play a great part in it, as jealousy does not belong entirely to the sphere of sexuality. The desire for food has much to do with the first impulses of jealousy. Certainly, a relatively germinating eroticism is also connected with it. This element gradually increases as the years go on, so that the Œdipus-complex soon assumes its classical form. In the case of the son, the conflict develops in a more masculine and therefore more typical form, whilst in the daughter, the typical affection for the father develops, with a correspondingly jealous attitude toward the mother. We call this complex, the Electra-complex. As everybody knows, Electra took revenge on her mother for the murder of her husband, because that mother had robbed her of her father.

Both phantasy-complexes develop with growing age, and reach a new stage after puberty, when the emancipation from the parents is more or less attained. The symbol of this time is the one already previously mentioned; it is the symbol of self-sacrifice. The more the sexuality develops the more the individual is forced to leave his family and to acquire independence and autonomy. By its history, the child is closely connected with its family and specially with its parents. In consequence, it is often with the greatest difficulty that the child is able to free itself from its infantile surroundings. The Œdipus- and Electra-complex give rise to a conflict, if adults cannot succeed in spiritually freeing themselves; hence arises the possibility of neurotic disturbance. The libido, which is already sexually developed, takes possession of the form given by the complex and produces feelings and phantasies which unmistakably show the effective existence of the complex, till then perfectly unconscious. The next consequence is the formation of intense resistances against the immoral inner impulses which are derived from the now active complexes. The conscious attitude arising out of this can be of different kinds. Either the consequences are direct, and then we notice in the son strong resistances against the father and a typical affectionate and dependent attitude toward the mother; or the consequences are indirect, that is to say, compensated, and we notice, instead of the resistances toward the father, a typical submissiveness here, and an irritated antagonistic attitude toward the mother. It is possible that direct and compensated consequences take place alternately. The same thing is to be said of the Electra-complex. If the libido-sexualis were to cleave fast to these particular forms of the conflict, murder and incest would be the consequence of the Œdipus and Electra conflicts. These consequences are naturally not found among normal people, and not even among amoral (“moral” here implying the possession of a rationalized and codified moral system) primitive persons, or humanity would have become extinct long ago. On the contrary, it is in the natural order of things that what surrounds us daily and has surrounded us, loses its compelling charm and thus forces the libido to search for new objects, an important rule which prevents parricide and inbreeding.

The further development of the libido toward objects outside the family is the absolutely normal and right way of proceeding, and it is an abnormal and morbid phenomenon if the libido remains, as it were, glued to the family. Some indications of this phenomenon are nevertheless to be noticed in normal people. A direct outcome of the infantile-complex is the unconscious phantasy of self-sacrifice, which occurs after puberty, in the succeeding stage of development. Of this I gave a detailed example in my work, “Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido.” The phantasy of self-sacrifice means sacrificing infantile wishes. I have shown this in the work just mentioned and in the same place I have referred to the parallels in the history of religions.

The Problems of the Incest-Complex

Freud has a special conception of the incest-complex which has given rise to heated controversy. He starts from the fact that the Œdipus-complex is generally unconscious, and conceives this as the result of a repression of a moral kind. It is possible that I am not expressing myself quite correctly, when I give you Freud’s view in these words. At any rate, according to him the Œdipus-complex seems to be repressed, that is, seems to be removed into the unconscious by a reaction from the conscious tendencies. It almost looks as if the Œdipus-complex would develop into consciousness if the development of the child were to go on without restraint and if no cultural tendencies influenced it. Freud calls this barrier, which prevents the Œdipus-complex from ripening, the incest-barrier. He seems to believe, so far as one can gather from his work, that the incest-barrier is the result of experience, of the selective influence of reality, inasmuch as the unconscious strives without restraint, and in an immediate way, for its own satisfaction, without any consideration for others. This conception is in harmony with the conception of Schopenhauer, who says of the blind world-will that it is so egoistic that a man could slay his brother merely to grease his boots with his brother’s fat. Freud considers that the psychological incest-barrier, as postulated by him, can be compared with the incest-taboo which we find among inferior races. He further believes that these prohibitions are a proof of the fact that men really desired incest, for which reason laws were framed against it even in very primitive cultural stages. He takes the tendency towards incest to be an absolute concrete sexual wish, lacking only the quality of consciousness. He calls this complex the root-complex, or nucleus, of the neuroses, and is inclined, viewing this as the original one, to reduce nearly the whole psychology of the neuroses, as well as many other phenomena in the world of mind, to this complex.

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