Jung - Problems of Modern Psychotherapy
This is the second chapter from Modern Man in Search of a Soul. I aim to summarise and quote parts of this chapter to better comprehend how Jung thought, and ideas that may be applicable in my current and future practice.
As of the time of publication, Jung broke down the psychotherapy into three different disciplines:
"Freud... psychoanalysis" "Adler... individual psychology" "my own approach [Jung]... analytical psychology" (page 29)
As for Jung's analytical psychology, he broke this approach down into four stages: confession, explanation, education and transformation.
Confession
Jung spoke of this first stage of analytical psychology and its similarity to confession within religious institutions, despite having no causal connection. The common psychic root that joins religious confession and the initial stages of analytical psychology is described:
"Anything that is concealed is a secret. The maintenance of secrets acts like a psychic poison which alienates their possessor from the community. In small doses, this poison may actually be a priceless remedy." (page 31)
"[The possession of secrets save] him from dissolving in the unconscious of mere community life, and thus from a fatal psychic injury." (page 31)
Elements of the psyche that are hidden from others and from the self, exclude the possessor from effective integration into the community. This exclusion from the community can be destructive, however, complete admittance of secrets can dissolve an individual's differentiation between themselves and others, which may also lead to destructive effects. Jung does not state how beneficial confession of secrets could be but instead warns of the known harms of keeping it a secret. However, that which we can become conscious of will likely do less harm than when it was left to remain in the unconscious:
"If we are conscious of what we conceal, the harm done is decidedly less than if we do not know what we are repressing - or even that we have repressions at all." (page 32)
Before I continue, I wish to define what "a complex" is:
"[A complex] is the image of a certain psychic situation which is strongly accentuated emotionally and is, moreover, incompatible with the habitual attitude of consciousness." (A Review of the Complex Theory)
Importantly, Jung suggests it would be unwise to picture the unconscious psyche as that which was once conscious:
"Unconscious contents are by no means exclusively such as were once conscious and, by being repressed, have later grown into unconscious complexes." (page 32)
Secrets held in the unconscious often make themselves present in lapses of the tongue [Fruedian slip], of the pen, of memory, and in symptoms of neurosis. If one attempts a thorough investigation of distortions to conscious performance, one will find its related unconscious content.
"In general, therefore, an unconscious secret is more harmful than one that is conscious." (page 33)
Jung also warns of emotional concealment:
"When emotion is withheld it tends to isolate and disturb us quite as much as an unconscious secret, and is equally guilt-laden." (page 34)
This is congruent with my experience. Attempting to picture everyone like a sponge that soaks up the stressors of life. Every now and then, one will need to squeeze their sponge to be able to soak up more of life's stressors. If this does not occur then the sponge becomes saturated, and will simply leak, with the added incoming stressors of life. This leakage may present itself in the form of neurotic symptoms and troubles handling life effectively and without excessive distress. It is important to note that some are more sensitive to stress than others or may have greater stressors coming into their lives than others. This may be seen as a greater flow of stress they need to soak up. While others may simply be a smaller sponge, needing to squeeze themselves out more frequently than others to prevent leakage.
I believe that most therapy works in this way. People need to learn how to squeeze their own sponge to be able to take on more, rather than involuntarily leaking everywhere they go, in their family life, personal life, work life and out in the community. This voluntary controlled leakage, time to decompress, can be controlled and therefore have fewer unintended impacts on your life. This might look like people taking time to go on quiet walks, talk and cry with a friend, watch a movie, or whatever they see fit to expel some stress of life, to then be able to take on more future stressors.
Repressions of emotion, and repressions of secrets may each present themselves differently in conscious life. Individuals likely have both forms of repression but the extent of each repression may direct the form of neurosis and pathological symptoms that become conscious. The following quotes depict the direction individuals should take, should they wish to move from their current state, towards that of self-actualisation.
"To cherish secrets and to restrain emotions are psychic misdemeanours for which nature finally visits us with sickness - that is, when we do these things in private. But when they are done in communion with others they satisfy nature and may even count as useful virtues." (page 34)
"It seems to be a sin in the eyes of nature to hide our insufficiency - just as much as to live entirely on our inferior side. There appears to be a conscience in mankind which severely punishes the man who does not somehow and at some time, at whatever cost to his pride, cease to defend and assert himself, and instead confess himself fallible and human. Until he can do this, an impenetrable wall shuts him out from the living experience of feeling himself a man among men." (page 35)
"Give up what thou hast, and then thou wilt receive." (page 35)I have experienced this first-hand. During the lockdowns of 2019 and 2020, I spent time talking and writing about myself. This included a faults and virtues analysis, and how those qualities have made themselves evident in my past or formed, as well as how they could affect my future aspirations if I maximise my virtues, or if I let my faults get the better of me.
"I must have a dark side also if I am to be whole; and inasmuch as I become conscious of my shadow I also remember that I am a human being like any other." (page 35)
"The psychoanalytic aim is to observe the shadowy presentations - whether in the form of images or of feelings - that are spontaneously evolved in the unconscious psyche and appear without his bidding to the man who looks within." (page 35)
"In keeping the matter private I have only attained a partial cure - for I still continue in my state of isolation. it is only with the help of confession that I am able to throw myself into the arms of humanity freed at last from the burden of moral exile. the goal of treatment by catharsis is full confession - no merely intellectual acknowledgement of the facts, but their confirmation by the heart and the actual release of the suppressed emotions." (page 36)
Explanation
"The second stage - the stage of explanation. Let us suppose that in a given case the confession demanded by the method of catharsis has taken place - that the neurosis has disappeared, or that the symptoms at least have vanished. The patient could now be dismissed as cured if it depended on the physician alone. [But,] the patient seems bound to the physician by the act of confession. If this apparently meaningless attachment is forcibly severed, there is a relapse." (page 37)
"It is both curious and significant that there are cases where no attachment develops. The patient goes away apparently cured - but he is not so fascinated by the hinterland of his own mind that he continues to practice catharsis by himself at the expense of his adaptation to life. He is bound to the unconscious - to himself - not only the physician." (page 37)
"These curious and unexpected occurrences must be explained to the patients." (page 37)
"Explanation is called for - that is, where the problem of fixation arises." (page 38)
Fixation is an obsessive drive that may or may not be acted on involving an object, concept or person (verywellmind).
In the case of attachment to the therapist, the patient can fall into a childish relationship with the therapist, similar to that of father and child. This is the process of transference. Transference is the act of the client unknowingly transferring feelings about someone from their past onto the therapist, or themselves (positivepsychology).
"The patient falls into a sort of childish dependence from which he cannot protect himself even by reason and insight." (page 38)
"But since the process of transference is an unconscious one, the patient is unable to give any information about it. [A neurotic symptom is formed] directly induced by the treatment." (page 38)
"How is this new difficulty to be met?" (page 38)
"The memory-image of the father with its accent of feeling is transferred to the physician." (page 38)
"He has not, of course, been made childish by this relation; there was always something childish about him, but it was suppressed." (page 38)
"A certain dependence upon the physician who has helped you is of course normal and understandable enough. What is abnormal and unexpected is the unusual obstinacy of the transference and its inaccessibility to conscious correction." (page 38)
Jung suggested that the abnormal attachment and dependency on the therapist is a result of unconscious fantasies and must be explored, and brought into conscious awareness, in order to resolve the ensuing neurotic symptoms. This highlights one of the main differences between confession and explanation: confession allows the patient to admit their conscious, hidden from the public, emotions and secrets, but explanation seeks to reveal to the patient contents within the unconscious, that are leading to neurosis.
As for individuals who do not attach themselves to the therapist but instead, attach themselves to their own unconscious.
"Even before coming to the doctor, they had identified themselves with their parents, and derive from this identification that force of authority, that independence and critical power which enables them to offer a successful resistance to the treatment. These are chiefly cultivated and differentiated persons. While others become the helpless victims of the unconscious parental image, these draw strength from it by unconsciously identifying themselves with their parents." (page 40)
The therapist must engage in the interpretative method:
"He must interpret the transference to the patient - that is, explain to him what it is that he projects upon his doctor. Since the patient himself does not know what is is." (page 40)
A key source of interpretation is dream interpretation. As popularised by Freud, this method allowed for an elaborate discovery of man's shadow side, facilitating patient "enlightenment". Bringing that which is in the unconscious, into the light, or consciousness.
"It is painful - there is no denying it - to interpret radiant things from the shadow-side, and thus in a measure reduce them to their origins in dreary filth. But it seems to me to be an imperfection in things of beauty, and of weakness in man, if an explanation from the shadow-side has a destructive effect." (page 41)
If such an explanation produces a destructive effect it is likely due to a naïveté that does not know the evil within him. As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn once said:
"The battleline between good and evil runs through the heart of every man" (The Gulag Archipelago)
Upon acceptance of this statement, we begin to better understand ourselves and others.
"Our mistake would lie in supposing that what is radiant no longer exists because it has been explained from the shadow-side." (page 42)
"I welcome this exposure and attach it to an almost incalculable significance. It is one of those swings of the pendulum which, as history has so often shown, set matters right again." (page 42)
We are now better equipped to deal with the insufficiencies of others, as we can see how we are not as distant from such actions as we previously thought. It can make that which was conscious, embarrassing and difficult to handle, hidden and repressed into the unconscious. The hiding or revealing of these difficult truths neither makes us any less nor more human. Being conscious of the shadow side can facilitate a greater understanding of motives and past actions, as well as the formation of systems to prevent unwanted harm from succumbing to our shadowy desires.
"Nothing influences our conduct less than do intellectual ideas." (page 42)
"Man believes indeed that he moulds these ideas, but in reality they mould him and make him the unwitting mouthpiece." (page 42)
Jung returns to the problem of fixation, and how to deal with the effects of explanation:
"The patient becomes aware of the unsoundness of his position with respect to the doctor when his transference has been traced back to its dark origins; he cannot avoid seeing how inappropriate and childish his claims are." (page 42)
"If he has not yet renounced his infantile claims upon the doctor, he will now recognise the inescapable truth that to make claims on others is a childish self-indulgence which must be replaced by a greater sense of his own responsibility." (page 43)
"A normal adaptation and patience with his own shortcomings will become his guiding moral principles, and he will try to free himself from sentimentality and illusion." (page 43)
Importantly, this process will lead to the patient leaning away from the unconscious as a source of weakness and temptation.
"The problem which now faces the patient is that of being educated as a social being, and with this we come to the third stage." (page 43)
"Mere insight into themselves is sufficient for morally sensitive persons who have enough force to carry them forward; for those with little imagination for moral values, however, it does not suffice." (page 43)
"It is a weakness of the method of explanation that it succeeds only with sensitive persons who can draw independent moral conclusions from their understanding of themselves." (page 43)
"But the fact remains that the most thorough explanation leaves the patient in many cases an intelligent but still incapable child." (page 43-44)
"On the average, those who easily achieve social adaptation and social position are better accounted for by the pleasure principle than are the unadapted whose social shortcomings leave them with a craving for power and importance." (page 44)
"Adler has shown convincingly that many cases of neurosis can be more satisfactorily explained on the ground of an urge to power than by... [Freud's] pleasure principle." (page 44)
Education
The Adlerian school of thought believes education assists the patient who has now learned to see himself for what he truly is and to find the way to normal life.
"It is obviously not enough for him to know how and why he fell ill, for to understand the causes of an evil does very little towards curing it. We must never forget that the crooked paths of a neurosis lead to as many obstinate habits, and that, despite any amount of understanding, these do not disappear until they are replaced by other habits. But habits are only won by exercise and appropriate education is the sole means to this end. The patient must be, as it were, prodded into other paths. and this always requires an educating will." (page 45-46)
"[The period of education] makes us realise that no confession and no amount of explaining will make the ill-formed tree grow straight, but that it must be trained with gardener's art upon the trellis before normal adaptation can be attained." (page 46)
Transformation
"[For the fourth stage,] the stage of transformation... we must ascertain what could seem more desirable or lead further than the claim to be a normally adapted, social being. Nothing is more useful or fitting than to be a normal human being; but the very notion of a "normal human being" suggests a restriction to the average." (page 48)
"There are many people who become neurotic because they are only normal, as there are people who are neurotic because they cannot become normal. For the former the very thought that you want to educate them to normality is a nightmare; their deepest need is really to be able to lead "abnormal" lives." (page 48)
"A man can hope for satisfaction and fulfilment only in what he does not yet possess; he cannot find pleasure in something of which he has already had too much. To be a socially adapted being has no charms for one to whom to be so is mere child's play. Always to do what is right becomes a bore for the man who knows how." (page 48-49)
"What sets one free is for another a prison." (page 49)
"We should expect the doctor to have an influence on the patient in every effective psychic treatment; but this influence can only take place when he too is affected by the patient. You can exert no influence if you are not susceptible to influence." (page 50)
"One of the best known [forms of influence] is the counter-transference which the transference evokes. [This is] best evoked by the old idea of the demon of sickness. According to this a sufferer transmits his disease to a healthy person whose powers subdue the demon - but not without a negative influence upon the well-being of the healer." (page 50)
"The doctor... is as much a part of the psychic process of the treatment as is the patient, and is equally exposed to the transforming influences." (page 51)"[Given this, the therapist] is called upon himself to face that task which he wishes the patient to face. If it is a question of becoming socially adapted, he himself must become so - or, in the reverse case, appropriately non-adapted." (page 51)
"At all events the doctor must consistently try to meet his own therapeutic demands if he wishes to assure himself of a proper influence on his patient. All these guiding principles in therapy can confront the doctor with important ethical duties which can be summed up in the single rule: be the man through whom you wish to influence others. Mere talk has always been considered hollow, and there is no trick, however cunning by which one can evade this simple rule for long." (page 51)
"The physician must overcome these resistances himself, for who can educate others while himself uneducated? Who can enlighten his fellows while still in the dark about himself, and who can purify if he is himself unclean?" (page 52)
"If he examines himself he will discover some inferior side which brings him dangerously near to his patient and perhaps even blights his authority." (page 53)
"Analytical psychology confronts us with the imponderable elements of human personality; that we have learned to place in the foreground the personality of the doctor himself as a curative or harmful factor; and that we have begun to demand his own transformation - the self-education of the educator." (page 53)
"The doctor... must pass through the stages of confession, explanation, and education so that his personality will not react unfavorably on the patient." (page 53)
"The medical diploma is no longer the crucial thing, but human quality instead." (page 54)
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