The multiple interpretation of works of fantasy has become our problem, and the diametrical opposition of the psychoanalytic and the anagogic interpretation has particularly struck us. The question now apparently becomes more complicated if I show that the psychoanalytic interpretation contains an analogue that we must take into consideration. The analogue is presented by the remarkable coexistence of symbolism of material and functional categories in the same work of imagination. In order to make myself intelligible, I must first of all explain what these categories are.
In division 2 of the introductory part we have seen that the imagination shows a predilection for symbolic forms of expression, proportionately greater indeed, the more dreamlike it is. Now by this symbolism as we observe most clearly in hypnagogic (half dreaming) hallucinations and in dreams, three different groups of objects are represented.
I. Thought contents, imagination contents, in brief, the contents or objects of thinking and imagining, the material of thought whether it be conscious or unconscious.
[pg 234]II. The condition, activity, structure of the psyche, the way and manner that it functions and feels, the method of functioning of the psyche, whether it be conscious or unconscious.
III. Somatic processes (bodily stimulations). This third sort of objects is closely coördinated with the other two. It is not capable of interesting us in the present connection so we pass it by.
Therefore we arrive at two categories in which we can enroll all symbolizing works of the imagination, the material and the functional.
I. The material category is characterized by its representation of thought contents, i.e., of contents that are worked out in a train of thoughts (arranged thought, imagined), whether they are mere images or groups of images, concepts that are somewhat drawn out into comparisons and definition processes, or indeed judgments, trains of reasoning, which serve as analytic or synthetic operations, etc. Since, as we know, the phantasies (dreams, reveries, even poems) are mostly inspired by wishes, it will prove frequently the case that the contents symbolically contained in them are wish images, i.e., the imagined experiencing of gratification.
II. The functional category is characterized by the fact that the condition, structure or capacity for work of the individual consciousness (or the psychic apparatus) is itself portrayed. It is termed functional because it has nothing to do with the material or the contents of the act of thinking, but applies merely to manner and method in which consciousness [pg 235] functions (rapid, slow, easy, hard, obstructed, careless, joyful, forced; fruitless, successful; disunited, split into complexes, united, interchangeable, troubled, etc.). [It is immaterial whether these are conscious or unconscious. Thinking must be taken here in the widest possible sense. It means here all psychic processes that can have anything as an “object.”]
Two typical examples will enable us at once clearly to understand the two categories and keep them separate.
A. Material Symbolism.—Conditions. In a drowsy state I reflect upon the nature of the judgments that are transsubjectively (= for all men) valid. All at once the thread of the abstract thought is broken and autosymbolically in the place of it is presented the following hypnagogic hallucination:
Symbol. An enormous circle, or transparent sphere, floats in the air and men are putting their heads into this circle.
Interpretation. In this symbol everything that I was thinking of is expressed. The validity of the transsubjective concerns all men without exception; the circle goes through all the heads. This validity must have its cause in something common to all. The heads all belong to the same apparently homogeneous sphere. Not all judgments are transsubjective; with their bodies and limbs men are outside of and under the sphere and stand on the earth as separate individuals.
[pg 236]B. Functional Symbolism.—Conditions. Dreamy state as above. I reflect upon something or other, and yet in allowing myself to stray into bypaths of thought, I am diverted from my peculiar theme. When I want to get back the autosymbolic phenomenon appears.
Symbol. I am climbing mountains. The nearer mountains shut out my view of the more distant ones, from which I have come and to which I should like to return.
Meaning. I have got off the track. I have ventured too high and the ideas that I have entertained shut out my starting point like the mountains.
To the material category belongs, for example, the meaning of the strawberry dream explained in the second part of the introductory chapter. Strawberry picking is a symbol for an imaged wish gratification (sexual intercourse), and so for an image content. The symbolism is therefore a material one. The greatly preponderating part of psychoanalytic dream literature is occupied with interpretation according to material categories.
To the functional categories belong, for example, the symbolism of falling asleep and waking up, which I have mentioned in the second part in connection with the interpretation of the parable.
The two categories of symbolism, if they never did anything but parallel each other, would afford us no analogues for our problem of double meaning. Now the cases, however, are extremely rare where [pg 237] there is only functional or only material symbolism; the rule is an intimate interweaving of both. To be sure, one is frequently more emphasized than the other or more easily accessible, but we can generally find cases where long contexts of images are susceptible of material as well as functional interpretation, alike in detail and continuity of connection.
The following may serve as a very simple case in point. Lying one evening in bed and exhausted and about to fall asleep, I devoted my thoughts to the laborious progress of the human spirit in the dim transcendant province of the mothers-problem. (Faust, Part II.) More and more sleepy and ever less able to retain my thoughts, I saw suddenly with the vividness of an illusion a dream image. I stood on a lonely stone pier extending far into a dark sea. The waters of the sea blended at the horizon with an equally dark-toned mysterious, heavy air. The overpowering force of this tangible picture aroused me from my half sleeping state, and I at once recognized that the image, so nearly an hallucination, was but a visibly symbolic embodiment of my thought content that had been allowed to lapse as a result of my fatigue. The symbol is easily recognized as such. The extension into the dark sea corresponds to the pushing on into a dark problem. The blending of atmosphere and water, the imperceptible gradation from one to the other means that with the “mothers” (as Mephistopheles pictures it) all times and places are fused, that there we have no [pg 238] boundaries between a “here” and a “there,” an “above” and a “below,” and for this reason Mephistopheles can say to Faust on his departure,
We see therefore between the visualized image and the thought content, which is, as it were, represented by it, a number of relations. The whole image resolves itself insofar as it has characteristic features, almost entirely into such elements as are most closely related to the thought content. Apart from these connections of the material category, the image represents also my momentary psychic condition (transition to sleep). Whoever is going to sleep is, as it were, in the mental state of sinking into a dark sea. (The sinking into water or darkness, entrance into a forest, etc., are frequently-occurring threshold symbols.) The clearness of ideas vanishes there and everything melts together just as did the water and the atmosphere in the image.
This example is but to illustrate; it is in itself much too slight and simple to make any striking revelation of the remarkable interlacing of the two kinds of symbolism. I refer to my studies on symbolism and on dreams in the bibliography. Exhaustive treatment at this point would lead us too far afield. Let us rest satisfied then with the facts that the psychoanalysts simultaneously deal with two fundamentally different lines of interpretation in a product of the phantasy (dream, etc.), quite apart from the multiple determinants which they can find [pg 239] within the material as well as in the functional categories; both lines of interpretation are supplied by the same fabric of images, indeed often by the same elements of this image fabric. This context therefore must have been sought out artfully enough by the creative unconscious to answer the double requirement.
The coexistence of the material meaning with the functional is not entirely puzzling to the student of psychoanalysis. Two facts must be kept in mind throughout.
In the first place, we are acquainted with the principle of multiple determination or condensation. The multiplicity of the dimly moving latent dream thoughts condenses into a few clear dream forms or symbols, so that one symbol continually, as it were, appears as the representative of several ideas, and is therefore interpretable in several ways. That it should be susceptible of more than one interpretation can cause no surprise because the fundamental significance (the latent thoughts) were the very ones that, by association, caused the selection of the symbols from an infinite series of possibilities. In the shaping of the dream, and therefore in the unconscious dream work, only such pictorial elements could penetrate into consciousness as satisfied the requirements of the multiple determination. The principle of multiple determination is valid not only within the material and the functional categories, but makes the fusion of both in the symbol in question to some extent intelligible. Elements of both [pg 240] categories take an active part in the choice of the symbol. On the one hand, a number of affects press on towards the symbolic representation of objects to which they direct themselves (objects of love, hate, etc.). On the other hand, the psyche takes cognizance of its own impulses, play of affects, etc., and this perception will gain representation. Both impulses take part in the choice of those symbols which thrust themselves into the nascent consciousness of phantasy, and so the dream, like the poem, etc., besides the symbolism of the wish tendencies (material categories) that animate them, bears the stamp of the psychic authorship (functional category) of the dreamer or the author. [Ferenczi defends the view for the myth also that the material symbolism must coincide with the functional (Imago I, p. 283).]
Secondly, it has been shown in recent times in psychoanalytic studies that symbols which were originally material pass over to functional use. If we thoroughly analyze for a sufficient time the dreams of a person we shall find that certain symbols which at first probably appeared only incidentally to signify some idea content, wish content, etc., return and become a persistent or typical form. And the more such a typical form is established and is impressed, the farther it is removed from its first ephemeral meaning, and the more it becomes a symbolic representative of a whole group of similar experiences, a spiritual capital, so to speak, till finally we can regard it simply as the representative of a spiritual current (love, hate, tendency to frivolity, to cruelty, [pg 241] to anxiety, etc.). What has been accomplished there is a transition from the material to the functional on the path of a determination inward or intro-determination (verinnerlichung) as I shall call it. Later I shall have more to say about intro-determination. For the present this may suffice for the understanding, that the material and the functional symbolism, in spite of their at first apparently fundamental difference, are essentially related in some way, which is illuminated by the process of intro-determination.
The analogue of the problem of multiple interpretation unfolded in the preceding section is shown to be a question that can be easily answered. And we would bring our problem to a generally satisfactory position if we succeeded in showing that the anagogic interpretation, whose alignment with the psychoanalytic seemed so impracticable, is a form of functional interpretation, or at least related to it. In this case it would be at once comprehensible how a product of the imagination harmonizes with several expositions (problem of multiple interpretation); because this variety of sense had already operated in the selection of the symbol and indeed, in those cases as well where we did not at first sight suspect the coöperation of the anagogic thoughts; secondly, the anagogic and the psychoanalytic interpretations are somehow reconciled to each other, whereby possibly also the position of the natural science interpretation can be made somewhat clearer.
The possibility that the anagogic has some part [pg 242] in the creation of the functional, will be brought nearer by the fact that our previously offered anagogic expositions (fairy tales, parabola) markedly resemble functional interpretations. In the tale of the six swans Hitchcock explains the reception of the maiden into the castle as the reception of sin into the heart; the seven children are the seven virtues (consequently spiritual tendencies). The small maiden is conscience, the tissues are processes of thought. In the story of the three feathers, again, one son is conscience; the secret door is the entrance to the inner life, to spiritual absorption, the three feathers are spiritual tendencies, etc. In the dream of the “flying post” conscience appears as the conductor. The “Mills of God,” which psychologically also represents conscience, the more strikingly because the burden of sin, guilty feeling, drives them, also appear in the parable. The lion or the dragon which must be overcome on the mystic path is again a spiritual force. The approximation to the functional category is not to be denied. Processes that show an interplay of spiritual powers are symbolically represented there. But we are at once struck with a difference. The true functional phenomenon, as I have so far described it, pictures the actual psychic state or process; the anagogic image appears on the contrary to point to a state or process that is to be experienced in the future. We shall pass over for a time the last topic, which will not, however, be forgotten, and turn to the question as to the point on which the anagogic and the functional [pg 243] interpretations can best be brought together. This point appears to me to be introversion, first because it is related to the previously mentioned intro-determination, and second, because it is familiar to psychoanalysis and is of great importance in anagogic method.
The term “introversion” comes from C. G. Jung. It means sinking into one's own soul; the withdrawal of interest from the outer world; the seeking for joys that can be afforded by the inner world. The psychology of the neuroses has led to the concept of introversion, a province, therefore, which principally treats of morbid forms and functions of introversion. The sinking of oneself into one's own soul also appears exactly as a morbid losing of oneself in it. We can speak of introversion neuroses. Jung regards dementia precox as an introversion neurosis. Freud, who has adopted the concept of introversion [with some restrictions] regards the introversion of the libido as a regular and necessary precondition of every psychoneurosis. Jung (Jb. ps. F., III, p. 159) speaks of “certain mental disturbances [he means dementia precox] which are induced by the fact that the patients retire more and more from reality, sink into their phantasy, whereby in proportion as reality loses its force, the inner world takes on a reality and determining power.” We may also define introversion as a resignation of the joys of the outer world (probably unattainable or become troubled) and a seeking for the libido sources in one's own ego. So we see how generally [pg 244] self-chastisement, introversion and autoerotism are connected.
The turning away from the outer world and turning in to the inner, is required by all those methods which lead to intensive exercise of religion and a mystic life. The experts in mysteries provide for opportunities that should encourage introversion. Cloisters and churches are institutions of introversion. The symbolism of religious doctrine and rite is full of images of introversion, which is, in short, one of the most important presuppositions of mysticism.
Religious and mythical symbolism has countless images for introversion; e.g., dying, going down, subterranean crypts, vaults, dark temples, into the underworld, hell, the sea, etc.; being swallowed by a monster or a fish (as Jonah), stay in the wilderness, etc. The symbols for introversion correspond in large part with those that I have described for going to sleep and waking (threshold symbolism), a fact that can be readily appreciated from their actual similarity. The descent of Faust to the mothers is an introversion symbol. Introversion fulfills here clearly the aim of bringing to reality, i.e., to psychological reality, something that is attainable only by phantasy (world of the past, Helen).
In Jacob Boehme (De Vita Mentali) the disciple says to the master, “How may I attain suprasensuous life, so that I may see God and hear him speak?” The master says, “When you can lift yourself for one moment into that realm where no creature dwelleth, [pg 245] you will hear what God speaks.” The disciple says, “Is that near or far?” The master says, “It is in yourself.”
The hermetics often urge retirement, prayer and meditation, as prerequisites for the work; it is treated of still more in the hieroglyphic pictures themselves. The picture of death is already familiar to us from the hermetic writings, but in the technical language there are still other expressions for introversion, e.g., the shutting up in the receptacle, the solution in the mercury of the sages, the return of the substance to its radical condition (by means of the "radical" or root dampness).
Similar features in our parable are the wandering in the dense forest, the stay in the lion's den, the going through the dark passage into the garden, the being shut up in the prison or, in the language of alchemy, the receptacle.
Introversion is continually connected with regression. Regression, as may be recalled from the 2d section of Part I, is a harking back to more primitive psychic activities, from thinking to gazing, from doing to hallucinating; a striving back towards childhood and the pleasures of childhood. Introversion accordingly is accompanied by a desire for symbolic form of expression (the mystical education is carried on in symbols), and causes the infantile imagos to revive—chiefly the mother image. It was pre-eminently father and mother who appeared as objects of childish love, as well as of defiance. They are unique and imperishable, and in the life of adults [pg 246] there is no difficulty in reawakening and making active those memories and those imagos. We easily comprehend the fact that the symbolic aim of the previously mentioned katabasis always has a maternal character; earth, hole, sea, belly of fish, etc., that all are symbols for mother and womb. Regression revives the Œdipus complex with its thoughts of incest, etc. Regression leads back to all these relics now done away with in life and repressed. It actually leads into a sort of underworld, into the world of titanic wishes, as I have called them. How far this was the case in the alchemistic parable, I have fully shown in the psychoanalytic treatment of it. Here I need merely to refer to the maternal nature of the symbols cited: receptacle, mercury of the sages (“mother of metals”) and radical moisture, also called “milk” and the like.
Fairy tales have frequently a very pretty functional symbolism for the way in which introversion leads to the mother imago. Thus the simpleton in the fairy tale of the feathers comes through the gate of introversion exactly into the family circle, to the mother that cares for him. There his love finds its satisfaction. There he even gets a daughter, replica of the mother imago, for a wife.
In the parable the wandering in the forest (introversion) is followed by the battle (suggestive of incest) with the lion (father or mother in their awe inspiring form); the inclusion in the receptacle (introversion) by the accomplishment of the incest.
If it is now clear also that in introversion, as a [pg 247] result of the regression that is connected with it, visions of “titanic” emotions (incest, separating of parents, etc.) are encountered, yet it has not become in the slightest degree comprehensible how these visions are related to the treatment of anagogic ideas. And that is indeed the question.
We can really understand these striking facts better if we recall what I have said above about the type formation and the intro-determination of the symbols, namely, that symbols can depart from their original narrower meaning and become types for an entire class of experiences whereby an advance is made from the material to the functional meaning. Some examples will elucidate this.
I have observed particularly fine cases of intro-determination in a series of experiments in basin divination (lecanomancy) which I have carried on for several years. Lecanomancy resembles crystal gazing, except that the gazer looks into a basin of water. In the visions of my subject, Lea, typical forms were pictured, which always recurred. Regarded as symbols they were, as subsequent analysis showed, almost all subjected to inward accentuation or intro-determination. Thus, for instance, a black cat appeared. At first it appeared as representative of Lea's grandmother, who was cat-like, malicious and fawning. Later the cat stood for the corresponding traits that she perceived in herself. Above all the cat is the symbol of her grandmother, so the grandmother (or cat) is a mental current of Lea. Frequently there appears in the image a Dyas, sometimes [pg 248] in the shape of a two-headed snake, of two hands, of two feet, or of a woman with two faces, etc. Above all, every antithesis appears to have some external meaning, two men who love each other, etc. So it becomes clear that the common element which finds its most pregnant expression in the double faced woman is the Dyas in itself and that it means bisexuality, psychic hermaphroditism. More than that it is definitely certain that the deepest sense of the symbol means a complete dissociation of Lea's character into two different personalities, one of which may be called the savage and the other the mild. (Lea herself uses the expressions cynical and ideal personality.) In one of the later experiments Lea saw her cynic double vividly personified and spoke in this character, which is closely related to the “black cat.” The Dyas in the symbols has the value first of a representation of externals (two lovers, etc.), then as symbols of bisexuality. The sexual Dyas can again be conceived as a symbol or characteristic of a still more general and comprehensive dissociation of the ego. A further symbol and one still more tending towards intro-determination was death. Starting from connections with definite external experiences and ideas of actual death, the meaning of the symbol became more and more spiritual, till it reached the meaning of the fading away of psychic impulses. What died symbolically or had to die was represented by an old man who sacrificed himself after suffering all kinds of fortune. The dying of this old man signified, as [pg 249] analysis showed, the same thing that we call the “putting off the old Adam” (turning over a new leaf). The figure of the old man, originally Lea's grandfather, then her father, came to have this meaning only after a long process of intro-determination.
A few more examples for typical figures.
In many dreams of a woman analyzed by me (Pauline, in my treatise Zur Symbolbildung), a cow appears as a typical image. The alternation of this cow with more or less definite mother symbols leads to identification of the cow with the mother. Two circumstantial dreams that were fully analyzed showed, however, that the cow and other forms with which she alternated cannot be translated so correctly by the concept of mother as by that of the maternal authority and finally still more correctly by self-criticism or conscience, of which maternal authority is but a type. Children figure in Pauline's case as a result of various experiences, as typical of obstacles.
In the case of another dreamer the father stands in similar relation as the determinant that paralyzes his resolutions.
The climbing of an ascent, usually a symbol of coitus (hurrying upward which makes us out of breath), turns out often in a deeper relation as the effort to get from the disagreeable things of life to a place of retreat (lonely attics, etc.), inaccessible to other persons (= thoughts); and now we see that this deeper meaning appears without prejudice to the first, for even coitus, like all transport, is only [pg 250] a special case of flight from the outer life, one of the forms of spiritual oblivion. Hence in part the mythologically and psychopathologically important comparison of intoxication, intoxicating drink and sperm, soma and semen. Ascent = coitus is in this case a type for a quite comprehensive class of experience.
Marcinowski found in his analyses that the father in dream life often was a “symbol of an outlived, obsolete attitude.” (Z. Bl. f. Ps., II, 9.)
Other examples of types are the phallus, the sun and other religiously revered objects, if we regard them as does Jung (Wandl. u. Sym., Jb. ps. F., III-IV) as a symbol of the libido. [The concept of which is extended by Jung almost to Schopenhauer's Will.] The typical character of divine personalities is moreover quite clearly emphasized by Jung himself.
The snake, about whose significance as a “negative phallus,” etc. [developed in detail by Jung], we shall have more to say, can also be regarded as a typical image. Bull, cow and other animal forms are in mythology as in dreams typical transmutations, with unlimited possibility of intro-determination. Dogs are often in dreams the representations of animal propensities. The beast is often “la bête humaine” in the dreamer's own inner life. We have become acquainted with the terrible lions, the bears, etc., as father types; here we get a new perspective which makes clear the one-sidedness of our first conception.
[pg 251]Since psychoanalysis has found acceptation, many of its followers believe they are able to solve, with their work of analysis alone, all the psychological, esthetic and mythological problems that come up. We understand only half of the psychic impulses, as indeed we do all spiritual development, if we look merely at the root. We have to regard not merely whence we come but also whither we go. Then only can the course of the psyche be comprehended, ontogenetically as well as phylogenetically, according to a dynamic scheme as it were.
If we apply this fundamental principle to symbolism there develops therefrom the obligation to keep both visible poles in view, between which the advance of significance, the process of intro-determination is completed. (An externalization is also possible, yet the internalization or intro-determination must be regarded as the normal process.) [It corresponds namely to the process of education and progress of culture. This will soon be cleared up.] To the most general type belong then, without doubt, those symbols or frequently disguised images, concerning which we wondered before, that besides representing “titanic” tendencies, they are fitted to represent the anagogic. The solution of the riddle is found the instant we regard these images as types with a certain degree of intro-determination, as types for a few fundamental forces of the soul, with which we are all endowed, and whose typical symbols are for that reason of general applicability. [I will therefore call these types the human elementary [pg 252] types.] For example, if by psychoanalysis we deduce father and mother, etc., from some of the symbols appearing in dreams, we have in these representations of the psychic images, as the psychoanalyst calls them, in reality derived mere types whose meaning will change according to the ways of viewing them, somewhat as the color of many minerals changes according to the angle at which we hold them to the light. The actual father or mother, the experiences that surrounded them, were the material used in the formation of the types; they were external things even if important, while later the father, etc., emerging as symbol, may have significance as a type of the spiritual power of the very person in question; a spiritual power to be sure, which the person in question feels to be like a father for otherwise the father figure would not be suited for the symbol. And we can go so far as to call this spiritual power a father image. That should not however, mislead us into taking that real person, who in the individual case generally (though not always) has furnished the type, for the real or the most essential. The innermost lies in ourselves and is only fashioned and exercised upon persons of the external world.
So then we get for the typical symbol a double perspective. The types are given, we can look through them forward and backward. In both cases there will be distortions of the image; we shall frequently see projected upon each other, things that do not belong together, we shall perceive convergences [pg 253] at vanishing points which are to be ascribed only to perspective. I might for brevity's sake call the errors so resulting errors of superposition. The significance of this concept will, I hope, come to have still greater validity in psychoanalysis. [This error of superposition C. G. Jung attempts to unmask, when he writes: “As libido has a forward tendency, so in a way, incest is that which tends backward into childhood. It is not incest for the child, and only for the adult, who possesses a well constituted sexuality, does this regressive tendency become incest in that he is no longer a child, but has a sexuality that really no longer can suffer a regressive application.” (Jung, Psychology of the Unconscious.) It may moreover be remarked that Freud also is careful not to take the incest disclosed by psychoanalysis in too physical a sense.] This error of superposition is found not only in the view backward but in the forward view. So what I, as interpreter of mystical symbolism, may say about the possible development of the soul will be affected by this error of superposition. It is not in my power to correct it. In spite of everything, the treatment of symbolism from the two points of view must be superior to the onesided treatment; in order to approximate a fundamental comprehension, which to be sure remains an ideal, the different aspects must be combined and in order to make this clear I have added a synthetic treatment to the analytic part of my work.
Looking back through the elementary types, we [pg 254] see the infantile images together with those non-moral origins that psychoanalysis discovers in us; looking forward we notice thoughts directed to certain goals that will be mentioned later. The elementary types themselves thanks to intro-determination represent however a collection of our spiritual powers, which we have first formed and exercised at the time that the images arose, and which are in their nature closely related to these images, indeed completely united with them as a result of the errors of superposition—this collection of powers, I say, accompanies us through our entire life and is that from which are taken the powers that will be required for future development. The objects or applications change, the powers remain almost the same. The symbolism of the material categories which depends on external things changes with them; but the symbolism of the functional categories, which reflects these powers remains constant. The types with their intro-determination belong to the functional categories; and so they picture the constant characters.
That experience to which the suggestions of symbolism (brought to verbal expression by means of introversion) point as to a possible spiritual development, corresponds to a religious ideal; when intensively lived out this development is called mysticism. [We can define mysticism as that religious state which struggles by the shortest way towards the accomplishment of the end of religion, the union with the divinity; or as an intensive cultivation of [pg 255] oneself in order to experience this union.] It presents itself if instead of looking backward we gaze forward from our elementary types to the beyond. But let us not forget that we can regard mysticism only as the most extreme, and therefore psychically the most internal, unfolding of the religious life, as the ideal which is hardly to be attained, although I consider that much is possible in this direction. If my later examination carries us right into the heart of mysticism, without making the standpoint clear every time, we now know what restrictions we must be prepared for.
If I take the view that those powers, whose images (generally veiled in symbolism) are the elementary types, do not change, I do not intend to imply that it is not possible to sublimate them. With the increasing education of man they support a sublimation of the human race which yet shows in recognizable form the fundamental nature of the powers. One of the most important types, in which this transformation process is consummated and which refines the impulse and yet allows some of its character to remain, is the type mother, i.e., incest. Among religious symbols we find countless incest images but that the narrow concept of incest is no longer suited to their psychological basis (revealed through analysis) has been, among psychoanalysts, quite clearly recognized by Jung. Therefore in the case of every symbolism tending to ethical development, the anagogic point of view must be considered, and most of all in religious symbolism. The impulse corresponding [pg 256] to the religious incest symbols is preeminently to be conceived in the trend toward introversion and rebirth which will be treated of later. [Vid. note C, at the end of the volume.]
I have just used the expression “sublimation.” This Freudian term and concept is found in an exactly similar significance in the hermetic writers. In the receptacle where the mystical work of education is performed, i.e., in man, substances are sublimated; in psychological terms this means that impulses are to be refined and brought from their baseness to a higher level. Freud makes it clear that the libido, particularly the unsocial sexual libido, is in favorable circumstances sublimated, i.e., changed into a socially available impelling power. This happens in the evolution of the human race and is recapitulated in the education of the individual.
I take it for granted that the fundamental character of the elementary psychic powers in which the sublimation is consummated is the more recognizable the less the process of sublimation is extended in time. In mysticism, e.g., the fundamental character penetrates the primal motive because the latter wishes to lead the relatively slightly sublimated impulses by a shortened process to the farthest goal of sublimation. Mysticism undertakes to accomplish in individuals a work that otherwise would take many generations. What I said therefore about the unchangeability of the fundamental powers or their primal motive, is wholly true of its fate in mystical development.
[pg 257]The Mohammedan mystic Arabi (1165-1240) writes, “Love as such, in its individual life, is the same for sensuous and spiritual, therefore equally for every Arab (of an allegory) and for me, but the objects of love are different. They loved sensible phenomena while I, the mystic, love the most intimate existence.” (Horten, Myst. Texte, p. 12.)
The religious-mystical applications of the fundamental powers represented by the types, in the sense of a sublimation, does not manifest therefore in contrast to their retrospective form (titanic, purposeless form) an essentially foreign nature; the important novelty in them is that they no longer are used egotistically but have acquired a content that is ethically valuable, to which the intro-determination was an aid. This determination, whose external aspects we have noticed in the types or symbols, is only the visible expression of a far more important actual intro-determination whose accomplishment lies in an amplification of personality, and will later be considered in detail.
In the psychoanalytic consideration of the alchemistic parable it would appear that only the titanic impulses were realized there, e.g., to have the mother as a lover and to kill the father. Now it corresponds to a really significant intro-determination when we hear that in the alchemistic work the father is the same as the son, and when we understand that the father is a state, or psychic potentiality, of the “son,” whom the latter in himself, has to conquer, [pg 258] exactly in the same manner as Lea in the lecomantic study strove to put off the old man.
The alchemist Rulandus (Lex., p. 24) quotes the “Turba”: “Take the white tree, build him a round, dark, dew-encircled house, and set in it a hundred year-old man and close it so that no wind or dust can get to him (introversion); then leave him there eight days. I tell you that that man will not cease to eat of the fruit of that tree till he becomes a youth. O what a wonderful nature, for here is the father become son and born again.” Ibid: “The stone [that is in the anagogic sense, man] is at first the senex, afterwards young, so it is said filius interficit patrem; the father must die, the son be born, die with each other and be renewed with each other.”
We must proceed similarly if we wish to interpret the parable anagogically.
What I have already taken from the anagogic fairy tale interpretation as a symbol of introversion shows, of course, also the character of intro-determination.
As for the nature of the relatively unchangeable spiritual tendencies represented by the elementary types [That can also be called in mythological study primal motives] a simple examination of the essentials without any psychological hair splitting, brings us at once to an elementary scheme that will help us to understand the changes (intro-determination) that take place in accordance with the elementary types. We need here only to examine the simplest [pg 259] reactions of the individual, necessarily produced by rubbing up again the external world; reactions which become persistent forms of experience that are approximately as self-evident as the libido itself. The degree of egoism which is active in the elementary tendencies must, according to the experience of psychoanalysis, be considered very great. For this purpose I have selected in what follows an excessively egotistical expression for the “titanic” aspect, the retrospective form, of the tendencies; and this same excessive expression which would seem to be rather objectionable when applied to the basis of a religious development, enables us, thanks to the principle of intro-determination, to understand this development.
Starting from the libido in the most general sense we arrive first of all at the two phenomena, the agreeableness and the disagreeableness, from which results at once, acceptance and aversion. Obstacles may aggravate both activities, so that acceptance becomes robbery and aversion becomes annihilation. These possibilities can to be sure only become acts in so far as they prove practically feasible. In all cases they are present in the psyche, and in this crude primal form play no small part in the soul of the child. It is indeed only a blind sentimentality that can raise the child to an angelic status, from which it is as far removed as from its opposite. We should be careful not to regard the crude form of the impulse as crude in the sense of an educated humanity, which must see in the crudeness something morally inferior. In robbery and annihilation there [pg 260] exists on the primitive or childish level hardly the slightest germ of badness. There is much to be said about the psychology and morality of the child. I cannot, however, enter very deeply into this broad topic, interesting though it is.
The primal tendencies, when directed toward the persons in the environment, produce certain typical phenomena. I can unfortunately describe them only with expressions which, if the cultured man uses them, evoke the idea of crime. An ethically colorless language should be made available for these things. [The dream and the myth have found for them the language of symbolism.] The opposition of a fellow man against the working out of an impulse arouses a tendency to overcome this man, to get him out of the way, to kill him. The type of the obstructing man is always the instructor (father, eventually mother). That he is at the same time a doer of good is less appreciated because the psychical apparatus takes the satisfaction of desires as the natural thing, which does not excite its energy nearly as much as does a hindrance to its satisfaction. [Recognition of a good deed, thankfulness, etc., regularly presuppose sublimation; they do not belong to the titanic aspect. A form of appreciation of this kindness however comes to mind. Towards the mother there occurs on the part of the child, though it has been completely overlooked for a long time, very early and gradually increasing, a sexually-toned feeling, although the manifestations of this feeling are very dim and at times may completely [pg 261] disappear. In this “love” is contained a germ of desire, of erotic appropriation-to-self. Any woman in the environment and especially the mother must needs supply the ideal of the desired woman. In so far as the father is perceived as an obstacle to the love towards the mother he must, in the elementary tendency, be killed to remove the obstacle, and there arises the murder impulse belonging to the Œdipus Complex. [The child has no clear idea of death. It is only a matter of wishing to have some one out of the way. If this primal motive appears to us subsequently as a “killing,” it is again only because of the error of superposition, just as in the later mentioned “rape.”] In so far as the mother herself does not meet the desired tenderness or in refusing, acts as a corrective agent, while carrying on the education, she, too, becomes an obstacle, a personality contrasting with the “dear” mother, a contrast which plunges the psyche in anxiety and bitterness. Anxiety comes principally from the conflict of psychical tendencies, which result from the same person being both loved and hated. The correlative to the denying action of the mother is to commit rape on her. Another cause of the attraction towards the mother besides the erotically toned one, is the desire for her care, called forth by the hardships encountered elsewhere in the world. It is an indolence opposed to the duties of life. The propensity towards ease is psychologically a very important factor. The home is in general the place of protection; the characteristic embodiment [pg 262] of this is preëminently the mother. We speak of maternal solicitude but less of paternal solicitude. I have noted the solicitous mother type in the story of the three feathers, where the mother toad bestows the gifts from the big box. In so far as the solicitous person refuses the requests made of her and for reasons of necessity thrusts the child out into the world, or in so far as any other obstacles (demands of life) stand in the way of the gratification of the lazy, “feed me” state of mind, like the angel with the flaming sword before the entrance to paradise, so far the obstructing power appears as the type of the “terrible” mother, a picture whose terribleness is yet intensified by the working of the incest conflict. In this aspect therefore the otherwise beloved mother is a hostile personality.
To the process of education on the part of the parents, felt as pedantry by the child, or to otherwise misunderstood action, he opposes a well known defiance, and there results, as also from the attempt to change in general the rough path of life, the hopeful attempt to get a creative “improvement,” which I have already discussed. The wish to die sometimes occurs. Further the obstacles that stand in the way of the full erotic life in the external world, in so far as they are insuperable or are not overcome on account of laziness, lead to autoerotism. (That this is found even in early childhood is for the mechanism of the impulses, a side-issue. The scheme just given is not to be regarded as a historical or chronological development, but [pg 263] the tendencies are quite as intimately connected with each other as with the acquisition of the psychical restraints that are not generally brought to view; in separating them we commit something like an error.)
We have considered the following main forces: 1. Removal of obstacles. 2. Desire for the solicitude of the parents. 3. Desire for the pleasurable [especially of the woman]. 4. Auto-erotism. 5-6. Improvement and re-creation. 7. Death wish. The following scheme shows the retrograde (titanic) as well as the anagogic aspect of these powers, which later corresponds to an intro-determination of the types, and a species of sublimation of impulses.
| Retrograde Aspect. | Anagogic Aspect. |
| 1. Killing of the father. | Killing of the old Adam. |
| 2. Desire for the mother (laziness). | Introversion. |
| 3. Incest. | Love towards an Ideal. |
| 4. Auto-erotism. | Siddhi.4 |
| 5. Copulation with the mother. | Spiritual regeneration. |
| 6. Improvement. | Re-creation.5 |
| 7. Death wish. | Attainment of the ideal. |
We need not scent anything extraordinary behind these intro-determinations, as the scheme is here indeed only roughly sketched; they take place in each and every one of us, otherwise we should be mere beasts. Only they do not in every one of us rise to the intensity of the mystical life.
[pg 264]A more careful inquiry into the mechanism of the psychic powers in the development of mysticism, would show in greater detail how everything that happens is utilized toward intro-determination in the process of education. It would be interesting as an example to discover the application of the special senses to introversion and ascertain the fate of the sense qualities. It is quite remarkable what a prominent rôle tastes and smells often play in descriptions given by persons who have followed the path of mysticism. I mention the odor of sanctity and its opposite in the devilish, evil odor. The experimenter in magic Staudenmaier, who will be mentioned later, has established in his own case the coördination of his partial souls (personifications, autonomous complexes) to definite bodily functions and to definite organs. Certain evil, partial souls, which appear to him in hallucinations as diabolical goat faces, were connected with the function of certain parts of the lower intestine.
Mysticism stimulates a much more powerful sublimation of impulses than the conventional education of men. So it is not strange if intro-determination does not accomplish its desires quickly but remains fragmentary. In such unfortunate or fragmentary cases, the inward-determined powers show more than mere traces of their less refined past. The heroes of such miscarried mysticism appear as rather extraordinary saints. So, for instance, Count von Zinzendorf's warm love of the Savior has so much of the sensual flavor, with furthermore such [pg 265] decided perversities, that the outpourings of his rapture are positively laughable. Thus the pious man indulges his phantasy with a marked predilection for voluptuousness in the “Seitenhölchen” (Wound in the Side) in Jesus' body and with an unmistakable identification of this “cleft” with the vulva.
Examples of the poetical creations of Zinzendorf and his faithful followers are given:
On this curiosity compare the psychological explanations of Pfister. (Frommigkeit G. Ludw. v. Zinzendorf.)
Returning to the previously mentioned “spiritual powers” I should mention that alchemy also attempts to include in a short schema the inventory of powers available for the Great Work. It uses different symbols for this purpose; one of the most frequent is the seven metals or planets. Whether I say with the astrologers that the soul (not the celestial spirit, which is derived from God) flowing in from the seven planets upon man, is therefore composed of their seven influences, or if with the alchemists I speak of the seven metals, which come together in the microcosm, it is of course quite the same, but expressed in another closely related symbol. The metals are, as we know, incomplete and have to be [pg 267] “improved” or “made complete.” That means we must sublimate our impulses.
“From the highest to the lowest everything rises by intermediate steps on the infinite ladder, in such manner that those pictures and images, as outgrowths of the divine mind, through subordinate divinities and demigods impart their gifts and emanations to men. The highest of these are: Spirit of inquiry, power of ruling and mastering self, a brave heart, clearness of perception, ardent affection, acuteness in the art of exposition, and fruitful creative power. The efficient forces of all these God has above all and originally in himself. From him they have received the seven spirits and divinities, which move and rule the seven planets, and are called angels, so that each has received his own, distinct from the rest. They share them again among the seven orders of demons subordinated to them, one under each. And these finally transmit them to men.” (Adamah Booz. Sieb. Grunds., p. 9 ff.)
In this enumeration the fundamental powers, whose partition varies exceedingly, already show a certain measure of intro-determination. If we wish to contrast their titanic with their anagogic aspect, we get approximately the following scheme, to which I add the familiar astrological characters of the seven planets.
| Destroying (castration). | [Symbol: Saturn] Introversion. |
| Mastery. | [Symbol: Jupiter] Mastery of oneself. |
| Love of combat. | [Symbol: Mars] Warring against oneself. |
| Libido. | [Symbol: Sol] Sublimated libido. |
| Sexual life, incest. | [Symbol: Venus] Regeneration. |
| Hypercriticism, fussing. | [Symbol: Mercury] Knowledge. |
| Joy in change; Improvement. | [Symbol: Luna] Changing oneself. |
[Freud is of the opinion that the original inquisitiveness about the sexual secret is abnormally transformed into morbid over subtlety; and yet can still furnish an impulsive power for legitimate thirst for knowledge.]
Beside the partition of the fundamental powers according to the favorite number seven, there are to be sure in alchemy still other schemata with other symbols. We must furthermore continually keep in mind that the symbols in alchemy are used in many senses.
In so far as the Constellations, as is often to be understood in the hermetic art, are fundamental psychic powers, it sounds just like psychoanalysis when Paracelsus expresses the view that in sleep the “sidereal” body is in unobstructed operation, soars up to its fathers and has converse with the stars.
With regard to intro-determination I must refer to my observations in the following sections on the extension of personality. It is an important fact that those external obstructions which oppose the unrestrained unfolding of the titanic impulses are gradually taken up as constraints into the psyche, which adopts those external laws, that would make life practicable. In so far as deep conflicts do not hinder it, there arises by the operation of these laws a corresponding influence upon the propensities. [pg 269] Habit, however, can learn to carry a heavy yoke with love, even to make it the condition of life. I have just made the restriction: if conflicts do not hinder it; now usually these exist, even for the mystics; and the “Work” is above all directed toward their overcoming. For the annihilation of the opposition, the weapons aimed outward in the “titanic” phase must be turned inward; there and not outside of us is the conflict. [Here we see the actual intro-determination briefly mentioned above.]