Hidden Minds (15 page)

The running order of Freud’s Wednesday-night meetings was always the same. One of the group would present a paper, after which coffee and cakes were served. Cigars and cigarettes were also supplied and smoked in large quantities (in spite of Freud’s worrying conclusion concerning the real meaning of smoking). Then, fifteen minutes of small-talk was permitted before a group discussion.

Although this agenda sounds very tame, contemporary accounts of the meetings at Bergasse 19 suggest that the atmosphere was far from boring. Participants seemed to enjoy the kind of illicit thrill more commonly associated with the convocation of a cult or underground sect. Even so, there was no stampede to gain cult membership. By 1906 Freud’s coterie consisted of only seventeen disciples.

Oddly, as the group enlarged, presentations became more like public confessionals. Many aspirant analysts were inclined to deliver papers on their own sexual problems, early masturbation experiences, or deviant predilections. Presumably this penchant for self-disclosure followed the master’s precedent
{The Interpretation of Dreams
is full of candid confessional gems -such as a priceless description of the effect of scrotal boils on Freud’s dream life).

In 1907 two Swiss doctors paid a visit: Ludwig Binswanger and Carl Gustav Jung, The following year saw the arrival of the first transatlantic visitor, the Austrian born émigré American Dr A. A. Brill and also Dr Ernest Jones (who would become Freud’s most evangelical English disciple). Clearly, word was spreading. So much so that in 1908 the regular members of the Wednesday Psychological Society appointed a secretary and renamed themselves The Viennese Psychoanalytic Society. There was no looking back.

In an extraordinarily short period of time, Freud rose from relative obscurity – the chairman of a local psychology club – to international celebrity. By the 1920s the psychoanalytic movement had branches all over the world, and by the 1930s the image of Sigmund Freud, an elderly man with a beard and an intense, slightly troubled expression, had become synonymous with the mind and its mysteries. Even those with little or no knowledge of academic psychology could claim some familiarity with Freud’s ideas and methods.

As the vocabulary and principles of psychoanalysis spread through Europe and North America, so it was that the unconscious became established as a fundamental feature of mental life – relevant to everyday behaviour and experience. A model of mind, in which the unconscious influenced judgement, slips of the tongue, and the content of dreams, gradually insinuated itself in the collective imagination.

Although the concept of the unconscious had been discussed since the time of Leibniz, such discussion had been restricted to the parochial worlds of philosophy, neurology, and psychiatry. Through the vehicle of psychoanalysis, the unconscious ‘came out’. Subsequently almost every aspect of cultural life was affected by the ‘new psychology’.

The rapid expansion and influence of psychoanalysis was a remarkable phenomenon; however, it was also surprising, given the ambition of Freud’s generals. The psychiatrist and historian, j. A. C. Brown, once wrote that Freud ‘was surrounded by a group of egocentric primadonnas whose highly ambivalent devotion to the Master was only equalled by their dislike of each other’. But he was probably being generous.

Although the early meetings of the Wednesday Psychological Society were intimate and good humoured, this professional bonhomie was relatively short lived. Petty rivalries soon developed. There were alliances, counter-alliances, squabbles, and frequent episodes of verbal back-stabbing. Moreover, within a few years some members of Freud’s inner circle began to covet the old man’s chair. In a bizarre re-enactment of Freud’s much loved Oedipal situation, Freud’s intellectual heirs were soon plotting against him, and after 1910 they began to resemble the murderous primal horde which he was about to describe in
Totem and Taboo.

The psychoanalytic movement was constantly fracturing and fragmenting. Minor differences of opinion were inflated, leading to bitter arguments and recriminations. Any excuse served to justify breaking away from Freud in order to set up a new school of psychotherapy.

Internecine struggles and ambitious schismatics constantly threatened to raze the edifice of psychoanalysis. Famous devotees like Otto Rank, Sándor Ferenczi, Wilhelm Reich – and even dear old Stekel, all felt the need to break with Freud,

This apostate culture was established early. In 1911 Alfred Adler, one of the original four Wednesday-night meeting invitees, resigned from the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. His discontent had been fermenting for years. After Freud, Adler was the most senior member of the burgeoning psychoanalytic movement. He had published original and interesting work of his own, and contemporary reports suggest that he was also the most intellectually able of Freud’s Viennese satellites. But as far as Adler was concerned, Freud was a colleague, not a mentor or prophet. Subsequently, Freud’s preeminence rankled.

Adler’s approach to mental illness and psychotherapy was very different from Freud’s. He was much more interested in context; most notably, social and political. Whereas Freud emphasised internal conflict due to the competing demands of agencies within the mind, Adler emphasised external conflict between the individual and society. The principal motivating force in Adler’s theoretical framework was not libido but the desire for power – the need to ascend the social hierarchy. The most fundamental difference between Adler and Freud, however, concerns the status of the unconscious. Although Adler recognised the existence and influence of the unconscious, it does not occupy a central position in his psychology.

When Adler resigned from the Viennese Psychoanalytic Society, his relationship with Freud had reached an all-time low. Thereafter the two men managed to nurse a mutual contempt that lasted until Adler’s death twenty-six years later. Records suggest that the news of Adler’s death was such a tonic to Freud he could barely stop himself from celebrating. He was particularly pleased to learn that Adler had died in Aberdeen, which he took to be proof of Adler’s flagging fortunes and a fitting (albeit belated) punishment.

Nevertheless, in the gallery of psychoanalytic schismatics, pride of place must be awarded to Carl Gustav Jung. Even against the impressive standards set by Freud and Adler, the Jung-Freud débâcle was an outstanding achievement in the field of disastrous personal relationships.

Jung met Freud for the first time in the February of 1907, The two men connected immediately. Their conversation began at one o’clock in the afternoon and, without pause, they spoke continuously until two o’clock the following morning. Afterwards Jung felt that he had been in the presence of greatness – a feeling that was soon reciprocated by Freud.

Jung became Freud’s most favoured son. Freud identified him as the ‘heir apparent’ and even addressed him as the ‘Crown Prince’. But their mutual admiration acquired an unhealthy intensity. They began writing to each other like a couple of lovesick adolescents: they missed each other and longed to be with each other – even requesting photographs. This bizarre correspondence reached a kind of apotheosis when Jung finally declared that he had a crush on Freud. It was inevitable that such a feverish, overwrought relationship would end badly.

Like Adler before him, Jung gradually became resentful of Freud’s authority. Subsequently he used various theoretical differences as a jemmy to force open a rift between them. The breach was intentionally irreparable, and as it widened their amorous exchanges were replaced by spiteful accusations and personal insults. The late correspondence is brief, formal, and frigid. Indeed, Freud’s final letter begins with a stone-cold: ‘Dear Doctor’. He felt Jung’s betrayal so keenly he couldn’t even write his name.

Jung proved to be the most successful of all the post-Freudian heretics. With the exception of Freud himself, no other psychologist developed such a self-contained and comprehensive framework within which to study the mind. And like Freud’s psychoanalysis, Jung’s
analytical psychology
has implications that extend well beyond psychotherapy. Indeed, Jung’s framework resembles a complete metaphysical belief system.

Unlike Adler, Jung was always loyal to Freud’s unshakeable conviction in the immense importance of the unconscious. Indeed, it could be argued that within analytical psychology, the unconscious is invested with even greater significance. By probing the very limits of the unconscious, Jung reintroduced a spiritual dimension into western psychology and earned himself a plinth in the pantheon of great thinkers.

For those who found the Freudian unconscious a demeaning maelstrom of primitive animalistic urges, Jung provided an attractive, semi-mystical, alternative. Thus, well before interest in the Freudian unconscious had begun to flag, the Jungian unconscious was already swelling into view. The idea of the unconscious was given a new lease of life, capturing the attention of a fresh generation of psychologists as well the interest of theologians, philosophers, and students of comparative mythology.

Jung’s appreciation of the importance of the unconscious began early in his career – long before he had become Freud’s ‘heir apparent’. His medical degree dissertation was called
On the Psychology and Pathology of So-called Occuli Phenomena
(1902). It is a study of a fifteen-year-old medium, Helene Preiswerk, who was also Jung’s cousin. During seances, young Helene appeared to be possessed by various personalities – mostly deceased relatives and acquaintances. She was extremely convincing. When in a trance state, she would lose her usual Basel dialect and reproduce perfect High German. After studying her, Jung concluded that the voices she produced were not those of her deceased relatives, but ‘personifications’ arising from her own unconscious.

The idea that spirit guides and possessing spirits were personifications rather than discamate entities was not a new one. Janet, for example, described a case in 1893 of man possessed by the devil, and subsequently demonstrated a psychological origin. And in 1900 Flournoy published his famous study of the medium Helen Smith. Jung, however, took the idea of personification and made it a key feature of his psychology, where it later re-emerged in the guise of sub-personalities and archetypes.

in 1902 Jung travelled to Paris, where he studied with Janet for a term at the Salpêtrière. Five years later, in a letter to Freud, he would describe Janet as ‘a vain old buffer’ who only had ‘sterile’ ideas, but he was probably doing so only to please his new master. Jung later fully acknowledged Janet’s influence, and it is again further evidence of Janet’s curious talent for invisibility that he is completely overlooked in most accounts ofjung’s life and works.

It is interesting that both Freud and Jung were unable to develop their respective systems of psychology before first exploring their own unconscious minds. Freud had undertaken an extensive self-analysis during which dream interpretation proved to be hts royal road. Jung also explored his own unconscious, but his methods were far more sensational. For nineteenth-century figures like Coleridge and De Quincey, opium was the key – their way in. For Jung, however, the key was mental illness. After the trauma of breaking with Freud, he experienced a period of extreme mental instability. The mechanisms that hold the unconscious in check broke down, and the unconscious erupted into Jung’s life, instead of resisting this process, he let it take a natural course.

From 1912 Jung felt disorientated and described living ‘as if under constant inner pressure’. He suspected that he wasn’t well, and that be might be suffering from ‘some psychic disturbance’. He began a programme of self-analysis, but the results were inconsequential. Subsequently, he resolved to let the unconscious provide him with the answer to his problems: ‘Thus, I consciously submitted myself to the impulses of the unconscious.’

In his autobiographical memoir,
Memories, Dreams, Reflections
(1962), Jung uses volcanic images to evoke his experiences. He describes a ‘stream of lava’ and the ‘heat of its fires’ reshaping his life; ‘primal stuff’ and ‘incandescent matter’. The words which he chooses create an impression of extraordinary power being unleashed.

Like Freud, Jung’s encounter with the unconscious was highly profitable.

Jung kept a record of his dreams and fantasies, which he regarded as communications from the unconscious; however, he also believed that the unconscious could signal its readiness to communicate by engendering unusual urges and impulses in the conscious mind. Jung believed that by surrendering to such impulses he could furnish the unconscious with a much wider expressive repertoire. For example, he indulged in ‘childish games’ -building a little town out of stones that he found by a lake. The features of this Lilliputian creation could then be interpreted in much the same way as a dream. These experiences were to have a profound effect on Jung’s method of practice. He was perhaps the first psychotherapist to suggest that the unconscious might communicate through creative activities; thus, he can be credited with having invented
art therapy.

Although Jung had surrendered himself to the unconscious, this surrender did not become total until 12 December 1913. On that day Jung was sitting at his desk, contemplating his mental state, when he finally allowed himself to let go’ of external reality – completely. The experience that followed reads more like an excerpt from a fantasy novel than autobiography;