Part 8

Some feelings, such as so-called party spirit, pride of ancestry, solidarity, national pride, etc., are only identifications. The German identifies himself with his great national heroes, e.g., Schiller, Goethe, Bismarck, etc., and is then as proud of being a German as if that implied that he had himself been responsible for their great achievements. The well-known and almost ridiculous pride of the Englishman is only the product of an extreme identification. But, as a matter of fact, the British Government also identifies itself with the humblest of its subjects and protects him in whatever corner of the earth he may happen to be. The officer who takes great pride in his regiment, the pupil who is all enthusiasm for the colours of his school, and the ordinary citizen who can see no element of goodness in any but his own political party, all bear witness to the great power of identification. It is in this way that socialism has become such a tremendous power. Not because it furnishes the proletariat with a dream of a happier future, not because it has supplied it with a religion. (The Church supplies this want better.) No! Only because it has enabled the individual, the weak one, to feel himself one with a tremendous majority, to identify himself with an organization that is world-wide. Socialism is the triumph of identification and the death-knell of individualism.

The most beautiful instance of identification is furnished by love. One who is in love has completely identified himself with the beloved. “Two souls with but a single thought; two hearts that beat as one.” Has not Rückert designated his beloved as his “better self”? (Or Kletke’s very popular song: “What is thine and what is mine?”) A lover almost literally transfers his whole ego into another’s soul. He projects all his yearning upon that one object. He is oblivious of his mistakes until the identification is over. Then the intoxicating dream, too, is over.

With the aid of identification a lover can transfer his passion upon any object that stands in some sort of relationship to his beloved. It is in this way that fetichism sometimes results. That is why love for a woman so easily leads to a love for her kindred. There is a Slavic proverb which says: “He who loves his wife also cherishes his mother-in-law.” And, on the other hand, a discontent with one’s wife is often concealed behind a stubborn hatred of her relatives. In many instances the feeling against mothers-in-law cannot be interpreted in any other way.

Thus there runs through the soul of mankind an endless chain of identifications ranging from the normal to the pathological. The child that puts its father’s hat on its head identifies itself with him just as certainly as the lunatic who thinks himself Napoleon. Both have realized their wishes. But there is this difference between them: In the normal the identification is held under control by the force of facts, whereas in the lunatic the identification has suffered a fixation. A delusion is frequently only a wholly successful identification in the interests of the desire to escape from painful realities. Delusion and truth are plastic conceptions. Who could presume to define where truth ceases and delusion begins? From Schopenhauer’s point of view our whole world-philosophy might be said to be only a process of identification. And truth is nothing but the transference of our own limited knowledge upon the outer world.

REFUGE IN DISEASE

The psychological study of disease is still, alas! a very young and immature science. We have been held so long in the thrall of the materialistic delusion of having to look for bacilli and other micro-organisms behind all diseases that we have almost wholly neglected the psychic factor in disease. It now seems that these psychic factors play the chief role in the so-called “nervous” diseases, whereas all the other “causes,” namely, the predisposition, heredity, infection, etc., it now turns out, do play a certain role, not an unimportant one, it is true, but yet a secondary one. The influence of emotional disturbance upon these diseases has only recently received careful study.

We have learned that psychic causes may play a great role in the occurrence and the prevention of disease. We may confidently assert that without the presence of a psychic component which invokes the disease hardly a single case of nervous disease could occur. Paradoxical as this may sound it is nearer the truth than the orthodox teachings of our day. For who does not recollect times in his childhood when he longed to be sick that he might not have to go to school, and that he might at the same time be petted and indulged by his parents? A little of this infantilism persists with us throughout life. Hysterics especially are distinguished by the infantilism of their thoughts, their feelings, and their ideas. This being so, we must agree with Bleuler when he asserts that the most common cause of hysteria is the desire to take refuge in disease. It will be of interest here to reproduce Bleuler’s report of one of his cases (from his book on “affectivity, suggestibility, and paranoia,” published by Karl Marhold in 1906).

“A _paterfamilias_ suffers an injury in a railway accident. How terrible it would be if he were so disabled that he could no longer provide for his family and if he had to go through life that way, suffering all the time, and half the time unable to work! How much better it would be if he were dead or wholly disabled. His attorney informs him that his annual earnings equal the interest on 80,000 francs, and that he could bring an action for that amount--a sum which would insure his family against want for the rest of their lives. Are there not indications enough that he will need this sum? Isn’t it a fact that he is already suffering from insomnia? Work fatigues him--his head aches--railway journeys make him apprehensive and even cause attacks of anxiety; how helpful it would be, nay, how absolutely necessary it would be, to prove that he is very sick and to get that 80,000 francs! And now the traumatic neurosis or psychosis is established, and will in all probability not be curable until the lawsuit is satisfactorily settled.” Bleuler does not mince matters but roundly asserts that in this case the wish caused the neurosis. Would it be proper to call these people malingerers? By no means! For, naturally, all these wishes are not clearly known to these individuals; they suffer in good faith. The wish emanates from unconscious levels. Consciousness vehemently resents any imputation of the thought of simulation. Such invalids usually protest vehemently their desire to be well. “How happy would I be if only I had my health! Then I would gladly dispense with damages!”

Here I should like to report two cases from my own experience which serve to illustrate the refuge in disease even better than the case described by the distinguished Swiss psychiatrist. The first was a very sick woman who had been bed-ridden for six years. No organic malady could be discovered. The diagnosis was hysteria. The deeper cause of her malady was as follows: Her husband was a coarse, brutal fellow, continually upbraiding her for something or other and raising fearful rows; but when she was sick his whole nature underwent a change. Then he became amiable, affectionate and attentive. As soon as she was well he became the old, unendurable, domestic tyrant. Finally, there was nothing for this delicate, weak woman to do but to take refuge in disease. Her limbs used to tremble and refuse their function, so that she had to stay in bed or be rolled about in an invalid chair. All the skill of her physicians--and she had the best the metropolis had to offer--proved unavailing. Naturally the cure of such a case is hardly possible unless one can remove the cause for the refuge in disease. In this case this solution was out of the question, and so the woman goes on enjoying the blessed fruits of her invalidism, complainingly but not unhappily, exulting within, but miserable without.

Our everyday life furnishes numerous petty examples of refuge in disease: the nervous wife who breaks out in a hysterical crying spell if her husband reproaches her; the schoolboy who complains of headache when he cannot get his lessons done; the husband who gets pains in the stomach every time his wife makes life unbearable;--they all take refuge in disease as a means of escape from their persecutor. How often is this phenomenon observed among soldiers, for whom a few days of illness means the most delightful change! In these cases even the most experienced military physicians often find it impossible to distinguish between wish and reality.

A physician who does not know of the phenomenon we have designated as “refuge in disease” will be helpless in the handling of most cases of hysteria. A blooming young girl had for two years consulted specialists of the highest repute about the raging headaches with which she was afflicted. All the usual remedies, such as antipyrin, phenacetin, pyramidon, and even morphine, failed to give her even slight temporary relief. The experts thought of a tumor in the brain and of other dangerous maladies as the possible cause of these obstinate headaches. But it turned out that this headache, too, was only a refuge in disease. A casual remark of the father’s betrayed the true nature of the trouble: “My daughter is about to be married; she has been engaged for two years, and the young man is anxiously waiting for the wedding; but I can’t let her marry while she is suffering from such a severe disease.”

The headache was obviously the means of getting out of a hateful marriage. Of course one who would have been content with her first story would never have discovered the truth. What stories she told about her wonderful love! How ardently she loved her betrothed! There was nothing she longed for more than the wedding-day! How unhappy she would be if she lost him! But a careful psychoanalysis brought forth ample and convincing confirmation of the above-mentioned suspicion. The girl had been engaged once before; in fact she had not yet completely broken off her relations with her former lover. In addition thereto there were confessions about the death of all erotic feelings during the second engagement, as to which we cannot go into details. It was quite clear that her malady was a refuge in invalidism. I advised breaking the engagement. The advice was not followed. On the contrary, the family hoped that a speedy marriage might bring about a cure of the hysterical condition. But the young woman is still going about, complaining and whimpering, with her malady (from which her husband, notwithstanding his inexhaustible patience, suffers more than she). Will she ever be well? If she ever learns to love her husband she may recover her health. But where such powerful, unconscious counter-impulses, such powerful instincts, contend against an inclination, it is scarcely possible that this inclination will develop into full sovereignty of the soul.

What we have just said of the neurosis is also true of the delusions of insanity. A delusion also is a fleeing from this world into another one in which some particular overvalued idea represses all other ideas and dominates the mind. It will not be long ere this conception will be an accepted doctrine of all psychiatrists. For the time being it is the common property of creative literary artists, who, because of their intuitive insight into human nature, have frequently given expression to this idea. It is perhaps most beautifully expressed by Georges Rodenbach, the Flemish artist, unfortunately too early deceased, who says in one of his fine posthumous novels (“Die Erfüllung,” Dresden, 1905):--

“The insane have nothing to complain of. Often they achieve their purposes only in this way. They become what they have longed for and what they would otherwise never have become. They obtain the coveted goal and their plans are fulfilled. They live what once they dreamed. Their delusion is, to all intents and purposes, their inner fruition, inasmuch as it corresponds to their most ardent desires and their most secret yearnings. Thus the ambitious one ascends in his delusions the heights that have beckoned to him; he possesses endless treasures, orders the destinies of great nations, and moves only among the great rulers of the earth. Religious delusion brings its victim to the throne of God and makes life in Paradise a tangible reality. So that delusion always realises the goal that each has longed for. It gratifies our desires to the utmost limit. Sympathetically it takes a hand in our affairs and completes the altogether too pretentious destiny of those upon whom fulfillment never smiles.”

What a beautiful idea! Delusion is a wish-fulfilment exactly as the dream is. The madhouse is the paradise of thoughts, the heaven in which wishes meet with unlimited fulfilment. And human beings sicken so often, and madness increases with such uncanny rapidity, because our most secret wishes are never gratified, because in these dull times the miraculous has died, and because life demands so much renunciation and yields so little happiness.

Let us draw these lessons from the foregoing remarks: to keep one’s desires within bounds means to assure one’s spiritual health. Inordinate ambition, which foolish parents kindle in their children’s hearts, is often the cause of an early breakdown. We must school ourselves and our children to wish only for the attainable and to attain our desires. Our ideals must live in our breasts, not in the outer world. Then we may find in ourselves what the world denies us. They who can find refuge in their health will escape having to take refuge in disease.

WHY WE TRAVEL

Why do we not know why we travel? Haven’t we the imperative obligation to recuperate? Does not our malady enforce a trip to a health resort? Are we not thirsty for new countries, new people, a new environment?

Peace! peace! No, we do not know! Or rather, we do not wish to know. Naturally, we always have a few superficial motives at our disposal when it suits us to mask our unconscious secrets from ourselves and from the world. Why do we travel? Psychologists have given many reasons, but they do not go beyond such superficial motives as “the desire for a change,” “a craving for excitement,” “curiosity,” “fatigue, the need for a rest,” “flight from the home,” etc. Some go further and attribute the desire to travel to the elementary pleasure of being in motion. For these psychologists the little child’s first step is its first journey, the last step of the weary aged their last journey. Others again veritably classify journeys and distinguish between trips undertaken for health reasons, business trips, scientific trips, etc.

Vain beginning! In reality one trip is like another. If we would understand the elementary feelings associated with a trip we must go back to our youth. In youth we still have a sense of the wonderful; in youth the horizon of our fantasies is aglow with wondrous visions. But of course the world about us is solemn and wearisome, full of duties and obligations. But ah, the wide world without! There dangerous adventures smile alluringly; there unrestrained freedom beckons; there deeds may be achieved that may make kings of us. In our thoughts we build a small skiff that will take us out of the narrow channel of our homes into the vast sea; we battle on the prairie with the brave and crafty Indians; we seek out the sun-burned gold-fields in the new world; we put a hurried girdle round about the earth, and--when at top speed--we would even attempt a flight to the moon.

Nothing that makes an impression on the human mind is ever lost. Our youth with its fantasies and childish desires exerts an important influence on us all our life. Henceforth all our excursions are journeys into the realm of youth. All, all are alike. Life hems us in with innumerable obstacles, bonds, and walls. The older we grow the greater becomes the weight that loads us down. In the depths of the soul the tintinnabulation of youth is ringing and speaking to us of life and freedom, and keeps on ringing alluringly till weary man surrenders and takes a trip. The tinkling music of the soul works strongest on the mind of youth. He, fortunate he, knows not the difference between the music of his heart and the hum of the world without. He knows not yet that the world is everywhere the same, the people everywhere the same, and the mountains, the lakes, the seas, with but slight variations, the same. His longings carry him out, far out, and he seeks their fulfilment.

The adult lives a life of bitter disappointments. He never seeks the new. He longs only to get rid of the old. And the aged wanderer, having reached the end of the vale of life, follows his buried wishes, his memories of the beautiful days in which there was still something to hope for, in which he was not beyond self-deception.

It is not to be denied that ours is _the_ travelling age. This is partly due to the fact that we experience so little, as we have already said, in our craving for excitement. The many inventions that have conquered time and space have made it possible for us to fly over the whole world, and thus the primary purpose of travelling, the hunger for experience, shrinks into trivial, merry or vexatious hotel adventures. But in every such trip one may discover a deeply hidden kernel of the voyages of the old Vikings. Every journey is a tour of conquest. Here at home we have found our level; our neighbours know us and have passed their irrevocable judgment on our person. To travel means to conquer the world anew, to make oneself respected and esteemed. Every new touring acquaintance must stand for a new conquest. We display all our talents for which we no longer have any use at home and all our almost rusty intellectual weapons, our amiability, our courteousness, our gallantry, are again taken out of the soul’s lumber chamber and put to use in conquering new persons. This secret foolery compensates us for all the plans of conquest that we have long ago given up. To conquer persons without having to depend on one’s social background is one of the greatest delights of travelling.

How strange! As in ordinary life we seek ourself and are overjoyed to find ourself in our environment and get most out of the individual who is most like ourself, so everywhere abroad we seek our own home. How happy we are on beholding a familiar face even though it be that of a person who has been ever so unsympathetic or indifferent. We are delighted with him and greet him like a trusted friend--only because he represents for us a fragment of our home which we have been seeking out here and which we have found, to some extent, in him. That is why such discoveries make us happiest as revealing identities with our home. Even in this the infantile character of travelling is shown. Just as in our youth we had to learn many things that we had to forget subsequently so we act with regard to our journeys; every new city, every new region is a kind of primer whose fundamentals we have to make our own no matter how much it goes against our grain to do so. The faithful visiting of all the objects of interest with our Baedeker in our hands, the profound sense of an obligation to have seen so-and-so is clearly such an infantile trait and has about it much of the youthfulness and school-boyishness of the time in which the teacher’s authority meant compelling knowledge to follow a set norm.

Much might be said about the technique of travelling. The manner in which the thought springs from the unconscious, gently and with tender longing, takes on more definite shape and apparently suddenly breaks out during the night with the violence of a deed, presents almost a neurotic picture, and one is justified, from this point of view, in speaking of a “touring neurosis.” Every repression begets a compulsive idea. The repression of the emotions of youth begets a touring neurosis. The compulsion is strongest in the first few days during which difficult internal conflicts have to be overcome. The threads that bind us to our home, our vocation, and our beloved, must first be wholly severed. This happens only after several days, after the so-called “travel-reaction.” That is the name I would propose for that unpleasant feeling that overcomes us after a few days. Suddenly we feel lonesome and alone, curse the desire that prompted us to leave our home, and play with the idea whether it would not be better to terminate the trip and go back home. It is only when this reaction has been overcome, when the conflict between the present and the past has been decided in favour of the latter, only then has one acquired the correct attitude to travelling, an attitude which depends upon a complete forgetting of our social and individual obligations. It is, for all the world, as if after this reaction we had suppressed all our relations to our home and freed all our inhibitions. Only then can we enjoy the pleasure of travelling, but, alas, it lasts only a short time. For soon there rises before our eyes, like a threatening monster, the time when we must again resume our obligations. The sense of duty gets stronger and stronger, the desire for travelling gets weaker and weaker, and after a short but decisive conflict, the fever for travelling abates, leaving behind it a little heap of ashes in which the feeble coals of memory gradually die.

It is a profound feeling of bliss that we feel at home, for down at the bottom of the heart we have always been faithful to the home. We see everything in the new colours with which our journey has beautified the dull gray of daily life; alas! they are only temporary joys, borrowed harmonies, which lose their intensity in the day’s progress and are bound to return to their former dulness.

Particular mention must be made of the journeys of married couples. These, too, are trips into the realm of youth, into the beautiful country of the betrothal period, and thus every such trip is a new honeymoon. The energies which had hitherto been devoted to the discharge of their duties have now been freed and burst powerfully into the amatory sphere; but they may also intensify components of aversion and hatred, and are just as likely to emphasize antagonisms as, under circumstances, they may build bridges over bottomless depths. Inasmuch as _en tour_ thought and feeling are dominated by infantile traits, and inasmuch as to a certain extent a new spring of love awakens with the youthful fire and youthful tenderness, a journey may--just because of these results--result in disappointments such as cannot otherwise be brought to light in staid old age.

Let us also make mention of the opportunity a journey gives one of living a purely physical existence, of enjoying the rare pleasure of feeling oneself a creature of muscles, a thing all backbone and little brain. Let us also mention the delight of feeling oneself a stranger, of shaking off every irritating constraint, of being able to break with impunity the rules of propriety and good breeding, and we have, in comparison with all the really important psychological motives, touched only a small part of the surface psychology of travelling.

And now I come to the really important point of my thesis. What I have hitherto said is of general validity, applying to the generality of travelling people. But I believe that every individual has also a secret, deep-lying motive of which he himself is unaware and which one rarely is in a position to discover. Now and then one may succeed in discovering such a motive and one is then astonished at the strange things that may be hidden behind the passion of travelling.