Collected Papers on Analytical PsychologyJung, C. G. (Carl Gustav)
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Collected Papers on Analytical Psychology
Jung, C. G. (Carl Gustav)
Psychoanalysis
But now comes the circumstance that the snake and the bad man also
threaten him, there happens to him the same thing as to his mother in
the next room. Thus he identifies himself with his mother and proposes a
similar relationship for himself with his father. That is owing to his
homosexual component which feels like a woman towards the father. What
enuresis signifies in this case is, from the Freudian standpoint, not
difficult to understand. The micturition dream throws light upon it.
Let me refer to an analysis of the same kind in my article: "L'analyse
des rêves, Année psychologique" (1909). Enuresis must be regarded as an
infantile sex-surrogate; in the dream-life of adults too it is easily
used as a cloak for the urge of sexual desire.
This little example shows what goes on in the mind of an eight year old
boy, when he is in a position of too much dependence upon his parents,
but the blame is also partly due to the too strict father and the too
indulgent mother.
The infantile attitude here, it is evident, is nothing but infantile
sexuality. If now we survey all the far-reaching possibilities of the
infantile constellation, we are forced to say that _in essence our
life's fate is identical with the fate of our sexuality_. If Freud and
his school devote themselves first and foremost to tracing out the
individual's sexuality it is certainly not in order to excite piquant
sensations, but to gain a deeper insight into the driving forces that
determine that individual's fate. In this we are not saying too much,
rather understating the case. If we can strip off the veils shrouding
the problems of individual destiny, we can afterwards widen our view
from the history of the individual to the history of nations. And
first of all we can look at the history of religions, at the history
of the phantasy-systems of whole peoples and epochs. The religion of
the Old Testament elevated the _paterfamilias_ to the Jehovah of the
Jews whom the people had to obey in fear and dread. The Patriarchs are
an intermediate stage towards the deity. The neurotic fear and dread
of the Jewish religion, the imperfect, not to say unsuccessful attempt
at the sublimation of a still too barbarous people, gave rise to the
excessive severity of the Mosaic Law, the ceremonial constraint of the
neurotic.[159]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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