Psychology of the Unconscious: A Study of the Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido. A Contribution to the History of the Evolution of ThoughtJung, C. G. (Carl Gustav)
Philosophy
Psychology of the Unconscious: A Study of the Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido. A Contribution to the History of the Evolution of Thought
Jung, C. G. (Carl Gustav)
Libido (Psychology); Mother and child; Psychoanalysis; Subconsciousness; Symbolism (Psychology)
A fleeting glance at the history of evolution is sufficient to teach
us that countless complicated functions to which to-day must be
denied any sexual character were originally pure derivations from
the general impulse of propagation. During the ascent through the
animal kingdom an important displacement in the fundamentals of the
procreative instinct has taken place. The mass of the reproductive
products with the uncertainty of fertilization has more and more
been replaced by a controlled impregnation and an effective
protection of the offspring. In this way part of the energy required
in the production of eggs and sperma has been transposed into the
creation of mechanisms for allurement and for protection of the
young. Thus we discover the first instincts of art in animals used
in the service of the impulse of creation, and limited to the
breeding season. The original sexual character of these biological
institutions became lost in their organic fixation and functional
independence. Even if there can be no doubt about the sexual origin
of music, still it would be a poor, unæsthetic generalization if one
were to include music in the category of sexuality. A similar
nomenclature would then lead us to classify the cathedral of Cologne
as mineralogy because it is built of stones. It can be a surprise
only to those to whom the history of evolution is unknown to find
how few things there really are in human life which cannot be
reduced in the last analysis to the instinct of procreation. It
includes very nearly everything, I think, which is beloved and dear
to us. We spoke just now of libido as the creative impulse and at
the same time we allied ourselves with the conception which opposes
libido to hunger in the same way that the instinct of the
preservation of the species is opposed to the instinct of
self-preservation. In nature, this artificial distinction does not
exist. Here we see only a continuous life impulse, a will to live
which will attain the creation of the whole species through the
preservation of the individual. Thus far this conception coincides
with the idea of the Will in Schopenhauer, for we can conceive Will
objectively, only as a manifestation of an internal desire. This
throwing of psychological perceptions into material reality is
characterized philosophically as “introjection.” (Ferenczi’s
conception of “introjection” denoted the reverse, that is, the
taking of the outer world into the inner world.)[251] Naturally, the
conception of the world was distorted by introjection. Freud’s
conception of the principle of desire is a voluntary formulation of
the idea of introjection, while his once more voluntarily conceived
“principle of reality” corresponds functionally to that which I
designate as “corrective of reality,” and R. Avenarius[252]
designates as “empiriokritische Prinzipialkoordination.” The
conception of power owes its existence to this very introjection;
this has already been said expressively by Galileo in his remark
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