The Depths of the Soul: Psycho-Analytical StudiesStekel, Wilhelm
Science
The Depths of the Soul: Psycho-Analytical Studies
Stekel, Wilhelm
Psychoanalysis
Obviously the deeper motives slumber in the unconscious, and if
they ever become conscious they are looked upon as sinfulness
and bad temper. Freud has become the founder of a wholly new
psychology by virtue of his discovery of the laws of repression and
of transference--a psychology which will be indispensable to the
criminologist of the future. What is nowadays brought to light in our
halls of justice as the psychological bases for conflicts is generally
only superficial psychology.
This is strikingly illustrated by one of the saddest of legal
proceedings of last year. I mean the trial for murder in the
Murri-Boumartini case, in consequence of which an innocent victim--so I
am convinced--the Countess Linda Boumartini is languishing in prison.
Her brother Tullio, who had murdered his brother-in-law, was accused
of an illicit relationship with his sister, for otherwise the murder
would have been inexplicable. One who has carefully read Linda’s
memoirs and her letters, which are now before the public, as well as
the confessions of the imprisoned Tullio, will be sure to laugh at the
accusation, which unquestionably owed its origin to a clerical plot.
What may have really happened is that unconscious brotherly love which
deep down under consciousness in all likelihood takes its origin from
the sexual but whose flowers appear on the surface of consciousness as
the loftiest manifestations of ethical feeling. It was brotherly love,
the primal motive which Wagner immortalised in his “Valkyrie,” that
forced the dagger into Tullio Murri’s hand. He saw his sister suffer
and go to pieces because of the brutal stupidity of his brother-in-law.
What lay hidden behind his pure fraternal love may never have entered
his consciousness.
Oh, we unfortunates, doomed to eternal blindness! What we see of the
motives of great conflicts is usually only the surface. Even in the
case of the little domestic quarrels, the irritating frictions of
everyday life, the vessel of knowledge sails only over the easily
excited ripples. But what gives these waters their black aspect
is the deep bed over which they lie. Down there, at the bottom of
the sea which represents our soul, there ever abide ugly, deformed
monsters--our instincts and desires--emanating from the beginnings
of man’s history. When they bestir their coarse bodies the sea too
trembles and is slightly set in motion. And we stupid human beings
think it is the surface wind that has begot the waves.
LOOKING INTO THE FUTURE
It was getting late. The last guests had left the café. The waiters,
tired and sleepy, were prowling around our table with a peculiar
expression in their countenances which clearly challenged us to call
for our checks....
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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