One may agree with the diagnosis and treatment of this case without
difficulty. It was not a Freudian case. The wound was only remotely
sexual, and McDougall manages to ignore its erotic elements altogether.
He is always the Dr. Jekyll of the couple of which Freud is the Mr.
Hyde.
Jung, for some reason, also enjoys a Jekyllian reputation, but he
hardly deserves it. Indeed, he frequently out-Hydes his former teacher.
For Freud observes that the “significance of sexual complexes must
never be forgotten, nor must they, of course, be exaggerated to the
point of being considered exclusive.”[65] Jung on the other hand writes
(I am certain of his words but have forgotten the book and the page),
“I am often asked why it is just the erotic complex rather than any
other which is the cause of the neuroses. There is but one answer. No
one asserts that this ought to be the case.... But as a simple matter
of fact, it is always found to be so, notwithstanding all the cousins
and aunts, godparents and teachers who rage against it.”
In another place, Jung declares quite sensibly that the real cause of
trouble is “the non-fulfillment of life’s task.” He is, it seems, so
anxious not to be lost beneath the shadow of the master that he seeks
to outshine him even in the production of self-contradictions.
What chiefly distinguishes this noted citizen of Zurich, however,
is the vast array of complications which he has added to the map of
our psychic “localities” by drawing in the “archetypes ... the great
primordial images”; the “collective unconscious” (inherited or innate
tendencies of various awesome shades); the “Persona,” or mask beneath
which the developed self timidly confronts the world; the “Anima,”
or submerged personality; the “Kabyr,” or undeveloped intuitive
premonitions, and many other romantic features whose names seem to have
been taken from the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Yet his attempt to write
as picturesquely as Freud is a failure, like his endeavor to evolve an
independent philosophy. Jung is merely Freud, McDougall, and water.
His principal Avatars in this country are Dr. Maurice Nicoll and Dr.
Constance Long.
And now for the Œdipus Complex.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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