CW8 THE STRUCTURE AND DYNAMICS OF THE PSYCHE
Extracts from
A REVIEW OF COMPLEX THEORY (1934)
200 Everyone knows nowadays that people "have complexes." What is not so well known, though far more important theoretically, is that complexes can have us. The existence of complexes throws serious doubt on the naive assumption of the unity of consciousness, which is equated with "psyche," and on the supremacy of the will. Every constellation of a complex postulates a disturbed state of consciousness. The unity of consciousness is disrupted and the intentions of the will are impeded or made impossible. Even memory is often noticeably affected. The complex must therefore by a psychic factor which, in terms of energy, possesses a value that sometimes exceeds that of our conscious intentions, otherwise such disruptions of the conscious order would not be possible at all. And in fact, an active complex puts us momentarily under a state of duress, of compulsive thinking and acting, for which under certain conditions the only appropriate term would be the judicial concept of diminished responsibility.
201 What then, is a "feeling-toned complex"? It is the image of a certain psychic situation which is strongly accentuated emotionally and is, moreover, incompatible with the habitual attitude of consciousness. This image has a powerful inner coherence, it has its own wholeness and, in addition, a relatively high degree of autonomy, so that it is subject to the control of the conscious mind to only a limited extent, and therefore behaves like an animated foreign body in the sphere of consciousness. The complex can usually be suppressed with an effort of will, but not argued out of existence, and at the first suitable opportunity it reappears in all its original strength...
202 Complexes behave like Descartes' devils and seem to delight in playing impish tricks. They slip just the wrong word into one's mouth, they make one forget the name of the person one is about to introduce, they cause a tickle in the throat just when the softest passage is being played on the piano in a concert, they make the tiptoeing latecomer trip over a chair with a resounding crash. They bid us congratulate the mourners at a funeral instead of condoling them, they are the instigators of all those maddening things which [is] attributed to the "mischievousness of the object." They are the actors in our dreams, whom we confront so powerlessly; they are the elfin beings so aptly characterized in Danish folklore by the story of the clergyman who tried to teach the lord's prayer to two elves. They took the greatest pains to repeat the words after him correctly, but at the very first sentence they could not avoid saying; "Our Father, who art not in heaven." As one might expect on theoretical grounds, these impish complexes are unteachable…
203 The deeper one penetrates into their nature - I might almost say into their biology - the more clearly do they reveal their character as splinter psyches. Dream psychology shows us as plainly as could be wished how complexes appear in personified form when there is no inhibiting consciousness to suppress them, exactly like the hobgoblins of folklore who go crashing round the house at night. We observe the same phenomenon in certain psychoses when the complexes get "loud" and appear as "voices" having a thoroughly personal character…
204 As a rule there is a marked unconsciousness of any complexes, and this naturally guarantees them all the more freedom of action. In such cases their powers of assimilation become especially pronounced, since unconsciousness helps the complex to assimilate even the ego, the result being a momentary and unconscious alteration of personality known as identification with the complex. In the Middle Ages this went by another name: it was called possession.
207 Complexes appear to be such trivial things, such ridiculous "nothings", in fact, that we are positively ashamed of them and do everything possible to conceal them. But if they were really "nothing" they could not be so painful. Painful is what causes pain - something decidedly unpleasant, therefore, which for that reason is important in itself and deserves to be taken seriously. But we are only too ready to make anything unpleasant unreal - so long as we possibly can. The outbreak of neurosis signalises the moment when this can no longer be done by the primitive magical means of apotropaic gestures and euphemisms. From this moment the complex establishes itself on the conscious surface; it can no longer be circumvented and proceeds to assimilate the ego-consciousness step by step. This eventually lead to a neurotic dissociation of the personality.
209 The tendency to make complexes unreal by assimilation does not prove their nugatoriness but, on the contrary, their importance. It is a negative admission of the instinctive fear which primitive man has of invisible things that move in the dark. With primitives, this fear does in fact set in with the fall of darkness, just as with us complexes are swamped by day, but at night raise their voices all the more clamorously, driving away sleep or filling it with bad dreams. Complexes are objects of inner experience and are not to be met in the street and in public places. It is on them that the weal and woe of personal life depends; they are the lares and penates who await us at the fireside and whose peaceableness it is dangerous to extol; they are the "little people" whose pranks disturb our nights. Naturally, so long as the evil falls only on our neighbours, it counts for nothing; but when it attacks us then one must be a doctor in order to appreciate what an appalling menace a complex can be. Only when you have seen whole families destroyed by them, morally and physically, and the unexampled tragedy and hopeless misery that follow in their train, do you feel the full impact of the reality of complexes. You then understand how idle and unscientific it is to think that a person can "imagine" a complex...
210 The universal belief in spirits is a direct expression of the complex structure of the unconscious. Complexes are in truth the living units of the unconscious psyche, and it is only through them that we are able to deduce its existence and its constitution...The via regia to the unconscious...is not the dream...but the complex, which is the architect of dreams and of symptoms. Nor is this via so very "royal" either, since the way pointed out by the complex is more like a rough and uncommonly devious footpath that often loses itself in the undergrowth and generally leads not into the heart of the unconscious but past it.
211 Fear of complexes is a bad signpost, however, because it always points away from the unconscious and back into consciousness. Complexes are something so unpleasant that nobody in his right senses can be persuaded that the motive forces which maintain them could betoken anything good. The conscious mind is invariably convinced that complexes are something unseemly and should therefore be eliminated somehow or other. Despite overwhelming evidence of all kinds that complexes have always existed and are ubiquitous, people cannot bring themselves to regard them as normal phenomena of life. The fear of complexes is a rooted prejudice, for the superstitious fear of anything unfavourable has remained untouched by our vaunted enlightenment. This fear provokes violent resistance whenever complexes are examined, and considerable determination is needed to overcome it.
