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passed into common speech both in German and in English. 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 postu-lates a disturbed state of consciousness. The unity of conscious-ness is disrupted and the intentions of the will are impeded or made impossible. Even memory is often noticeably affected, as we have seen. The complex must therefore be a psychic factor which, in terms of energy, possesses a value that sometimes exceeds that of our conscious intentions, otherwise such dis-ruptions 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, scientifically speaking, is a "feeling-toned com-plex"? It is the image of a certain psychic situation which is strongly accentuated emotionally and is, moreover, incompat-ible 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 sup-pressed with an effort of will, but not argued out of existence, and at the first suitable opportunity it reappears in all its origi-nal strength. Certain experimental investigations seem to indi-cate that its intensity or activity curve has a wavelike character, with a "wave-length" of hours, days, or weeks. This very complicated question remains as yet unclarified. 202 We have to thank the French psychopathologists, Pierre Janet in particular, for our knowledge today of the extreme dissociability of consciousness. Janet and Morton Prince both succeeded in producing four to five splittings of the personality, and it turned out that each fragment of personality had its own peculiar character and its own separate memory. These frag-ments subsist relatively independently of one another and can 96
DOI link for passed into common speech both in German and in English. 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 postu-lates a disturbed state of consciousness. The unity of conscious-ness is disrupted and the intentions of the will are impeded or made impossible. Even memory is often noticeably affected, as we have seen. The complex must therefore be a psychic factor which, in terms of energy, possesses a value that sometimes exceeds that of our conscious intentions, otherwise such dis-ruptions 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, scientifically speaking, is a "feeling-toned com-plex"? It is the image of a certain psychic situation which is strongly accentuated emotionally and is, moreover, incompat-ible 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 sup-pressed with an effort of will, but not argued out of existence, and at the first suitable opportunity it reappears in all its origi-nal strength. Certain experimental investigations seem to indi-cate that its intensity or activity curve has a wavelike character, with a "wave-length" of hours, days, or weeks. This very complicated question remains as yet unclarified. 202 We have to thank the French psychopathologists, Pierre Janet in particular, for our knowledge today of the extreme dissociability of consciousness. Janet and Morton Prince both succeeded in producing four to five splittings of the personality, and it turned out that each fragment of personality had its own peculiar character and its own separate memory. These frag-ments subsist relatively independently of one another and can 96
passed into common speech both in German and in English. 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 postu-lates a disturbed state of consciousness. The unity of conscious-ness is disrupted and the intentions of the will are impeded or made impossible. Even memory is often noticeably affected, as we have seen. The complex must therefore be a psychic factor which, in terms of energy, possesses a value that sometimes exceeds that of our conscious intentions, otherwise such dis-ruptions 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, scientifically speaking, is a "feeling-toned com-plex"? It is the image of a certain psychic situation which is strongly accentuated emotionally and is, moreover, incompat-ible 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 sup-pressed with an effort of will, but not argued out of existence, and at the first suitable opportunity it reappears in all its origi-nal strength. Certain experimental investigations seem to indi-cate that its intensity or activity curve has a wavelike character, with a "wave-length" of hours, days, or weeks. This very complicated question remains as yet unclarified. 202 We have to thank the French psychopathologists, Pierre Janet in particular, for our knowledge today of the extreme dissociability of consciousness. Janet and Morton Prince both succeeded in producing four to five splittings of the personality, and it turned out that each fragment of personality had its own peculiar character and its own separate memory. These frag-ments subsist relatively independently of one another and can 96
ABSTRACT
The nature or, more accurately, the idea of a psychic process is not so much a conscious content or conscious experience as the psychic reality which must necessarily be thought to underlie the existence of such a process. Psychology, as a subject, still comes under the philosophical faculty in most universities and remains in the hands of professional philosophers. Freud, starting from the symptomatology of the neuroses, also made out a plausible case for dreams as the mediators of unconscious contents. In his Outlines of Psychology, Wundt says: any psychical element that has disappeared from consciousness is to be called unconscious in the sense that we assume the possibility of its renewal, that is, its reappearance in the actual interconnection of psychical processes. The instincts are physiological and psychic dispositions which cause the organism to move in a clearly defined direction.
