Page:Psychology of the Unconscious (1916).djvu/45

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fore inhibited from finding his biological adaptation. He need no longer be unconscious of the motives underlying his actions or hide himself behind a changed exterior, in other words, be merely a series of reactions to stimuli as the mechanists have it, but he may to a certain extent become a self-creating and self-determining being.

Indeed, there seems to be an impulse towards adaptation quite as Bergson sees it, and it would seem to be a task of the highest order to use intelligence to assist one’s self to work with this impulse.

Through the investigation of these different avenues leading into the hidden depths of the human being and through the revelation of the motives and influences at work there, although astonishing to the uninitiated, a very clear and definite conception of the actual human relationship—brotherhood—of all mankind is obtained. It is this recognition of these common factors basically inherent in humanity from the beginning and still active, which is at once both the most hopeful and the most feared and disliked part of psychoanalysis.

It is disliked by those individuals who have prided themselves upon their superiority and the distinction between their reactions and motives and those of ordinary mankind. In other words, they attempt to become personalities through elevating themselves and lowering others, and it is a distinct blow to discover that beneath these pretensions lie the very ordinary elements shared in common by all. On the other hand, to those who have been able to recognize their own weaknesses and have