Page:Psychology of the Unconscious (1916).djvu/561

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pp. 49-86]
THE HYMN OF CREATION
491

half questioning, half sorrowful. The young lady knew intuitively that she did not wholly understand that an oracle had spoken to her in the form of an allegory and that Nietzsche had revealed to her a glimpse into the dark abyss of his inner self." On page 166 Bernoulli continues as follows: "One can perhaps see, behind that harmless pleasure of faultless exactness in dress, a dread of contamination arising from some mysterious and tormenting disgust."

Nietzsche went to Basle when he was very young; he was then just at the age when other young people are contemplating marriage. Seated next to a young woman, he tells her that something terrible and disgusting is taking place in his transparent hand, something which he must take completely into his body. We know what illness caused the premature ending of Nietzsche's life. It was precisely this which he would tell the young lady, and her laughter was indeed discordant.

2 A whole series of psychoanalytic experiences could easily be produced here to illustrate this statement.

3 Ferenczi: "Introjektion und Übertragung," Jahrbuch, Pt. I (1912).


CHAPTER III

1 The choice of words and comparisons is always significant. A psychology of travels and the unconscious forces co-operating with them is yet to be written.

2 This mental disturbance had until recently the very unfortunate designation, Dementia Praecox, given by Kraepelin. It is extremely unfortunate that this malady should have been discovered by the psychiatrists, for its apparently bad prognosis is due to this circumstance. Dementia praecox is synonymous with therapeutic hopelessness. How would hysteria appear if judged from the standpoint of psychiatry! The psychiatrist naturally sees in the institutions only the worst cases of dementia praecox, and as a consequence of his therapeutic helplessness he must be a pessimist. How deplorable would tuberculosis appear if the physician of an asylum for the incurable described the nosology of this disease! Just as little as the chronic cases of hysteria, which gradually degenerate in insane asylums, are characteristic of real hysteria, just so little are the cases of dementia praecox in asylums characteristic of those early forms so frequent in general practice, and which Janet has described under the name of Psychasthenia. These cases fall under Bleuler's description of Schizophrenia, a name which connotes a psychological fact, and might easily be compared with similar facts in hysteria. The term which I use in my private work for these conditions is Introversion Neurosis, by which, in my opinion, the most important characteristic of the condition is given, namely, the predominance of introversion over transference, which latter is the characteristic feature of hysteria.

In my "Psychology of Dementia Praecox" I have not made any study of the relationship of the Psychasthenia of Janet. Subsequent experience with Dementia Praecox, and particularly the study of Psychasthenia in Paris, have demonstrated to me the essential relationship of Janet's group with the Introversion Neuroses (the Schizophrenia of Bleuler).

3 Compare the similar views in my article, "Über die Psychologie der Dementia praecox," Halle 1907; and "Inhalt der Psychose," Deuticke, Wien 1908. Also Abraham: "Die psychosexuellen Differenzen der