When beginning to work with a new patient I will frequently draw a large circle. Then at the circumference I will draw a small niche(壁龛). Pointing to the inside of the niche, I say, “That represents your conscious mind. All the rest of the circle, 95 percent or more, represents your unconscious. If you work long enough and hard enough to understand yourself, you will come to discover that this vast part of your mind, of which you now have little awareness, contains riches beyond imagination.”
One of the ways, of course, that we know of the existence of this vast but hidden realm of the mind and the wealth it contains is through our dreams. A man of some prominence(著名) came to see me for a depression of many years’ duration. He found no joy in his work, but had little idea why. Although his parents were relatively poor and unknown, a number of his father’s forebears had been famous men. My patient made little mention of them. His depression was caused by many factors. Only after some months did we begin to consider the matter of his ambition. To the session following the one in which the subject of ambition was first raised he brought a dream from the night before, a fragment of which follows: “We were in an apartment filled with huge, oppressive(压迫的) pieces of furniture. I was much younger than I am now. My father wanted me to sail across the bay to pick up a boat he had for some reason left on an island across the bay. I was eager to make this journey and asked him how I could find the boat. He took me to one side where there was this particularly huge and oppressive piece of furniture, an enormous chest(箱子), at least twelve feet long and extending all the way up to the ceiling, with maybe twenty or thirty gigantic(巨大的) drawers in it, and told me I could find the boat if I sighted along the edge of the chest.” Initially the meaning of the dream was unclear, so, as is customary(习俗的), I asked him to associate to this huge chest of drawers. Immediately he said, “For some reason—maybe because the piece seemed so oppressive—it makes me think of a sarcophagus(石棺).” “What about the drawers,” I asked. Suddenly he grinned(露齿而笑). “Maybe I wanted to kill off all my ancestors,” he said. “It makes me think of a family tomb or vault(墓穴), each one of the drawers big enough to hold a body.” The meaning of the dream was then clear. He had indeed in his youth been given a sighting, a sighting for life, along the tombs of his famous dead paternal ancestors, and had been following this sighting toward fame(名誉). But he found it an oppressive force in his life and wished that he could psychologically kill off his ancestors so as to be free from this compulsive(难以抑制的) force.
Anyone who has worked much with dreams will recognize this one to be typical. I would like to focus on its helpfulness as one of the respects in which it is typical. This man had started to work on a problem. Almost immediately his unconscious produced a drama(剧本) that elucidated(阐明) the cause of his problem, a cause of which he had previously been unaware. It did this through use of symbols in a manner as elegant as that of the most accomplished playwright(剧作家). It is difficult to imagine that any other experience occurring at this point in his therapy could have been as eloquently(富于表现力地) edifying(启迪的) to him and me as this particular dream. His unconscious dearly seemed to want to assist him and our work together, and did so with consummate skill.
It is precisely because they are so routinely helpful that psychotherapists generally make the analysis of dreams a significant part of their work. I must confess that there are many dreams whose significance completely eludes(逃避) me, and it is tempting to wish petulantly(任性地) that the unconscious would often have the decency( 体面) to speak to us in dearer language. However, on those occasions when we succeed in making the translation, the message always seems to be one designed to nurture our spiritual growth. In my experience, dreams that can be interpreted invariably provide helpful information to the dreamer. This assistance comes in a variety of forms: as warnings of personal pitfalls(陷阱); as guides to the solution of problems we have been unable to solve; as proper indication that we are wrong when we think we are right, and as correct encouragement that we are right when we think we are probably wrong; as sources of necessary information about ourselves that we are lacking; as direction-finders when we feel lost; and as pointers to the way we need to go when we are floundering(挣扎).
The unconscious may communicate to us when we are awake with as much elegance and beneficence as when we are asleep, although in a slightly different form. This is the form of “idle thoughts,” or even fragments of thoughts. Most of the time, as with dreams, we pay these idle thoughts no attention and cast them aside as if they were without significance. It is for this reason that patients in psychoanalysis are instructed again and again to say whatever comes into their minds no matter how silly or insignificant it may initially seem. Whenever a patient says, “It’s ridiculous, but this silly thought keeps coming to my mind—it doesn’t make any sense, but you’ve told me I have to say these things,” I know that we have hit pay dirt(有利可图的事物), that the patient has just received an extremely valuable message from the unconscious, a message that will significantly illuminate(阐明) his or her situation. While these “idle thoughts” usually provide us with insight into ourselves, they may also provide us with dramatic insights into others or into the world outside ourselves. As an example of an “idle thought” message from the unconscious, and one that falls into the latter category, let me describe an experience of my own mind while working with a patient. The patient was a young woman who was suffering since early adolescence from a sensation of dizziness, a sensation that she was about to topple over any moment, for which no physical cause had ever been found. Because of this sensation of dizziness she walked with a straight-legged, wide-based gait, almost a waddle(蹒跚行走). She was quite intelligent and charming, and initially I had no idea as to what might be causing her dizziness, of which psychotherapy of some years’ duration had failed to cure her, but for which she had nonetheless recently come to me for assistance. In the middle of our third session, as she was comfortably seated and talking about this or that, a single word suddenly popped into my mind: “Pinocchio.” I was trying to concentrate on what my patient was saying, so I immediately pushed the word out of consciousness. But within a minute, despite myself, the word came back into my mind, almost visible, as if spelled out in the back of my eyes: P i n o c c h i o. Annoyed now, I blinked my eyes and forced my attention back to my patient. Yet, as if it had a will of its own, within another minute the word was back into my awareness, somehow demanding to be recognized. “Wait a second,” I finally said to myself, “if this word is so anxious to get into my mind, maybe I’d better damn well pay attention to it, because I know these things can be important, and I know if my unconscious is trying to say something to me I ought to listen.” So I did. “Pinocchio! What the hell could Pinocchio mean? You don’t suppose it could have anything to do with my patient, do you? You don’t suppose she’s Pinocchio, is she? Hey; wait a minute; she’s cute, like a little doll. She’s dressed in red, white and blue. Each time she’s been here she’s been dressed in red, white and blue. She walks funnily, like a stiff(僵硬的)-legged wooden soldier. Hey, that’s it! She’s a puppet(木偶). By God, she is Pinocchio! She’s a puppet!” Instantly the essence of the patient was revealed to me: she was not a real person; she was a stiff, wooden little puppet trying to act alive but afraid that at any moment she would topple(不稳而倒下) over and collapse in a tangle of sticks and strings. One by one the supporting facts rapidly emerged: an incredibly domineering mother who pulled strings, who took great pride in having toilet-trained her daughter “overnight”; a will totally devoted to fulfilling the external expectations of others, to being clean, neat, proper, tidy and saying all the right things, frantically(紧张忙乱地) trying to juggle(尽力应付) the demands upon her; a total lack of self-motivation and ability to make autonomous decisions.
This immensely(极其) valuable insight about my patient presented itself to my awareness as an unwelcome intruder(侵入者). I had not invited it. I did not want it. Its presence seemed alien(外星人) to me and irrelevant to the business in which I was engaged, a needless distraction. Initially I resisted it, attempting several times to kick it out the door through which it had come. This seemingly alien and unwanted quality is characteristic of unconscious material and its manner of presentation to the conscious mind. It was partly because of this quality and the associated resistance of the conscious mind that Freud and his initial followers tended to perceive the unconscious as a repository of the primitive, the antisocial and the evil within us. It is as if they assumed, from the fact that our consciousness did not want it, that unconscious material was therefore “bad.” Along these same lines, they tended to assume that mental illness somehow resided in the unconscious as a demon(魔鬼) in the subterranean(地下的) depths of our mind. To Jung(荣格) fell the responsibility of initiating a correction in this view, which he did in a variety of ways, including coining the phrase: “The Wisdom of the Unconscious.” My own experience has confirmed Jung’s views in this regard to the point where I have come to conclude that mental illness is not a product of the unconscious; it is instead a phenomenon of consciousness or a disordered relationship between the conscious and the unconscious: Consider the matter of repression(压抑), for instance. Freud discovered in many of his patients sexual desires and hostile(敌对的) feelings of which they were not aware yet which were clearly making them ill. Because these desires and feelings resided in the unconscious, the notion arose that it was the unconscious that “caused” mental illness. But why were these desires and feelings located in the unconscious in the first place? Why were they repressed? The answer is that the conscious mind did not want them. And it is in this not wanting, this disowning, that the problem lies. The problem is not that human beings have such hostile and sexual feelings, but rather that human beings have a conscious mind that is so often unwilling to face these feelings and tolerate the pain of dealing with them, and that is so willing to sweep them under the rug.
A third way in which the unconscious manifests itself and speaks to us if we care to listen (which we usually don’t) is through our behavior. I am referring to slips of the tongue and other “mistakes” in behavior, or “Freudian slips,” which Freud, in his Psychopathology of Everyday Life , initially demonstrated to be manifestations of the unconscious. Freud’s use of the word “psychopathology” to describe these phenomenon is again indicative of his negative orientation toward the unconscious; he perceived it as acting a spiteful role or at least a mischievous(恶作剧的) devil(撒旦) trying to trip us up rather than seeing it as a kind of good fairy working very hard to make us honest. When a patient makes a slip in psychotherapy, the event is invariably helpful to the process of therapy or healing. At these times the conscious mind of the patient is engaged in trying to combat therapy, intent upon hiding the true nature of the self from the therapist and from self-awareness. It is the unconscious, however, that is allied(结盟的) with the therapist, struggling toward openness, honesty, truth, and reality, fighting to “tell it like it is.”
Let me give some examples.
A meticulous(注意细节的) woman, totally unable to acknowledge in herself the emotion of anger and therefore unable to express anger openly, began a pattern of arriving a few minutes late for her therapy sessions. I suggested to her that this was because she was feeling some resentment toward me or toward therapy or both. She firmly denied that this was a possibility, explaining that her lateness was purely a matter of this or that accidental force in life and proclaiming her wholehearted appreciation of me and motivation for our work together. On the evening following this session she paid her monthly bills, including my own. Her check to me arrived unsigned. At her next session I informed her of this, suggesting that she had not paid me properly, because she was angry. She said, “But that’s ridiculous! I have never in my life not signed a check. You know how meticulous I am in these matters. It is impossible that I did not sign your check.” I showed her the unsigned check. Although she had always been extremely controlled in our sessions, she now suddenly broke into sobs(啜泣): “What is happening to me?” she wailed. “I’m falling apart. It’s like I’m two people.” In her agony(剧痛), and with my acknowledgment that she was indeed like a house divided against itself, she began for the first time to accept the possibility that at least a part of her might harbor(庇护) the feeling of anger. The first step of progress was made.
Another patient with a problem with anger was a man who believed it unconscionable(不合理的) to feel, much less express, anger toward any member of his family. Because his sister was visiting him at the time, he was telling me about her, describing her as a “perfectly delightful(令人愉快的) person.” Later in the session he began telling me about a small dinner party he was hosting that night, which, he said, would include a neighboring couple and “of course, my sister-in-law.” I pointed out to him that he had just referred to his sister as sister-in-law. “I suppose you’re going to tell me this is one of those Freudian slips,” he remarked blithely(快活地). “Yes, I am,” I replied. “What your unconsciousness is saying is that you don’t want your sister to be your sister, that as far as you’re concerned, she’s your sister-in-law only, and that actually you hate her guts(你恨她入骨).” “I don’t hate her guts,” he responded, “but she does talk incessantly, and I know that at dinner tonight she will monopolize the whole conversation. I guess maybe I am embarrassed by her sometimes.” Again a small beginning was made.
Not all slips express hostility or denied “negative” feelings. They express all denied feelings, negative or positive. They express the truth, the way things really are as opposed to the way we like to think they are. Perhaps the most touching slip of the tongue in my experience was made by a young woman on her initial visit with me. I knew her parents to be distant and insensitive(漠不关心的) individuals who had raised her with a great deal of propriety(得体) but an absence of affection or genuine caring. She presented herself to me as an unusually mature, self-confident, liberated and independent woman of the world who sought treatment from me because, she explained, “I am sort of at loose ends for the moment, with time on my hands, and I thought that a little bit of psychoanalysis might contribute to my intellectual development.” Inquiring as to why she was at loose ends(无所适从) at the moment, I learned that she had just dropped out of college because she was five months’ pregnant. She did not want to get married. She vaguely(粗略地) thought she might put the baby up for adoption following its delivery and then proceed to Europe for further education. I asked her if she had informed the father of the baby, whom she had not seen for four months, of her pregnancy. “Yes,” she said, “I did drop him a little note to let him know that our relationship was the product of a child.” Meaning to say that a child was the product of their relationship, she had instead told me that underneath her mask of a woman of the world she was a hungry little girl, starved for affection, who had gotten pregnant in a desperate attempt to obtain mothering by becoming herself a mother. I did not confront her with her slip, because she was not at all ready to accept her dependency needs or experience them as being safe to have. Nonetheless, the slip was helpful to her by helping me be aware that the person really seeing me was a frightened young child who needed to be met with protective gentleness and the simplest, almost physical kind of nurture possible for a long time to come.
These three patients who made slips were not trying to hide themselves from me as much as from themselves. The first really believed that there was no shred of resentment(一丝怨恨) in her. The second was totally convinced that he bore no animosity(憎恶) toward any member of his family. The last thought of herself in no other way than as a woman of the world. Through a complex of factors, our conscious self-concept(自我评估) almost always diverges(出现分歧) to a greater or lesser degree from the reality of the person we actually are. We are almost always either less or more competent than we believe ourselves to be. The unconscious, however, knows who we really are. A major and essential task in the process of one’s spiritual development is the continuous work of bringing one’s conscious self-concept into progressively greater congruence(一致) with reality. When a large part of this lifelong task is accomplished with relative rapidity, as it may be through intensive psychotherapy, the individual will often feel “reborn.” “I am not the person I was,” a patient will say with real joy about the dramatic change in his or her consciousness; “I am a totally new and different person.” Such a person has no difficulty in understanding the words of the song: “I once was lost, but now am found, was blind, but now I see.”
If we identify our self with our self-concept or self-awareness or consciousness in general, then we must say concerning the unconscious that there is a part of us that is wiser than we are. We have talked about this “wisdom of the unconscious” primarily in terms of self-knowledge(自知之明) and self-revelation(自我启示). In the example of my patient whom my unconscious revealed to me to be Pinocchio, I attempted to demonstrate that the unconscious is wiser than we are about other people as well as ourselves. The fact of the matter is that our unconscious is wiser than we are about everything. Having arrived after dark on a vacation in Singapore for the first time, my wife and I left our hotel for a stroll(散步). We soon came to a large open space at the far end of which, two or three blocks away, we could just make out in the darkness the vague(不清楚的) shape of a sizable building. “I wonder what that building is,” my wife said. I immediately answered with casual and total certainty, “Oh, that’s the Singapore Cricket Club.” The words had popped out of my mouth with utter(完全的) spontaneity. Almost immediately I regretted them. I had no basis whatever for saying them. I had not only never been in Singapore before, I had never seen a cricket club before in daylight, much less in darkness. Yet to my amazement, as we walked on and came to the other side of the building, which was its front, there by the entrance was a brass(黄铜) plaque(匾牌) reading Singapore Cricket Club .
How did I know this which I did not know? Among the possible explanations, one is that of Jung’s theory of the “collective unconscious,” in which we inherit the wisdom of the experience of our ancestors without ourselves having the personal experience. While this kind of knowledge may seem bizarre(古怪的) to the scientific mind, strangely enough its existence is recognized in our common everyday language. Take the word “recognize” itself. When we are reading a book and come across an idea or theory that appeals to us, that “rings a bell” with us, we “recognize” it to be true. Yet this idea or theory may be one of which we have never before consciously thought. The word says we “re-know” the concept, as if we knew it once upon a time, forgot it, but then recognized it as an old friend. It is as if all knowledge and all wisdom were contained in our minds, and when we learn “something new” we are actually only discovering something that existed in our self all along. This concept is similarly reflected in the word “education,” which is derived from the Latin educare , literally translated as “to bring out of” or “to lead forth.” Therefore when we educate people, if we use the word seriously, we do not stuff something new into their minds; rather, we lead this something out of them; we bring it forth from the unconscious into their awareness. They were the possessors of the knowledge all along.
But what is its source, this part of us that is wiser than we are? We do not know Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious suggests that our wisdom is inherited. Recent scientific experiments with genetic material in conjunction with the phenomenon of memory suggest that it is indeed possible to inherit knowledge, which is stored in the form of nucleic acid codes within cells(细胞内的核酸编码). The concept of chemical storage of information allows us to begin to understand how the information potentially available to the human mind might be stored in a few cubic inches of brain substance. But even this extraordinary sophisticated model, allowing for the storage of inherited as well as experiential knowledge in a small space, leaves unanswered the most mind-boggling(难以置信的) questions. When we speculate on the technology of such a model—how it might be constructed, how synchronized, and so on—we are still left standing in total awe before the phenomenon of the human mind. Speculation on these matters is hardly different in quality from speculation about such models of cosmic control as God having at His command armies and choirs of archangels(大天使), angels, seraphims(六翼天使) and cherubims(基路伯) to assist Him in the task of ordering the universe. The mind, which sometimes presumes to believe that there is no such thing as a miracle, is itself a miracle.