GENERAL PROBLEMS OF P S Y C H O T H E R A P Y
him problems whose answer inevitably involves a discussion of fundamental questions. Such people often know very well-what the neurotic seldom or never knows—that their conflicts have to do with the fundamental problem of their own attitude, and that this is bound up with certain principles or general ideas, m a word, with their religious, ethical, or philosophical beliefs. It is precisely because of such cases that psychotherapy has to spread far beyond the confines of somatic medicine and psychiatry into regions that were formerly the province of priests^ and philosophers. From the degree to which priests and philosophers no longer discharge any duties in this respect or their competence to do so has been denied by the public, we can see what an enormous gap the psychotherapist is sometimes called upon to fill, and how remote religion on the one hand and philosophy on the other have become from the actualities of life. The parson is blamed because one always knows in advance what he is going to say; the philosopher, because he never says anything of the slightest practical value. And the odd thing is that both of them—with few and ever fewer exceptions—are distinctly unsympathetic towards psychology. 251 The positive meaning of the religious factor in a man's philosophical outlook will not, of course, prevent certain views and interpretations from losing their force and becoming obsolete, as a result of changes in the times, in the social conditions, and in the development of human consciousness. The old mythologems upon which all religion is ultimately based are, as we now see them, the expression of inner psychic events and experiences; and, by means of a ritualistic "anamnesis," they enable the conscious mind to preserve its link with the unconscious, which continues to send out or "ecphorate" the primordial images just as it did in the remote past. These images give adequate expression to the unconscious, and its instinctive movements can in that way be transmitted to the conscious mind without friction, so that the conscious mind never loses touch with its instinctive roots. If, however, certain of these images become antiquated, if, that is to say, they lose all intelligible connection with our contemporary consciousness, then our conscious acts of choice and decision are sundered from their instinctive roots, and a partial disorientation results, because our judgment then lacks any feeling of 7
7 [From éxcpoQgco, "to carry forth."—TRANS.] IZ2