The Discovery of the Self

A Study in Psychological Cure

Elizabeth Severn, Peter L. Rudnytsky

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317572473
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Psychoanalysis
• Index: Psychology

Elizabeth Severn, known as "R.N." in Sandor Ferenczi's Clinical Diary, was Ferenczi's analysand for eight years, the patient with whom he conducted his controversial experiment in mutual analysis, and a psychoanalyst in her own right who had a transformative influence on his work. The Discovery of the Self is the distillation of that experience and allows us to hear the voice of one of the most important patients in the history of psychoanalysis. However, Freud branded Severn Ferenczi's "evil genius" and her name does not appear in Ernest Jones's biography, so she has remained largely unknown until now. This book is a reissue of Severn's landmark work of 1933, together with an introduction by Peter L. Rudnytsky that sets out the unrecognized importance of her thinking both for the development of psychoanalysis and for contemporary theory.

Inspired by the realization that Severn has embedded disguised case histories both of herself and of Ferenczi, as well as of her daughter Margaret, Rudnytsky shows how The Discovery of the Self contains "the other side of the story" of mutual analysis and is thus an indispensable companion volume to the Clinical Diary. A full partner in Ferenczi's rehabilitation of trauma theory and champion of the view that the analyst must participate in the patient's reliving of past experiences, Severn emerges as the most profound conduit for Ferenczi's legacy in the United States, if not in the entire world.

Lacking any institutional credentials and once completely marginalized, Elizabeth Severn can at long last be given her due as a formidable psychoanalyst. Newly available for the first time in more than eighty years, The Discovery of the Self is simultaneously an engaging introduction to psychotherapy that will appeal to general readers as well as a sophisticated text to be savored by psychoanalytic scholars and clinicians as a "prequel" to the works of Heinz Kohut and a neglected classic of relational psychoanalysis.

Chapter 1
What Is the Self?

“Know Thyself,” said Socrates, “and you will know the world.” This wisdom has been echoed by all great philosophers and sung by the poets throughout the ages, and indeed I think it represents the longing of all intelligent beings. But of what this self consists, and how to reach and know it, has remained difficult and obscure—until modern psychology, with its combination of science and philosophy, was born and began to solve the puzzle.

Socrates, with his superior mind and great powers of observation, turned the light of unflinching reason on human motives and behavior, uncovering cherished assumptions and questioning seeming certainties, teaching us finally that the only way of salvation is through knowledge—and yet more knowledge. Also, he had his “daemon,” a personification of what we now regard as the inner voice of the self and that may be likened to intuition or gnosis, i.e., direct or unconscious knowledge. But ordinary mortals, more or less lost in the chaos of material striving, crave to be shown a way in this quest and to be given firm footing, if not formulas, in the uncertain business of deciphering their souls. The eager youth of Athens sought Socrates as its master, and the Hindu seeker after truth always has his guru. It is, indeed, as necessary and desirable to have a guide in this great exploration as in any other. But first let us define our terms (even as Socrates insisted on doing) and our goal. What is that which we seek?

In a word, what is the self? It is the living, governing principle in man, the soul or mind that animates and gives meaning to all that he is and does. It is not only the “little I,” the mere surface manifestation with which we are all more or less familiar, but a vital and integrating principle consisting of various and dynamic forces, which in their entirety make up the individual or ego. It is the “big I” that, having its roots not only in us but in the cosmos, gives us intimations from time to time of vast processes, high aims, and even immortality. This internal entity is the representative of our higher or spiritual destinies, and is what gives significance to our whole existence.

However, the self is not only the soul but also the mind, the seat of intelligence and the instrument by which we perceive our own identity and make relation with the objective world. The Greeks used one and the same word for these two. They called it the psyche, and this is the word that modern psychology has now generally adopted to designate the immaterial part of man. This psyche, or self, is, however, only now in the process of being “discovered.” That is, until recent years it never has been subjected to the microscope, never been scrutinized at first hand for knowledge of its qualities, its possibilities, its form. When I say “at first hand,” I mean literally. I mean individual self-knowledge, not just descriptive academic psychology or the glimpses or silhouettes given us occasionally by great poets or dramatists. I mean rather to follow the quest personally, seeking answers to such questions as “What am I?,” “How did I come to be what I am?,” and “How can I become other than I am?” Every human being asks himself these questions in some way and at some time, and the last one in particular is the reverberating cry of the human heart. The question itself, “How can I become other than I am?” implies dissatisfaction and some consciousness, however dim, of the fact that growth and development is not only a physical process but also a spiritual one. It implies further that the individual does not feel himself to be static, knows that he is not merely automatic, not merely a reaction to environment, but that he is a living, creating center, capable of evolution and unfolding.

This faint but persistent recognition of the potentialities of the self has given rise to religion and to philosophy, to art and to ethics, to science and to all movements that have “progress” as their nucleus and aim. Each of these departments of man’s endeavor represents an aspiration, an effort on his part. But so much of it is wasted, never realized. A host of contradictory forces and feelings, especially in himself, rise to dim the fervor of his desires. He is overcome by sloth and apathy, by greed and sensuality. It is discouraging, and he sinks again, more or less a victim of his “fate.”

And this brings us to the third aspect or constituent of the self—that is, to the life of the emotions, the desires, and instincts. Here lie the crude and primitive forces of life with their roots in the soil. The way of religion for the most part has been—and indeed the way of civilization itself has been—to call them “bad” and to hide and suppress them as far as possible like sinners abandoned to their prison. That this was an effort to rise above the “brute creation” with its law of each for himself there can be no doubt. But the faults and the cost of this method of “taboo” development are many and high, and it is becoming obvious that humanity must seek a new and better way for itself if any further progress is to be made.

The old way, the repressive way, was not one of knowledge but rather the obliteration of certain knowledge. The way of evasion or avoidance was easier but hypocritical and unsound. Today we are trying to understand what our instincts are, rather than to hide or be ashamed of them, to find how far they can be given a place in our present-day complicated society, and what to do with them when they cannot. “Instincts” are the very foundation of our existence, instincts become “habits,” and when they reappear on a higher evolutionary level we perceive them again as “emotions.” The biological has become mixed with the psychological, and we are torn between our many conflicting feelings, such as whether to do this or that, whether it is “right” or “wrong,” whether we can “afford” to do it, and worst of all, being compelled, whether we like it or not, to commit certain acts by some inner force of which we have no knowledge. An outstanding example of the latter difficulty is that of “being in love,” which is practically always a compulsion and occurs generally for reasons unknown to its subject.

These are the phases of the self with which we are all the most familiar, i.e., the emotional ones. It is not only a question of the struggle between primitive “desire” and the moral or social standards of our environment, but it is also the internal struggle between feelings so opposite—or so complicated—as often to ruin the integrity of the self.

The enemy is within the camp.

Most people cannot, for instance, quickly answer the simple question, “what would you most like to do in life?” They are filled with doubts, uncertainties, and confusion; they have to consider what is “possible” or “probable,” or make a choice between various conflicting desires. The problem ends in frustration. But the power of feelings is recognized by all, and we are, to a large extent, swayed by this medley of forces, hither and thither, unable or unwilling to bring the light of intelligence to bear on them.

The reason for this lies partly in our faulty education. No cognizance is taken of the emotional life and little or no instruction is given the child regarding the governing of his emotions—that is, nothing more than a slap or an angry parental threat. These are inhibiting forces, it is true, but cannot be called instruction. I have written elsewhere of this glaring fault in our training system, quoting Herbert Spencer, Rousseau, and other great thinkers who have called attention to this primitiveness of our educational ideas.

But there is a deeper and more illuminating reason as to why our emotional life is so little understood, and that is because so much of it is beneath the surface, in the less-known, and even unknown, part of the self that modern psychology now terms the unconscious. The truth is that there is a very large part of the mind, actively functioning, that is completely unknown to the conscious self. It was Freud who in modern times first showed us clearly that this “unconscious” was a powerful entity, deeply submerged, thoroughly organized, and able to act quite independently of the ordinary consciousness. He succeeded to show not only that it existed, which many philosophers and teachers before him already knew, but that it contained contrary and forcible tendencies mostly rejected or repudiated by the conscious mind, and that, nevertheless, quite unknown to it, were acting as the directing forces of the life and personality.

This lifting of the invisible into visibility was a prodigious work and has entitled Freud to a distinguished place among the scientists and benefactors of the world. He demonstrated beyond a question of doubt that our conscious life, as we know it, is but a surface effect of underlying causes quite hidden from our sight, but capable of investigation. Because he established the law of mental cause and effect, he has been called a “determinist,” and by some even a “fatalist”; for it is difficult for most people to admit they are the makers of their own fate, especially when it is an unhappy one. But the importance of his discovery is great, as he devised a method for reaching the unconscious, thus greatly increasing our opportunities for dealing with it and for remedying defects in our constitution that were previously inaccessible.

Going into the unconscious in the way Freud has shown us is like going into a mine or workshop where all the raw stuff lies exposed to our view and waiting to be put into the crucible of conscious desire and aim, to be fashioned according to our purpose and ideal. To be sure, Freud did not say this. His purpose was chiefly to show the workings of the mind—what one does or may do with them after is not so much his concern. But as practically all our tastes and tendencies emanate from this subterranean factory, sometimes most surprisingly, it is a great advance toward self-knowledge when one can actually see it at work and come into possession of the secret of the dynamism of behavior.

Among simple everyday examples of the workings of the unconscious, one of the most common (and one called especially to our attention by Freud) is so-called “forgetfulness.” A person “forgets” what he meant to do and does something else instead. He makes superficial excuses for the omission and fails to realize that the thing that he actually did was also a product of his own mind and must be regarded as containing motive or cause. For instance, a gentleman whom I once invited to my house (more out of courtesy than “wish”) arrived very late, after midnight in fact, when most of the other guests were leaving. He greeted me with an appearance of cordiality, but what he said was, quite unaware of his words, “I am awfully sorry I could not come later.” I knew very well that the gentleman meant to say “earlier,” but as this phrase was a mere politeness, his unconscious told me his true feeling, which was that he did not want to come at all.

It is common enough to “forget” to pay one’s bills, to keep unpleasant appointments, to return lost articles, books, etc., to recall names, and in general to do all the things that for one reason or another are unpleasant or annoying. But it is uncommon to regard these acts as “predetermined,” i.e., as expressions of a positive cause in oneself. In addition to this is the strange phenomenon of “unconscious error,” such as sending an urgent telegram with the wrong address, precluding its ever being delivered. What makes us do such things? The unconscious—for reasons of its own.

The early experiments in hypnotism, now some forty years ago or more, showed unmistakably this division in the mind and its double-level arrangement so often working at cross purposes. I once told a hypnotized subject that she would come to the next appointment not wearing the ring she had habitually on her hand and that she had said she never took off. She arrived without it, but with no memory of the instruction that had been given her unconscious, and when I commented on its absence, she told me a long and absurd story in a vain effort to account for its disappearance: “Probably my little sister borrowed it while I slept,” she said.

This was merely an unconscious invention, and such futilities are often resorted to because the subject cannot account for his own actions.

Another example of the conflict of forces between the conscious and unconscious levels is apparent when what is called a “temptation” arises, and the attractiveness of a certain course of action is so great that it outweighs or cancels a conscious intention to be “good” or dutiful. This phenomenon often occurs entirely below the surface of consciousness—as, for instance, when one feels indignant over some offense and firmly determines to treat the offender with great politeness, only to find that one has been extremely rude and perhaps even made a scene; or one may have decided that the only fitting behavior was that of scorn, and discovered instead oneself smiling and easy in the accustomed manner.

In his Psychopathology of Everyday Life, Freud has expounded his theory of the existence of the unconscious and given numerous examples to prove it. It is not necessary to cover this ground here. I only wish to say that when one once learns to recognize the “hinterland” of the mind, the whole field of vision is vastly augmented. The “fourth-dimensional” quality of human beings comes into view, and not only are the “two voices,” soprano and alto, heard, but infinite tones and overtones, all woven into the most intricate of patterns. And, indeed, in this background lies the bulk of the energy of the human machine. Its relative force is infinitely greater than that of the conscious mind, so that one may consciously cry “yes” with loud intention, while the unconscious cries “no” still louder. Thus it comes that the pathway to hell is often paved with good intentions: one can “intend” the very best, but the “titan” in the depths may force procrastination and finally annulment.

From this point of view our “choices” are not free choices at all, but are determined by tendencies behind the narrow field of vision—tendencies that, for the most part, are contrary to our conscious will and have been rejected by it. Rejected, but not silent, not dead. Nothing is forgotten, nothing is lost; we are today the accumulation of all that we ever have been, and whether we “remember” it or not, it continues to be a living force.

Some member of the Catholic clergy, a Jesuit perhaps, has said “give us the child until he is three, and he will be ours for ever.” While no statistics are available on this point, I do not doubt its truth. The chief forces in the unconscious seem to be not from the higher soul levels but from the patterns engraved upon the mind in early childhood, when it is plastic and unable to discriminate or refuse. Whatever is put into it stays there, and especially do the emotions survive that were created in childhood or even infancy by the people and events surrounding it. So pronounced is this law of the survival of early impressions that when a certain physician consulting me regarding his psychic problems told me that he was an active worker on the City Milk Commission for the providing of pure milk for infants, I had no hesitation in saying, “And were you deprived of milk when you were an infant?” He looked startled and had to admit that he had been, that his mother died when he was six weeks old, and that it was common talk in the family that he had been difficult to feed.

So clear is this connection between the events of early life and all subsequent choices and actions that one of the chief necessities of psychological therapeutic procedure is to uncover the forgotten life of childhood and bring it back, so far as possible, to consciousness. Very much that is ascribed to “inheritance” is found to be an unconscious retention of the early environmental impressions—habits and tendencies imprinted so early that their origin is obscure, and so deeply hidden that they are practically ineradicable. These make up “family traits,” personal characteristics, and disposition to a very great degree.

Besides these purely personal impressions, the unconscious contains, I believe, certain racial and social characteristics that cannot be said to be “inherited” in the physical sense but that, nevertheless, form a certain psychic framework in which the individual grows. It is well known, for instance, that the English are characteristically devoted to honor, the Americans to money, the Jews to family, the French to sexuality and intellectualism.

The difference between races, however, is nothing like so great in the unconscious as in the conscious, and even the differences between primitive and highly cultivated races disappear if one goes very far beneath the surface, as culture is, after all, a very late acquisition and does not alter the unconscious that lies under it. To analyze a Frenchman, a Chinaman, and an American would not, I am sure, present any fundamental differences. Habit and custom alter, but instincts and emotions do not, at least not very much.

The social characteristics of family and general environment are very marked: each child is the product of the community and the group of people into which he is born. Before he is old enough to “think,” he has already absorbed by hearing, sight, and other sense impressions all the general attitudes and tendencies of those about him. From birth on, and probably even before, the specific characteristics, especially of his mother as a person, and later of his nurse and other associates, are impressed upon him as upon graven wax. If there was, for example, a doting grandfather in the family always giving sweets to the child, the same child, when an adult, will be looking for another, substitute grandfather to supply him with the equivalent “sweet” in some form or other. Or, if there was an angry and hysterical mother, her boy, when grown, will be unconsciously drawn to other women of the same type or possibly driven to the opposite extreme, seeking relief from his internal picture with a woman of great docility, or even one weakly dependent on him.

It is little realized how sensitive the child’s mind is, and especially how even in its “unconscious” years—that is generally until the third year—it is the constant recipient of the words, actions, and behavior (and I believe also the thoughts) of those in his environment. A little later comes “imitation,” and this also becomes unconscious, so that adults rarely realize the origin of most of their opinions, prejudices, cravings, and attitudes. We can now, however, trace these to their sources, so that “knowing oneself” can even go back to infancy and the mental soil in which one was reared.

To do so uncovers the process by which most of us have become mere automatons and lost our essential selves—a process the senselessness and harm of which is remarkably well conceived and expressed by Aldous Huxley in his recent novel Brave New World. In this book he lets his daring fantasy picture for us a time in the future when all children will be “conditioned” or automatically trained by “sleep teaching,” where mechanical instruments, like gramophones, are used to repeat ceaselessly certain precepts into their ears while sleeping. And he shows further the later results of this mechanical “education,” how the same children, when grown, repeat the same ideas over and over like automatic dullards without even knowing what they are saying. What Huxley has made us see by the power of his imagination is amusing, but it is also tragic and richly illuminating for the thoughtful. How automatic we are! And how little we know the real self that lies under the automatisms.

The early memories that have been lost to consciousness make up the state described by Freud as “repression.” By this term he means psychological material that is caught and held in a fixed form and place in the mind, and that by reason of its loss of fluidity remains unavailable to consciousness. This is pathological. By removing “repression,” the mind is relieved from an obstacle of a fixated nature and is restored to its normal state of flux and plasticity. (Removing repressions has nothing whatever to do with encouraging licence of action—one of the popular misconceptions of psychoanalysis.) In the normal mind very much that has happened is naturally and easily “forgotten,” that is, it “fades” and becomes innocuous; but repression is a pathological state wherein one cannot forget in reality and painful memories remain submerged in the mind, to cause tension and nervous symptoms. Their “outcroppings” are numerous, however, and constantly deflect and disturb the normal course of life. A repressed or forgotten anger, for instance, may cause a perpetual bad temper or make a man throw up his job on slight pretext because he unconsciously hates his employer. The unconscious is, in fact, full of these undischarged “complexes” and to reach and release them is the special endeavor of psychoanalysis—a diffi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• The Work of Elizabeth Severn: An Appreciation
• Introduction: The Other Side of the Story: Severn on Ferenczi and Mutual Analysis
• 1 What Is the Self?
• 2 What Makes People Ill
• 3 Psychoanalysis—The Modern Method of Cure
• 4 Psychosynthesis—The Building-Up Process
• 5 Nightmares Are Real
• 6 The Emotional Life
• 7 A Way Out—Plasticity of the Human Mind, Education of Children