A Psychonomic Contribution to Analytical Technique 1
The Psychological Clinic Copyright, 1933, by Lightner Witmer, Editor Vol. XXII, No. 1 March-May, 1933 PROMETHEAN CONSTELLATIONS PART I
- Author:
Henry E. Starr, Ph.D.
Read of the Department of Psychology and Director of the Psychological and Mental Hygiene Clinic of Eutgers University Consulting psychologists are increasingly being called upon to advise in the complex and delusive field of personality. Constantly augmented numbers of individuals with incipient mental disorders are applying to them for first aid. Many quite severe cases are being referred to them for study and treatment by honest and capable physicians who have first assured themselves by thorough examination that there is no detectable organic basis for the disorder.
The responsibility thus entailed is great. “We need especially to be on our guard against permitting ourselves to slip into the morass of a lop-sided cult.2 As psychologists, presumably acquainted with the basic principles of psychology, familiar with the behavior of normal individuals and recognizing the importance of individual differences, our approach to the problems must be along broad psychonomic lines.3 As Witmer has pointed out, it is imposi Read at the annual meeting of the Association of Consulting Psychologists, at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, May 6, 1933. 2 A not unlikely danger. Cf. Starr, H. E. Certain Phases in the Psychology of Psychologists, Psychol. Clin., 1932, 21, 69-76. 3 The term ‘’ psychonomic’’ is employed in the Witmerian sense as denoting “what is in conformity to a fundamental or universal law of thought. The orientation of the c].’nical psychologist is, or at least ought to be, psy1 1 sible to make adequate interpretations of human behavior “without having had instruction in the psychological diagnosis of normal mentality, personality and will.”4 In that sentence, perhaps, is the key to the inadequacy of much of modern psychopathically founded psycho-analysis. Be that as it may, careful psycho-analysis of even the pathological, itself finds more in the unconscious than the limited number of complexes which are the stock in trade of the average analyst. This is, I think, clearly indicated by certain findings of the Psychological and Mental Hygiene Clinic of Rutgers University. They are clinical and empirical findings based upon the scientific study of both normal and abnormal individuals and they point definitely to certain conclusions important to the adequate understanding and treatment not alone of such as may seriously require orthogenic aid but of human beings in general.
During the past four years, approximately 1,000 individuals have been examined at the Rutgers Clinic. In most cases some attempt has been made to study the personality from the six points of view required by the psychonomic orientation. In many instances, prolonged analyses have been conducted, involving dream analysis, hypnotic and hypnagogic vision, controlled and free association, etc. In every analysis we have endeavored rigorously to exclude, or at least to minimize, the influence of suggestion in the initial study. For example, even though the examiner might, because of obvious symptomatology in a particular case, expect to find an (Edipus complex, he sedulously avoided steering in that or any other direction. Nor was an analysis necessarily terminated when an expected complex appeared. That is, of course, an chonomic… . Psychonomics is the body of fundamental laws or axiomatic truths involved in the psycho-analytic interpretation of human behavior. The term is more inclusive than the word ‘psycho-analysis’ which in its Freudian orientation is a particular form of inquiry too much concerned with sex and the pathology of sex. Psycho-analysis of more general orientation has been for many centuries an organized procedure in introspective psychology, aesthetic criticism, medical therapeutics, the Roman Catholic confessional and the criminal courts?wherever, in fact, inquiry is made to ascertain the motivation controlling the behavior of persons, whether as individuals or in groups. The psychonomic analysis of human behavior is concerned with what is considered normal and orthogenic, and only by way of exception with what is considered non-normal and pathogenic.” “Witmer, Lightner. Psychological Diagnosis and the Psychonomic Orientation of Analytic Science. Psychol. Clin., 1925, 16, 1-18. Reprinted in Clinical Psychology, edited by R. A. Brotemarkle, University of Pennsylvania Press and Oxford University Press, Philadelphia and London, 1931.
4 Quoted from article cited in preceding foot-note. egregious error of technique to which we all are liable unless definitely on our guard against it. When, in the course of analytic exploration, the particular kind of complex anticipated does appear, it is all too easy to stop the analysis. Obviously, the patient should be encouraged to continue his associations beyond the point of the initial appearance of any particular complex or constellation. One can always return to it if desired. And often the trail leads definitely through it and beyond to some quite different and more deeply seated and disturbing element. Let me illustrate with a case from the clinic files.5
L. was a junior in college when his family physician sent him to us because of a marked anxiety neurosis, complicated by specific phobias. “Without any suggested lead from the examiner, the trail of association led rather circuitously but unmistakably to a highly emotionally-toned homo-sexual complex. When, however, no particular attention was paid to this, and he was non-committally urged to continue, L. passed through this level of associations and revealed rather suddenly, an ardent drive in the direction of what, for lack of a better term, may be called the “unio mystica.” There was neither excessive parental fixation nor abnormal “Wille zur Macht.” The homo-sexual complex was relatively superficial. The root cause of his disorder was the repression of a strongly motivated constellation urging in the direction of that which the famous “Brother Lawrence” spoke of as “the habitual sense of God’s presence.’’6
As a child, L. had been quite sympathetic toward all animate things and empathetic toward the inanimate. “An universal livingness in nature,” ” a feeling with and into things,” “an ever present spiritual being”?emotionalized ideas such as these, early fused into a potent constellation which was, however, repressed under increasing pressure by his family and his social group. Unlike Shaw’s Black Girl, he was sent rather than went “in search of God.’’ He was sent to Sunday school. He was sent to catecheti5 Because of what appears to be the popularity of that complex among certain psycho-analysts by whom, I understand, it is not unusual for a patient to be given an encouraging booklet on the subject even before exploratory analysis, I have selected a case who displayed a homo-sexual symptomatology? as the result of reading such a tract.
6 ffloge, on Abrege de la Vie du Frere Laurent de la Resurrection. In Recueil de Divers Traites de Theologie Mystique qui entrent dans la Celebre Dispute du Quietisme qui s’agite presentement en France. Cologne, 1699. There are several translations into English under the title of “The Practice of the Presence of God,” by Brother Lawrence (Nicholas Herman). cal classes. He was sent to church. He was sent “to seek God” in conformity with the standards of his group. An intensely anthropomorphic concept was forced upon him. His earlier feelings, ideas, satisfactions and ideals were tabooed. “God couldn’t be found out of doors in the sunshine or when one was by one’s self. On the contrary, God was locked up in a building and the clergy were his keepers.” Such, he reported, were his impressions at this period of powerful anthropomorphistic pressure. Superficially this pressure was successful. Beneath these impressions, consciously accepted, his earlier drives were rigorously repressed into the unconscious, despite intermittent revulsions of feeling. Upon arriving at college he soon became associated with a rather atheistic group who tabooed with equal rigor the concepts of deity of both previous periods of his life. The anthropomorphic god went into the discard?not very vigorously repressed, perhaps, but enough to force under yet more deeply his childhood images and feelings and the motivation toward the unio mystica. A period of vague unrest, accompanied by an exaggerated consciousness of freedom, culminated in the neurosis. Casting about to arrive at some measure of self-understanding in a modern manner, he came upon a propagandizing tract of a certain psycho-analyst who appears to be a bisexual enthusiast. When, subsequently, his family physician sent him to the clinic for psychological study, the contents of this tract came up in consciousness, or at least directed his chain of association, and he proceeded to unfold a homo-sexual complex with symbolic trimmings. Yet the real unconscious source of his unrest, disease or neurosis, was not that complex, nor was it one of inferiority or akin to CEdipus or Narcissus. If one must go to mythology to find a generic term for a titanic drive of this sort, it might best be referred to as a Promethean constellation. It was a drive in the direction of a higher and fuller life than that permitted by the taboos of his social environment. The case I have cited is illustrative of many others. Time after time, in case after case at the Rutgers Clinic the trail of association has led to powerful and painfully repressed constellations of emotionally charged ideas representing ideals above the level of the conscious everyday life of the individual and above the level of his social group, whether that be family, church or college, and which are consequently repressed by social taboo. These ideals are not always, or even most frequently, specifically religious, in the usual sense of the word, or involving reference to the same name by which the Supreme or the Supernal may be called. Many times it is not “God,” but “Truth,” “Social Justice,” “Integrity,” “Mercy,” around which clusters the Promethean constellation. But always it is, in psychonomic terminology, a repressed altruizing drive in the direction of a ” preferred perfection.’’7 For example, a compulsion neurosis may develop as the result of the inadequate expression of a Promethean constellation urging toward the free pursuit of truth. I have seen such a case cured by what might be termed the “rechannelling of the libido” attending the relatively simple expedient of the patient taking a course in analytical chemistry, wherein he had his first experience with the accurate and impartial methods of a scientific laboratory.
It is true that many of our cases revealed a disordered repression of some phase of sexuality or of an overweening “will to power.” Probably many of the corresponding complexes are present to some degree in each of us. I would not gloss over that fact. But we need to recognize that they do not constitute the entire content of the unconscious. We all may, and no doubt do, carry about within ourselves certain dark and nameless powers of the pit, but there is also deep within the unconscious a luminous Titan, who now may slumber and again may rage, like Prometheus chained to the rock. The analyst seeking to loose the repressive knots of the ‘’ censor’’ must take heed lest he but free the 11 ape and tiger,” or loose yet another vulture upon the outstretched god. As consulting psychologists, however, we are not exclusively concerned with the abnormal, nor yet with the normal as normal. We are interested also in the normal as the foundation of the superior. It is peculiarly the work of the clinical psychologist to continue, as heretofore, to blaze the trail for orthogenics 8?or as certain phases of that discipline have more recently, if less aptly, been termed, “mental hygiene.” Orthogenics aims at the normal development of every child, adolescent and adult. We must seek to apply the psychonomic principles revealed by analytical methods to assist the individual to attain his ontic norm and so to be his Higher Self. We can the better do this if we realize, in each individual case, that the ontic norm is itself largely determined by 7 For Witmer’s introduction of the phrase ‘’ preferred perfection,’’ see his article cited above.
8 ‘’ Orthogenics in the field of human psychology is defined by whatever is considered normal in the development of human personality and character. The orthogenic treatment includes any agency known to science likely to develop, preserve or restore personal competency.”?Witmer, previous citation. Promethean constellations and that these constellations, at least in many instances, are so extensive and organized that their integration constitutes a Higher Self. The conclusions presented in this paper should not seem too strange, even in modern psychology. It would appear rather obvious that if a psycho-analysis is to be at all adequate, it must be continued beyond the level of the first few complexes or constellations encountered; that the trail of association may lead upward as well as down; and that a competent psychonomic analyst must be able to recognize and reckon with Promethean constellations and their systems. It is true, these facts are consistently overlooked by those to whom psycho-analysis is itself “an obsessional neurosis.” But they are implicit in the psychonomic orientation of Witmer. The “instinct-emotion” systematizing of McDougall is quite suggestive. The “anagogic” concepts of Silberer are illuminating. And a similar trend of thought is increasingly manifest in the later writing of Jung, much of which is distinctly psychonomic.
But, why multiply references to the moderns ? The conclusions are a restatement in new terms of a very old truth. The novelty consists but in the fact that they represent the scientific postanalytic confirmation of a pre-analytic generalization?an olden truth that may be found even in the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead. Frequently forgotten, ignored or contradicted, but capable of post-analytic confirmation and, in our researches, post-analytically confirmed, the truth is that man is not “totally depraved” and that not only from without is he urged in the direction of the Platonic Trinity of the Good, the True and the Beautiful. That, in fact, in addition to certain crawling creatures of the abyss, man also bears within the vault of the unconscious a potential god? hidden deep, perhaps, within what the poet Waite has called “the secret, sacred, inmost shrine.” As the same poet also sings, “At the term of all, it is man who attains himself.” May we, as consulting psychologists, at least not hinder that attainment!
Disclaimer
The historical material in this project falls into one of three categories for clearances and permissions:
Material currently under copyright, made available with a Creative Commons license chosen by the publisher.
Material that is in the public domain
Material identified by the Welcome Trust as an Orphan Work, made available with a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
While we are in the process of adding metadata to the articles, please check the article at its original source for specific copyrights.