Part 4 (1/2)
Parental Instinct and Tender Emotion
Until They Can Fly. Only half of Nature's need is met by the reproductive instinct. Her carefulness in this direction would be largely wasted without that other impulse which she has planted, the impulse to protect the new lives until they are old enough to fend for themselves. The higher the type of life and the greater the future demands, the longer is the period of preparation and consequent period of parental care. This fact, coupled with man's power for lasting relations.h.i.+ps through the organization of permanent sentiments, has made the, bond between parent and child an enduring one. Needless to say, this relations.h.i.+p is among the most beautiful on earth, the source of an incalculable amount of joy and gain. However, as we have already suggested, there lurks here, as in every beneficent force, a danger. If parents forget what they are for, and try to foster a more than ordinary tie, they make themselves a menace to those whom they most love. Any exaggeration is abnormal. If the childhood bond is over-strong, or the childhood dependence too long cultivated, then the relations.h.i.+p has overstepped its purpose, and, as we shall later see, has laid the foundation for a future neurosis.
Mothering the World. Probably no instinct has so many ways of indirect expression as this mothering impulse of protection. Aroused by the cry of a child in distress, or by the thought of the weakness, or need, or ill-treatment of any defenseless creature, this mother-father impulse is at the root of altruism, grat.i.tude, love, pity, benevolence, and all unselfish actions.
There is still a great difference of opinion as to how man's spiritual nature came into being; still discussion as to whether it developed out of crude beginnings as the rest of his physical and mental endowment has developed, or whether it was added from the outside as something entirely new. Be that as it may, the fact remains that man has as an innate part of his being an altruistic tendency, an unselfish care for the welfare of others, a relations.h.i.+p to society as a whole,-a relations.h.i.+p which is the only foundation of health and happiness and which brings sure disaster if ignored. The egoistic tendencies are only a part of human nature. Part of us is naturally socially minded, unselfish, spiritual, capable of responding to the call to lose our lives in order that others may find theirs.
Summary
Civilized man as he is to-day is a product of the past and can be understood only as that past is understood. The conflicts with which he is confronted are the direct outcome of the evolutional history of the race and of its attempt to adapt its primitive instincts to present-day ideals.
Character is what we do with our instincts. According to Freud, all of a man's traits are the result of his unchanged original impulses, or of his reactions against those impulses, or of his sublimation of them. In other words, there are three things we may do with our instincts. We may follow our primal desires, we may deny their existence, or we may use them for ends which are in harmony with our lives as we want them to be. As the first course leads to degeneracy, the second to nervous illness, and the third to happy usefulness, it is obviously important to learn the way of sublimation. Sometimes this is accomplished unconsciously by the life-force, but sometimes sublimation fails, and is reestablished only when the conscious mind gains an understanding of the great forces of life. This method of reeducation of the personality as a means of treatment in nervousness is called psycho-therapy.
Religion's Contribution. If it be asked why, amid all this discussion of instincts and motives we have made no mention of that great energizer religion, we answer that we have by no means forgotten it, but that we have been dealing solely with those primary tendencies out of which all of the compound emotions are made. Man has been described as instinctively and incurably religious, but there seems no doubt that religion is a compound reaction, made up of love,-sympathetic response to the parental love of G.o.d,-fear, negative self-feeling, and positive self-feeling in the shape of aspiration for the desired ideal of character; all woven into several compound emotions such as awe, grat.i.tude, and reverence.
It goes almost without saying that religion, if it be vital, is one of the greatest sources of moral energy and spiritual dynamic, and that it is and always has been one of the greatest aids to sublimation that man has found. A force like the Christian religion, which sets the highest ideal of character and makes man want to live up to it, and which at the same time says, ”You can. Here is strength to help you”; which unifies life and fills it with purpose; which furnishes the highest love-object and turns the thought outward to the good of mankind-such a force could hardly fail to be a dynamic factor in the effort toward sublimation. This book, however, deals primarily with those cases for which religion has had, to call science to her aid in order to find the cause of failure, to flood the whole subject with light, and to help cut the cords which, binding us to the past, make it impossible to utilize the great resources that are at hand for all the children of men.
Where We Keep Our Instincts. It must have been impossible to read through these two chapters on instinct without feeling that, after all, we are not very well acquainted with ourselves. The more we look into human nature, the more evident it becomes that there is much in each one of us of which we are only dimly aware. It is now time for us to look a little deeper,-to find where we keep these instinctive tendencies with which it is possible to live so intimately without even suspecting their existence. We shall find that they occupy a realm of their own, and that this realm, while quite out of sight, is yet open to exploration.
CHAPTER V
In which we look below the surface and discover a veritable wonderland
THE SUBCONSCIOUS MIND
Strangers to Ourselves
Hidden Strings. A collie dog lies on the hearthrug. A small boy with mischievous intent ties a fine thread to a bone, hides himself behind a chair, and pulls the bone slowly across the floor. The dog is thrown into a fit of terror because he does not know about the hidden string.
A Chinese in the early days of San Francisco stands spell-bound at the sight of a cable car. ”No pushee. No pullee. Go allee samee like h.e.l.lee!” He does not know about the hidden string.
A woman of refinement and culture thinks a thought that horrifies her sensitive soul. It is entirely out of keeping with her character as she knows it. In her misunderstanding she considers it wicked and thrusts it from her, wondering how it ever could have been hers. She does not know about the hidden string.
In the last two chapters we thought together about some of these strings, examining the fibers of which they are made and learning in what directions they pull. We found them to be more powerful than we should have supposed, more insistent and less visible. We found that instinctive desire is the string, the cable that energizes our every act, but that our desires are neither single nor simple, and are but rarely on the surface. Many of us live with them a long time, feeling the tug, but not recognizing the string.
There's a Reason. We take our thoughts and feelings and actions for granted, without stopping very often to wonder where they come from. But there is always a reason. When the law of cause and effect reaches the doorsill of our minds, it does not stop short to give way to the law of chance. We wake up in the morning with a certain thought on top. We say it ”just happens.” But nothing ever just happens. No thought that ever comes into our heads has been without its history,-its ancestors and its determining causes. But what about dreams? They, at least, you say, have no connections, no past and no future, only a weird, fantastic present. Strange to say, dreams have been found to be as closely related to our real selves, as interwoven with the warp and woof of our lives as are any of our waking thoughts. Even dreams have a reason.
We find ourselves holding certain beliefs and prejudices, interested in certain things and indifferent to others, liking some foods, some colors and disliking others. Search our minds as we will, we find no clue to many of these inner trends. Why?
The answer is simple. The cause is hidden below the surface. If we try to explain ourselves on the basis of the open-to-inspection part of our minds, we must come to the conclusion that we are queer creatures indeed. Only by a.s.suming that there is more to us than we know, can we find any rational basis for the way we think and feel and act.
A Real Mind. We learn of our internal machinery by what it does. We must infer a part of our minds which introspection does not reveal, a mind within the mind, able to work for us even while we are unaware of its existence. This inner mind is usually known as the subconscious, the mind under the level of consciousness. [16] We forget a name, but we know that it will come to us if we think about something else. Presently, out of somewhere, there flashes the word we want. Where was it in the meanwhile, and what hunted it out from among all our other memories and sent it up into consciousness? The something which did that must be capable of conserving memories, of recognizing the right one and of communicating it,-surely a real mind.
[16] Writers of the psycho-a.n.a.lytic school use the word ”unconscious” to denote the lower layers of this region, and ”fore-conscious” to denote its upper layers. Morton Prince uses the terms ”unconscious” and ”conscious” to denote the different strata. As there is still a good deal of confusion in the use of terms, it has seemed to us simpler to use throughout only the general term ”subconscious.”
One evening my collaborator fumbled unsuccessfully for the name of a certain well-known journalist and educator. It was on the tip of her tongue, but it simply would not come, not even the initial letter. In a whimsical mood she said to herself just as she went to sleep, ”Little subconscious mind, you find that name to-night.” In the middle of the night she awoke, saying, ”Williams-Talcott Williams.” The subconscious, which has charge of her memories, had been at work while she slept.
The history of literature abounds in stories of under-the-surface work. The man of genius usually waits until the mood is on, until the muse speaks; then all his lifeless material is lighted by new radiance. He feels that some one outside himself is dictating. Often he merely holds the pen while the finished work pours itself out spontaneously as if from a higher source.