“We should not forget that every neurosis entails a corresponding amount of demoralization. If a man is neurotic, he has lost confidence in himself. A neurosis is a humiliating defeat and is felt as such by people who are not entirely unconscious of their own psychology.”
Carl Jung, Collected Works Volume 17
In the modern day, many people are plagued by a fear of life. Instead of facing up to life’s challenges, they shrink from them and allow anxiety to limit their experience and cowardice to limit their potential. Carl Jung believed that those who evade life’s challenges and who suffer from anxiety, depression, guilt, and shame as a result, are neurotic, and he saw the neurotic illness as extremely prevalent in the West. Jung also recognized that many neurotics justify their errant ways by blaming events of their past and this is often encouraged by therapists who believe that talking about the past, and in particular one’s childhood, can promote healing. In this video we explore why Jung believed that turning backwards and examining the past is a wrong turn, and how overcoming a neurotic illness is best accomplished by focusing on the present and looking to the future.
“. . .there is scarcely a neurotic who does not love to dwell upon the evils of the past and to wallow in self-commiserating memories. Very often his neurosis consists precisely in his hanging back and constantly excusing himself on account of the past.”
Carl Jung, Collected Works Volume 16
If asked to account for the origins of their distress, most neurotics will point to their childhood, and for good reason. Being raised in a dysfunctional household, having poor role models, parents who do not provide adequate support, or who are neurotic themselves, greatly increases the chance of developing a neurosis. Jung went as far as to suggest that if a child is neurotic, blame can usually be placed solely on the parents, or as he wrote:
“. . .neuroses in children are more symptoms of the mental condition of the parents than a genuine illness of the child. Only a very little of the child’s psychic life is its own; for the most part it is still dependent on that of the parents. . . Parents should always be conscious of the fact that they themselves are the principal cause of neurosis in their children.”
Carl Jung, Collected Works Volume 17
But while parents are often to blame for the neurosis of a child, as a neurotic child develops into a neurotic adult, responsibility shifts away from the parents and toward the individual suffering from the neurosis, or as Jung writes:
“. . .the real therapy only begins when the patient sees that it is no longer father and mother who are standing in his way, but himself. . .”
Carl Jung, Collected Works Volume 7
A middle-aged man, for example, is not neurotic solely because he had neurotic parents. He is neurotic because he has failed to take responsibility for his life, and failed to cultivate the courage to deal with the problems in the present that are keeping him neurotic. Or as Jung explains:
“The causes of a neurosis lie in the present as much as in the past, and only a cause actually existing in the present can keep a neurosis active.”
Carl Jung, Collected Works Volume 11
To effectuate a cure from a neurosis many therapists encourage their patients to explore their childhood and to pontificate on why they have become neurotic. This is called a reductive therapeutic approach as it attempts to narrow down from the great complex of past events the one’s that triggered the neurotic illness. Understanding the sources of our distress, it is maintained, can help us realize that we are not to blame for our suffering, and this can promote the self-acceptance that facilitates healing. Jung, however, believed that while self-acceptance is important, attempting to understand the specific causes of our suffering is often counterproductive and not necessary for the acceptance that leads to change, or as he wrote:
“It is very suspicious…that patients often have a pronounced tendency to account for their ailments by some long-past experience, ingeniously drawing the analyst’s attention away from the present to some false track in the past.”
Carl Jung, The Theory of Psychoanalysis
A desire to dwell on the past is counterproductive for several reasons. Firstly, excessive self-analysis, whether it takes the form of dwelling on the past, ruminating on the future, or over scrutinizing the self, can make one miserable. The great 18th century philosopher Immanuel Kant went as far as to suggest that too much self-analysis can dispose one to mental illness, or as he wrote:
“. . .to wish to play the spy upon oneself. . .is to reverse the natural order of the cognitive powers. . . The desire for self-investigation is either already a disease of the mind (hypochondria) or will lead to such a disease and ultimately to the madhouse.”
Immanuel Kant, Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science
Self-analysis that takes the form of dwelling on the past is particularly pathological and rarely produces positive results. Jung suggests that the neurotic who constantly tries to figure out what went wrong with his life is like a man who fixates on trying to determine how he caught a bacterial illness. In each case, the cause is not what is most important, what is important is taking the steps to get well in the present, or as Jung writes:
“A man is not tubercular because he was infected twenty years ago with bacilli, but because active foci of infection are present now. The questions when and how the infection occurred are totally irrelevant. Even the most accurate knowledge of the previous history cannot cure the tuberculosis. And the same holds true of the neuroses.”
Carl Jung, Collected Works Volume 11
Another major flaw of the reductive therapeutic approach is that often we go astray in our attempt to account for what caused our suffering. When we look back on our life, we do so through a series of interpretive filters which makes an objective account of our history a practical impossibility. How we feel about our life now, influences what events we remember, and how we remember them. If we are depressed, for example, we will likely see our childhood as full of miseries and disappointments, as our depressive state will lead us to focus only on the negatives of the past and to overlook all that was good about it. If, on the other hand, we are content with our life, we may look back on the exact same past with fond memories and even see the bad events as important learning experiences that were necessary to sculpt us into the person we are now. But it is not only that our current life conditions skew how we perceive the past, they can also lead us to create false memories in order to justify our current failings, or as Caroll Tavris and Elliot Aronson write in Mistakes Were Made (but Not By Me):
“False memories allow people to forgive themselves and justify their mistakes, but sometimes at a high price: an inability to take responsibility for their lives. An appreciation of the distortions of memory, a realization that even deeply felt memories might be wrong, might encourage people to hold their memories more lightly, drop the certainty that their memories are always accurate, and let go of the appealing impulse to use the past to justify problems of the present. We’re told to be careful what we wish for because it might come true. But we must also be careful which memories we select to justify our lives, because we will have to live by them.”
Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson, Mistakes Were Made (but Not By Me)
Some people will argue that one benefit of digging into the past is that we may unearth repressed traumas that we have failed to process. However, research suggests that people rarely forget, or successfully repress, traumatic experiences. The problem with trauma is typically an inability to stop thinking about the event and to prevent the memories from intruding when one wishes to forget, or as the clinical psychologist Richard McNally wrote in his book Remembering Trauma:
“The notion that the mind protects itself by repressing or dissociating memories of trauma, rendering them inaccessible to awareness, is a piece of psychiatric folklore devoid of convincing empirical support.”
Richard McNally, Remembering Trauma
Due to the problems with the reductive therapeutic approach, Jung adopted what he called a constructive approach to heal from a neurosis. The constructive approach does away with the need to delve into the past, and instead focuses on the problems of the present that are preventing us from actualizing a better future, or as Jung writes:
“The constructive standpoint asks how, out of this present psyche, a bridge can be built into its own future.”
Carl Jung, Collected Works Volume 3
A constructive approach is teleological, as it looks forward toward an end or goal, in the realization that the ends we aim at can be more influential in shaping our mindset, and the state of our character, than the events of our past. Jung believed that to heal from a neurosis our overarching goal should be the development of our personality toward the state psychological wholeness. Psychological wholeness is attained when we actualize all our latent potentials and in the brevity of human life this state is only ever approached, never fully realized. Those who are moving toward this ideal are participating in what Jung called the process of individuation, a process that contributes to health in body and mind. The problem that most neurotics face, is that they are stuck in confines of a stagnant comfort zone and have long since stopped moving along the path of individuation, and so as Jung writes:
“. . .the treatment of neurosis is . . . a renewal of the personality, working in every direction and penetrating every sphere of life.”
Carl Jung, Collected Works Volume 8
While psychological wholeness is the overarching goal that we should aim for, to move toward this ideal necessitates the selection of a series of more practical goals, be it in the realm of our career, religious pursuits, interpersonal relations, or the cultivation of life skills. The goals we select should be bold enough to force us out of our comfort zone and to break us free from the errant ways of our past. For as Jung noted in a passage in volume 7 of his collected works, often “a liberation from the past” and a beckoning toward “a future rich in possibilities” is sufficient to break a neurosis.
“For young people a liberation from the past may be enough: a beckoning future lies ahead, rich in possibilities. It is sufficient to break a few bonds; the life urge will do the rest.”
Carl Jung, Collected Works Volume 7
Another practical tip Jung offers that can help one overcome a neurosis is to focus on our habits. Habits are foundational to the quality of our life and neurotics tend to be plagued by a pernicious set of bad habits that contribute to a chronic avoidance of life’s challenges and an inability to accomplish life-changing goals.
“It is obviously not enough for [a neurotic] to know how his illness arose and whence it came, for we seldom get rid of an evil merely by understanding its causes. Nor should it be forgotten that the crooked paths of a neurosis lead to as many obstinate habits, and that for all our insight these do not disappear until replaced by other habits. Habits are won only by exercise. . .The patient must be drawn out of himself into other paths. . .”
Carl Jung, Collected Works Volume 16
We can adopt the constructive approach to healing from a neurosis without understanding what caused us to become neurotic in the first place. We don’t need to try and untangle the complicated web of our past to aim for new goals or to begin addressing our problems in the here and now. Dwelling on the past may provide us with excuses for our neurotic ways and it may satisfy our need to justify our cowardice, but these excuses and justifications will not cure us, for as Jung wrote:
“. . .it is only in the today, not in our yesterdays, that the neurosis can be “cured.” Because the neurotic conflict has to be fought today, and historical deviation is a detour, if not actually a wrong turning.”
Carl Jung, Collected Works Volume 10
