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 the transference to the doctor as the object of the analytic therapy. I am no longer in doubt about your maxim: “Every interference on the analyst’s part is a gross mistake in technique. So-called chance is the law and the order of psychoanalysis.” Further, I am entirely in agreement with you when you say that altruism necessarily must be innate in man considered as a herd-animal. The contrary would be the thing to be wondered at.

I should be much disposed to agree that not the egoistic, but the altruistic instincts are primary. Love and trust of the child for the mother who feeds it, nurses, cherishes and pets it,—love of the man for his wife, regarded as the going out towards another’s personality,—love for offspring, care for it,—love for kinsfolk, etc. The egoistic instincts owe their origin to the desire for exclusive possession of all that surrounds love, the desire to possess the mother exclusively, in opposition to the father and the brothers and sisters, the desire to have a woman for himself alone, the desire to possess exclusively ornaments, clothing, etc. But perhaps you will say I am paradoxical and that the instincts, egoistic or altruistic, arise together in the heart of man, and that every instinct is ambivalent in nature. But I have to ask if the feelings and instincts are really ambivalent? Are they exactly bipolar? Are the qualities of all emotions altogether comparable? Is love really the opposite of hate?

However that may be, in any case it is well that man bears the social law within himself, as an inborn imperative; otherwise our civilised humanity would fare badly, having to subject themselves to laws imposed on them from outside only: they would be impervious to the inheritance of the earlier religious faiths, and would soon fall into complete anarchy. Man would then have to ask himself whether it would not be better to maintain by force an extreme belief in religious authority such as prevailed in the Middle Ages. For the benefits of civilisation, which strove to grant every individual as much outward freedom as was consistent with the freedom of others, would be well worth the sacrifice of free research. But the age of this use of force against nature is