Page:Collected Papers on Analytical Psychology (1916).djvu/364

 For him the delusion-formation is a “manly protest,” a means of gaining security for himself against his menaced superiority. Thus characterised, this struggle is likewise infantile and the means employed—the delusional creation—is infantile because insufficient for its purpose; one can therefore understand why Freud declines to accept Adler’s point of view. Freud, rightly on the whole, subsumes this infantile struggle for power under the concept of the infantile wish.

The constructive standpoint is different. Here the delusional system is neither infantile nor, upon the whole, eo ipso pathological but subjective, and hence justified within the scope of the subjective. The constructive standpoint absolutely denies the conception that the subjective phantasycreation is merely an infantile wish, symbolically veiled; or that it is merely that in a higher degree; it denies that it is a convulsive and egoistic adhesion to the fiction of its own superiority, in so far as these are to be regarded as finalistic explanations. The subjective activity of the mind can be judged from without, just as one can, in the end, so judge everything. But this judgment is inadequate, because it is the very essence of the subjective that it cannot be judged objectively. We cannot measure distance in pints. The subjective can be only understood and judged subjectively, that is, constructively. Any other judgment is unfair and does not meet the question.

The absolute credit which the constructive standpoint confers upon the subjective, naturally seems to the “scientific” spirit as an utter violation of reason. But this scientific spirit can only take up arms against it so long as the constructive is not avowedly subjective. The constructive comprehension also analyses, but it does not reduce. It decomposes the delusion into typical components. What is to be regarded as the type at a given time is shown from the attainment of experience and knowledge reached at that time.

Even the most individual delusional systems are not absolutely unique, occurring only once, for they offer striking and obvious analogies with other systems. From the comparative