Page:Freud - The history of the psychoanalytic movement.djvu/57

 by so many forerunners. The Messiah is surely no longer anything relative.

Jung's argument ad captandam benevolentiam rests on the all-too-optimistic assumption that the progress of humanity, of civilization, and of knowledge has always continued in an unbroken line, as if there had never been any epigones, reactions, and restorations after every revolution, as if there had never been races who, because of a retrogression, had to renounce the gain of former generations. The approach to the standpoint of the masses, the giving up of an innovation that has proved unpopular, all these make it altogether unlikely that Jung's correction of psychoanalysis could lay claim to being a liberating act of youth. Finally it is not the years of the doer that decide it, but the character of the deed.

Of the two movements we have here considered, that headed by Adler is undoubtedly the more important. Though radically false, it is, nevertheless, characterized by consistency and coherence and it is still founded on the theory of the impulse. On the other hand, Jung's modification has lessened the connection between the phenomena and the impulses: besides, as its critics (Abraham, Ferenczi, Jones) have already pointed out, it is so unintelligible, muddled, and confused, that it is not easy to take any attitude towards it. Wherever one touches it, one must be prepared to be told that one has misunderstood it, and it is impossible to know how one can arrive at a correct understanding of it. It represents itself in a peculiarly vacillating manner, since at one time it calls itself "a quite tame deviation, not worthy of the row which has arisen about it" (Jung), yet, at another time, it calls itself a new salvation with which a new epoch shall begin for psychoanalysis, in fact, a new aspect of the universe for everything else.

When one thinks of the disagreements between the individual private and public expressions of Jung's utterances one is obliged to ask to what extent this is due to his own lack of clearness and lack of sincerity. Yet, it must be admitted that the representatives of the new theory find themselves in a difficult position. They are now disputing things which they themselves formerly defended and what