Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis II 1921 1.djvu/85

 THE UNCONSCIOUS 77

train of thought just described. He distinguishes a primitive repression as a primary phase from the real repression — the secondary stage; he describes the process of repulsion from con- sciousness and attraction by the primary repressed material; and he characterises repression as individual and mobfle. These points are extraordinarily fruitful as regards the knowledge and working of the unconscious. Professor Jelgersma (17) in his clear exposition, to which particular value is to be attached as coming from a distinguished and unbiassed psychiatrist, has called attention to the necessity of assuming unconscious processes and also the impor- tance of the analytic theories. Kaplan (19 — 21), who in most of his works draws a comparison between the concepts and results of non-analytic psychology and philosophy, deals with the under- standing of unconscious processes and their numerous relations to the symptomatology of the neuroses and psychoses, and also with conceptual diiiferentiation. In his articles, which have not been suiTiciently estimated, appear such important problems as repression and psychical polarity, reversal, the relations of the unconscious to the outer world, the fact of mental processes being entirely determined, and other points are elucidated from many aspects and advanced in a clear-sighted manner. In Bjerre's article (2) the relation of conscious and unconscious as an absolute contrast is treated schematically; as a result of this it leads to modifications in the theory and practice of psycho-analysis, in the direction of Jung's teaching. Bjerre's article has been subjected to such an excellent and technical criticism by Meyer (28) and Eitingon (6) concerning its reference to the definite character of the unconscious, that it need only be said that the distinction of a personal and super-personal, "absolute or collective" unconscious in Jung's sense is proved in theory to be just as misleading and arbitrary is it proved itself fateful for Jung in its practical results. The apparent justification that Jung's theories concerning the unconscious possess comes only from the fact that psycho-analysis up to the present has not yet sufficiently investigated the relations of individual psychical processes to the processes of the mass psyche. How cautiously Freud expresses himself concerning the content of the unconscious with reference to the collective mental possession is evident from his comparison with a psychical primitive people. "If there are inherited psychical formations in human beings, anything analogous to the instinct of animals, then