Page:The theory of psychoanalysis (IA theoryofpsychoan00jungiala).pdf/102

 *tempered and enterprising, but the other was always in difficulties with both people and things. The first one became in later life hysterical, the other one katatonic. These far-reaching differences, which go back into earliest childhood, cannot depend on the more or less accidental events of life, but have to be considered as being innate differences. From this point of view, we cannot any longer pretend that her special previous psychological history caused this sensitiveness at that critical moment; it would be more correct to say: This innate sensitiveness is manifested most distinctly in uncommon situations.

This surplus of sensitiveness is found very often as an enrichment of a personality contributing even more to the charm of the character than to its detriment. But in difficult and uncommon situations the advantage very often turns into a disadvantage, as the inopportunely excited emotion renders calm consideration imposible. Nothing could be more incorrect than to consider this sensitiveness as eo ipso a morbid constituent of a character. If it really were so, we should have to regard at least one third of humanity as pathological. Only if the consequences of this sensitiveness are destructive to the individual have we a right to consider this quality as abnormal.

Primary Sensitiveness and Regression.—We come to this difficulty when we crudely oppose the two conceptions as to the significance of the previous psychological history as we have done here; in reality, the two are not mutually exclusive. A certain innate sensitiveness leads to a special psychological history, to special reactions to infantile events, which are not without their own influence on the development of the childish conception of life. Events bound up with powerful impressions can never pass without leaving some trace on sensitive people. Some of these often remain effective throughout life, and such events can exert an apparently determining influence on the whole mental development. Dirty and disillusional experiences in the domain of sexuality are specially apt to frighten a sensitive person for years and years. Under these conditions, the mere thought of sexuality raises the greatest resistances. As the creation of the shock-theory proved, we are too much inclined, in consequence of our knowledge of such cases, to attribute the emotional development of a person more or less to accidents. The earlier shock