a beautiful warm summer day. the churchyard lies dreamily in the sultry noonday atmosphere. all nature seems to be possessed by the desire to imitate the sleep of those interred in the womb of earth. suddenly there is heard a grinding sound in the fine gravel and a curly, rosy-cheeked, dark-haired lad is seen leaping over hedges and over mounds after a gilded butterfly....
wondrous images loom up before me like large great question marks in the trembling air. similar scenes from the distant mirage of my own youth come to mind. like a hot, long-dammed-up stream my emotions break from the unconsciousness into consciousness. i am overcome by a long-forgotten yearning. is not my heart beating faster? is there not a wild pleasure in the melancholy that oppresses me?
how strange! a little while ago i lay lost in cheerful reflections in the tall grass, delighting in the noiseless pace of time, and now i am excited, restless, disturbed, and sad, but not unhappy. my mood has undergone a complete change. what has brought this transformation about? surely, only the appearance of the beautiful boy who was trying to catch a butterfly [pg 144]with his green net. why did this scene excite me so? there must have been set up in my mind a thinking process of which i was not conscious. some secret power that drives the wheels of the emotions had set into action a long-inhibited and hidden spring.
gradually the shadowy thoughts came into the bright light of comprehension. the boy was to me a symbol of my life. an echo of my distant youth. and the slumbering cemetery, my inevitable future. my heart too is a cemetery. numberless buried hopes, too early slain, unblown buds, longings goaded to death, unfulfilled wishes lie buried here within and no cross betrays their presence. and over all these dead possibilities i, too, am chasing a gilded butterfly. and when i catch it in my net i seize it with my rude heavy hands, doing violence to the delicate dust on its wings, and throw the lusterless remainders among the dead. or it is destined to a place in a box, transfixed with the fine needle named “impression” and constituting one of the collection of dead butterflies which go to make up “memory.”
it really was an “unconscious” thought, then, that transformed my mood from dur into moll. and the truth dawns on me that all our “incomprehensible” moods are logical and that they must all have a secret psychic motivation. moody persons are persons with whom things are not in order. their consciousness [pg 145]is split up into numerous emotionally-toned “complexes.” an unconscious complex is like a state within a state. a sovereign power, too repressed, too weak, and too tightly fettered to break into consciousness without having to unmask, but strong enough to influence the individual’s conduct. moody persons have their good and their bad days. the bad days are incomprehensible puzzles to them. simple souls speak of being under the influence of demons; poets share their pains with the rest of the world and “sublimate” their petty individual woes into a gigantic world-woe; commonplace souls place the responsibility for their moods upon “nature,” the bad weather, the boss, the husband, or wife, their cook, their employment, and what not.
in the grasp of an incomprehensible mood we are ill at ease and anxious, very much like a brave person who finds himself threatened in a dark forest by a vindictive enemy whom he cannot see. to muster up courage we deceive ourselves, just as the little child that falteringly proclaims: “please, please! i am good. the bogey man won’t come!” but the bogey man does come, for a certainty. he always comes again because everything that is repressed must take on the characteristics of a psychic compulsion. if we do not want him to come again we must bravely raise our eyelids and look at him fixedly with eyes of understanding and realise that he is nothing but a phantom of our [pg 146]excited senses, that he does not exist and has not existed. the bogey man cannot long endure this penetrating look; slowly he dissolves into grey shadows and disappears for ever.
modern psychologists have pointed out the relationship between unmotived moods and the periodical character of certain phenomena of life. it is, of course, a fact that we are all subject to certain partly known and partly unknown periodical influences. but whether this alone is sufficient reason for attacks of depression does not seem to me to have been proved. my own experiences speak against it. just as a stone, thrown into a body of water, causes the appearance of broad circular ripples which gradually get feebler and feebler until they disappear with a scarcely perceptible undulation of the surface, so does a strong impression continue to work within us, giving rise to ever wider but ever feebler circles. only when these circles set a floating mine in motion does the water shoot up, the mud is thrown on high, and the clear surface is muddied. these floating mines are the split off, unconscious complexes. the secret thought must not be put in motion.
but enough of metaphors! let us take an example from our daily life. a woman is suffering from frequently-recurring incomprehensible depressions. she has everything that a childish, spoiled heart can desire. and she is not a spoiled child, for she had been a poor seamstress when she made her husband’s acquaintance. [pg 147]now she lives in a magnificent palace, wears costly garments, has a houseful of servants, adorns herself with the finest laces; her husband clothes her like a doll, pampers and coddles her, treats her with the greatest affection—in short, worships her. and this woman, the envy of her associates as she rides by them in her splendid automobile, has days on which she cries for hours. our first guess is she does not love her husband. you are wrong, you psychologists of the old school! she does love her husband, she is as happy with her finery and wealth as a child with a toy; she can assign no cause for her melancholy.
notwithstanding this, her depression was of psychic origin. when we investigated carefully the experiences and excitements that ushered in one of these attacks it became clear that subterranean bridges led to secret (suppressed) desires. quite often the immediate occasion was of a trifling nature. she had seen a poor woman pass her in the street. alone? no—with a young man, very happy, care-free, their arms affectionately intertwined. on another occasion she had been reading of a pair of lovers who had drowned themselves. suicide was a subject, beyond all others, which she could not bear to hear. at the theatre she once sat in a box on the third tier. suddenly she looked down into the orchestra and was seized with horror. that was a yawning abyss! what if her opera glass fell down there! or if she lost [pg 148]her balance and toppled over! a shudder passed through her. she put the opera glass aside and became greatly depressed.
the mystery surrounding her melancholy was soon solved. her husband, fifteen years her senior, is not adapted to her temperamentally. in secret she longs for a life rich in emotions, full of sin and perhaps also of vice. nature probably intended her for a fast woman, not for an eminently respectable lady. alluring melodies beckon her to the metropolis. she would rather lose her breath in an endless dance in the tight embrace of a pair of coarse arms than ride sedately down the main avenue. she loves her husband, but sometimes she hates him. he’s the obstacle. she knows how terribly jealous he is. he was very sick once; just then the wicked thought entered her mind: “if he died now i’d be rich and free!” the reaction was not long in coming. she saw herself as a dreadful sinner. life had no more interest for her. since then she has been suffering from periodical attacks of depression.
what happened in this case in the wake of powerful repressions happens a little in all moody persons. an unconscious motive for the depression can always be demonstrated. in most instances it is secret reproaches that provoke the change in mood. in young people they are the sequel of exaggerated warnings about not injuring their health. sins against religion and morality. reproaches for too readily yielding to one’s impulses. but also the opposite! [pg 149]many an attack of depression is nothing but the expression of regret at having to be virtuous.
a girl suffers from violent (psychically), apparently wholly unmotived crying spells. the last one lasted half a day. i inquired whether she had excited herself in some way. had she any reason for being depressed? no! was she sure? a trifling matter—“of no particular significance”—occurs to her. on one of the city bridges a very elegant, young gentleman had addressed her. would she permit him to accompany her? indignantly she repelled him. what did he think she was! but he persisted in his role; he painted in glowing colours the delights of a rendezvous, till finally she found the courage to exclaim: “if you do not leave me at once, i shall call a policeman!” then, flushed, bathed in perspiration, she rushed home, ate her meal in silence and soon thereafter gave vent to an almost unending crying spell.
and now i discover that her first attack of crying followed a similar occurrence. she was coming home from the country and had to travel at night. she asked the conductor to point out the ladies’ coupé. to her horror a tall, blonde lieutenant entered her coupé at the next station. she at once protested vigorously at the intrusion. the officer very politely offered his apologies, explaining that the train was full and that he would be quite satisfied with a modest corner. he would be greatly obliged to her for her kindness. but so anxious was she about her [pg 150]virtue that she was proof against his entreaties. she appealed to the conductor and insisted on her rights. the spruce officer had to leave the coupé and for the rest of the night she was not molested. but the occurrence had so excited her that she could not fall asleep and she lay awake till dawn. the following day she had the first attack of depression and crying. she bewailed her cruel fate that compelled her to be virtuous while all the hidden voices within clamoured for a gay life. she did not find herself strong enough to conquer her ethical inhibitions. she was too weak to sin and not strong enough to be really virtuous.
i could cite many such examples. they all show convincingly that there are no “inexplicable” psychic depressions, that consciousness does not embrace all the psychic forces that govern and direct us.
the classification of human beings into those that are free and those that are not was determined by a social or ethical canon. but in reality most human beings are the slaves of their unconscious complexes. only he can be free who knows himself thoroughly, who has dared to look unafraid into the frightful depths of the unconscious. most persons are under the yoke of their “other self” who, with his biting whip, drives them to pains and to pleasures, compels them to leave the table of life and goads them into the arms of crime.
the greatest happiness in life is to have [pg 151]achieved one’s inner freedom. this thought is still expressed in an old aphorism. “everyone may have his moods; but his moods must not have him.”
moody persons are the slaves of their past, masters of renunciation and assuredly bunglers in the art of life. their only salvation is in learning the truth or in the art of transforming their depression into works of art. most of the time they glide through life’s turbulence like dreamers. their ears are turned inward and thus it comes about that life’s call is perceived but faintly by them. they are chasing butterflies in cemeteries....
