Civilization’s Struggle Between Instinct and Consciousness
Nothing estranges humankind more from the ground plan of its instincts than its learning capacity, which turns out to be a genuine drive towards progressive transformations of human modes of behavior. It, more than anything else, is responsible for the altered conditions of our existence and the need for new adaptations which civilization brings. It is also the source of numerous psychic disturbances and difficulties occasioned by humanity's progressive alienation from its instinctual foundation, i.e., by its uprootedness and identification with its conscious knowledge of itself, by its concern with consciousness at the expense of the unconscious. The result is that modern individuals can know themselves only in so far as they can become conscious of themselves—a capacity largely dependent on environmental conditions, the drive for knowledge and control of which necessitated or suggested certain modifications of their original instinctive tendencies. Their consciousness therefore orients itself chiefly by observing and investigating the world around them, and it is to its peculiarities that they must adapt their psychic and technical resources. This task is so exacting, and its fulfillment so advantageous, that they forget themselves in the process, losing sight of their instinctual nature and putting their own conception of themselves in place of their real being. In this way they slip imperceptibly into a purely conceptual world where the products of their conscious activity progressively replace reality.
Separation from instinctual nature inevitably plunges civilized individuals into the conflict between conscious and unconscious, spirit and nature, knowledge and faith, a split that becomes pathological the moment consciousness is no longer able to neglect or suppress instinctual tendencies. The accumulation of individuals who have got into this critical state starts off a mass movement purporting to be the champion of the suppressed. In accordance with the prevailing tendency of consciousness to seek the source of all ills in the outside world, the cry goes up for political and social changes which, it is supposed, would automatically solve the much deeper problem of split personality. Hence it is that whenever this demand is fulfilled, political and social conditions arise which bring the same ills back again in altered form. What then happens is a simple reversal: the underside comes to the top and the shadow takes the place of the light, and since the former is always anarchic and turbulent, the freedom of the "liberated" underdog must suffer Draconian curtailment. All this is unavoidable, because the root of the evil is untouched and merely the counterposition has come to light.
The Communist revolution has debased humanity far lower than democratic collective psychology has done, because it robs individuals of their freedom not only in the social but in the moral and spiritual sense. Aside from the political difficulties, the West has suffered a great psychological disadvantage that made itself unpleasantly felt even in the days of German Nazism: the existence of a dictator allows us to point the finger away from ourselves and at the shadow. The dictator is clearly on the other side of the political frontier, while we are on the side of good and enjoy the possession of the right ideal. Did not a well-known statesman recently confess that they had "no imagination in evil"? In the name of the multitude they were here giving expression to the fact that Western individuals are in danger of losing their shadow altogether, of identifying themselves with a fictive personality and of identifying the world with the abstract picture painted by scientific rationalism. Their spiritual and moral opponent, who is just as real as they are, no longer dwells in their own breast but beyond the geographical line of division, which no longer represents an outward political barrier but splits off the conscious from the unconscious self more and more menacingly. Thinking and feeling lose their inner polarity, and where religious orientation has grown ineffective, not even a god is at hand to check the sovereign sway of unleashed psychic functions.