The Depths of the Soul: Psycho-Analytical Studies. Wilhelm Stekel

confess their most secret sufferings from time to time and to be absolved. Dr. Muthmann calls attention to the fact that suicides are most frequent in Protestant countries, and least frequent among Roman-Catholic peoples, and he thinks that this is to be attributed to the influence of the confessional, one of the greatest blessings for numberless people.

      The psycho-analytic method of treating nervous diseases has not only made the incalculable benefit of confession its own but has united with it the individual’s spiritual education inasmuch as it teaches him how to know himself and to turn his eyes into the darkest depths of his soul. But there is also a kind of speaking out that is almost equivalent to confession—self-communion. That is, one’s communings with oneself. For, as Grillparzer says, every heart has its secrets that it anxiously hides even from itself. Not all of us know how to detect such secrets. The poet has this gift. As Ibsen beautifully says: “To live is to master the dark forces within us; to write is to sit in judgment on ourselves.” But only a poet is able to sit in judgment on his own soul. Not every person has the capacity for self-communion. Most of the diseases of the soul depend upon the peculiar mechanism that Freud has called “repression.” This “repression” is a semi-forgetting of displeasing impressions and ideas. But only a half-forgetting. For a part of the repressed idea establishes itself in some disguised form as a symptom or as some form of nervous disease. In these cases the psychotherapeutist must apply his art and teach the invalid to know himself.

      Goethe knew the value of confession. He reports that he once cured a Lady Herder by confession. On September 25th, 1811, he wrote to Mrs. Stein: “Last night I wrought a truly remarkable miracle. Lady Herder was still in a hypochondriacal mood in consequence of the unpleasantnesses she had experienced in Carlsbad, especially at the hands of her family. I had her confess and tell me everything, her own shortcomings as well as that of the others, in all their minutest details and consequences, and at last I absolved her and jestingly made her understand that by this ritual these things had now been disposed of and cast into the deeps of the sea. Thereupon she became merry and is really cured.” Here we have the basic principles of modern psychotherapy. Unconsciously, by virtue of the hidden power of his genius, the poet accomplished what modern therapeutists also attempt.

      Nietzsche, too, fully understood the value of confession. We are accustomed at once to associate with Nietzsche the concept of the Antichrist. That he has accurately conceived the essence of the true priest he shows in his description of the priestly temper in his book, “The Joyful Wisdom.” He says, “the people honour a wholly different kind of man, … They are the mild, earnest, simple, and modest priestly natures … before whom one may pour out one’s heart with impunity, upon whom one may unload one’s secrets, one’s worries, and what’s even worse.” (The man who shares himself with another frees himself from himself; and one who has acknowledged, forgets.)

      It would be impossible to state the value of confession more beautifully and more clearly. It will not be long ere this view which knocks commandingly at the door of science and which has already been productive of good will be generally accepted. It will not be long ere it will furnish us a deep insight into the genesis of the “endogenetic mental diseases,” excepting, of course, those “exogenetic” maladies that follow some of the infectious diseases. We shall look upon the “endogenetic” diseases, even delusions, as a disturbance of the psychic circulation, and it will be our task to ascertain the causes that bring these maladies about.

      There are numbers of substitutes which are equivalent to a kind of confessing to oneself. These are art, reading of newspapers, music, literature, and, least but not last, the theatre. The ultimate effect of a dramatic presentation depends, in reality, upon the liberation in us of affects that have been a long time pent up within us. It is not without good reason that humanity throngs to witness tragic plays during the performance of which it can cry to its heart’s content. When the spectators are apparently shedding tears over the unhappy fate of a character on the stage they are really crying over their own pain. And the woman who laughs so heartily at the awkward clumsiness of a clown, that the tears run down her cheeks, is perhaps laughing at her husband, who, though she will not acknowledge it, appears to her just as stupid and clumsy; she is thereby excusing to herself her own sins which she has possibly committed only in fantasy. The theatre serves as a kind of confessional; it liberates inhibitions; awakens many memories, consoles, and perhaps renews in us hopes of secret possibilities as to whose fulfillment we have long since despaired.

      We have become accustomed of late to suspect sex-motives behind friendship. Even if we accept the theory that these motives are present, but hidden in the unconscious, it is a far from adequate explanation for the longing for friendship. The unconscious sex-motive unquestionably co-operates in a significant measure in the choice of a friend. It may be the determining factor in what we call sympathy and antipathy, although it would have to be proved with regard to the latter, and the theme is deserving of separate consideration, for it is quite possible that our antipathies are only reactions to an excessive attraction and therefore are evidence of repression. Looked at from this point of view, sympathy and antipathy are one feeling, one affect, having in the former case a positive sign and in the latter a negative sign. This secret tendency may be the deciding factor in the choice of a friend. But the need for a friend surely is in direct relation to the need for confession.

      It is customary to ridicule the Germans’ passion for forming clubs, and societies of all kinds. But do these founders of fraternal associations seek for anything but an opportunity to fraternise, to have a good talk, something from which they are barred at home? The innumerable speeches that are delivered during the course of a year, and which are being poured out every second in an endless stream in some house at some meeting are apparently being spoken only for the benefit of the auditors. But every speech is a kind of relief to the speaker’s “I,” and people who have the craving to speak before the whole world are very often the keepers of a great secret which they must conceal from the world and which they are imparting in this indirect way in homœopathic doses. Just as a dye that is dissolved in a large quantity of fluid is so completely lost that the naked eye can detect no trace of it, so do occasional particles of the great secret which must forever remain hidden find their way into the elocutionary torrent.