Why you should analyze yourself

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I want you to psychoanalyze yourself. Yes, you may very well be able to help yourself with the aid of the analytic method. It's not some deep dark secret system dreamed up only a few years ago by bearded intellects. The first psychoanalyst lived a long, long time ago; somewhere about 2200 years or so. Just who this old-time mental specialist was, where he lived, and how long he practiced, is not on record. For that matter, I should never have known of his existence if I had not happened to run across one of his mental prescriptions in some very old records. "He that covereth his transgressions shall not prosper; but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy." The binding case where I found this old mental prescription is entitled Proverbs; the sub-file index is numbered 28:13. There is a long stretch of time between those days of the Old Testament and those of Freud; yet it seems, after all, that both these analytic practitioners subscribed to the same school of thought. A few word-symbols differ, but the spirit is the same.

In present-day psychoanalytic language we read the ancient mental prescription thus:

"He who represses his mental transgressions shall have unconscious conflicts; but he who analyzes and forsakes them shall have peace." Thus the psychoanalytic method is not a modern fad, but is based upon one of the oldest psychological truths on record. Repression means unconscious conflicts; bringing these repressed thoughts back to consciousness and thereby dispersing them accomplishes peace. Hitherto, well-intentioned but misguided people have preached a doctrine of repression, but the analytic method is based upon the principle of dispersion. To repress is to cover over, to deny the existence of something. Dispersion means an opening up of un-healed mental wounds, and healing them by draining off the morbid agents. The old method inflicted on society a multitude of neurotics, and filled asylums to the brim; the analytic method enables the impaired personality to become adjusted to its responsibilities by a removal of the causes of the mental discords. The old cry was forget, forget; the new one is analyze, analyze. The former means a running away from difficulties; the latter implies facing conditions and remedying them. The old concept assumed that the personality was of a dual character: an outer and an inner self. The psychoanalytic contention is that all mental activity is one interlocking mechanism.

The basic principle of the analytic method is that every form of conscious conduct is motivated by unconscious causes; that no mental trait or tendency can be successfully hidden; that every buried inclination becomes expressed in some feature of conscious behavior.

As every buried inclination becomes expressed in some aspect of conscious behavior, and as repressed inclinations are more or less inimical to the best interests of the individual, a state of unconscious warfare is continually raging. One force tries to secure a fullness of external expression, while another is striving to keep the repressions active. The outcome, consequently, is a compromise. The undesirable and repressed tendencies fail to attain direct expression, but succeed in reaching compensating outlets.

The thousand and one forms of strange and temperamental actions observable in daily life are phenomena of this compromise between the repressing efforts of the conscious thought-streams and the repressed unconscious tendencies.

Your inner conflicts can be resolved within yourself. But you must learn to be honest with yourself— to analyze yourself—in order to find this peace of mind.