Chapter 32
Section 32 of Psychological Types or The Psychology of Individuation. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Psychological Types or The Psychology of Individuation by Carl Gustav Jung. Translated by Helton Godwin Baines, 1882-1943. Section 32.
Chapter 7. The Problem of Typical Attitudes in Aesthetics. It is, as it were, self-evident that every province of the human mind that is either directly or indirectly concerned with psychology should yield its contribution to the question we are here discussing. Now that we have listened to the philosopher, the poet, the physician, and the observer of men, let us hear what the representative of aesthetics has to say.
Aesthetics has to deal not only with the aesthetic nature of things, but also, and in perhaps even higher degree, with the psychological question of the aesthetic attitude. Not for long could such a fundamental phenomenon as the opposition of introversion and extroversion escape the aesthetic standpoint, since the form and manner in which art and beauty are sensed and regarded by different individuals differs so widely that one could not but be struck by this
opposition. Disregarding the many more or less sporadic and unique individual peculiarities of attitude, there exist two contrasting basic forms which Warringer has described as feeling into empathy, footnote 1, and abstraction, footnote 2. Footnote 1. There exists, unfortunately, no English equivalent for ein Fühlung. Notwithstanding a certain unavoidable clumsiness such a term involves, I have preferred the literal feeling into to a more manageable,
inadequate rendering such as empathy. Translator. End of footnote 1. Footnote 2. Warringer. Abstraction und ein Fühlung. Third edition. Munich, 1911. End of footnote 2. His definition of feeling into is derived principally from lips. For lips, feeling into is the objectification of my quality into an object distinct from myself, whether the quality objectified merits the term feeling or not. While I am in the act of perceiving an object, I experience as though in it
or issuing from it as something I perceived and present in it an impetus towards definite manner of inner behaviour. This appears as given through it, as though imparted to me by it. Footnote 1. Lips, Leitfaden der Psychologie. Second edition, 1906. Page 193. End of footnote 1. Yodel, footnote 2, interprets it as follows. The sensuous appearance given by the artist is not merely an inducement which brings to our mind kindred experiences by the laws of association, but since
it is subordinated to the universal laws of externalisation, footnote 3, and appears as something outside of ourselves, we also project into it those inner processes which it reproduces in our minds. Footnote 2. Yodel, L'Erebac de Psychologie. 1908. Volume 2. Page 436. End of footnote 2. Footnote 3. By externalisation, Yodel understands the localising of the sense perception in space. We neither hear tones in the ear, nor do we see colours in the eye, but in the spatially
localised object. Locos et Atoe. Volume 2. Page 247. End of footnote 3. We thereby give it aesthetic animation, an expression which may be preferred to the term feeling into, because in this interjection of one's own inner state into the picture, it is not feeling alone that is concerned, but every sort of inner process. By Wundt, feeling into is reckoned among the elementary assimilation processes. Footnote 4. Wundt. Grundsüger der Physiologischen Psychologie. 5th edition. Volume 3. Page 191.
End of footnote 4. Feeling into therefore is a kind of perception process, distinguished by the fact that it transvaes, through the agency of feeling, an essential psychic content into the object, whereby the object is introjected. This content, by virtue of its intimate relation with the subject, assimilates the object to the subject, and so links it up with the subject that the latter senses himself, so to speak, in the object. The subject, however, does not feel himself into the
object, but the object felt into appears rather as though it were animated and expressing itself of its own accord. This peculiarity depends upon the fact that the projection transfers an unconscious content into the object, whence also the feeling into process is termed transference, Freud, in analytical psychology. Feeling into therefore is an extraversion. Warringer defines the aesthetic experience in feeling into as follows.
Aesthetic enjoyment is objectified pleasure in oneself. Locos et ato. Page 4. Consequently, only that form is beautiful into which one can feel oneself. Lipp says, only so far as this feeling into extends are forms beautiful. Their beauty is simply this my ideal freely living itself out in them. Aesthetic. Page 247. The form into which one cannot feel oneself is, accordingly, ugly. Herein is also involved the
limitation of the feeling into theory, since there exist art forms, as Warringer points out, whose products do not correspond with the attitude of feeling into. Specifically, one might mention the oriental and exotic art forms as being of this nature. But, with us in the West, long tradition has established natural beauty and truth to nature as the criterion of beauty and art, since it is also the criterion and essential character of
Greco-Roman and Occidental art in general, with the exception, however, of certain medieval forms. For ages past, our general attitude to art has been one of feeling into, and we can describe as beautiful only a thing into which we can feel ourselves. If the artistic form of the object is opposed to life, inorganic or abstract, we cannot feel our life into it, whereas this naturally always takes place when we have a feeling into relationship with the object. What I feel myself
into is life in general. Lips. We can feel ourselves only into organic form, form that is true to nature and has the will to live. And yet another art principle certainly exists, a style that is opposed to life, that denies the will to live, that is distinct from life and yet makes a claim to beauty. When artistic energy creates forms whose abstract inorganic quality is opposed to life, they can only be seen as a form of beauty.
No longer be any question of a creative will arising from the feeling into need. Rather, is it a need to which feeling into is directly opposed? In other words, a tendency to suppress life. The impulse to abstraction would seem to be this counter urge to the feeling into need. Waringer, Le Cositato, page 16. Concerning the psychology of this impulse to abstraction, Waringer says, what psychic suppositions are there for the impulse to abstraction?
Among those peoples where it exists, we must look for them in their feeling towards the world, in their psychic behaviour vis-a-vis the cosmos. Whereas the feeling into impulse is conditioned by a happy, pantheistic, trustful relationship between man and the phenomena of the outer world, the impulse to abstraction is the result of a great inner uneasiness or fear of this phenomena. And in the religious connection corresponds with a strong transcendental colouring of every idea.
Such a state might be called an immense spiritual agoraphobia. When Thiboulus says, primum in mundo fecet deus timorum, the first thing God made in the world was fear. This very feeling of dread is admitted as the primal root of artistic energy. This is literally true. Feeling into does presuppose a subjective attitude of readiness or trustfulness vis-a-vis the object. It is a free movement of response,
transferring a subjective content into the object, thus producing a subjective assimilation, which brings about a good understanding between subject and object, or at least simulates it. A passive object allows itself to be assimilated subjectively, but in doing so, its real qualities are in no way altered, although through the transference they may become veiled, or even conceivably violated. Through the feeling into process, similarities and apparently common
qualities may be created which have no real existence in themselves. It is quite understandable therefore, that the possibility of another kind of aesthetic relation to the object must also exist, an attitude namely, that neither responds nor advances to the object, but on the contrary, seeks to withdraw from it, and to ensure itself against any influence on the part of the object by creating a subjective psychic activity whose function it is to paralyse the effect of the object.
To a certain extent, the feeling into attitude presupposes an emptiness of the object, which can thereupon be imbued with its own life. Abstraction on the other hand, presupposes a certain living and operating force on the part of the object, hence it seeks to remove itself from the object's influence. Thus the abstracting attitude is centripetal, it is introverted. Waringer's concept of abstraction therefore, corresponds with the introverted attitude.
It is significant that Waringer describes the influence of the object in terms of fear or dread. Thus the abstracting attitude would have a posture vis-a-vis the object, suggesting that the latter had a threatening quality, it est, an injurious or dangerous influence against which it must defend itself. Doubtless, this apparently a priori quality of the object is also a projection of transference, but a transference of a negative kind. We must therefore assume that the act of
abstraction is preceded by an unconscious act of projection in which negatively stressed contents are translated to the object. Since feeling into, like abstraction, is a conscious act, and since the latter is preceded by an unconscious projection, we may reasonably ask whether feeling into may not also be preceded by an unconscious act. Since the nature of feeling into is a projection of subjective contents, the antecedent unconscious act must be the opposite,
redilicit a neutralizing of the object, it est, making it inoperative. For by this means the object is, as it were, emptied, robbed of spontaneity, and thereby made a suitable receptacle for the subjective contents of the feeling into individual. The feeling into subject seeks to feel his life into the object, to experience in and through the object. Hence it is essential that the independence of the object and the difference between it and the subject be not too manifest.
Through the unconscious act preceding the feeling into process, the independent power of the object is thus depotentiated or overcompensated because the subject forthwith unconsciously superordinates himself to the object. But this act of superordination can happen only unconsciously through an intensification of the importance of the subject. This may happen through an unconscious fantasy which either deprives the object forthwith of its value and force,
or enhances the value of the subject, placing him above the object. Only by such means can that difference of potential arise which the act of feeling into demands for the subjective contents to be transphased into the object. The man with the abstracting attitude finds himself in a terribly animated world which seeks to overpower and smother him. He therefore retires himself so that in himself he may contrive that redeeming formula which can be relied upon to enhance his
subjective value to a point where at least it shall be a match for the influence of the object. The man with the feeling into attitude finds himself on the contrary in a world that needs his subjective feeling to give it life and soul. Confidingly he bestows his animation upon it, while the abstracting individual retreats mistrustingly before the demons of objects and builds up a protective counter world with abstract creations. If we recall our argument
of the preceding chapter we shall easily recognize the mechanism of extroversion in the feeling into attitude and that of introversion in the abstracting. The great inner uneasiness occasioned by the phenomena of the outer world is nothing but the stimulus fear of the introvert who as a result of his deeper sensibility and realization has a real dread of too rapid or too powerful changes of stimuli. Through the agency of the general
concept his abstractions also serve a most definite aim, videlicit to confine the changing and irregular within law abiding limits. It is self-evident that this at bottom magical procedure is to be found in fullest flower among the primitives whose geometrical signs are less valuable from the standpoint of beauty than for their magical properties.
