Analytical Psychology
Analytical psychology differs from experimental psychology in that it
does not attempt to isolate individual
functions (sense functions, emotional
phenomena, thought-processes, etc.) and then subject them to experimental
conditions for purposes of investigation. It is far more
concerned with the total manifestation of the psyche as a natural phenomenon – a
highly complex structure, therefore, even though critical examination may be
able to divide it up into simpler component complexes. TDoP
92
The difference between this and all earlier psychologies is that
analytical psychology does not hesitate to tackle even the most difficult and
complicated processes. Another difference lies in our method
of procedure. We have no laboratory equipped with elaborate
apparatus. Our laboratory is the world.
Our tests are concerned with the actual, day-to-day happenings of human life,
and the test-subjects are our patients, relatives, friends, and last but not
least, ourselves. Fate itself plays the role of experimenter.
There are no needle-pricks, artificial shocks, surprise-lights, and all
the paraphernalia of laboratory experiment; it is the hopes and fears, the pains
and joys, the mistakes and achievements of real life that provide us with our
material.
Our aim is the best possible understanding of life as we find it in the
human soul. What we learn through understanding will not, I
sincerely hope, petrify into intellectual theory, but will become an instrument
which, through practical application, will improve in quality until it can serve
its purpose as perfectly as possible. Its main purpose is the
better adaptation of human behavior, and adaptation in two directions (illness
is faulty adaptation). The human being must be adapted on two
fronts, firstly to external life- profession, family, society – and secondly to
the vital demands of his own nature. Neglect of the one or
the other imperative leads to illness. Although it is true
that anyone whose unadaptedness reaches a certain point will eventually fall
ill, and will therefore also be a failure in life, yet not everybody is ill
merely because he does not know how to use his external adaptedness for the good
of his most personal and intimate life and how to bring it to the right pitch of
development. Some people become neurotic for external
reasons, others for internal ones. It can easily be imagined
how many different psychological formulations there must be in order to do
justice to such diametrically opposite types. Our psychology
inquires into the reasons for the pathogenic failure to adapt, following the
slippery trail of neurotic thinking and feeling until it finds the way back to
life. Our psychology is therefore an eminently practical
science. It does not investigate for investigation’s sake,
but for the immediate purpose of giving help. We could even
say that learning is its by-product, but not its principal aim, which is again a
great difference from what one understands by “academic” science.
TDoP 93.