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PARTISAN REVIEW
see that he was reading these books not for the kind of external
proof of his theories, based on someone's research, which in the case
of
Totem and Taboo
would have been more formal than real; he
was reading in order to make sure that he was not flying in the
face of the facts and, I suspect, in order to see whether anyone had
thought along this
subject
before. In that case, we can be sure, he
would have checked. He was original, not irresponsible.
This is the essential Freud of the portrait-the speculative, the
experimenter, the plunger, but all of whom add up to the highest
scientific rectitude. It is the adventurousness in Freud that explains
his break with his old teacher Breuer, with whom he had written
the cardinal first book in psychoanalysis,
Studies in Hysteria.
But
Breuer was frightened of "sexual studies" and withdrew. On the other
hand, with a younger man like Jung, we can see that the break
occurs precisely because Freud is wary of what he called in Jung
the "mystical" element. Now what is the difference, someone might
well demand, between Freud and Jung, since they are both theorists
in a highly speculative field and each may be equally right? The
difference lies in the extent to which things are real to one. Freud
said, my theories are
true;
Jung, my theories are
possible.
This is not the
p~ace
for a discussion of Freud and Jung, except
as their early association and later quarrel affected the founder of
psychoanalysis. But I will say that even someone who is far more
sympathetic to the religious imagination than Freud is, can hardly
help a feeling of revulsion when he compares Jung's
Modern Man
in Search of a Soul
with Freud's
Th~
Future of an Illusion.
Freud's
book, though limited, sounds as if he is talking about something he
believes; while Jung's, "sincere," far more supple and sympathetic
to the modem yearning for a faith, for any faith!, has about
it
the
unmistakable suggestion: try it, it may be good for you. One rejects
an
illusion;
the other offers us a
search-for
an illusion? The dif–
ference between these two books is that Freud thinks like a scientist,
and is concerned with what he knows; Jung thinks "psychologically":
i.e.,
he is concerned with what man
needs;
Freud is concerned with
what he sees as
truth.
It is this passion for the truth, with its consonant sense of the
whole, of the sharp edges of truth, which prepares you for whatever
surprises in the shape of tigers and jaguars may spring out at you
