From

Lipot Szondi, Ich-Analyse [Ego
Analysis]

Translated by

Arthur C. Johnston

© 2008

By Arthur C. Johnston, PhD

Please Observe: The copyright of this article (in German or in
English) belongs to the Szondi Institute and to Dr. Arthur C. Johnston. This means
you may not duplicate this article without their permissions.

Chapter XII

Inflation. Doubling and Possession*

[*Editor: Also Obsession: both from Besessenheit].

Conception
and Forms of Inflation

One can understand an elementary ego function correctly only if one
first has settled two basic questions. First of all: How does the ego with this function solve the problem of mental
opposite structures? Secondly: Which
final goal is set up by the ego with this manner of solution?

With primordial projection,
i.e. with participation, the ego
solves the oppositeness by the means that it transfers out [hinausverlegt]
both parts of the pair of opposites into the outer object (total projection).

Through this separation the outer object becomes “both.” --
that is, everything and consequently omnipotent. The subject becomes
therefore not completely powerless because through the mystic or real
participation, it has obtained an indirect part in the out-shifted omnipotence.
Therefore, we say that the ego with primordial projection strives after being
related, being the same and being one with the object. In this way, the ego
succeeds in canceling the opposites and participates indirectly in the
omnipotence of the outer objects. The ego becomes indirectly related to the
omnipotence. This primitive original relation between the subject and the
object is still possible with a primitive culture; it becomes intolerable in
the long run however on a higher stage of culture.  Internal development factors and outer
social events disturb this paradise-like being one with the world and its
objects in any form of a dual union. The subject is then compelled to draw back
the double power of the opposites from the object. The ego is able to carry out
this drawing back in two ways. The first way leads to inflation and to greatness delusion [megalomania]; the second is to
secondary projection and to
persecution delusion.

The first way of inflation is thus that the ego does not return the
double power withdrawn from the outside to the unconscious but keeps it for itself. The result of this
unconscious ego machination is that from now on the ego becomes itself both and thus is everything. We say: The ego
doubles itself. C. G. Jung calls this
doubling of the ego “psychic
inflation.”

The word inflation means in general language usage “puffed
up currency [money]” -- that is, the depreciation of gold and indeed
through that the state means of accounting brings into circulation lots of
currency without gold reserves. Something similar happens also with the
doubling of the ego.

Psychic inflation should mean, according to
C. G. Jung, the “puffing up of the person” -- that is to say, an
expansion of the personality exceeding the individual boundaries through dissolution
of the opposites.

Inflation is the original
elementary striving of the ego to be both itself and to be everything itself.
Briefly, after being complete [perfect] itself.

If however someone wants to carry out both fate possibilities of his own opposite structures in his own
being, then he can only do it if he doubles his ego.

Inflation and ego doubling include the same mental process. In the
doubled ego the opposites stand no longer arranged against each other but are
set next to one another. Man and woman, humans and animal, lord and servant, emperor
and subject, Christ and Antichrist, angel and devil, God and humans, and all
other opposites basic pairs do not become separated
any more through resistance, but by means of inflated doubling are placed side by side, as if here scarcely no contradiction
existed between the opposites.

The solution of contrary opposites with inflation is thus that in which
the ego does not feel any contradiction in the opposite pairs. The ego simply
dissolves the antinomian and exempts itself through that of the laborious work
of complementariness and wholeness. The inflative
ego is consequently a dangerous and often a sick ego, since it is indeed
incapable really to take up the task
of the pontifex oppositorum (the bridge between opposites). We see in inflation
also a defense mechanism of the ego. The danger threatening and defensive situation
-- namely the tension of the opposites pushing out of the unconscious --
becomes conscious to the ego (p+).  It can however not bear consciously these
opposites as being different -- thus it simply dissolves the immanent contradiction.
Henceforth the ego behaves as if it could be both.

Through the abolishment and the denial of the opposites structure of
the unconscious, it becomes possible for the ego -- even in doubling -- to
expand itself without limits and at the same time to be itself both and consequently to be everything.

*

Inflation follows thus historically
after the process of primordial projection, participation. The restitution of
the shifted-out double power of the pairs of opposites leads to doubling and to
doubling of one’s own ego.

On the basis of
psychopathology we assume that inflation
represents the “natural” first
consequence of the restitution of the double power to one's own ego.

On the Basis of Ego Analysis We Assume:

1.
Primordial projection (thus participation), inflation and secondary
projection are three successive phases of the same process, which we call
uniformly ego expansion and ego diastole.

2.  The term “ego diastole” is the generic term,
which covers the two phases and forms of projection as well as inflation.

3.
Ego diastole means in the ego theory of fate
psychology [Schicksalspsychology] each striving of the ego to
expand its internal boundaries and thus to make bearable the discomfort from
the opposites structure.

(a)  In participation –
that is to say, with primordial projection, the double power of the opposites
are shifted out of the unconscious into the outer object. Not the subject
itself but the environmental object becomes both
and everything and thus omnipotent. Here we speak of allodiastole [Greek allos = other; Greek
diastole = expansion].

The ego
however has nevertheless a part in
this object made all powerful. It feels related,
the same, and one with the object in that it participates in it in a mystic or a real
form. Finally the ego -- through the participation and through the most
intimate sharing with the other
object -- has become in any case a partner of the omnipotence. Since the ego is
related to the all powerful object, it feels itself also indirectly all
powerful.

(b) Then a disturbance of the
mystic or real dual union occurs. The double power is withdrawn from the object
and given to its own ego. Through the restitution of the out-shifted double
power the ego doubles itself. We speak now of an “inflation.” The
ego strives “to be both itself” and “to be everything
itself.” Briefly it becomes now directly perfect (greatness delusion). The
ego in the phase of primordial projection was only indirectly -- through its relationship to the object -- omnipotent,
thus the ego now has become directly
omnipotent in the phase of inflation. This direct omnipotence of the ego we
call autodiastole [Greek auto
= self; Greek diastole = expansion]. It
is however still more difficult for the ego to bear than the illusion of being
one with the object made omnipotent by the primordial projection and thus by
the participation.

(c)  There appears the third
phase of ego diastole: Secondary
projection, with which the allodiastole
now becomes completed. Only the object becomes all powerful through projection;
the subject on the other hand becomes completely powerless. Despite this powerlessness,
the ego nevertheless has a hidden
feeling of its power: It becomes persecuted by the other person because it is
“greater” than the persecutor. The person feels himself hated, harmed,
and persecuted by the object made all powerful, precisely because he is powerful. Allodiastole without participation is called in psychiatry
“persecution delusion.”

4.
Ego diastole is consequently the essence
of any expansion. It is the generic term, which includes together within it projection and inflation. We call the functional antipode of ego diastole ego contraction and ego systole. It strives towards the inner against the expansion of
the ego. We will speak about this comprehensive term in our discussion of
introjection and negation.

5.
The clinical experience agrees most often with the above discussed
process sequence of ego diastole. Differences are therefore possible for each
individual case. Thus can be found cases where a paranoid after the
participation love phase does not fall first into the inflative but immediately
into the secondary projective persecuted phase and only after that becomes inflative -- that is, develops greatness
delusion ideas. Thus, for example in the classic case of Schreber, whom Freud
described.

On the other hand, however, it must be emphasized that the inflated and
projective phases of the paranoid -- as well in the clinical and in the
observations with the test -- quite often may
alternate several times successively. This circumstance makes it
difficult in the individual case to specify accurately if after the
participating primary phase appears inflation or secondary projection as the
first result of libido and power restoration.

*

We have up to this point discussed the psychological and ontogenetic
relationship of ego inflation to ego projection.

Now we must still examine the relationship of the concept
“inflation” to two other psychopathological concepts. These are:
(1) possession [Besessenheit] and
(2) ambitendency.

Inflation
as Possession

By “possession” in
psychopathology one understands the condition in which “the person
appears to transform himself or herself into another person; voice and behavior,
facial expression, and content of speech manifest another personality.”1

This change of the personality disappears again suddenly. Jaspers
writes the following: “In the most narrow and real sense, however, one
speaks of possession, when the ill person himself experiences that he is at the
same time two essences and is
performing with two egos and two completely heterogeneous ways of
feeling.”2 To the condition of possession belongs, according
to Jaspers, the experience of a strange and hallucinating personality, who
speak to the ill person, and furthermore distant compulsive phenomenon and
everything as feeling strange.

The possessed person gives up therefore the wholeness of the ego. With possession
occurs an actual “doubling experience,” the splitting of one's own
ego into two egos. With these two egos,
two successions of mental processes and two different personalities develop
themselves at the same time so that both
stand as strangers to one another, that “both” experience in individual
ways, and that both sides insist on feeling connections, which do not flow
together with those of the other side; many times they stand opposite one
another feeling strange.”3

The most well-known example of possession is always a condition in which
a spirit, as demon and angel or devil and God, takes control of the man who is
gripped by its possession.

It is not to be misunderstood that C. G. Jung actually called this
condition of possession “psychic inflation” developed in his theory
that this condition occurs through the dissolution of the opposite pair “the
personal psyche and the collective psyche.”

Inflation as Ambitendency

Next to the designations “possession” and “psychic
inflation,” there is in psychopathology still another term for this
interesting condition, and indeed that of the expression “ambitendency” coined by Eugen
Bleuler.

Under ambitendency, E. Bleuler understood the simultaneous presence of
such opposite tendencies, which exclude one another in reality.

The
patient wants, says E. Bleuler, at the same time to eat and not to eat.  He is at the same time like all other
men, but at the same time he is quite different than his fellow men.  He is at the same time King and subject,
Lord and servant, God and devil, Christ and Antichrist, man and woman, the
gardener named Hans Műller and Napoleon or King of China.  And so on.

Experimental
ego analysis interprets all these so far "described" pure representative
clinical pictures like possession, ambitendency, psychic inflation, and
doubling of the person as illnesses of ego diastole, the ego function "p."

Inflation
as a defense technique indeed is based on the function of ego diastole; it
represents the prototype of a "p"
defense mechanism.

*

We
point to the well-known self description of Paters Surin from the work of
Ideler as an example of the psychopathology of possession and ambitendency.4

So
much about the general definition of inflation.  Now we can turn to the discussion of the
forms of inflation.

On the
basis of the origins of inflation contents we distinguish -- similarly as with
the projection process -- three forms
of inflation: (1) personal, (2) collective, and (3) familial inflation.

1. Personal Inflation

Inflation
is personal, when the doubling of the
ego is being carried out through contents that have been previously repressed
into the personal unconscious.

Although
Freud has never used the term "inflation," he has still represented the
process of personal inflation completely under "doubling" and "greatness
delusion" in the case of Schreber.5

On the
basis of this analysis we can
reconstruct the stages of the soul with personal
inflation as follows:

(a)   The man
fluctuates his whole life between heterosexual and homosexual feelings.  Disillusionment and failure can drive
him from one side to another.

(b)   Psychic, however,
and also somatic factors -- like the climacteric -- can lurk in the background
with the woman as well as with the man and push the not-lived same sexual stirrings
into the foreground.  The ego
however does resist and represses the homosexual strivings pushing into the
foreground.

(c)   Through the
repression, the ego brings about libido detachment from a person, who is taboo
to love because the person is of the same sexuality.  Now the person seeks, first by means of
projection to cancel the repression and to lead back the libido to the person
abandoned by him.  This can happen
only in the well-known paranoid
form.  The person feels himself
persecuted by the same sex person formerly loved by him.  This consists of the negative ego
diastolic p- phase of persecution
delusions.  Therein the first
transformation consists of the homosexuality redeemed out of repression.  Some persons remain perpetually in this
phase of defense conflict against homosexuality.

There are
however some who can establish a second transformation which then leads then to
greatness delusions and to possession [Besessenheit], in a
word, exactly to inflation. This phase in our nomenclature is the positive ego
diastole p+ phase.

(d)   As one of these
transformations, Freud explains the following: The patient sets up the persecutor
through a higher court.  He no
longer insults the earthly projection object that was first loved and then
hated, for the object becomes an overly powerful greater cosmic court, for
example the sun, God, and so forth.
Everything happens now henceforth "on a world order scale."

In our
everyday speech, this means that from the personal dual union is made a
"cosmodal" union [union with the universe] through the ego diastole.6
Through the greatness delusion, the ego, according to Freud, is compensated:
"Conflict and illness can stop."

Often
the paranoid splits also his own ego into more persons, by which the one can be
frequently a god-like court.  Freud
writes: "There is doubling of the same significant relationships, as Otto
Rank has recognized in myth formations."7

"The
cosmic relations were replaced, however, according to Freud, not through the
collective psyche relations but through the personal and infantile relationship
to the real father."  The illusionary relationship to God,
according to Freud, originates on the basis of the "father complex"
through substitute formations and transferences.8

The
doubling of the ego occurs consequently through the early infantile and until
then repressed love and hate relationship to
the father and indeed through the placing
next to one another of the two egos, of one's own ego and of that of the
God-father, or through the splitting of the soul into one's own ego and the
God-father.  The patient now becomes
both. He doubles, consequently, his ego.

(e)    Freud
developed the theory that with the paranoid the libido withdrawn from the
object strikes the ego and is employed for ego enlargement.  Consequently, the stage of narcissism,
well-known from the development of libido, is again reached in which one's own
ego was one's own sexual object. "Because of this clinical statement, we
assume" Freud writes further “that the paranoia brings with it a fixation in narcissism and, we state,
that the regression from the sublimated
homosexuality to narcissism gives the carrier the regression characteristic of paranoia."9

Freud still
mentions here the old interpretation of school psychiatry of the origin of
greatness delusions out of the persecution idea.  This means: "The sick person who has
been primarily struck by the delusion to be the object of the persecution on
the part of the strongest powers feels the need himself to explain the
persecution, and to do so on the assumption that he is himself a grand personality, worthy of such a
persecution."10
What Freud may have added to the old interpretation on the basis of psychoanalysis was, until then, an invisible
process, which was divided by him into the following steps:

(1)   same sexual love for one of the
parents,

(2)   libido withdrawal through
repression,

(3)
driving back the libido to the beloved
person or to its substitute figure through the help of projection,

(4)
transformation of projection into
doubling through splitting of the person into more ego existences of which one
is a higher court (God).

*

Inflation
uses, consequently, in these cases a personal
coinage that is the object on which the personal
repressed sexual wish is attached and may appear in consciousness as a
particular ego existence next to
one's own ego.

Thus
the doubling through the dissolution of repression after the first projection
phase occurs as the second transformation.
We indicated that the sequence of projective and inflative phases can
also be reversed.

*

On the
question of the relationship between persecution and greatness delusion Freud
remarks: "It remains not without significance for other parts of paranoia
knowledge that an addition of greatness
delusion is confirmed in most other forms of paranoia illness. We have the
right to assume that megalomania is
chiefly infantile and that it in the later development of society is
sacrificed, as it becomes intensely repressed through no other influence than
through an individual being powerfully seized when falling in love."11

Falling in love is however again only an
ego diastolic ego stage, and indeed the condition of mystic participation, the being
one of the subject with the object.

The infantile and all-human greatness
delusion -- as a particular phase of ego diastolic processes -- is consequently
quasi "healed" through a "regression" to the first, original stage of ego diastole of
the participative primordial projection stage of being one with the object
through falling in love.

It is
to be regretted that the dangerous inflations and greatness delusions particularly
in those that reached this level could not be cured by means of falling in love,
and these thus become the most tragic chapters in the history of mankind.

2. Collective Inflation

Collective is each form of inflation by which the
doubling of the ego occurs through the collective unconscious and not through the
personal repressed contents of the unconscious. The most important trait of the
collective psyche is: The allness [Allheit].
It expresses itself in omnipresence,
all responsibility, all guilt, etc.  The simplest form in which this inflative allness manifests itself is
the double being and the simultaneous
presence in two or more places, thus the "double presence" (bi-présence
according to Lévy-Bruhl) or the multi
presence.  We find this manner
of inflation both in the thinking of primitives and also in that of the
different forms of paranoia.

(a) The Idea of Doubling in the Thinking
of Primitives

[1] Doubling
of Man and Animal

The
following report comes from Nelson about the Eskimos of the Bering Straits:
“One believes that once all organisms led a double existence and by its own will could appear as either human
or animal in its current shape…. ” 12

Here we find the
prototype of collective inflation in form of a legend. The double being becomes the werewolf
(Lycanthropy) with the Naga (in the northeast India), with the Toradjas on
Celebes, the leopard men, and panther men in areas spread out in west
Africa between Sierra Leone and the Congo and in earlier times in the 16th
Century with the Indians of Peru, and furthermore attributed to sorcerers and
witches, and even to animals, lifeless objects and the dead.

Lévy‑Bruhl remarked on the
fact that in this “superstition,” which is widespread nearly over
the whole world, a person and an animal
are constantly in reality one and the same being. Not the soul of a person
leaves one’s body in order to travel as a wolf, leopard, or tiger, but
the person and the animal are only one being with a double existence and a
double presence.13 Since these primitives consider that the
collective descent of their tribe or their humanity is mostly from these
animals, it appears to be correct that we understand the mental process of
these ideas of double being and double presence as collective inflation.

It will suffice if
we demonstrate from the rich collection of Lévy–Bruhl some
examples here for the representation of these phenomena:

J. H. Hutton
reports: "On
one occasion the elders of a large Ao village came to me for permission to tie
up a certain man in the village, while they hunted a leopard that had already
caused a great deal of damage. The man in question, who was, by the way, a
Christian convert, also appeared to protest against the action of the village
elders. He said passionately that he was very sorry that he was a leopard man;
he did not want to be one, and that it was not his fault, but seeing that he
was one, he supposed that his leopard body must kill to eat, and if it did not,
both the leopard and he would die. He said that if he were tied up the leopard
would certainly be killed, and he would die. To tie him up and hunt the leopard
was, he said, sheer murder. In the end, I gave leave to the elders to tie the
man up and hunt the leopard, but told them that if the man died as a result of
their killing the leopard, whoever had speared the leopard would of course be
tried, and no doubt hanged, for murder, and the elders committed for abetment
of the same. On this, the elders unanimously refused to take advantage of my
permission to tie up the man." It would be difficult to imagine a more
conclusive fact. Everybody is so convinced that the man and the leopard are the
same individual in two bodies that the European administrator is obliged to
make his verdict conform to the common belief.”  Lévy‑Bruhl remarks on this:
“It would be difficult to furnish a more complete factual proof for the
faith in the double being of the leopard men. Everyone in the village is
perfectly convinced that the man and the leopard are the same being in two
different bodies; consequently, the European government official is forced to
adapt his decision to the common superstition.”14

What concerns us
here indeed is a possession [Besessenheit]
by doubling. This becomes clear from the description of the “fits” that
tend to accompany these doubling transformations. Thus J. H. Hutton describes a
fit of lycanthropy possession with the Naga in the northeast of India as
follows:

"‘The possession is accompanied by very
severe pain swellings in the knees, elbows and small of the back in the person both
during and after the possession. These pains are said to be such as would
result from a continuous marching or from remaining long periods in an unaccustomed
position. During sleep at the time of possession the limbs move convulsively,
as the legs of a dog move when it is dreaming. A leopard man of the Tizu
valley, in paroxysm at such a time, bit one of his wife's breasts off. When the
leopard is being hunted by men, the human body behaves like a lunatic, leaping
and throwing itself about in its efforts to escape. Under these circumstances
the relatives of the leopard man feed him with ginger as fast as possible
in order to make him more active, so that the leopard body, on which his life
depends, may have the agility to escape its pursuers. The body of the man and
that of ‘his’ leopard thus both experience the same sensations at
the same time. In order that the leopard may escape, new strength is procured
for the man. They are in reality but one being, present in two places. That is
the belief of those chiefly interested: The neighborhood, the pursuers, and
himself.”

The deadly action at a distance of the
charm curse -- according to Lévy‑Bruhl -- conditioned ikewise
“a double existence and a double presence of material objects, which
causes death.”15

The double
presence is presented with some primitives on the basis of “two egos” or “tamaniu.” With many primitive
peoples one finds the belief that the dead person is at the same time present
and absent or is present at two places. In order to make this double presence
impossible for the dead person, some tribes make use of actions, which our
culture calls funeral rites for violators. Thus reports W. E. Roth from the
district of Brisbane in Australia:

"In the case of adults, immediately after
death, some old medicine man, not necessarily a relative, would cut off the
whole genitalia of a male, the clitoris only of a female, wrap it in grass, and
place it high up in the fork of a tree: This was to be significant for the sexual
instinct being finished with and to prevent the spirit (nguru) of the
dead entering into sexual relations with the living." Lévy‑Bruhl writes, “Thus the
mutilation of the corpse reacts upon the dead, just as the wound inflicted
on the leopard appears upon the body of the leopard man. In both cases
individuality is consistent with double being and double presence.”16

Often the dead,
particularly in the first days after their dying, appear in animal forms.17
Thus many Bantu Negroes of southern Africa
prefer the shape of serpents.18

With the
reading of these collective possessions of the primitives, one is struck that
the “second ego" appears mostly as an animal and is able to carry
out the cruelest sadistic actions. The cruel acts of the secret societies, thus
the so-called leopard men and panther men in West Africa
and also in other places supply today still sufficient proof for the fact that
the original collective need of the two egos is the impulse to kill, to have
the thirst for blood, and to eat people (cannibalism). The opposite pair, which
here conditioned the doubling, is man and animal.  Both stand next to one another as
"ego existences" as if there were no contradiction between them.  This opposite pair is almost as old as
that of heterosexuality and homosexuality, which according to Freud, is
connected with personal doubling with
the paranoids.

On the
basis of fate analysis [Schicksalsanalysen] with paranoids we have come to the conclusion that the
paranoids do not always try to solve
the opposition of "heterosexuality homosexuality" emphasized by Freud
in the form of doubling delusion, but that they double themselves most
frequently also through a different opposite pair, and indeed through the antinomy
"Cain-Able," "animal-man," "cannibalism-humanism."  These paranoids descend mostly from
families, according to our research, in which next to paranoids are also to be
found chiefly epileptics. (Case 1 in this book supplies a model example for
this fact.)  One therefore can not
accordingly verify absolutely the Freudian thesis that in the background of the
paranoid stands the repressed homosexuality.

[2] The Doubling of Man and Woman

Despite this qualified
criticism of this Freudian interpretation we must emphasize that inflation, the
doubling of man and woman in the case
of culture poor tribes, plays an outstanding role, in particular in their legends,
cults, songs, and cult devices. The leading role of sexual doubling, the sexual
collective inflation, with primitives is illuminated out of the book of
collections of J. Winthuis on "The Two Sexual Being."19
This Ethnologist had the opportunity to work with the
most diverse South Seas tribes on New Pommern in
the center of the former German New Guinea Colony and also with the Melanesian
tribes: With Vitjians, Salomons islanders and Admiralty Islanders, Polynesians as
well as Samoans. His statements have a special importance also through the
circumstance that he learned the difficult Gunantuna language; thus, his
translation of legends and songs of these tribes are authentic.

The legend of
the Aranda tells that man and woman in the beginning were grown together.20
The Aranda explained to Strehlow, “That a man nevertheless married one of
those alknarintja women, whom they were not allowed to marry. The punishment
for it was that the woman did not love him. There he drew her picture on the
soil and threw at it continuously with spears (virile membrane). Then he hurled
the woman’s picture burning at all sides towards the sky. There it became
transformed into the body of a comet and the spear into its tail. And now the
woman loved him passionately.  Thus the
opinion of the Aranda that the comet became a two sexual being, a man woman, which there with its female body,
which is inflamed with love, is always connected with the tail = virile
membrane.”21

According to the
legends of the Aranda rainbows and stars are also two sexual beings. Thus Strehlow
tells the following legend:

Two girls hiding
in the bushes looked at the solemn initiations for two boys to whom they were
promised. “After completion of the celebration they came out from their
hiding place, loaded the two circumcised boys on their shoulders and climbed
with them to the sky, where they together with the young men were transformed
into two brilliant stars.  According
to the main role, which the girls played here, the stars are man woman.”22

Double being,
man woman, is also the rain.
“With the rain cult the actor carries “a rain bearing mother”;
on a cord (membrane) it hangs out over his belly.”23

Also in the thinking of the Aranda and Loritja,
the trees and rocks are two sexual beings.

Many cult songs and
cult behaviors prove how strongly this doubling inflation of man and woman
prevails in the thinking of primitives. (See Strehlow’s reports on Emu
cult behaviors and singing.)24

Winthuis writes: “To become a two sexual being is the great
longing of the Aranda and Loritja.  Formerly, then they believed humans, man
and woman, were connected to one another. But they were helpless. Then a totem
God, Mangarkunjerkunja, gave them the use of their limbs. However they were
separated. Since then man and woman themselves long again for constant union. Therefore
their pitying totem Gods brought the cult, by which the sign of the two sexual
union was through tooth eruption,25
sub-incision etc., and thus can initiate again the union as a two
sexual being. Also the magic wands, which they brought with them there in stone
or wood transformed bodies (tjurunga)
should keep them holy as two sexual beings; for the same purpose, they would
rub them with fat (female) and ocher (male), and in the holy cave, the symbol
of the coupling, they carefully preserved them; thus with the help of these
holy magic wands, they became two sexual beings…. “26

The initiation
into manhood ceremonies is in any case a cult behavior in the sense of making
the boy a man woman. Therefore the
small operation of the sub-incision.

A. Van Gennep27
refers to the similarity of the initiations ceremonies in Australia, Asia,
Africa etc. with the Eleusinian mysteries. “How is one to explain the
complete similarity of the Greek, Egyptian and Asiatic rites with those of the
Australian, the Bantu Negroes or Guinea Negroes and the Indian of northwest America?”
On this question the author gives the answer, “That all these mysteries
are the basis of a common thought, the thought of the transformation of the
initiate into a new double sexual nature.”28

If indeed these
mysteries and initiation rites mean the will of a man and woman to be a double
being and to be God-like perfection (completion) -- as J. Winthuis believes ‑-
“We are concerned here with the central secret of the religions of most
peoples of the earth…. ”29

The alchemical material
on the double being and on the hermaphroditism collected by C. G. Jung and its role
in the history of culture is represented in a magnificent and unique way. We
cannot even bring briefly here this enormous material of C. G. Jung. We refer
here only to his books.30

The
demand to double oneself sexually appears to be consequently an original human
eternal and archaic collective need, which however -- apart from the rare cases
of somatic hermaphrodites and
androgynous persons -- is never realized in fact.  The "culture-poor" primitive
is however also relatively more fortunate than the present
"culture-rich" person.
While the primitive with the help of his cult devices and cult actions
and through his mysteries from time to time therefore may live out the god-like
perfection in the archaic heroic world of two sexual beings without running any danger, the person
in our culture can in fact experience
the original old collective inflation of man woman doubling only in dreams or in delusion
formations.  (Compare this to the
hermaphroditic dream numbers 6, 7, and 8 in the third part of this book.)  Modern persons have become poorer therefore in their need
experiences through their higher culture than the so-called culture poor
peoples of Australia,
Africa, Asia, and northwest America.  The culture stage of present
"culture-rich" people excludes completely the doubling mysteries of
cult behavior from religion.

There
remains for the man in the present consequently no other way to make himself
feel god-like -- that is, to make himself a two sexual being -- other than by
dreaming or by becoming insane.

[3] Collective Inflation as the Idea of
Doubling

in the Case of Cultured People

Jung
separates a normal form of inflation
from a pathological one.  When, for
example, an official identifies completely with his office and thus behaves as
if he were the office and completes all the intricate social functions that
actually do not belong to him but to the office, then this man acts in the
condition of inflation.31 This form of puffing up of the person is however
still not pathological.

The pathological form of inflation rests
according to Jung on "a mostly inborn weakness of the personality
vis-à-vis contents of the autonomous collective unconscious."32

As is
well known an opposition between the personal
and the collective universal
tendencies of the unconscious exists in the human soul according to Jung.  The collective psyche embraces -- as
Jung writes -- the "parties inférieures" [inferior parts] in
the sense of P. Janet -- thus "the well established, as it were
automatically hackneyed, recognized and existing everywhere and thus beyond the
personal or impersonal part of the individual psyche."  The personal unconscious and
consciousness includes, on the other hand, the "parties
supérieures" [superior parts] of mental activity. That means the
personal, ontogenetic, acquired and developed part of the soul.

A pathological form of inflation occurs
therefore when the person "annexes the collective psyche given to him a
priori and unconsciously as his ontogenetic acquired own property as if it were
a part of the same."33

In
other words, the person acts in the condition of a pathological
"inflation," when he expands the range of his personality with
"beyond the personal" and "beyond human" contents of the
unconscious collective psyche.  On
the one hand this "inflation" is burdened with collective
"beyond the personal" strivings of the personality; on the other hand
it depreciates it and indeed at one time through the pathological "ego
expansion" of the person through "omnipotence" and god-likeness";
at another time through the "crushing" of self-feelings through
beyond human strivings present at the same time.

Jung
perceives this making one ill in this form of inflation in the dissolution of
the personality into its opposite pairs.

Opposites
such as the personal and the beyond the personal, the satanic-like and the
god-like, the individual man and the collective beyond men, and related
opposites are dissolved with the inflation. The dissolution of the opposition
between the personal and collective psyche occurs in that the person has taken
the contents and tendencies of the collective psyche into the inventory of his
personal psychic functions.  As a
result of this puffing up, the person behaves henceforth as if the strivings of
the collective psyche -- like omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscient, being responsible
for everything and further god-likeness and holiness -- belonged to his own
personal and individual possession.
Naturally all the above mentioned beyond the personal "all" [omni]
tendencies belong to the universal and collective property of mankind.  If, however, a normal man is made
conscious of these "beyond man" and "god-likeness" demands,
then he represses them henceforth.
"The repression of the collective psyche" -- Jung writes -- "was
simply a necessity for personal development.34  A man becomes sick when he can not
repress the making conscious of the collective all-tendency to be like God
because of weakness of his personality and when he expands and puffs up himself
with the collective contents.

For
the normal development of the personality, according to Jung, the strong
differentiation of the personal soul from the collective psyche is an absolute
requirement.

As an example of the “God-like”
inflation C. G. Jung mentions the
case of Maeder. The patient “stood with the mother of God and similar
gods in ‘telephonic’ connection. In his human reality he had been an unsuccessful locksmith apprentice,
who already for approximately 19 years had been incurably mentally ill.”
(Paranoid dementia with greatness dellusion.)  Further Jung writes: “He had discovered the grandiose idea
however among other things that the world
was his picture book, through which he can leaf for his favorites. The
proof for it is very simple: He needs to only to turn, and then he sees a new page.”35

For the
evaluation of this case Jung draws upon Schopenhauer’s World
as Will and Representation for a comparison here and remarks the following:
The difference between this paranoid and the philosopher consists in the fact
that for the paranoid the view of the world as a picture book remained in the
stage of merely a spontaneous growth, while Schopenhauer abstracted and, in
generally accepted language, expressed the same opinion. “It had from its
underground initial beginning thereby been raised up into the bright daylight
of collective consciousness.”36 We say that Schopenhauer with his
p function and with his position taking
and reality testing k function of his
ego was able to produce the idea.

Another example
from the collection of G. Elsässer: A 25-year old woman, whose husband
became mentally ill one year before, found a job in a monastery, where she helped
with the housework. “In connection with religious practices, she became
ill….  She believed herself to be the mother of God, and further that
people were behind her, who in a truck would fetch and execute her.”37
Her inflation was thus of a collective nature.

About a paranoid
female patient of his, W. Weygandt stated, “She had seen the sky open and
on a tree were shapes, lions and cows, and the Lord spoke to her”…
“You are blessed, God is your
beloved papa and the priest is your healer.”38

The “being God-like” penetrated into consciousness from out of the collective unconscious as signs of power and mightiness manifested
itself in these examples once therein when the patient was able ‑- like
God ‑-  to look at the world
as a picture book, at another time when the patient was the mother of God, and
at a third time when her father was “Papa God,” with Whom she is
able to speak, and when the sky stands open for her.

These profound personality changes, according
to C. G. Jung, are based on “the attraction of a collective picture.”
In the case cited by W. Weygandt the
hallucinating picture of the open sky and lions and cows in the trees works
indeed like a painting from the early Renaissance. The eruption of such
collective pictures into consciousness dissolves the personality. She becomes
“mad.” Therefore the statement of Jung that the hallucinations and
the pathological illusion world of racially different schizophrenics with
archaic original pictures of representations and interpretations, thus with archetypes of mankind and with
collective mythologies, indicate a profound connection.39

In a supplement to the Schreber case Freud drew attention to the
fact that so many delusion fantasies are not
only based on the “father complex” but also may indicate mythological connections. Schreber maintained that the sun speaks to him in human speech and verified “that its
rays pale before him, when he spoke, and turned toward him.”

Freud at first explained
the relationship of the patient to the sun as a sublimated “father
symbol.” In a supplement he however completed this interpretation, based on
S. Reinach, with the fact that only eagles -- as
inhabitants of the highest air layers in the sky -- had the good fortune to be able to look into the sun unblinking and
without being blinded and thus had been entitled as eagles to examine their young
objectively with this test before they recognized their young as legitimate.
Due to similar examples derived from primitives (as with the tribe of the
Psyllen), Freud felt compelled to express the following:

“We are here
concerned with things that appear to compel me to make possible a
psychoanalytical understanding for the origins of religion.” He continues:
“This small addition for the analysis of a paranoid may do that since the
well-founded interpretation of Jung that the myth forming forces of mankind
have not expired but today still are producing in the neuroses the same
psychological products as in the oldest times ….  And I mean, it will soon be the time to
add a proposition, which we psychoanalyists have already expressed for a long
time, which is to expand from its individual and ontological understood
contents to the anthropological and phylogenetical contents that can add to the
comprehended amendment. We have said: In dreams and in neurosis we find the child again with the characteristics of
his ways of thinking and his affect life. We will complete this with also the savages and primitives, as has been shown us in the light of antiquity science
and the research on primitives.”40

Thus Freud himself
has bridged the gulf between the personal unconscious and the collective
unconscious, an act that the Jungian school quite often is inclined to forget.

3. Familial Inflation

Familial inflation originates when the person expands
the boundary of his personality with contents, functions, honors, and
possessions, which belong to the stock of
the family and not to the person.
The person puffs himself up with the not personally acquired
characteristics but with the power belonging to the family in total or to another family member.  In circumstances of familial inflation,
the person, consequently, sees no more or not yet any distinction between the
opposition between the individual and the family.  The boundary between daughter, son,
father, sister, brother, grandfather, grandmother, etc. becomes indefinite.  The individual acts thus as if he
himself were the family and collects all physical and mental and spiritual and
material "accessories" of his whole family.

The person doubles or expands himself with
his relatives.  This definition of familial inflation
elucidates how generally this kind of inflation is to be found among people.  And still more:  There are many places, even state
mechanisms, that determine and legally protect precisely this familial
inflation.  Thus, for example, the
hereditary family titles of duke, count, baron, the titles of "von"
and "zu" and so on.  The
hereditary parliamentarian functions and offices of certain families are all in
this class.

The
word family stems recognizably from the Latin famulus and the
relationship of bond servants (= famulus) to their lord (= dominus).  The authority of the family father rules
over the power of the family.  The
patriarchal family is based first on the household community, second on the
providing community, and third on the operating community.41

In
general, the concept of the family signifies the degree of blood relatedness
and the social unit of parents and children.  This concept given here stems
historically from the fact that the Romans consequently consider their own
children as "serfs" or "bond servants."  Here is revealed the original form of
familial inflation.  The parents
expand -- as in the case of the Romans -- their personal power over the
children as if their children were their physical
property.  This familial
inflation of the parents, who thus are incapable to consider and to respect the
"physical" boundary and opposition between "parents and
children" is today still to be found quite often.  Thus many incest bindings are prolonged
and maintained throughout decades in the first place by the familial inflation
of the parents, in particular the mother. We give
some examples of it:

Case 2. A
lesbian inclined mother brought home her daughter, who was bound to her and who
had just acquired her diploma. The reaction of the “familial
inflated” mother was: “Now, the diploma belongs to me. You, you go into
your room.  So there.” This
mother will thus be herself a doctor, something that her daughter had personally
attained.

Case 3. A
sexually unrestrained mother gave the consent to two of her daughters to marry on
the condition that she can take their suitor for the time being to herself in
bed. An inflation, which reminds us of the jus primae noctis of the lord
of property over the women of his bond servants.

In these two examples the mothers wanted
not only to be everything but also to have
everything that their daughters respectively were or had.

Another psychopath,
an advanced-in-age manufacturer who lived with her son in an actual incest marriage,
consented to the marriage of her son only on the condition that she will accompany
the newlyweds on the their wedding journey and that also in the future the
right to determine “temporally” the coition of the spouses. She
could not do without power over her son also after the marriage. Here we must therefore
accept a coupling of familial inflation and introjection.

Most
frequently the phenomenon is that sons inflate themselves with the power of their
fathers.  The son of a landowner
treats the builders as if he were the
lord and landowner. The son of a Prime Minister seized the presidency over his
school comrades. The son of the world-famous poet behaves at school and later
also in life in a manner as if he were a famous poet.

This
is a harmless form of familial puffing up [Aufgeblasenheit] and is
naturally mostly not pathological.

The pathological form of inflation of a
familial nature begins first with doubling, with which somebody at the same
time is the person, who he is in
reality, and also his own mother,
grandmother, or some figure of his ancestor line.  Most frequently these ancestors, with
whom the sick person has doubled or expanded himself, appear in the
hallucinations of paranoids.

If a
deep analysis of these hallucinations are successfully carried out, one, thus, quite
often comes to understand that the patients in their mental reality have expanded
or doubled themselves with their relations and at the same time are mother and daughter, daughter and
father, grandparent and daughter, etc. As a model example we bring in the third
part of this book a succession of visions of a highly gifted school principal,
who during the day or at night in bed produced rich daydreams in a waking condition without loss of
consciousness; these daydreams she
tried to interpret and to write up.
Certainly she was not mentally disturbed.  She had however the capability -- something
like a poet -- to experience consciously
her visions, to abstract them and to interpret them herself.  In these daydreams, we find quite often
the typical inflations of a familial nature.  There appear figures that are, at the
same time, father and child or mother and child.  [See Part Three: Autogenous Participation
with Relatives.  Example 10.  Visions 1 to 5.]

END
NOTES

1   JASPERS, K.: Allgemeine Psychopathologie [General Psychopathology].
Springer, Berlin‑Heidelberg. p. 615.

2  Ibid.

3  Ibid., p. 104.

4  IDELER: Versuch einer Theorie des religiösen Wahnsinns [Attempt at
a Theory of Religious Madness], Bd. I, p. 392 ff [in footnote]. Cited in. JASPERS: p. 104.

5  FREUD, S.: Ober einen autobiographisch
beschriebenen Fall von Paranoia [About an Autobiographical Case of Paranoia].
Ges. Sehr., Bd. VIII, p. 399 in footnote.

6 SZONDI, L.: Experimentelle
Triebdiagnostik [Experimental Drive Diagnostic]. Huber, Bern 1947. p.
155 ff.

7  RANK, 0.: Der Mythus von der Geburt der
Helden [The Myth of the Birth of the Hero]. Schriften z. ang.
Seelenkunde, V 1909. Zit. n. FREUD: Ges. Schr., Bd. VIII, p. 400.

8  Später hat FREUD
diese Auffassung korrigiert [Later, Freud has corrected this interpretation].
(Siehe später [See previous].)

9  FREUD, S.: Ges. Schr., Bd.VIII, S. 424/425.

10
Ibid., p. 399.

11
FREUD, S.: Ges.
Schr., Bd. VIII, p. 417.

12
LÉVY‑BRUHL:
Die Seele der Primitiven [The Soul of Primitives]. W. Braumüller,
1930. p. 176.

13
Ibid., p. 159.

14
HUTTON,
J. H.: Leopard‑men in the Naga hills.
Zit. n. LÉVY‑BRUHL: p. 160/161. [English translation (slightly
modified by the editor) is from the English version of the book published by
Henry Regnery Company (a Gateway Edition), 1971]

15
LÉVY‑BRUHL:
Die Seele der Primitiven, p. 181.. [English translation (slightly modified by
the editor) is from the English version of the book published by Henry Regnery
Company (a Gateway Edition), 1971]

16
Ibid., p. 270.

17
Ibid., p. 293.

18
Ibid., p. 303.

19
WINTHUIS,
J.: Das Zweigeschlechterwesen [The Two Sexual Being]. Hirschfeld, Leipzig 1928. Forschungen
zur Völkerpsychologie und Soziologie [Researches on the People’s
Psychology and Sociology], Bd. 5. Hrg. v. R. THURNWALD.

20
Compare
this to PLATO’S “Symposium,” where it is told that
“before time superhumans lived, who actually bore in themselves the
characteristics of both sexes as double beings. Since meanwhile these
superhumans appeared dangerous to the Gods, these double beings were divided.
And since then there are here women and there men, and everyone seeks now the  half of the other sex, its partner, from whom
it was separated.”

21 WINTHUIS, J.: pp. 45‑47.

22
Ibid., p. 49.

23
Ibid., p. 49.

24
Ibid., p. 54 in footnote.

25
Der Sinn
des Zahnausschlgaens [The Meaning of the Tooth Eruption] as an inauguration
rite is that that the Weihling becomes now a double being. “The gap
resulted from the deflected tooth is to suggest that from now on the virile
membrane, symbolized by the tongue that has admission to the vagina (gap),
and/or with it is to be always connected!” Ibid., pp. 38/39.

26 WINTHUIS, J.: p. 81.

27 VAN GENNEP, A.: Les rites de Passage, p. 130. Cited
in note in WINTHUIS, J.: p. 132.

28
Ibid., p. 132.

29
Ibid., p. 134.

30
JUNG, C.
G.: a) Psychologie und Alchemie. 1944. b) Symbole der Wandlung [Symbols of
Transformation], p. 374, p. 497 ff.

31
JUNG, C.
G.: Die Beziehungen zwischen dem Ich und dem Unbewußten [The
Relationships Between the Ego and the Unconscious]. Rascher, Zürich
1928. p. 38.

32
Ibid., p. 44 f [footnote].

33
Ibid., p. 46 f.

34
Ibid., p. 50.

35
Ibid., p. 39.

36
Ibid., p. 40.

37
ELSÄSSER, G.: Die Nachkommen geisteskranker Elternpaare [The
Descendents of Mentally Ill Pairs of Parents]. Thieme, Stuttgart 1952. p. 60.

38
WEYGANDT, W.: Atlas und Grundriß der Psychiatrie [Atlas
and Outline of Psychiatry]. Lehmann, Munich
1902. p. 436.

39 JUNG, C. G.: Wandlungen und Symbole der
Libido [Transformations and Symbols of Libido]. Rascher, Zürich. Compare
to Triebpathologie, Book. I, p. 24 footnote.

40
FREUD, S.: Nachtrag zu [Supplement to] “Über
einen autobiographisch beschriebenen Fall von Paranoia.” Ges. Schr., Bd.
VIII, p. 434 ff.

41 Autorität und Familie. Studien aus dem Institut für
Sozialforschung [Studies out of the Institute for Social Research], Bd.
V. Librairie F. Alcan, Paris 1936. p. 523.