Discover Your SELF

INTRODUCTION

You don’t consider yourself bad company, do you? It would not be a great hardship to spend an hour a day three or four times a week in your own exclusive com­pany, would it? These short periods of solitary rumina­tion may transform you from a discontented, disor­ganized being into a serene personality.

Discovering your self is a restful but highly stimulat­ing process. It does not require great powers of con­centration; on the contrary, the faculty for “decentra-tion” is what you will have to develop.

Lack of self-control in the face of temptation, an over­abundance of self-control hampering vital emotions and functions and various cases of hysterical incapacities can be cured completely through autoanalytical practice. Fits of melancholia or a senseless abandon to superficial fun, excessive shyness or compulsive show-offishness can be eliminated by drawing on secret resources. Autoanalysis does not offer a sure-fire cure for nervous symptoms like tics, stuttering, asthma and certain kinds of skin diseases, but in combination with competent medical treatment it may help by bringing relief from the common cause of these evils: relief from the pressure of a clogged sub­conscious.

The autoanalytical method developed in this book is especially adapted to the faculties of the unassisted lay­man. A word of warning may be in order: if you feel that you won’t have the energy necessary for such an under­taking, don’t even embark upon it. See a reliable psy­chiatrist instead. If your symptoms seem to be of a severe order, don’t try to analyze yourself. The exercises and analyses prescribed on the following pages can help against neurotic but not against psychotic disturbances.

The nervous person is addressed. Through this medium it is not possible to guide the deranged.

Nevertheless, some psychiatrists, especially if they are hard pressed for time, may find it useful to put this book into their patients’ hands in order to convey in­formation and training supplementary to their treat­ment.

Autoanalysis makes extensive use of techniques based on discoveries of the pioneer psychoanalysts, but only insofar as they can be applied by one individual to his own troubles. It uses other techniques too, such as auto­suggestion, self-conditioning, introspection and certain “mental tools.”

Since the lonely, decentrated mind only too easily can float away from its problem, I have devised a few symbolic “props” for the autoanalyst. For instance, if you feel at odds with the world, write one word char­acterizing your chief complaint on a blackboard. After passing one full autoanalytical session facing this word and getting your fill of its nasty associations, wipe it off your slate; you can be sure that this simple symbolic act has the suggestive power to wipe away your com­plaining mood too. (“Make a clean slate of it.”)

Introspection is not “brooding.” Rather it is work, hard work applied to your essential self. When you set out to discover your self, you want, first, to reach the unconscious center of your own being and, second, to make this center respond to your conscious directives. Almost every human being has an astonishing amount of psychic power, but many men and women cannot use their will power when it should serve to improve their own functioning. You must break through the outer crust which is formed by moral censorship and self-censorship, by forgetfulness, inertia, taboos. The process of gaining access to your own unconscious core in order to clear up emotional complications is what you might call “learning to be an autoanalyst.”

This method, I believe, can be understood easily by the many men and women whose disorders originate in hurt feelings and not in hurt thinking.

Our troubled epoch is reflected in the profound rest­lessness of many physically healthy individuals. Statis­ticians predict that one seventeenth of the population of the United States will spend some time as mental pa­tients in our hospitals. This is a terrifying figure. The spread of autoanalytical knowledge and technique might help to reduce this danger.

Many people who need psychiatric treatment never get it, mainly for three reasons: lack of money, lack of time, and inhibitions against self-revelation. In many cases, the monetary reason obviously is the decisive one. Lack of time can be a strong deterrent too. To accomplish his purpose, the analyst will need the pa­tient’s undivided attention (or better, his undivided in­attention) for one hour five days a week during a period of several years.

If you can overcome these two material obstacles, there remains the third: most men do not want to talk about their secret lives. Many women seem to have a strong urge to speak in the first person singular. This, however, as a rule is the extrovert kind of talk which aims to impress the partner with affectations and affec­tions: there can be no psychic healing without intro­version.

The approach to psychological analysis by reading a book and thereby learning to apply analytical methods to one’s own symptoms has none of these disadvantages. A book cannot do the work of a competent psychiatrist, of course, but it can be of considerable help.

Self-discovery builds on an ancient tradition. Intro­spective processes have been of vast importance in the adventure of man’s learning about himself. They have been elaborated upon through the centuries, from Bud­dha down to the founders of psychoanalysis. As a matter of fact, Professor Freud made many of his valuable discoveries by observing Professor Freud. (He verified the symbolic significance of slips of the tongue, for in­stance, in just that manner.) Many psychiatrists deny that analysis applied by laymen to their own symptoms can produce durable healing effects. Freud’s pupil, Otto Rank, recommended that “the guidance of the analysis should be withheld completely from the patient.” Freud himself had different ideas: “The analyst rejoices if he can save his advice and, instead, waken the initiative of the analyzed person.” This seems to indicate that some autoanalytical work of the patient would have found his approval. A comprehensive study of self-analysis has been made by Karen Horney. I am deeply indebted to these and many other workers in this field.

Contrary to standard psychoanalysis, the autoanalyti­cal method explores the inner rhythms of the living or­ganism. Certain procedures can be effective only if they are coordinated to the ebb and flow of the psyche, to “high” or “low spirits.” As a matter of fact, it might be a good idea for the autoanalyst to obtain what is known as his Biogram and to use his biorhythmic data as a frame of reference during the progress of his studies and exercises.

Autoanalysis, as a system, relies on the essentially good qualities of man’s unconscious mind. Some psy­chiatrists picture the subconscious as filled exclusively with complicated traumata and barbaric drives. I am firmly convinced that this isn’t the whole picture. The unconscious is also the seat of repressed humane and graciously childlike feelings which the tough, battered adult of our era has consciously discarded. Therefore, the unconscious part of our soul can be transformed into a constant source of elation and inner contentment, into a counterbalance against actual afflictions. The un­conscious is really your guardian angel—if you learn to understand its untrammeled voice.