Analytic Psychology (Volume 2)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1896 edition. Excerpt: ...mode of thinking and acting. What a man says and believes in the heat of polemical discussion may be very different from what he says and believes in a cool moment. Yet he may never be aware of the discrepancy until he is unpleasantly reminded of it by some one else. Similarly, a person's opinions under the influence of an imposing religious ceremony, may vary considerably from those which he entertains in pursuing a scientific or critical research. It is quite conceivable that a professor of anatomy, who is also a devout Roman Catholic, may pay veneration to what are alleged to be bones of saints, although his scientific knowledge would constrain him to identify them as the bones of animals. In cases of this kind the two systems, which might conflict and do not, are usually disparate and disconnected. They may be equally extensive and excitable, as in the last instance, but they are not so united under a higher noetic synthesis, that the one is unable to operate in detachment from the other. The one, which for the time being preoccupies consciousness, excludes the other by competition. The points in which they conflict may be almost the only points of community between them. Hence the strength with which they compete is altogether out of proportion to the strength with which they cooperate. There is, as indicated above, an impulsive or excitable type of mind which is peculiarly apt to underestimate, overlook, or forget difficulties.1 This mental attitude finds its most appropriate embodiment in precipitate action, which often fails, bacause of the very eagerness with which it seeks its immediate object. The characteristics of the type are: (1) The explosive intensity of the group of ideas which happens at any given time to occupy the field...