Depth Psychology and a New Ethic/Chapter 2 - The Old Ethic/The Old Ethic - Perfection

The scope of what we describe as 'the old ethic' is actually very wide. It comprises the most variegated human ideals and includes a whole gamut of degrees of perfection. But in every case it involves an assertion of the absolute character of certain values which are represented by this old ethic as moral 'oughts'.

The ideal prototype at the center of the old ethic may be the figure of the Saint or the Wise Man, the Noble or the Good, the Devout, or the Orthodox Fulfiller of the Law, the Hero or the Man of Self-Control; the good which can be known is represented as an absolute value.

This value may be regarded as a law which can be revealed or immanent, as an intuited idea or as the behest of reason, but it is always a codifiable and transmittable value which governs human conduct in a 'universal' manner. e.g: The Torah, Bible, Quran, Pali Canon.

It is always held that the ideal of perfection can and ought to be realised by the elimination of those qualities which are incompatible with this perfection. The 'denial of the negative', its forcible and systematic exclusion, is a basic feature of this ethic.

However variable its dominant symbols may be, the moral formation of the personality is in every case only made possible by the conscious tendency of one-sidedness and by insistence on the absolute character of the ethical value. It excludes the 'other side', or the opposite and negative aspect of the value via suppression, or repression.

Suppression

Discipline and asceticism are the best-known forms assumed by this technique. As an example, denying satisfaction to the needs of the body and of sexuality, by the faithful fuliffer of the Law to exclude all tendencies contrary to that law. This is usually practiced by devout adherents; Ascetics, Anchorites, Monks, Celibate Priests, etc.

Suppression is a conscious achievement of the ego, and it is usually practiced and cultivated in a systematic way.

Consequences

It is important to notice that in suppression a sacrifice is made which leads to suffering. This suffering is accepted, and for that reason the rejected contents and components of the personality still retain their connection with the ego. As examples: One ought to suppress their homosexual emotions and behavior. Women ought to be obedient to their husbands. One ought to be celibate before marriage.

It is true that a moral veto which requires the suppression of a given type of instinctive reaction denies satisfaction to that instinct; at the same time, however, the suppressed instinctive reaction still continues to play an important part in the view of the life held by the ego-consciousness that suppresses it.

Suppression is the cause of the creation of the persona.

Repression

This form may be regarded as the instrument most frequently used by the old ethic to secure the imposition of its values. In repression, the excluded content loses touch with the ego-consciousness, and becomes unconscious or forgotten. The ego is entirely unaware of their existence.

Consequences

The complexes of the unconscious which have been shut away from daylight by repression undermine and destroy the world of consciousness. The uncleanness and tangled obscurity of the situation which arises as a result of repression has effects which are actually far more dangerous than those of asceticism, with its clear conscious attitude of suppression.

As depth psychology has shown, these constants lead an active underground life of their own culminating in the Shadow (the Id in the Freudian school), with disastrous results for both the individual and the collective.

Conscience

The authority by whose aid the (old) ethic imposed its behests on the individual is 'conscience', and this authority is an antithetical relationship to the 'inner Voice', which is the individual expression of psychic truth. Freud called conscience (the Super-ego) 'social anxiety' because it is to a considerable extent shaped by the taboos and social standards of the predominant culture, and ethics of the collective. In other words the time and place shape the conscience. Conscience is the inculcated ethic of the society, and 'wronging' this ethic creates anxiety from fear of alienation from the collective group, family, friends, God-image, etc.

What constitutes a value for one society, period, or community may represent an anti-value to another. Therefore conscience's across different collectives may not match.

Consequences

However, complete agreement with the collective values in force at any given time is in fact impossible. Because the values of the old ethic are 'absolute' (that is, not adjusted to the reality of the individual human being), adaptation to these values is one of the most difficult tasks in the life of any individual.

As mentioned earlier suppression and repression are the two main techniques employed by the individual in their attempt to achieve adaption to the ethical ideal. The natural result of this attempt is the formation of two psychic systems in the personality, one of which usually remains completely unconscious, while the other develops into an essential organ of the psyche, with the active support of the ego and the conscious mind. The unconscious part is the Shadow, the conscious part is the Persona.

Both are perilous but they are so to different degrees and with different results for the individual.

The situation which is more common and more familiar to the average person is that in which the ego identifies itself with the ethical values. This takes place by means of the identification of the ego with the persona. The ego confuses itself with the facade personality) which is of course in reality only that part of the personality that is tailored to fit the collective), and forgets that it possesses aspects which run counter to the persona. This means that the ego has repressed the shadow side and lost touch with the dark contents, which are negative and for this reason split off from the conscious sector.

It now feels itself to have a 'good conscience', and feels it is in complete harmony with the collective values, which are accepted as positive. And it feels itself to be the bearer of not simply the conscious light of human understanding but also the moral light of the world of values.

In the process, the ego falls a victim to a very dangerous inflation - that is to say, to a condition in which consciousness is 'puffed up' owning to the influence of an unconscious content.

The inflation is due to the ego identifying with the transpersonal value, and this causes the individual to forget his shadow (the suppressed negatives, creaturly limitation, and corporality).

The result is that the inevitable lack of complete harmony between the ego and the collective values is tacitly omitted from the reckoning.

Repression of the shadow and identification with the persona are two sides of one and the same process. It is a vicious circle; the more the shadow is repressed, the more one identifies with the persona, and the deeper that pushes the shadow into the unconscious.

The forms which may be taken by this ethical facade range from genuine illusion and an 'as if' attitude to sanctimonious hypocrisy and downright lying.

Though this false human responses are not confined to any one historical period, it is a fact that this pseudo-attitude has appeared with especially frequency in the history of the West during the past two hundred years. Actually, Western man's illusory self-identification with positive values, which conceals the real state of affairs, has never been more widespread than in the bourgeois epoch which is now coming to an end.

Possession

The positive belief in progress was one of the precursors of the First World War. This is still a belief held by many modern people. The Arrogation of modern people, regarding himself as the meaning and evolutionary culmination of creation, was a prelude to the mestial arrogation of the Aryan Herrenvolk under National Socialism.

The illusions and mendacity of the collective, in war and peace, are both cause and effect of the illusions and mendacity of its individual members, who betray their pseudo-Christian, pseudo-humanistic, pseudo-liberal, and pseudo-human attitudes in every sphere of life.

Ego-inflation implies a condition where the ego is overwhelmed by contents with greater libido than consciousness, which causes a kind of possession. This is so dangerous irrespective of the type of content that is possessing the ego, because it prevents the mind from achieving contact with reality. The person is blinded, and fixated on and by the unconscious content and becomes its mouth piece and vehicle, ignoring essential aspects of reality that may be outside the fixation.

As is demonstrated by a wealth of historical examples, every form of fanaticism, every dogma, and every type of compulsive one-sidedness is finally overthrown by precisely those elements which it had repressed, suppressed or ignored.

Hubris

What makes ego-inflation so disastrous is not some intrinsic danger to be found in the collective values themselves, but rather by identifying their personal ego with the transpersonal value (love, compassion, etc) the limited individual loses contact with their own limitation and become inhuman.

But the individual's essential non-identity with the transpersonal (a God, or Ideal/perfection) is in fact the basis of their life. The uniqueness and individuality of humans is realised precisely by the self-differentiation of the creaturely and limited from the unlimited power of the Creator. In inflation, this basic situation is by-passed, and the individual becomes a chimera, a 'pure spirit' or disembodied ghost.

This constellation, which may manifest itself in the form of dreams of flying or of becoming invisible, often enough has the same ending as the flight of Icarus, which in fact portrays this basic psychological situation in terms of the symbolic language of myth. The result is the fall of Icarus into the sea; the ego, which had imagined itself to be immortal, is destroyed by being swallowed up by the unconscious. It is this lower element, the part disregarded by man's hubris and sinful pride, which is responsible for his downfall in the end. The repressed element, overlooked in the arrogance of the flight, ultimately takes its revenge.

The devouring sea is well-known to us from the symbolism of myths and dreams as an image of the unconscious. In mythology it is axiomatic that the hubris of man should be punished by his downfall and by revenge of the gods. But this axiom is the projection of a psychological law. Every inflation, every self-identification of the ego with transpersonal content - and that is the precise meaning of hubris, in which man imagines himself to be equal to the gods - inevitably results in downfall; the transpersonal content (the gods) annihilates the ego, which is no match for its superior power.

Inner Voice

The contrast between the 'inner voice' is evidence in support of our contention about the relationship between ethics and persona-formation. This contrast is most clearly exemplified in the founders of new religious or ethical movements; these were invariably 'criminals', and it was inevitable that they should be treated as such. Abraham (who broke his father's idols into pieces), the prophets, Jesus and Luther (who in turn superseded the narrow religious nationalism of the Jewish people, the old Law, and Catholicism) - all these were regarded as criminals in exactly the same way as Socrates, who introduced 'new gods', or Marx and Lenin, who set out destroy the established order society.

The revolutionary (whatever their type) always takes their stand on the side of the inner voice and against the conscience of their time, which is always the expression of the old dominant values; and the execution of these revolutionaries is always carried out for good and 'ethical' reasons. Often enough - though by no means always, as the history of heresies may teach us - the course of history eventually recognises these 'criminals' of the inner voice as the forerunners of a new ethic. But this is no way alters the fact that the conscience of the new age - though itself partly shaped by the impact of the revolutionaries of the inner voice - invariably re-establishes a canon of dominant values and requires the individual to adapt to this canon in its turn by the formation of a new persona.