The Depths of the Soul: Psycho-Analytical Studies. Wilhelm Stekel
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stains and blots in our benefactor’s present life or pursuits that can blacken the spotlessness of his past. Not until we have done this are we free from the oppressive feeling of gratitude. Thus, with no further reason for being grateful left, our personal pride survives unshaken, the bowed ego again stands proudly erect.
This explanation of the psychology of ingratitude draws the veil from a series of remarkable phenomena which we pass by in our daily life without regard or understanding. We shall cite only a few instances from the many at our disposal: the ingratitude of servants and all subordinates—a species of ingratitude that is so obvious that if an exception occurs the whole world proclaims it as an exception; the ingratitude of pupils to the teacher to whom they owe all (this explains the common phenomenon that pupils belittle the scientific attainments of the teacher—a phenomenon that may almost be designated “the pupil’s neurosis”); the deep hatred with which artists regard those of their predecessors to whom they are most indebted; the tragedy of the distinguished sons whose fathers paved the way for them; the great injustice of invalids towards the physicians to whom they owe their lives; the historic ingratitude of nations to their great leaders and benefactors; the stubborn ignoring of the living great ones and the measureless overvaluation of the dead; the perpetual opposition to whatever administration may be in power, whence is derived a fragment of the psychology of discontent; the quite frequent transformation of a friendship into its opposite.
Verily, one who counts upon gratitude is singularly deficient in knowledge both of human nature and of his own nature. In this connection, we must consider also the fact that owing to an excessive overvaluation of the performance of our most obvious duties, we demand gratitude even when there is no reason for expecting it. I refer to only one example: Is there not an obvious obligation on parents to provide to the best of their ability for the child that they have brought into the world? Notwithstanding this we daily preach to our children: “You must be grateful to us for all that we do for you, for your food, your clothes, your education.” And is it not a fact that this insistence upon the duty of children to be grateful begets the opposite: ingratitude? Should we not rather strive to hold our children with only one bond, love?
Let us be just and also admit that really grateful human beings are to be found; persons whom life has not wearied and who lose none of their dignity though they are grateful. These are the spiritually pre-eminent individuals who have forced themselves to the recognition of the fact that no one is an independent unit, that our valuation of ourselves is false, individuals who have succeeded, by the aid of psychoanalytic self-knowledge, to reduce the normal person’s delusional greatness to the moderation warranted by reality.
Such persons are grateful because their valuation of themselves is fed by other springs. The knowledge of the frailties of humanity in general compensates them for the failing of the human in the individual. The greatest number of grateful persons will be found in the ranks of the geniuses, whereas talented persons are generally addicted to ingratitude. Genius can easily be grateful inasmuch as the frank recognition of one’s weaknesses and the secret knowledge of one’s achievements do not permit the suppression of the greatness of others. One who has so much to give need not be ashamed to have accepted something. And more especially as he knows with certainty that in life everyone must accept. …
Truly great men are notably modest. Modesty is the knowledge of one’s own shortcomings. Vanity, the overvaluation of one’s endowments. Gratitude is the modesty of the great; ingratitude the vanity of the small. Only those are grateful who really have no occasion for being so. A genuine benefactor finds his thanks in good works. In dealing with this theme one must think of Vischer’s verses:—
“If poison and gall make the world bitter,
And your heart you would preserve;
Do deeds of kindness! and you will learn
That doing good rejoices.”
UNPACKING ONE’S HEART
The average human being finds it helpful to free himself from his impressions by “pouring out his heart” to someone. Like a sponge, the soul saturates itself; like a sponge, it must be squeezed dry before it can fill itself up again. But now and then it happens that the soul cannot rid itself of its impressions. Such persons, we say, are soul-sick and we recognise those who suffer from soul-sickness by the fact that they sedulously shun new impressions. Every disease of the soul rests ultimately upon a secret.
Children exhibit in clear and unmistakable ways the reactions of their elders. In the presence of a secret they behave exactly as the normal person ought to behave. They cannot keep it to themselves. I recall very distinctly that as a child I was unable to sit a quarter of an hour without speaking. Repeatedly my parents promised me large rewards if I would sit a quarter of an hour without asking them a question or making some remark. The promised reward was increased from day to day because I never was quiet for more than half of the allotted period. But the obligation to keep a “secret” was even more discomforting to me. On one occasion my brother was to be given a silver watch for his birthday. For three days I went about oppressed and restive as if something was seriously amiss. I prowled around him, watching him intently with suppressed excitement, so that he finally noticed my strange behaviour and demanded to know what I wanted. On the day before his birthday I could contain myself no longer and while we were at dinner I burst out with, “Oh, you don’t know that you are going to get a silver watch to-morrow!”
All children are, doubtless, like that. A secret is to them an unbearable burden. When the time comes that they must keep some matters secret from their parents because an inexplicable shyness makes them ashamed to talk everything over with them freely, they change their attitude towards their parents and seek out a companion of their own age, some friend with whom they can discuss their secret.
Adults are really as little capable of going about with a secret as children are. It tortures and oppresses them like a heavy burden; and they are happy to rid themselves of it one way or another. If they cannot speak of it openly and frankly then they do so in some hidden, secret, or symbolic way. I could cite numerous illustrations of this but shall content myself with only one. A woman who had committed the unpardonable sin became troubled with a remarkable compulsive action. She was continually washing her hands. Why? Because she was dominated by the feeling that she was dirty, that she had become unclean. She could not tell any one in the world what she had done; she would have loved to say to her husband and to the whole household: “Do not touch me! I am impure, unclean, an outcast!” She had found a means of making this confession, but she did so in a form which only the expert can understand. At every appropriate and inappropriate occasion she washed her hands. If she was asked why she washed her hands she answered, “Because they are not clean.” Such symbolic actions are extremely common and constitute a kind of “speech without words” (to use Kleinpaul’s apt words). But a symbolic action is nothing but a substitution, a compromise between antagonistic psychic currents. It bears, however, no comparison with the freeing effect of pouring one’s heart out in words to a person, a confidant one can trust.
We know from the statements of convicts that nothing is so hard to bear in prison as the impossibility of “getting things off their chest.” And why is it that when touring foreign countries we so readily make friends with our townspeople whom we happen to meet, though at home we are quite indifferent to them? Because they furnish the opportunity for a good talk, because to a certain extent they become receptacles into which we may empty our soul’s accumulations. The profound yearning that we all harbour for friendship, for a sympathetic soul, emanates from the imperative need for pouring our hearts out. By means of a good talk of this sort, we “abreact,” or throw off a part of our pent-up excitement. Children are much more fortunate than we in this regard. How easily they find a friend! The first-best playfellow becomes a friend and confidant within half an hour. But for us grown-ups the matter is much more difficult. Before we can take any one into our confidence, take him to our bosom, he must satisfy certain social and ethical requirements. But in reality we disclose only the surface and retain our most oppressive secrets deep