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So far this book has been concerned with the formulation of a theory, the few ‘facts’ mentioned being illustrative models intended to give body to what might otherwise be an exercise in the manipulation of abstractions. It leads up to the formulation of a theory which has as its realization a background of psychoanalytic practice. The theory formulates a recurrent pattern of emotional experience of wide distribution. It does not replace any existing psychoanalytic theory, but is intended to display relationships which have not been remarked.
However thorough an analysis is, the person undergoing it will be only partially revealed; at any point in the analysis the proportion of what is known to what is unknown is small. Therefore the dominant feature of a session is the unknown personality and not what the analysand or analyst thinks he knows.
All psychoanalytic progress exposes a need for further investigation. There is a ‘thing-in-itself’, which can never be known; by contrast, the religious mystic claims direct access to the deity with whom he aspires to be at one. Since this experience is often expressed in terms that I find useful to borrow, I shall do so, but with a difference that brings them closer to my purpose. The penumbra of associations is intended to help those who look for my meaning.
In any object, material or immaterial, resides the unknowable ultimate reality, the ‘thing-in-itself’. Objects have emanations or emergent qualities or evolving characteristics that impinge upon the human personality as phenomena. Of these qualities the personality may be consciously or unconsciously aware; they differ from the ultimate reality.
‘Ultimate reality’ is a term with a penumbra of associations, which
makes it psychologically helpful, but this fact makes it unsuitable to represent something that by definition is unknowable. The same objection applies to the term ‘godhead’. Meister Eckhart expresses his sense that the godhead evolves to a point where it becomes a