You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Zoya here discusses a case in the light of that power of the unconscious upon which Jung based his hypothesis of an archetypal ethos, not dependent on and sometimes opposed to consciously accepted conventional morality, which manifests itself in what he called the ethical aspect of conscience.
The patient, of German origin but reared abroad, had returned in 1939 to fight for the Fatherland in what he thought was a just cause. But even before he saw active service he fell prey to repetitive nightmares, the recurrent theme of which was the inherent arbitrariness of violence and war; and, once arrived at the front and commanded to shoot at the advancing enemy, he suddenly and unaccountably turned his rifle on himself—luckily without either being noticed or inflicting too severe a wound. Later taken prisoner, he started writing, eventually becoming a successful journalist and writer on many subjects but always returning to the question of violence. The nightmares had stopped with the ending of the war, but as the years passed he became less and less able to complete any piece of writing and was plagued by many psychosomatic symptoms including prolonged migraines, which finally brought him to Zoya.
The wartime nightmares of his youth had not only had reference to his own aggression, but had pictured an unconscious perception that there was no ‘right’ side, the killing senseless and fortuitous and the slayer and slain essentially one. Now nearing fifty, his dreams revealed that his basic conflict was between his own individual values and those of the collective; this was further evidenced in obsessive ruminations during sessions about the value of his work and the impossibility of reconciling commercial pressures with his idealistic aims.
This exceptional and gifted patient had the greatest difficulty in becoming aware of his inner world, and although his various troubles decreased with analysis Zoya is unable to gauge how much insight was really gained. He simply offers the