C.G. Jung – Family Constellation
C. G. Jung's article "Family Constellation," translated by Elena Kruglyakova, is published in the second volume of his collected works. This volume compiles Jung's writings that explore experimental research, relying on the word association test. The volume covers the period of research from 1904 to 1911.
The article was written in 1909 and contains some of Jung's ideas about the family's influence on individual development. In it, one can see the nascent psychology of object relations, transgenerational transmission, family constellations, and, I believe, many other concepts that are now independent fields. I particularly want to highlight ideas about the mutual influence within a couple—that is, not only do parents influence children, but the development of a husband and wife within the family unit also matters. Moreover, this article is a reflection on the results of associative experiments; Jung muses based on figures and graphs, but in his reflections, he essentially describes elements of the family's emotional field, or, as we might say today, elements of the family unconscious.
The word constellation – Latin constellatio literally means "a group of stars" (con- "together" + stella "star"). In analytical psychology, one usually speaks of the constellation of a complex.
Ladies and gentlemen, as we have seen, there are various ways in which the association experiment can be utilized in practical psychology. Today, I would like to discuss yet another application of this experiment, which primarily holds purely theoretical significance. My student, Emma Furst, a staff member of the psychiatric clinic at the University of Zurich, conducted the following research: she applied the association experiment to twenty-four families, comprising a total of one hundred subjects. The resulting material amounted to 22,200 associations.
This material was processed as follows: fifteen clearly defined groups were formed according to logical and linguistic criteria, and the associations were grouped accordingly:
| Husband | Wife | Difference | ||
| I | Coordination | 6,5 | 0,5 | 6 |
| II | Subordination and Superordination | 7 | – | 7 |
| III | Differentiation | – | – | – |
| IV | Predicate expressing personal judgment | 8,5 | 95,0 | 86,5 |
| V | Simple predicate | 21,0 | 3,5 | 17,5 |
| VI | Verb relations to object or complement (subject or object) | 15,5 | 0,5 | 15,0 |
| VII | Designation of time, etc. | 11,0 | – | 11,0 |
| VIII | Definition | 11,0 | – | 11,0 |
| IX | Coexistence | 1,5 | – | 1,5 |
| X | Identity | 0,5 | 0,5 | – |
| XI | Motor-verbal combination | 12,0 | – | 12,0 |
| XII | Word composition | – | – | – |
| XIII | Word termination | – | – | – |
| XIV | Sound associations | – | – | – |
| XV | Deficient reactions | – | – | – |
| Total | 173,5 | |||
| Average difference 173,5/15= 11,5 |
As can be seen from this example, I use the difference to demonstrate the degree of analogy. To find a basis for the sum of similarities, I calculated the differences between all of Dr. Furst's non-related subjects by comparing each female subject with all other non-related women; the same comparison was done for male subjects.
The most notable difference is observed when two compared subjects do not share a common associative quality. All groups are calculated as percentages, with a maximum possible difference of 200/15 = 13.3 percent.
| I | The average difference between non-related male subjects is 5.9 percent; for women in the same group, it is 6 percent. |
| II | The average difference between related male subjects is 4.1 percent; for women, it is 3.8 percent. From these figures, we see that relatives show a tendency to agree in reaction type. |
| III | The difference between fathers and children = 4.2, mothers = 3.5. The children's reaction types are closer to the mother's type than to the father's. |
| IV | The difference between fathers and their sons = 3.1, daughters = 4.9; between mothers and sons = 4, daughters = 3.0. |
| V | The difference between brothers = 4.7, sisters = 5.1. If we exclude married sisters from the comparison procedure, we get the following result: the difference between unmarried sisters = 3.8. These observations clearly show that marriage to some extent breaks down the original conformity, as the husband belongs to a different type. The difference between unmarried brothers = 4.8. Apparently, in the case of men, marriage has no effect on the type of associations. However, the data we have is not yet sufficient to allow us to draw definitive conclusions. |
| VI | The difference between husband and wife = 4.7. This number is not a reliable sum of various and very unequal values; that is, there are some cases showing extreme differences, as well as cases showing complete agreement. The graphs illustrate various results (Figs. 1-5). I have plotted the quantitative values of associations on the vertical axis as percentages. The Roman numerals on the horizontal axis represent the forms of associations given in the table above. |
Fig. 1. The father (bold line) exhibits an objective type, while the mother and daughter show a pure predicative type with a pronounced subjective tendency.
Fig. 2. Husband and wife are well-matched in a purely predicative type, with the subjective predicative type being somewhat more pronounced in the wife.
Fig. 3. Very good agreement between the father and his two daughters.
Fig. 4. Two sisters live together. The dashed line represents the value for the married sister.
Fig. 5. Husband and wife. The wife is the sister of the women in Fig. 4. She is very close to her husband's type. Her pattern is the direct opposite of her sisters'.
The similarity of associations among related subjects is often astonishing. Let me give the associations of a mother and daughter:
| Stimulus Word | Mother | Daughter | |||
| pay attention | hard work | student | |||
| law | God's commandment | Moses | |||
| dear | child | father and mother | |||
| great | God | father | |||
| potato | tuber | tuber | |||
| family | many people | five people | |||
| stranger (foreign, unknown) | traveler | travelers | |||
| brother | dear to me | dear | |||
| to kiss | mother | mother | |||
| burn | severe pain | painful | |||
| door | wide | big | |||
| hay | dry | dry | |||
| month | many days | 31 days | |||
| air | cool | humid | |||
| coal | sooty | black | |||
| fruit | sweet | sweet | |||
| cheerful | happy child | little children | |||
Indeed, one might assume that in this experiment, where the door is wide open to so-called chance, individuality could become a factor of paramount importance, and therefore one might expect a rich variety and freedom of associations. But, as we have seen, the results indicate the opposite. The daughter shares the mother's way of thinking not only in her ideas but also in the form of their expression; so much so that she even uses the same words. What could be more free, volatile, and inconsistent than a fleeting thought? Yet here, thought is not inconsistent; however, it is not free, on the contrary, it is strictly determined by the boundaries of its habitat. Therefore, if even the most superficial and, apparently, the most fleeting mental images are entirely conditioned by the environmental constellation, what can we expect for more significant mental activities, for emotions, desires, hopes, and intentions? Let's consider a specific example, presented in Fig. 1.
The mother is forty-five, and the daughter is sixteen. Both are clearly of the predicative type according to the evaluation and are distinctly different from the father. The father is a drunkard and a demoralized man. Thus, it is understandable that his wife experiences emotional hunger and judges him harshly. However, the same arguments cannot be applied to the daughter, as, firstly, she is not married to a drunkard, and secondly, life with all its hopes and promises is still open to her. It is completely unnatural for the daughter to fall into the group of the pronounced predicative type. She reacts to environmental stimuli exactly as her mother does. But if, for the mother, this type is to some extent a natural consequence of her unfortunate situation, this is not at all true for the daughter. The daughter simply imitates her mother; she follows her mother's pattern. Let's consider what this might mean for a young girl. For her, it is unnatural and makes her react to the world as an old, disillusioned woman would. But the consequences can be even more serious. As you know, people of the predicative type openly express strong emotions; everything is emotional for them. If such people are close to us, it is difficult to avoid reacting, at least internally; we can be infected by their emotions and even be overwhelmed by them. Originally, affects and their physical manifestations had biological significance, that is, they served as a protective mechanism for the individual and the whole herd. If we show our feelings, we can be sure that we will evoke feelings in others. This is the experience of the predicative type in question. What a forty-five-year-old woman does not receive emotionally, namely love in marriage, she seeks as compensation in the outside world, and for this reason, she is an ardent follower of the Christian Science movement. If the daughter submits to this pattern, she behaves in the same way as her mother, seeking emotional satisfaction externally. But for a sixteen-year-old girl, such an emotional state is very dangerous, to say the least; like her mother, she reacts to her surroundings, asking for sympathy for her suffering. Such an emotional state is no longer dangerous for the mother, but for obvious reasons, it is dangerous for the daughter. As soon as she frees herself from her father and mother, she will become like her mother, a suffering, internally unsatisfied woman. Thus, she will be in great danger of falling victim to violence and marrying a brute and drunkard like her father.
This consideration seems important to me for understanding the influence of environment and education. This example shows what can be transmitted from a mother to her child. It is not pious commandments or the repetition of pedagogical truths that affect the formation of a developing child's character; the strongest influence on them comes from the unconscious personal affective states of their parents and teachers. Hidden conflicts between parents, secret anxieties, repressed desires - all these factors create in the child a characteristic emotional state that slowly but surely, though unconsciously, seeps into their psyche, resulting in the formation of exactly the same attitude and, consequently, the same reactions to the environment. We all know that when we interact with capricious and melancholic people, we ourselves become depressed. An anxious and nervous person infects those around them with anxiety, whining, dissatisfaction, and so on. Since adults are very sensitive to environmental influences, we should certainly expect that for children, whose psyches are soft and pliable as wax, sensitivity will be even more pronounced. Fathers and mothers deeply imprint their personalities into the psyches of their children; the more sensitive and receptive the child's psyche, the deeper the imprint. Everything is unconsciously reflected, even those things that were never spoken aloud. The child imitates gestures, and parental gestures are an expression of their emotional states, and, in turn, the gesture gradually forms a certain emotional state in the child as they appropriate it. The child's adaptation to the world is exactly the same as that of their parents. In puberty, when the child begins to free themselves from the curse of the family, they enter life with virtually the same set of impaired adaptive mechanisms as their parents. This can be the cause of frequent and very deep adolescent depressions; their symptoms are rooted in the difficulties of developing new adaptive mechanisms. At first, the adolescent tries to separate from the family as strongly as possible, even to the point of complete alienation, but internally, this will only bind them more tightly to the image of their parents. I recall the case of a young neurotic who ran away from home. He became estranged from his family to the point of cruelty, but at the same time admitted to me that he possessed a very special talisman: a box with his old children's books, dried flowers, stones, and even small bottles of water from the well of his home and from the river along which he walked with his parents.
The first steps in the direction of friendship and love are most strictly determined by the nature of our relationship with our parents, and this, as a rule, perfectly illustrates how powerful the influence of the family constellation is. For example, often the healthy son of a hysterical mother finds a hysterical wife, and the daughter of an alcoholic chooses an alcoholic as a husband. I once spoke with an intelligent and educated woman of twenty-six, suffering from a peculiar symptom. She complained that her gaze repeatedly took on a strange expression, which had an undesirable effect on men. If she looked at a man next to her, he would become embarrassed, turn away, suddenly start talking to the man next to him, after which they would either start laughing or feel ashamed. The patient was convinced that her gaze aroused indecent thoughts in men. It was impossible to dissuade her from this conviction. This symptom immediately aroused my suspicion that I was dealing not with neurosis, but with paranoia. But during the course of treatment, after only three days, I saw that I was wrong, as the symptom, once analyzed, immediately disappeared. It arose as follows: the lady had a lover who publicly rejected her. She felt completely abandoned, stopped appearing in society, gave up entertainment, and had suicidal thoughts. In such isolation, unconscious and repressed erotic desires accumulated, which she unconsciously projected onto men as soon as she was in their company. This formed the conviction that her gaze aroused erotic desires in men. Further investigation showed that her unfaithful lover was mentally ill, a fact that she was apparently unaware of. I expressed my surprise that she had made such an inappropriate choice, and added that she must have had a certain tendency to love mentally abnormal people. She denied this, but said that she had once, even before this incident, been engaged to an absolutely normal man. He also left her; and upon further investigation, it turned out that he had also been in a psychiatric hospital for a year shortly before this, another psychotic! This seemed sufficient to confirm my assumption that she had an unconscious tendency to choose insane men. Where did this strange taste come from? Her father was strange, eccentric, and in later years completely estranged from his family. The patient's love was thus shifted from the father figure to her brother, who was eight years older, and whom she loved and revered like a father. At fourteen, her brother became hopelessly insane. This, no doubt, was the very pattern from which the patient could not free herself, according to which she chose her lovers and through which she was destined to be unhappy. The particular form of her neurosis, giving the impression of madness, probably arose from this same childhood pattern. We must take into account that in this case, we are dealing with a highly educated and intelligent woman, not neglecting her inner experience, who indeed reflected much on her unhappy fate, having, however, no idea what caused her unhappiness.
Such things we unconsciously take for granted within ourselves; for this very reason, we cannot see what is actually happening, but assume that our innate character is to blame. I could give countless similar examples. Patients constantly illustrate to me the determining influence of family history on their destiny. In every neurosis, we can see how the emotional environment formed in infancy affects not only the nature of the neurosis but also the patient's fate down to the smallest details. One can trace the impact of such family constellations years later, leading to numerous unfortunate career choices and catastrophic marriages. There are, however, cases where the profession was chosen successfully, where the husband or wife is impeccable, and yet the patient feels bad and lives and works in constant tension. Such a situation often manifests in chronic neurasthenics. Here the difficulty lies in the fact that the mind is unconsciously split into two parts, representing divergent and conflicting tendencies; one part lives with the husband or profession, while the other lives unconsciously in the past with the father or mother. I treated a woman for many years who suffered from a severe neurosis, which eventually progressed to dementia praecox. The neurotic syndrome began to develop from the moment of marriage. The patient's husband was a kind, educated, wealthy man, suitable for her in every respect; in his character, there were no visible reasons that could in any way prevent family happiness. And yet, the marriage was unhappy because the wife was neurotic; easy relations were not possible. The heuristically important principle of any psychoanalysis states: If a patient develops a neurosis, this neurosis contains a negative aspect of the patient's relationship with a close person. Neurosis in a husband clearly shows that he has strong resistance and negative attitudes towards his wife; a neurotic wife has attitudes that alienate her from her husband. In an unmarried patient, the neurosis turns against a lover or parents. Every neurotic, of course, resists such a ruthless interpretation of the content of their neurosis and often does not admit it under any circumstances, and yet this is always the essence of the matter. Of course, the conflict does not lie on the surface and, as a rule, can only be revealed by painstaking psychoanalysis.
I will tell you the story of our patient: her father was a deeply impressive personality. She was his favorite daughter and treated him with boundless reverence. At seventeen, she fell in love for the first time with a young man. At that time, she had the same dream twice, the impression of which never left her afterwards; she even gave it a mystical meaning and often recalled it with religious awe. In the dream, she saw a tall male figure with a very beautiful white beard, at the sight of which she was filled with a sense of awe and delight, as if experiencing the presence of God himself. This dream made a profound impression on her, and she was forced to constantly think about it. The romance turned out to be unserious and soon ended. Later, the patient married her current husband. Although she loved her husband, she constantly compared him in her mind to her deceased father, and the comparison always turned out to be to her husband's disadvantage. Whatever her husband did, said, or intended to do, it was condemned according to the same scenario and always with the same result: “My father would have done all this differently and better.” Thus, our patient could not enjoy life with her husband. She could neither respect nor love him enough, and he was internally disappointed and dissatisfied. Gradually, she developed strong religious feelings and at the same time, symptoms of hysteria appeared. She began to show sentimental attachments now to one priest, now to another, becoming more and more estranged from her husband. The psychiatric syndrome manifested ten years after the marriage, and in this state, she refused to have anything to do with her husband and child; in her imagination, she saw herself pregnant by another man. Her resistance towards her husband, which had until then been carefully suppressed, became quite pronounced and manifested in various ways, including harsh violence.
This case shows that the neurosis began to develop approximately at the time of marriage and was expressed in the manifestation of a negative attitude towards her husband. What was the content of this negative attitude? It was her relationship with her father; day after day, she proved to herself that her husband never measured up to her father's level. When the patient first fell in love, a symptom appeared, an extremely impressive dream or vision. She saw a man with a very beautiful white beard. Who was this man? When her attention was drawn to the beautiful beard, she immediately recognized the image. Of course, it was her father. Every time the patient began to fall in love, the image of her father arose, thus preventing her from adapting to a relationship with the person in question.
I have deliberately cited this case as an example, as it is a simple and very typical illustration of how marriage can be crippled by a wife's neurosis. I could overwhelm you with similar examples. Unhappiness always has too strong a connection to parents, and the child remains a prisoner in the jail of their parent-child relationship. One of the most important goals of education should be to free the growing child from their unconscious attachment to the influences of their childhood, so that they can retain what is valuable in them and discard what is not. It seems impossible to me at present to solve this difficult question starting from the child's perspective. We still know too little about the emotional processes of children. The first and only contribution to the literature containing factual evidence on this topic was published this year. It is Freud's analysis of a five-year-old boy.
Children's problems are immense. Parents' problems, however, should not be so great. Parents could be much more circumspect and patient regarding their love for their children. Probably many sins committed against beloved children by their overly indulgent parents could have been avoided had parents possessed a deeper knowledge of the child's consciousness. For many reasons, I find it impossible to state anything universally substantiated regarding the educational aspect of this problem. We are still too far from general commandments and rules; we are still doing fieldwork, as shown in case histories. Unfortunately, our knowledge of the subtle processes of a child's consciousness is so insufficient that we are not yet able to say where the greater fault lies: in the parents, in the child itself, or in the relationships, in the environment. Only examples of psychoanalysis, like the one published by Professor Freud in our Jahrbuch, 1909 (5), will help overcome this difficulty. Such detailed and careful observations should be a powerful stimulus for all teachers to familiarize themselves with Freud's psychology. This psychological approach to education can bring much more benefit than all current physiological psychology.