The Rudolf Steiner Archive

3. Questions “On Psychiatry” following Friedrich Husemann’s lecture on “Nervousness, Worldview, and Anthroposophy”

Preliminary Note: Nothing is known about Friedrich Husemann’s lecture, as no notes were taken. However, it may be assumed that some of the points he raised were also addressed in his lectures on “Questions of Contemporary Psychiatry from the Perspective of Anthroposophy,” delivered during the first Anthroposophical University Course in September 1920. A summary of these lectures was published in the anthology “Aenigmatisches aus Kunst und Wissenschaft” (Enigmatic Aspects of Art and Science), Volume I, Stuttgart 1922.

Following Dr. Husemann's presentation, a question was asked about opportunities for pursuing a degree in psychiatry in the future.

[ 1 ] Rudolf Steiner: Of course, it is no longer possible today to discuss this topic—which would require an exhaustive treatment if one were to address it at all—in any way other than with a few brief remarks at most, for the study of psychiatry certainly requires the most far-reaching reforms, especially in our time. Even if one merely considers how impossible it actually is today to properly frame the questions that must be addressed in psychiatry, one will realize how necessary

[ 2 ] 70 such a reform of psychiatric education is. Yet such a reform alone will not be possible—as I understood from Dr. Husemann’s lecture itself—unless the humanities first truly enrich the individual disciplines. For that development—which Dr. Husemann has so beautifully described today, a development that began around the time of Galileo and then culminated in the 19th century—this scientific development has, in fact, torn the entire realm of human thought apart into two sharply opposing currents of thought. On the one hand are the concepts we have of the material world and its processes; on the other hand is the life of thought itself, which has taken on an increasingly abstract character, so that—since abstractions cannot be forces in the world— and thus cannot be forces within human beings capable of bringing about anything—there is no possibility for human beings to comprehend the material and the physical from the perspective of the soul, or to build any bridge from the psychological to the material.

[ 3 ] After all, when people speak of the soul today, they have at most a conception of a sum of abstractions—or even of abstract sensations and the like. This sum of abstractions, of course, cannot set an organism in motion; it cannot in any way build a bridge to the organism. Therefore, [on the one hand], one cannot claim that by influencing the life of the soul—which is, after all, merely a sum of abstractions—one can somehow influence the external, physical, real organism. On the other hand, there is what science has indeed established about the physical organism, for it has been posited that mental phenomena are merely parallel phenomena or even effects of the physical organism. The concrete concepts we form about this physical organism are not suited to allowing us to extract anything at all about the psychological from these concepts. And so today—regardless of whether one is more or less of a materialist—there actually coexist, side by side, a view of the life of the soul that focuses solely on abstractions, and a view of material life—including organic life—from which nothing spiritual can be extracted in any way.

[ 4 ] It is actually quite obvious that, especially in the field of psychiatry, it is not easy to find a method that is even remotely suitable. This is precisely why, in recent times, people have already moved away from speaking at all about the connection between the physical-organic aspects of the human being and the psychological processes unfolding in consciousness. And since, in reality, caught between these two stools—between the physical-material and the abstract-psychic—one is constantly in danger of falling to the ground, it becomes necessary to invent an entirely unconscious world, a strange and unconscious world. And this has indeed been done extensively in psychoanalysis, in analytical psychology—a scientific field that is actually extraordinarily interesting. For once psychiatry has been reformed—so that we once again have a proper form of psychiatry—this scientific subject will, above all, have to be thoroughly examined from this new psychiatric perspective, since it is, in fact, [itself] a subject for psychiatry.

[ 5 ] So, in order to avoid getting completely stuck between these two stools, people have tried to imagine an unconscious world. I have nothing against the unconscious world, of course, but it must be researched; it must be truly understood through what spiritual science introduces as “intuition”; it cannot be fantasized about in the way that Freudians or similar people fantasize about it.

[ 6 ] Spiritual science will contribute to a reform of psychiatry by leading it away from merely abstract concepts—which have no inner life—back toward concepts that correspond to reality, concepts that already exist in the world as such and are gained by immersing oneself in reality using its methods. Then, when one rises to such spiritual methods that in turn yield concepts grounded in reality, one will find a transition from concepts that are mere abstractions to what is not mere abstraction but reality itself. That is to say, one will be able to build a bridge between the psychological and the physical in the human being. If one is serious about psychiatry, the psychological and the physical must be viewed differently in one’s conception than they are today.

[ 7 ] Today’s sum of abstractions—including the one that encompasses the abstract laws of nature (for these laws of nature are, after all, becoming ever more and more filtered)—this sum of abstractions is incapable of immersing itself in a real process. Just imagine for a moment how, using the abstractions that figure in the sciences today, one could find something like the two important, I might say facts—for they are facts—that I cited in the first lecture of this series: the spiritual-scientific theory of the heart and the spiritual-scientific theory of the inverse biogenetic law governing the historical course of events on Earth. From such examples you can see that the methods of spiritual science are capable of truly finding the path from the inner life of the soul into the world of facts, of building a bridge between the so-called psychological and the so-called physical.

[ 8 ] But this is necessary above all for psychiatry, for it will only begin to thrive when it is able to correctly observe the relevant facts. And the facts of psychiatry are, in essence, even more difficult to observe—because they require a greater degree of impartiality—than the facts of physical laws. For in human life, as soon as one moves from the so-called healthy, or relatively healthy, to the relatively sick, there is actually almost no possibility of [observing] a person in complete isolation. Human beings certainly develop into complete individuals, into isolated lives; they do so precisely through their psyche. But whatever deviates in the psyche from a linear development—whatever deviates from the linear, so-called normal development—cannot be viewed in isolation—I can only hint at this, of course; otherwise, one would have to spend hours explaining it in detail if one wanted to substantiate it point by point. Human beings are, even in the deepest sense, far more social creatures than is generally supposed, and in particular, mental illnesses can rarely—if ever—be judged solely on the basis of the biography of a single, isolated individual. That is almost entirely impossible.

[ 9 ] I would rather illustrate what I actually mean through a hypothetical example than through theories. You see, it is possible, for example, that in any community—be it a family or any other kind of community—two people live side by side. After some time, one of them has the misfortune of suffering an episode that is thus classified as a psychiatric condition. Of course, one can treat this person in isolation. But if one does so—especially if one forms an opinion based on an isolated observation of this person—then in many cases one will actually fall victim to nothing more than a mental construct. For it may well be the case—and in numerous instances it is—that another person living with the one who has become ill, the one who has developed a mental illness, whether in the family or in some other community, actually possesses within themselves the—let us say—complex of forces that led to their fellow human being’s mental illness. So let us start with these two people: one person, A, is—from a psychiatric perspective—experiencing the episode; the other person, B, possesses within themselves a complex of forces of a psychically organic nature that, if considered in isolation, might reveal to a much greater degree what is identified as the cause of Individual A’s illness. In other words, Person B—who is not mentally ill at all—actually possesses this cause of mental illness to a much greater degree than Person A, who had to be admitted to a sanatorium.

[ 10 ] This is something that certainly lies within the realm of reality, not merely of possibility. For it is based on the fact that Person A, apart from the complex of forces that is identified as the cause of his mental illness, has a weak constitution and therefore cannot tolerate this complex of forces. The other person, B, who also possesses this complex of forces—perhaps even more strongly—has—apart from this complex—a considerably stronger constitution than A; it does him no harm. Person B can tolerate it, but person A cannot. However, person A would not have developed the illness at all if he had not been continuously psychologically influenced by person B, who lives next to him—an influence that in this case can be extraordinarily significant because person B is more robust than person A.

[ 11 ] Here is an example—one that is, in fact, a reality in numerous cases—from which you can see how important the psychiatric approach is if it is to seriously address realities, rather than engaging in the sort of pretense that is so often seen in this field today. The point here is truly that one should not view a person in isolation, but rather consider them within their entire social environment. Of course, what I mean here will have to be placed on a fairly broad foundation. After all, it is also true for the rest of the field of medicine that there is a great difference between whether a complex condition affects a weak individual or a strong, robust one. Let’s suppose two people live side by side from a certain age onward and interact with one another. One still possesses a robust peasant constitution due to his youth and ancestry, while the other descends from three generations of city dwellers. In such a case, the person who possesses this healthy, robust, peasant constitution—and can tolerate some internal damage—may, under certain circumstances, harbor a much more severe form of the complex within himself, yet he can tolerate it and does not become ill. The other person, who has acquired it essentially only through psychological contagion—through imitation, through whatever is always present in human interaction—cannot even tolerate the effects.

[ 12 ] Here you can see all the factors that come into play when you want to talk about psychiatry not in terms of theories and programs, but in terms of reality; you see how, in fact, people today are already turning toward the seriousness that arises from the realization that, fundamentally speaking, ever since the time of Galileo, our scientists have become so one-sided, and you see how necessary it is to embrace new ideas in a fruitful way in all fields. Otherwise, human knowledge—especially in those fields intended to lead into practice, into the practice of life—will fall into complete decadence. So I could say: Essentially, the same applies in psychiatry as what we say about the art of education when we speak of the Waldorf school—namely, that one should not merely come up with new theoretical formulations, but that one should bring living spiritual science itself into this field. What needs to be said about the field of education must also be said about the field of psychiatry. One can never take a one-sided approach by simply saying that this or that needs to be improved in the field of psychiatry; rather, one must familiarize oneself with the idea: Either one adopts the spiritual-scientific foundation in the realm of knowledge as a whole; in that case, this spiritual-scientific foundation will already transform psychiatry, and it will make psychiatry into something quite special—something that many people actually long for today, but which cannot exist at all through the latest scientific methods, which have been sufficiently explained to you both yesterday and today—or... [Gap in the postscript].

[ 13 ] You see, what must ultimately emerge above all else from—let me use this trivial word—the popularization of spiritual science is a much, much deeper understanding of human nature than you can find today. People stand in such opposition to one another today that one cannot even speak of an understanding of human nature. People pass each other by; each lives only within themselves. Spiritual science will open people up to one another. And then, above all, much of what people today may still believe belongs to the realm of psychological pathology will, precisely because of this, be shifted over into the realm of psychological hygiene. For the fact is that—I would say—everywhere, straight lines can be drawn from the symptom complexes of disturbed psychological life to the ideas that are commonplace in public life today and that are not at all regarded as pathological, but are simply generally accepted. And if one were to trace some of these widely accepted concepts, one would find that, albeit more slowly, the same path has ultimately been taken as that evident in the progression of a psychologically abnormal complex of symptoms—a process that, however, unfolds rapidly in someone whom we today consider psychologically abnormal.

[ 14 ] All these things show that, in the end, all this talk about the details of reforms in the individual sciences leads to very little; but that, if one resolves—though today many souls are many souls are too drowsy—to seek a revitalization of scientific life in the spirit of spiritual science, then the most diverse fields of science—but especially that field of science concerned with the various deviations from normal psychological life, namely psychiatric medicine—will thereby undergo a necessary, I would say, self-evident reform. Even if these cases go as far as extreme rebellion, mania, insanity, and so on—only then will we discover what these psychological deviations from normal life actually signify within the whole of normal development. And in many respects, one will find that as our worldview becomes increasingly healthy, much of what shines in from public error into the pathological aberrations of the mentally ill will also become healthy.

[ 15 ] After all, it is quite strange how difficult it is to draw a clear line between so-called normal life and psychologically abnormal life. For example, it is hard to say whether mental normality exists—take, for instance, the case that occurred not too long ago in Basel, not far from here, where a man bequeathed a large sum of money in his will to anyone who would isolate themselves in complete solitude until they succeeded in truly proving the immortality of the soul. This was stipulated in a will by a man in Basel, and I do not know what became of the matter. I believe the heirs objected to it and at the time attempted—not from a psychiatric perspective, but from a legal one—to determine to what extent it involved psychiatric issues or not. But if each and every one of you were to set out to investigate whether this should be assessed psychiatrically, or whether it is a mental disorder, or whether it is truly an excessive religiosity, or whatever else—you would hardly be able to come to a completely precise conclusion.

[ 16 ] The fact is that our concepts have gradually become weak in the face of reality; they must become strong again. But they can only become strong through spiritual science. And among many other fields, psychiatry in particular will come to feel the effects of this.