If the object of the present study were to try to account in full for the remote origin of Swedenborg's visionary life, it might be necessary to give a thorough presentation of psychoanalytical opinion on the matter; but that is not the object.
William James, in dealing with the tendency to class the religious impulse as pathological, says that two kinds of inquiry are often confused. One is, How did it [anything] come about, what is its origin? The other is, What is its significance or value, now that it is here? 10
Both lines of inquiry are surely necessary, but it is chiefly with the latter aspect that the present study attempts to deal. What were Swedenborg's ideas, after he had turned his gaze from the material to the immaterial, and what interest and meaning can they have in themselves for us?
This does not mean that any study of Swedenborg can fail to profit by the discoveries of the ways in which the unconscious functions, made by students of the mind from Flournoy,11 Myers,12 and Freud on. Such tricks as projection, identification, etc., were played also by Swedenborg's unconscious mind, one might say visibly.
But, apart from the religious side of his experience, the question why his particular unconscious behaved as it did—that is, the question as to the origins of the alleged "complexes," is too occult for the lay person, especially after two hundred years have passed. Yet it may be of interest to give a few samples of what the intrepid professionals believe they have discovered by studying Swedenborg's dreams and what they consider his behavior.
In a paper by R. Lagerborg,13 of Finland, Mr. Lagerborg quotes from E. Hitschmann, a German colleague, that Swedenborg's disease is paranoia, and that it is undoubtedly a regression to the infantile. "As a boy Swedenborg wanted to surpass his father [no evidence adduced] to be a Nazir, an instrument of God." He also suffered from "narcissism." "With his illness, the underside turns up, a more primitive psyche appears, and when he becomes like a child again the childish dreams of greatness return. The Lord's words to him 'eat not so much' contain reminiscence of paternal admonition. Father and God—the—Father coalesce, and what his
