The Improbability of Elephants

“There are no universal elephants, only individual elephants. But if a generality, a constant plurality, of elephants did not exist, a single elephant would be exceedingly improbable.”

The quotation is from The Practice of Psychotherapy by C. G. Jung. I am happy to acknowledge my debt to the master. We all build on the work of the great men who go before us. If Freud had not laid the foundations, Adler could have achieved nothing. If Adler had not erected the scaffold, Jung would with difficulty have reached the first story. Without Jung holding the ladder steady, I should have got nowhere. If it had not been for the work of these three men, the world would still be bogged down in the morass of delusion surrounding this question of the improbability of elephants. Nevertheless, the principal credit must, of course, be granted to me.

We have to be careful to distinguish, in the first place, between subjective elephants and objective elephants. The improbability of subjective elephants, if too easily assumed, may cast doubt on the validity of the improbability hypothesis applied to objective elephants. This blurring of the general picture is to be avoided at all costs.

We may, though, fall into even greater error if we confuse the improbability of subjective elephants with the nonexistence of subjective elephants. The existence of subjective elephants is no more open to doubt than it is susceptible of proof. I have myself encountered no less than four subjective elephants at one and the same time. This interesting experience took place one autumn night in 1952, at about 3 A.VL, in Leicester. I was driving north in a Morris Minor. In the center of the town, which appeared otherwise deserted at that hour, four elephants appeared, in profile, at the righthand side of the road. There was a very large elephant at the rear, with his hindquarters up against a house, an elephant of normal size standing slightly in front of the first, a small elephant standing similarly ahead of the second, and a tiny elephant in front of them all.

Puzzled by the appearance of such animals at such an hour, and in such a place, I nudged my companion, who was asleep. By the time he was awake, I had already identified the elephants as subjective elephants. Objectively speaking, they were a row of iron railings, descending to the pavement in steps, which had taken on in the deceptive light the appearance of elephants.

My companion’s reaction was typical. Typical, that is, of the reactions of patients exposed without prior preparation to elephant stimuli. When I told him I had seen four elephants, he expressed disbelief. On hearing that the elephants had been subsequently proved to be iron railings, his reactions were irritation and — very significantly — a desire to sleep. When I add that my companion was born in Vladivostok of English parents and stands six feet five in his socks, the clinical picture is complete.

Such reactions to subjective-elephant stimuli are a commonplace and must be familiar to all consultants. The instinctive protest of the patient is not against the existence of the elephant; he knows as well as the consultant that people just do see elephants, in given circumstances. The protest is against the improbability of the subjective elephant per se.

We must now approach, cautiously, the objective elephant. It is essential to grasp, in the first place, the concept that there is no fundamental difference between the subjective elephant and the objective elephant, from the aspects of nonexistence or improbability.

As we pointed out earlier, an objective elephant must not be confused with a subjective elephant, or, indeed, with another objective elephant. But the evidence that an elephant exists and is improbable, if it applies to subjective elephants, applies with equal force to objective elephants. Some psychiatrists have held, in fact, that it applies with an even greater force.

Consider the reaction of the patient in the test case quoted, when he manifested irritation and a desire to sleep. These are typical refusals of the conscious mind to accept the elephant. The first reaction is one of disbelief, but this is a childish attitude. The adult mind knows that the elephant exists; the concept of nonexistence cannot be maintained. But the knowledge is painful. Although it has to acknowledge the existence of the elephant, the mind balks at the sheer improbability of the elephant. It takes refuge in irritation and somnolence.

But we must ask ourselves whether there is anything in these reactions that applies solely to subjective elephants. Clearly there is not. My companion would have reacted in exactly the same way if I had seen four objective elephants in Leicester, in the circumstances outlined.

I have experienced exactly the same reactions myself, on coming across an elephant tethered outside the inn called the Aleppo Merchant in the valley of the Garno, northwestwards of Caersws, in Montgomeryshire. It was full daylight, a sunny afternoon in June. The elephant was wholly objective. Yet my reactions were precisely the same: irritation, followed by a desire to sleep.

We must, therefore, recast the statement of Jung quoted above to read (the form is that now known as Lister’s Modified Elephant Law):

There are no universal elephants, only individual elephants. But even though a generality, a constant plurality, of elephants does exist, a single individual elephant is still exceedingly improbable.