Sigmund Freud (1856–1939). Group
Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego. 1922. |
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Chapter X. The Group
and the Primal Horde [for our purposes
the concluding section on hypnosis is less important] |
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IN 1912 I took up a conjecture of Darwin’s to the effect
that the primitive form of human society was that of a horde ruled over
despotically by a powerful male. I attempted to show that the fortunes of
this horde have left indestructible traces upon the history of human descent;
and, especially, that the development of totemism, which comprises in itself
the beginnings of religion, morality, and social organisation, is connected
with the killing of the chief by violence and the transformation of the
paternal horde into a community of brothers. 1 To be sure, this is
only a hypothesis, like so many others with which archaeologists endeavour to
lighten the darkness of prehistoric times—a ‘Just-So Story’, as it was
amusingly called by a not unkind critic (Kroeger); but I think it is
creditable to such a hypothesis if it proves able to bring coherence and
understanding into more and more new regions. |
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Human
groups exhibit once again the familiar picture of an individual of superior
strength among a troop of similar companions, a picture which is also
contained in our idea of the primal horde. The psychology of such a group, as
we know it from the descriptions to which we have so often referred—the
dwindling of the conscious individual personality, the focussing of thoughts
and feelings into a common direction, the predominance of the emotions and of
the unconscious mental life, the tendency to the immediate carrying out of
intentions as they emerge—all this corresponds to a state of regression to a
primitive mental activity, of just such a sort as we should be inclined to
ascribe to the primal horde. 2 |
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Thus
the group appears to us as a revival of the primal horde. Just as primitive
man virtually survives in every individual, so the primal horde may arise
once more out of any random crowd; in so far as men are habitually under the
sway of group formation we recognise in it the survival of the primal horde.
We must conclude that the psychology of the group is the oldest human
psychology; what we have isolated as individual psychology, by neglecting all
traces of the group, has only since come into prominence out of the old group
psychology, by a gradual process which may still, perhaps, be described as
incomplete. We shall later venture upon an attempt at specifying the point of
departure of this development. |
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Further
reflection will show us in what respect this statement requires correction.
Individual psychology must, on the contrary, be just as old as group
psychology, for from the first there were two kinds of psychologies, that of
the individual members of the group and that of the father, chief, or leader.
The members of the group were subject to ties just as we see them to-day, but
the father of the primal horde was free. His intellectual acts were strong
and independent even in isolation, and his will needed no reinforcement from
others. Consistency leads us to assume that his ego had few libidinal ties;
he loved no one but himself, or other people only in so far as they served
his needs. To objects his ego gave away no more than was barely necessary. |
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He,
at the very beginning of the history of mankind, was the Superman whom
Nietzsche only expected from the future. Even to-day the members of a group
stand in need of the illusion that they are equally and justly loved by their
leader; but the leader himself need love no one else, he may be of a masterly
nature, absolutely narcissistic, but self-confident and independent. We know
that love puts a check upon narcissism, and it would be possible to show how,
by operating in this way, it became a factor of civilisation. |
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The
primal father of the horde was not yet immortal, as he later became by
deification. If he died, he had to be replaced; his place was probably taken
by a youngest son, who had up to then been a member of the group like any
other. There must therefore be a possibility of transforming group psychology
into individual psychology; a condition must be discovered under which such a
transformation is easily accomplished, just as it is possible for bees in
case of necessity to turn a larva into a queen instead of into a worker. One
can imagine only one possibility: the primal father had prevented his sons
from satisfying their directly sexual tendencies; he forced them into
abstinence and consequently into the emotional ties with him and with one
another which could arise out of those of their tendencies that were
inhibited in their sexual aim. He forced them, so to speak, into group
psychology. His sexual jealousy and intolerance became in the last resort the
causes of group psychology. 3 |
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Whoever
became his successor was also given the possibility of sexual satisfaction,
and was by that means offered a way out of the conditions of group
psychology. The fixation of the libido to woman and the possibility of
satisfaction without any need for delay or accumulation made an end of the
importance of those of his sexual tendencies that were inhibited in their
aim, and allowed his narcissism always to rise to its full height. We shall
return in a postscript to this connection between love and character
formation. |
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We
may further emphasize, as being specially instructive, the relation that
holds between the contrivance by means of which an artificial group is held
together and the constitution of the primal horde. We have seen that with an
army and a church this contrivance is the illusion that the leader loves all
of the individuals equally and justly. But this is simply an idealistic
remodelling of the state of affairs in the primal horde, where all of the
sons knew that they were equally persecuted by the primal father, and feared
him equally. This same recasting upon which all social duties are built up is
already presupposed by the next form of human society, the totemistic clan.
The indestructible strength of the family as a natural group formation rests
upon the fact that this necessary presupposition of the father’s equal love
can have a real application in the family. |
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But
we expect even more of this derivation of the group from the primal horde. It
ought also to help us to understand what is still incomprehensible and
mysterious in group formations—all that lies hidden behind the enigmatic
words hypnosis and suggestion. And I think it can succeed in this too. Let us
recall that hypnosis has something positively uncanny about it; but the
characteristic of uncanniness suggests something old and familiar that has
undergone repression. 4 Let us consider how
hypnosis is induced. The hypnotist asserts that he is in possession of a
mysterious power which robs the subject of his own will, or, which is the
same thing, the subject believes it of him. This mysterious power (which is
even now often described popularly as animal magnetism) must be the same that
is looked upon by primitive people as the source of taboo, the same that
emanates from kings and chieftains and makes it dangerous to approach them (mana).
The hypnotist, then, is supposed to be in possession of this power; and how
does he manifest it? By telling the subject to look him in the eyes; his most
typical method of hypnotising is by his look. But it is precisely the sight
of the chieftain that is dangerous and unbearable for primitive people, just
as later that of the Godhead is for mortals. Even Moses had to act as an
intermediary between his people and Jehovah, since the people could not
support the sight of God; and when he returned from the presence of God his
face shone—some of the mana had been transferred on to him, just as
happens with the intermediary among primitive people. 5 |
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It
is true that hypnosis can also be evoked in other ways, for instance by
fixing the eyes upon a bright object or by listening to a monotonous sound.
This is misleading and has given occasion to inadequate physiological
theories. As a matter of fact these procedures merely serve to divert
conscious attention and to hold it riveted. The situation is the same as if
the hypnotist had said to the subject: ‘Now concern yourself exclusively with
my person; the rest of the world is quite uninteresting.’ It would of course
be technically inexpedient for a hypnotist to make such a speech; it would
tear the subject away from his unconscious attitude and stimulate him to
conscious opposition. The hypnotist avoids directing the subject’s conscious
thoughts towards his own intentions, and makes the person upon whom he is
experimenting sink into an activity in which the world is bound to seem
uninteresting to him; but at the same time the subject is in reality
unconsciously concentrating his whole attention upon the hypnotist, and is
getting into an attitude of rapport, of transference on to him. Thus
the indirect methods of hypnotising, like many of the technical procedures
used in making jokes, have the effect of checking certain distributions of
mental energy which would interfere with the course of events in the
unconscious, and they lead eventually to the same result as the direct
methods of influence by means of staring or stroking. 6 |
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Ferenczi
has made the true discovery that when a hypnotist gives the command to sleep,
which is often done at the beginning of hypnosis, he is putting himself in
the place of the subject’s parents. He thinks that two sorts of hypnosis are
to be distinguished: one coaxing and soothing, which he considers is modelled
upon the mother, and another threatening, which is derived from the father. 7
Now the command to sleep in hypnosis means nothing more nor less than an
order to withdraw all interest from the world and to concentrate it upon the
person of the hypnotist. And it is so understood by the subject; for in this
withdrawal of interest from the outer world lies the psychological
characteristic of sleep, and the kinship between sleep and the state of
hypnosis is based upon it. |
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By
the measures that he takes, then, the hypnotist awakens in the subject a
portion of his archaic inheritance which had also made him compliant towards
his parents and which had experienced an individual re-animation in his
relation to his father; what is thus awakened is the idea of a paramount and
dangerous personality, towards whom only a passive-masochistic attitude is
possible, to whom one’s will has to be surrendered,—while to be alone with
him, ‘to look him in the face’, appears a hazardous enterprise. It is only in
some such way as this that we can picture the relation of the individual
member of the primal horde to the primal father. As we know from other
reactions, individuals have preserved a variable degree of personal aptitude
for reviving old situations of this kind. Some knowledge that in spite of
everything hypnosis is only a game, a deceptive renewal of these old
impressions, may however remain behind and take care that there is a
resistance against any too serious consequences of the suspension of the will
in hypnosis. |
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The
uncanny and coercive characteristics of group formations, which are shown in
their suggestion phenomena, may therefore with justice be traced back to the
fact of their origin from the primal horde. The leader of the group is still
the dreaded primal father; the group still wishes to be governed by
unrestricted force; it has an extreme passion for authority; in Le Bon’s
phrase, it has a thirst for obedience. The primal father is the group ideal,
which governs the ego in the place of the ego ideal. Hypnosis has a good
claim to being described as a group of two; there remains as a definition for
suggestion—a conviction which is not based upon perception and reasoning but
upon an erotic tie. 8 |
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Note 1. Totem
und Tabu. [back] For relevant excerpt (without the ads): Totem 4b-d |
Note 2. What we have just described in our
general characterisation of mankind must apply especially to the primal
horde. The will of the individual was too weak; he did not venture upon
action. No impulses whatever came into play except collective ones; there was
only a common will, there were no single ones. An idea did not dare to turn
itself into a volition unless it felt itself reinforced by a perception of
its general diffusion. This weakness of the idea is to be explained by the
strength of the emotional tie which is shared by all the members of the
horde; but the similarity in the circumstances of their life and the absence
of any private property assist in determining the uniformity of their
individual mental acts. As we may observe with children and soldiers, common
activity is not excluded even in the excremental functions. The one great
exception is provided by the sexual act, in which a third person is at the
best superfluous and in the extreme case is condemned to a state of painful
expectancy. As to the reaction of the sexual need (for genital gratification)
towards gregariousness, see below. [back] |
Note 3. It may perhaps also be assumed that
the sons, when they were driven out and separated from their father, advanced
from identification with one another to homosexual object love, and in this
way won freedom to kill their father. [back] |
Note 5. See Totem und Tabu and the sources
there quoted. [back] |
Note 6. This situation, in which the
subject’s attitude is unconsciously directed towards the hypnotist, while he
is consciously occupied with monotonous and uninteresting perceptions, finds
a parallel among the events of psycho-analytic treatment, which deserves to
be mentioned here. At least once in the course of every analysis a moment
comes when the patient obstinately maintains that just now positively nothing
whatever occurs to his mind. His free associations come to a stop and the
usual incentives for putting them in motion fail in their effect. As a result
of pressure the patient is at last induced to admit that he is thinking of
the view from the consulting-room window, of the wall-paper that he sees
before him, or of the gas-lamp hanging from the ceiling. Then one knows at
once that he has gone off into the transference and that he is engaged upon
what are still unconscious thoughts relating to the physician; and one sees
the stoppage in the patient’s associations disappear, as soon as he has been
given this explanation. [back] |
Note 7. Ferenczi: ‘Introjektion und
Übertragung.’ Jahrbuch der Psychoanalyse, 1909, Bd. I. [Contributions
to Psycho-Analysis. Boston, Badger, 1916, Chapter II.] [back] |
Note 8. It seems to me worth emphasizing the
fact that the discussions in this section have induced us to give up
Bernheim’s conception of hypnosis and go back to the naïf earlier one.
According to Bernheim all hypnotic phenomena are to be traced to the factor
of suggestion, which is not itself capable of further explanation. We have
come to the conclusion that suggestion is a partial manifestation of the
state of hypnosis, and that hypnosis is solidly founded upon a predisposition
which has survived in the unconscious from the early history of the human
family. [back] |