LOOKING at scientific advance as a whole, we see that direct, rectilinear advance keeps coming to a dead end, so that research has to be resumed from a completely fresh and often entirely unexpected and improbable angle. I once had occasion [in 1915] to point to one such surprising event when, in reviewing Freud’s ‘Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality’3 a purely psychological work, I had to describe it as an important advance in biology, i.e. in one of the natural sciences, an advance which that discipline would never have been able to make out of its own resources.
The value of this ‘utraquism’ (as I propose to call it) of a correct scientific policy is demonstrated, not only in the two great alternative possible approaches to knowledge, the objective (in the natural sciences) and the subjective (in psychology); it is also true within the field of psychology itself. Scarcely had we got used to the idea that the basis for unravelling the complex phenomena of the group mind (art, religion, myth-formation, etc.) had been provided by the findings of the psychology of the individual, i.e. of psycho-analysis, when our confidence in it was shaken by the appearance of Freud’s recent work on ‘group psychology’; which showed us the converse, namely that the investigation of the processes of group psychology was capable of solving important problems of individual psychology. In the following pages I propose to draw attention to the most important respects in which Freud’s dissection of the group mind throws light on the normal and pathological psychology of the individual.
Freud disposes of the idea, automatically assumed by other writers on the subject, that group psychological phenomena take place only in a ‘group’, i.e. in the presence of a large number of individuals. On the contrary, he demonstrates that the same emotional and intellectual phenomena can appear within a small group of persons, e.g. in the family, or even in relations with a single other person, i.e. in a ‘group of two’. This viewpoint enables us fundamentally to alter our views on one of the most remarkable and, from the standpoint of the psychology of the individual, most significant processes, namely hypnotism and suggestion.
Previous authors have tried to understand group phenomena by using the idea of suggestion without being able to explain the nature of suggestion. Freud, however, points out that it is in fact group phenomena and their historical development which help us to explain what occurs between two individuals in the process of suggestion. He traces the disposition to hypnosis back to its source in primitive humanity; in the primal horde the eye of the feared father-leader, who disposed of the power of life and death over every single one of its members, exercised over them throughout their lifetime the same paralysing effect, inhibiting all independent action, all independent intellectual activity, that the eye of the hypnotist still exercises over his subjects to-day. The effectiveness of hypnosis is due to this fear of the hypnotist’s eye; all other methods of inducing it (monotonous sounds, fixing the eye on a single spot, etc.), are only subsidiary devices which have the effect of diverting the subject’s conscious attention in order the better to bring his unconscious under the hypnotist’s sway.
In contrast to Bernheim’s hitherto generally accepted view that hypnosis is only a form of suggestion, we must now adopt Freud’s view that the fundamental phenomenon to which we must look for an explanation of suggestibility is susceptibility to hypnosis. But this susceptibility is not, as we have previously supposed, merely a residue of infantile fear of the strict father; it is also the return of emotions felt by primitive man in the presence of the dangerous leader of the horde. Thus group psychology provides a phylogenetic parallel to the ontogenesis of susceptibility to hypnosis. If we have regard to the central position of suggestion and hypnosis in the pathology and therapy of the neuroses, in education, etc., we shall immediately see that a fundamental revision of our previous views on the subject will have a perceptible effect throughout the field of normal and pathological psychology.
The second vital innovation for which the psychology of the individual has to thank this research into group psychology is the discovery of a new stage in the development of the ego and the libido. The transference neuroses, which were the original point of departure of psycho-analysis and for a long time its only subject-matter, of course enabled Freud to make a practically complete reconstruction of the phases of development of the sexual instinct. Meanwhile the second factor in the formation of neuroses, the ego, remained a compact mass, incapable of being analysed into its component parts, about the structure of which it was possible to form only the most hypothetical ideas. Some light was thrown on this darkness by the study of the narcissistic neuropsychoses and of normal love life; but it was Freud’s research into group psychology which first enabled him to establish a real ‘stage’ in the development of the ego. The primary narcissism of the child and of humanity is succeeded by a higher ego-stage, which consists in the separating out from the former of an ‘ego-ideal’, the pattern which one sets up inside oneself and against which one subsequently measures all one’s actions and qualities. This ego-ideal takes over the important functions of reality testing, of the moral conscience, of self-observation and dream-censorship; it is also the force at work in the creation of the ‘unconscious repressed’ which is so important in the formation of neurosis.
There is a libidinous process which runs parallel with his stage of ego-development and henceforward must be inserted as a special phase of development between narcissism and object-love (or, more correctly, between the still narcissistic oral and sadistic-anal stages of organization and true object-love). This process is identification. In this phase external objects are not really incorporated, as in the cannibalistic phase, but are ‘incorporated’ in an imaginary fashion, or, as we term it, introjected; that is to say, their qualities are annexed, attributed to the ego. The establishment of such an identification with an object (a person) is simultaneously the building of a bridge between the self and the outer world, and this connexion subsequently permits a shifting of emphasis from the intransitive ‘being’ to the transitive ‘having’, i.e. a further development from identification to real object-love. But a fixation at the stage of identification makes possible a regression from the later phase of object-love to the stage of identification; the most notable examples of this occur in certain pathological processes no less than in certain hitherto not understood phenomena of the group-mind. The establishing of this new stage of ego and libido development obviously opens a broad perspective, and will certainly bring nearer an understanding of many insufficiently understood phenomena of psychopathology and the psychology of the individual.
Though in this work Freud was primarily concerned with the dynamics of the group mind, he could not help making further contributions to certain aspects of the theory of the neuroses which in previous works he had left incomplete. Out of the fullness of his offerings I shall quote only a few examples.
Previous clinical-analytic investigation had already established that homosexuality in males generally appeared as a reaction to a previous excessively strong heterosexual trend. We now learn from Freud that this reaction is simultaneously a regression from object-love to identification. Woman as an external love-object is given up, but in compensation is reconstituted in the ego by way of identification and put in the place of the ego-ideal; thus the male becomes feminine and seeks out another male, thereby re-establishing the original heterosexual relationship, but in reverse.
Freud’s theory of the libidinous nature of the social tie between the individual and a leader and between an individual and his fellow-men grants us some insight into the pathogenesis of paranoia. Freud has now for the first time enabled us really to understand why so many people succumb to paranoia as a result of offences to which they have been subjected in social life. As a consequence of a social insult the libido, which was previously socially bound, is set free; it would like to express itself in a crudely sexual, generally homosexual form, but such an outlet is intolerable to the exacting standards demanded by the ego-ideal; and the way out of the acute dilemma is found in paranoia. The earlier social binding still finds expression in the feeling of being persecuted by compact groups, communities, or associations (Jesuits, Freemasons, Jews, etc.). Thus paranoia turns out to be a disturbance, not only of the (homosexual) tie with the father, but also of social ‘identification’ (which is in itself a-sexual).
Freud’s solution of this problem of group psychology provides new support for the previously elaborated metapsychology of melancholia; this psychosis too turns out to be a consequence of substituting for the ego-ideal the object which has been outwardly given up, because of hatred; the manic phase of cyclothymia, however, turns out to be a temporary rebellion of the primary-narcissistic ego-residue against the tyranny of the ego-ideal. We can see that the exploitation of the new phase of ego and libido development has made a promising beginning in psychiatry.
Hysterical identification differs from the above in that, among other things, the (unconscious) incorporation of the object is only partial and is restricted to certain characteristics of the latter.
Our view of normal love-life must be revised in important respects in the light of the new insights. The difference between uninhibited and aim-inhibited sexual impulses turns out to be even more important than had previously been supposed. The latency period, which brings about this inhibition of aim, of course also acquires increased significance.
The correct evaluation of aim-inhibited sexual impulses led Freud to a new conception of the dynamics of neurotic illness; according to the new description, the neurotic conflict is played out between the sexual trends which are inhibited in aim in accordance with the demands of the ego-ideal (trends acceptable to the ego) and direct sexual trends (trends unacceptable to the ego). To a considerable extent the processes of libidocathexis in falling in love also appear in a new light as a result of Freud’s research into group psychology. The feeling of shame actually appears to be determined by a phenomenon of group psychology. It appears to be a reaction to the disturbing effect on the expression of the heterosexual instinct, which is always a-social, of being brought before the public eye.
Returning to our point of departure, let us in conclusion draw attention once again to the group-psychological factors involved in every psychotherapy which make the study of this paper of Freud’s essential to everyone concerned with the healing of sick minds. For in dealing with the patient the physician is the representative of the whole of human society. Like a Roman Catholic priest, he has the power to loose or bind; through him the patient learns to render inoperative the former ‘conscience’ which made him ill; and it is by virtue of his authority that the patient is enabled to overcome his repressions. It is thus not least physicians who owe a debt of admiration and thanks to the author of this work. For in certain processes of group psychology he has provided an explanation of the effectiveness of psycho-therapeutic measures which has made intelligible to them the working of a tool that they use daily.