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Title: Group Psychology and The Analysis of The Ego

Author: Sigmund Freud

Translator: James Strachey

Release date: April 15, 2011 [eBook #35877]

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GROUP
PSYCHOLOGY AND THE ANALYSIS OF THE EGO ***

THE INTERNATIONAL PSYCHO-ANALYTICAL LIBRARY
No. 6

GROUP PSYCHOLOGY
AND
THE ANALYSIS OF THE EGO
BY
SIGM. FREUD, M. D., LL. D.
AUTHORIZED TRANSLATION
BY
JAMES STRACHEY

THE INTERNATIONAL PSYCHO-ANALYTICAL PRESS
LONDON MCMXXII VIENNA
Copyright 1922

TRANSLATOR'S NOTE

A comparison of the following pages with the German original
(Massenpsychologie und Ich-Analyse, Internationaler Psychoanalytischer
Verlag, Vienna, 1921) will show that certain passages have been transferred

in the English version from the text to the footnotes. This alteration has
been carried out at the author's express desire.
All technical terms have been translated in accordance with the Glossary
to be published as a supplement to the International Journal of Psycho-
Analysis.
J. S.

CONTENTS

Page
I Introduction 1
II Le Bon's Description of the Group Mind 5
III Other Accounts of Collective Mental Life 23
IV Suggestion and Libido 33
V Two Artificial Groups: the Church and the Army 41
VI Further Problems and Lines of Work 52
VII Identification 60
VIII Being in Love and Hypnosis 71
IX The Herd Instinct 81
X The Group and the Primal Horde 90
XI A Differentiating Grade in the Ego 101
XII Postscript 110
Footnotes
Index

GROUP PSYCHOLOGY AND
THE ANALYSIS OF THE EGO

I

INTRODUCTION

The contrast between Individual Psychology and Social or Group[1]
Psychology, which at a first glance may seem to be full of significance,
loses a great deal of its sharpness when it is examined more closely. It is
true that Individual Psychology is concerned with the individual man and
explores the paths by which he seeks to find satisfaction for his instincts;
but only rarely and under certain exceptional conditions is Individual
Psychology in a position to disregard the relations of this individual to
others. In the individual's mental life someone else is invariably involved, as
a model, as an object, as a helper, as an opponent, and so from the very first
Individual Psychology is at the same time Social Psychology as well—in
this extended but entirely justifiable sense of the words.
The relations of an individual to his parents and to his brothers and sisters,
to the object of his love, and to his physician—in fact all the relations which
have hitherto been the chief subject of psycho-analytic research—may claim
to be considered as social phenomena; and in this respect they may be
contrasted with certain other processes, described by us as 'narcissistic', in
which the satisfaction of the instincts is partially or totally withdrawn from
the influence of other people. The contrast between social and narcissistic—
Bleuler would perhaps call them 'autistic'—mental acts therefore falls
wholly within the domain of Individual Psychology, and is not well
calculated to differentiate it from a Social or Group Psychology.
The individual in the relations which have already been mentioned—to his
parents and to his brothers and sisters, to the person he is in love with, to his

friend, and to his physician—comes under the influence of only a single
person, or of a very small number of persons, each one of whom has
become enormously important to him. Now in speaking of Social or Group
Psychology it has become usual to leave these relations on one side and to
isolate as the subject of inquiry the influencing of an individual by a large
number of people simultaneously, people with whom he is connected by
something, though otherwise they may in many respects be strangers to him.
Group Psychology is therefore concerned with the individual man as a
member of a race, of a nation, of a caste, of a profession, of an institution, or
as a component part of a crowd of people who have been organised into a
group at some particular time for some definite purpose. When once natural
continuity has been severed in this way, it is easy to regard the phenomena
that appear under these special conditions as being expressions of a special
instinct that is not further reducible, the social instinct ('herd instinct', 'group
mind'), which does not come to light in any other situations. But we may
perhaps venture to object that it seems difficult to attribute to the factor of
number a significance so great as to make it capable by itself or arousing in
our mental life a new instinct that is otherwise not brought into play. Our
expectation is therefore directed towards two other possibilities: that the
social instinct may not be a primitive one and insusceptible of dissection,
and that it may be possible to discover the beginnings of its development in
a narrower circle, such as that of the family.
Although Group Psychology is only in its infancy, it embraces an immense
number of separate issues and offers to investigators countless problems
which have hitherto not even been properly distinguished from one another.
The mere classification of the different forms of group formation and the
description of the mental phenomena produced by them require a great
expenditure of observation and exposition, and have already given rise to a
copious literature. Anyone who compares the narrow dimensions of this
little book with the extent of Group Psychology will at once be able to guess
that only a few points chosen from the whole material are to be dealt with
here. And they will in fact only be a few questions with which the depth-
psychology of psycho-analysis is specially concerned.

II

LE BON'S DESCRIPTION OF THE GROUP MIND

Instead of starting from a definition, it seems more useful to begin with
some indication of the range of the phenomena under review, and to select
from among them a few specially striking and characteristic facts to which
our inquiry can be attached. We can achieve both of these aims by means of
quotation from Le Bon's deservedly famous work Psychologie des foules.[2]
Let us make the matter clear once again. If a Psychology, concerned with
exploring the predispositions, the instincts, the motives and the aims of an
individual man down to his actions and his relations with those who are
nearest to him, had completely achieved its task, and had cleared up the
whole of these matters with their inter-connections, it would then suddenly
find itself confronted by a new task which would lie before it unachieved. It
would be obliged to explain the surprising fact that under a certain condition
this individual whom it had come to understand thought, felt, and acted in
quite a different way from what would have been expected. And this
condition is his insertion into a collection of people which has acquired the
characteristic of a 'psychological group'. What, then, is a 'group'? How does
it acquire the capacity for exercising such a decisive influence over the
mental life of the individual? And what is the nature of the mental change
which it forces upon the individual?
It is the task of a theoretical Group Psychology to answer these three
questions. The best way of approaching them is evidently to start with the
third. Observation of the changes in the individual's reactions is what
provides Group Psychology with its material; for every attempt at an
explanation must be preceded by a description of the thing that is to be
explained.
I will now let Le Bon speak for himself. He says: 'The most striking
peculiarity presented by a psychological group[3] is the following. Whoever
be the individuals that compose it, however like or unlike be their mode of
life, their occupations, their character, or their intelligence, the fact that they
have been transformed into a group puts them in possession of a sort of
collective mind which makes them feel, think, and act in a manner quite

different from that in which each individual of them would feel, think, and
act were he in a state of isolation. There are certain ideas and feelings which
do not come into being, or do not transform themselves into acts except in
the case of individuals forming a group. The psychological group is a
provisional being formed of heterogeneous elements, which for a moment
are combined, exactly as the cells which constitute a living body form by
their reunion a new being which displays characteristics very different from
those possessed by each of the cells singly.' (p. 29.)[4]
We shall take the liberty of interrupting Le Bon's exposition with glosses
of our own, and shall accordingly insert an observation at this point. If the
individuals in the group are combined into a unity, there must surely be
something to unite them, and this bond might be precisely the thing that is
characteristic of a group. But Le Bon does not answer this question; he goes
on to consider the alteration which the individual undergoes when in a
group and describes it in terms which harmonize well with the fundamental
postulates of our own depth-psychology.
'It is easy to prove how much the individual forming part of a group differs
from the isolated individual, but it is less easy to discover the causes of this
difference.
'To obtain at any rate a glimpse of them it is necessary in the first place to
call to mind the truth established by modern psychology, that unconscious
phenomena play an altogether preponderating part not only in organic life,
but also in the operations of the intelligence. The conscious life of the mind
is of small importance in comparison with its unconscious life. The most
subtle analyst, the most acute observer, is scarcely successful in discovering
more than a very small number of the conscious[5] motives that determine
his conduct. Our conscious acts are the outcome of an unconscious
substratum created in the mind in the main by hereditary influences. This
substratum consists of the innumerable common characteristics handed
down from generation to generation, which constitute the genius of a race.
Behind the avowed causes of our acts there undoubtedly lie secret causes
that we do not avow, but behind these secret causes there are many others
more secret still, of which we ourselves are ignorant.[6] The greater part of
our daily actions are the result of hidden motives which escape our
observation.' (p. 30.)

Le Bon thinks that the particular acquirements of individuals become
obliterated in a group, and that in this way their distinctiveness vanishes.
The racial unconscious emerges; what is heterogeneous is submerged in
what is homogeneous. We may say that the mental superstructure, the
development of which in individuals shows such dissimilarities, is removed,
and that the unconscious foundations, which are similar in everyone, stand
exposed to view.
In this way individuals in a group would come to show an average
character. But Le Bon believes that they also display new characteristics
which they have not previously possessed, and he seeks the reason for this
in three different factors.
'The first is that the individual forming part of a group acquires, solely
from numerical considerations, a sentiment of invincible power which
allows him to yield to instincts which, had he been alone, he would perforce
have kept under restraint. He will be the less disposed to check himself from
the consideration that, a group being anonymous, and in consequence
irresponsible, the sentiment of responsibility which always controls
individuals disappears entirely.' (p. 33.)
From our point of view we need not attribute so much importance to the
appearance of new characteristics. For us it would be enough to say that in a
group the individual is brought under conditions which allow him to throw
off the repressions of his unconscious instincts. The apparently new
characteristics which he then displays are in fact the manifestations of this
unconscious, in which all that is evil in the human mind is contained as a
predisposition. We can find no difficulty in understanding the disappearance
of conscience or of a sense of responsibility in these circumstances. It has
long been our contention that 'dread of society [soziale Angst]' is the essence
of what is called conscience.[7]
'The second cause, which is contagion, also intervenes to determine the
manifestation in groups of their special characteristics, and at the same time
the trend they are to take. Contagion is a phenomenon of which it is easy to
establish the presence, but that it is not easy to explain. It must be classed
among those phenomena of a hypnotic order, which we shall shortly study.
In a group every sentiment and act is contagious, and contagious to such a
degree that an individual readily sacrifices his personal interest to the

collective interest. This is an aptitude very contrary to his nature, and of
which a man is scarcely capable, except when he makes part of a group.' (p.
33.)
We shall later on base an important conjecture upon this last statement.
'A third cause, and by far the most important, determines in the individuals
of a group special characteristics which are quite contrary at times to those
presented by the isolated individual. I allude to that suggestibility of which,
moreover, the contagion mentioned above is only an effect.
'To understand this phenomenon it is necessary to bear in mind certain
recent physiological discoveries. We know to-day that by various processes
an individual may be brought into such a condition that, having entirely lost
his conscious personality, he obeys all the suggestions of the operator who
has deprived him of it, and commits acts in utter contradiction with his
character and habits. The most careful investigations seem to prove that an
individual immersed for some length of time in a group in action soon finds
himself—either in consequence of the magnetic influence given out by the
group, or from some other cause of which we are ignorant—in a special
state, which much resembles the state of fascination in which the hypnotised
individual finds himself in the hands of the hypnotiser.... The conscious
personality has entirely vanished; will and discernment are lost. All feelings
and thoughts are bent in the direction determined by the hypnotiser.
'Such also is approximately the state of the individual forming part of a
psychological group. He is no longer conscious of his acts. In his case, as in
the case of the hypnotised subject, at the same time that certain faculties are
destroyed, others may be brought to a high degree of exaltation. Under the
influence of a suggestion, he will undertake the accomplishment of certain
acts with irresistible impetuosity. This impetuosity is the more irresistible in
the case of groups than in that of the hypnotised subject, from the fact that,
the suggestion being the same for all the individuals of the group, it gains in
strength by reciprocity.' (p. 34.)
'We see, then, that the disappearance of the conscious personality, the
predominance of the unconscious personality, the turning by means of
suggestion and contagion of feelings and ideas in an identical direction, the
tendency to immediately transform the suggested ideas into acts; these, we

see, are the principal characteristics of the individual forming part of a
group. He is no longer himself, but has become an automaton who has
ceased to be guided by his will.' (p. 35.)
I have quoted this passage so fully in order to make it quite clear that Le
Bon explains the condition of an individual in a group as being actually
hypnotic, and does not merely make a comparison between the two states.
We have no intention of raising any objection at this point, but wish only to
emphasize the fact that the two last causes of an individual becoming
altered in a group (the contagion and the heightened suggestibility) are
evidently not on a par, since the contagion seems actually to be a
manifestation of the suggestibility. Moreover the effects of the two factors
do not seem to be sharply differentiated in the text of Le Bon's remarks. We
may perhaps best interpret his statement if we connect the contagion with
the effects of the individual members of the group upon one another, while
we point to another source for those manifestations of suggestion in the
group which are put on a level with the phenomena of hypnotic influence.
But to what source? We cannot avoid being struck with a sense of
deficiency when we notice that one of the chief elements of the comparison,
namely the person who is to replace the hypnotist in the case of the group, is
not mentioned in Le Bon's exposition. But he nevertheless distinguishes
between this influence of fascination which remains plunged in obscurity
and the contagious effect which the individuals exercise upon one another
and by which the original suggestion is strengthened.
Here is yet another important consideration for helping us to understand
the individual in a group: 'Moreover, by the mere fact that he forms part of
an organised group, a man descends several rungs in the ladder of
civilisation. Isolated, he may be a cultivated individual; in a crowd, he is a
barbarian—that is, a creature acting by instinct. He possesses the
spontaneity, the violence, the ferocity, and also the enthusiasm and heroism
of primitive beings.' (p. 36.) He then dwells especially upon the lowering in
intellectual ability which an individual experiences when he becomes
merged in a group.[8]
Let us now leave the individual, and turn to the group mind, as it has been
outlined by Le Bon. It shows not a single feature which a psycho-analyst
would find any difficulty in placing or in deriving from its source. Le Bon

himself shows us the way by pointing to its similarity with the mental life of
primitive people and of children (p. 40).
A group is impulsive, changeable and irritable. It is led almost exclusively
by the unconscious.[9] The impulses which a group obeys may according to
circumstances be generous or cruel, heroic or cowardly, but they are always
so imperious that no personal interest, not even that of self-preservation, can
make itself felt (p. 41). Nothing about it is premeditated. Though it may
desire things passionately, yet this is never so for long, for it is incapable of
perseverance. It cannot tolerate any delay between its desire and the
fulfilment of what it desires. It has a sense of omnipotence; the notion of
impossibility disappears for the individual in a group.[10]
A group is extraordinarily credulous and open to influence, it has no
critical faculty, and the improbable does not exist for it. It thinks in images,
which call one another up by association (just as they arise with individuals
in states of free imagination), and whose agreement with reality is never
checked by any reasonable function [Instanz].[11] The feelings of a group
are always very simple and very exaggerated. So that a group knows neither
doubt nor uncertainty.[12]
It goes directly to extremes; if a suspicion is expressed, it is instantly
changed into an incontrovertible certainty; a trace of antipathy is turned into
furious hatred (p. 56).[13]
Inclined as it itself is to all extremes, a group can only be excited by an
excessive stimulus. Anyone who wishes to produce an effect upon it needs
no logical adjustment in his arguments; he must paint in the most forcible
colours, he must exaggerate, and he must repeat the same thing again and
again.
Since a group is in no doubt as to what constitutes truth or error, and is
conscious, moreover, of its own great strength, it is as intolerant as it is
obedient to authority. It respects force and can only be slightly influenced
by kindness, which it regards merely as a form of weakness. What it
demands of its heroes is strength, or even violence. It wants to be ruled and
oppressed and to fear its masters. Fundamentally it is entirely conservative,
and it has a deep aversion from all innovations and advances and an
unbounded respect for tradition (p. 62).

In order to make a correct judgement upon the morals of groups, one must
take into consideration the fact that when individuals come together in a
group all their individual inhibitions fall away and all the cruel, brutal and
destructive instincts, which lie dormant in individuals as relics of a
primitive epoch, are stirred up to find free gratification. But under the
influence of suggestion groups are also capable of high achievements in the
shape of abnegation, unselfishness, and devotion to an ideal. While with
isolated individuals personal interest is almost the only motive force, with
groups it is very rarely prominent. It is possible to speak of an individual
having his moral standards raised by a group (p. 65). Whereas the
intellectual capacity of a group is always far below that of an individual, its
ethical conduct may rise as high above his as it may sink deep below it.
Some other features in Le Bon's description show in a clear light how well
justified is the identification of the group mind with the mind of primitive
people. In groups the most contradictory ideas can exist side by side and
tolerate each other, without any conflict arising from the logical
contradiction between them. But this is also the case in the unconscious
mental life of individuals, of children and of neurotics, as psycho-analysis
has long pointed out.[14]
A group, further, is subject to the truly magical power of words; they can
evoke the most formidable tempests in the group mind, and are also capable
of stilling them (p. 117). 'Reason and arguments are incapable of combating
certain words and formulas. They are uttered with solemnity in the presence
of groups, and as soon as they have been pronounced an expression of
respect is visible on every countenance, and all heads are bowed. By many
they are considered as natural forces, as supernatural powers.' (p. 117.) It is
only necessary in this connection to remember the taboo upon names among
primitive people and the magical powers which they ascribe to names and
words.[15]
And, finally, groups have never thirsted after truth. They demand illusions,
and cannot do without them. They constantly give what is unreal
precedence over what is real; they are almost as strongly influenced by what
is untrue as by what is true. They have an evident tendency not to
distinguish between the two (p. 77).

We have pointed out that this predominance of the life of phantasy and of
the illusion born of an unfulfilled wish is the ruling factor in the psychology
of neuroses. We have found that what neurotics are guided by is not
ordinary objective reality but psychological reality. A hysterical symptom is
based upon phantasy instead of upon the repetition of real experience, and
the sense of guilt in an obsessional neurosis is based upon the fact of an evil
intention which was never carried out. Indeed, just as in dreams and in
hypnosis, in the mental operations of a group the function for testing the
reality of things falls into the background in comparison with the strength of
wishes with their affective cathexis.[16]
What Le Bon says on the subject of leaders of groups is less exhaustive,
and does not enable us to make out an underlying principle so clearly. He
thinks that as soon as living beings are gathered together in certain numbers,
no matter whether they are a herd of animals or a collection of human
beings, they place themselves instinctively under the authority of a chief (p.
134). A group is an obedient herd, which could never live without a master.
It has such a thirst for obedience that it submits instinctively to anyone who
appoints himself its master.
Although in this way the needs of a group carry it half-way to meet the
leader, yet he too must fit in with it in his personal qualities. He must
himself be held in fascination by a strong faith (in an idea) in order to
awaken the group's faith; he must possess a strong and imposing will, which
the group, which has no will of its own, can accept from him. Le Bon then
discusses the different kinds of leaders, and the means by which they work
upon the group. On the whole he believes that the leaders make themselves
felt by means of the ideas in which they themselves are fanatical believers.
Moreover, he ascribes both to the ideas and to the leaders a mysterious and
irresistible power, which he calls 'prestige'. Prestige is a sort of domination
exercised over us by an individual, a work or an idea. It entirely paralyses
our critical faculty, and fills us with astonishment and respect. It would
seem to arouse a feeling like that of fascination in hypnosis (p. 148). He
distinguishes between acquired or artificial and personal prestige. The
former is attached to persons in virtue of their name, fortune and reputation,
and to opinions, works of art, etc., in virtue of tradition. Since in every case
it harks back to the past, it cannot be of much help to us in understanding

this puzzling influence. Personal prestige is attached to a few people, who
become leaders by means of it, and it has the effect of making everything
obey them as though by the operation of some magnetic magic. All prestige,
however, is also dependent upon success, and is lost in the event of failure
(p. 159).
We cannot feel that Le Bon has brought the function of the leader and the
importance of prestige completely into harmony with his brilliantly
executed picture of the group mind.

III

OTHER ACCOUNTS OF COLLECTIVE MENTAL LIFE

We have made use of Le Bon's description by way of introduction, because
it fits in so well with our own Psychology in the emphasis which it lays
upon unconscious mental life. But we must now add that as a matter of fact
none of that author's statements bring forward anything new. Everything
that he says to the detriment and depreciation of the manifestations of the
group mind had already been said by others before him with equal
distinctness and equal hostility, and has been repeated in unison by thinkers,
statesmen and writers since the earliest periods of literature.[17] The two
theses which comprise the most important of Le Bon's opinions, those
touching upon the collective inhibition of intellectual functioning and the
heightening of affectivity in groups, had been formulated shortly before by
Sighele.[18] At bottom, all that is left over as being peculiar to Le Bon are
the two notions of the unconscious and of the comparison with the mental
life of primitive people, and even these had naturally often been alluded to
before him.
But, what is more, the description and estimate of the group mind as they
have been given by Le Bon and the rest have not by any means been left
undisputed. There is no doubt that all the phenomena of the group mind
which have just been mentioned have been correctly observed, but it is also

possible to distinguish other manifestations of the group formation, which
operate in a precisely opposite sense, and from which a much higher
opinion of the group mind must necessarily follow.
Le Bon himself was prepared to admit that in certain circumstances the
morals of a group can be higher than those of the individuals that compose
it, and that only collectivities are capable of a high degree of unselfishness
and devotion. 'While with isolated individuals personal interest is almost the
only motive force, with groups it is very rarely prominent.' (p. 65.) Other
writers adduce the fact that it is only society which prescribes any ethical
standards at all for the individual, while he as a rule fails in one way or
another to come up to its high demands. Or they point out that in
exceptional circumstances there may arise in communities the phenomenon
of enthusiasm, which has made the most splendid group achievements
possible.
As regards intellectual work it remains a fact, indeed, that great decisions
in the realm of thought and momentous discoveries and solutions of
problems are only possible to an individual, working in solitude. But even
the group mind is capable of genius in intellectual creation, as is shown
above all by language itself, as well as by folk-song, folk-lore and the like.
It remains an open question, moreover, how much the individual thinker or
writer owes to the stimulation of the group in which he lives, or whether he
does more than perfect a mental work in which the others have had a
simultaneous share.
In face of these completely contradictory accounts, it looks as though the
work of Group Psychology were bound to come to an ineffectual end. But it
is easy to find a more hopeful escape from the dilemma. A number of very
different formations have probably been merged under the term 'group' and
may require to be distinguished. The assertions of Sighele, Le Bon and the
rest relate to groups of a short-lived character, which some passing interest
has hastily agglomerated out of various sorts of individuals. The
characteristics of revolutionary groups, and especially those of the great
French Revolution, have unmistakably influenced their descriptions. The
opposite opinions owe their origin to the consideration of those stable
groups or associations in which mankind pass their lives, and which are
embodied in the institutions of society. Groups of the first kind stand in the

same sort of relation to those of the second as a high but choppy sea to a
ground swell.
McDougall, in his book on The Group Mind,[19] starts out from the same
contradiction that has just been mentioned, and finds a solution for it in the
factor of organisation. In the simplest case, he says, the 'group' possesses no
organisation at all or one scarcely deserving the name. He describes a group
of this kind as a 'crowd'. But he admits that a crowd of human beings can
hardly come together without possessing at all events the rudiments of an
organisation, and that precisely in these simple groups many of the
fundamental facts of Collective Psychology can be observed with special
ease (p. 22). Before the members of a random crowd of people can
constitute something in the nature of a group in the psychological sense of
the word, a condition has to be fulfilled; these individuals must have
something in common with one another, a common interest in an object, a
similar emotional bias in some situation or other, and ('consequently', I
should like to interpolate) 'some degree of reciprocal influence' (p. 23). The
higher the degree of 'this mental homogeneity', the more readily do the
individuals form a psychological group, and the more striking are the
manifestations of a group mind.
The most remarkable and also the most important result of the formation
of a group is the 'exaltation or intensification of emotion' produced in every
member of it (p. 24). In McDougall's opinion men's emotions are stirred in a
group to a pitch that they seldom or never attain under other conditions; and
it is a pleasurable experience for those who are concerned to surrender
themselves so unreservedly to their passions and thus to become merged in
the group and to lose the sense of the limits of their individuality. The
manner in which individuals are thus carried away by a common impulse is
explained by McDougall by means of what he calls the 'principle of direct
induction of emotion by way of the primitive sympathetic response' (p. 25),
that is, by means of the emotional contagion with which we are already
familiar. The fact is that the perception of the signs of an emotional state is
calculated automatically to arouse the same emotion in the person who
perceives them. The greater the number of people in whom the same
emotion can be simultaneously observed, the stronger does this automatic
compulsion grow. The individual loses his power of criticism, and lets
himself slip into the same emotion. But in so doing he increases the

excitement of the other people, who had produced this effect upon him, and
thus the emotional charge of the individuals becomes intensified by mutual
interaction. Something is unmistakably at work in the nature of a
compulsion to do the same as the others, to remain in harmony with the
many. The coarser and simpler emotions are the more apt to spread through
a group in this way (p. 39).
This mechanism for the intensification of emotion is favoured by some
other influences which emanate from groups. A group impresses the
individual with a sense of unlimited power and of insurmountable peril. For
the moment it replaces the whole of human society, which is the wielder of
authority, whose punishments the individual fears, and for whose sake he
has submitted to so many inhibitions. It is clearly perilous for him to put
himself in opposition to it, and it will be safer to follow the example of
those around him and perhaps even 'hunt with the pack'. In obedience to the
new authority he may put his former 'conscience' out of action, and so
surrender to the attraction of the increased pleasure that is certainly obtained
from the removal of inhibitions. On the whole, therefore, it is not so
remarkable that we should see an individual in a group doing or approving
things which he would have avoided in the normal conditions of life; and in
this way we may even hope to clear up a little of the mystery which is so
often covered by the enigmatic word 'suggestion'.
McDougall does not dispute the thesis as to the collective inhibition of
intelligence in groups (p. 41). He says that the minds of lower intelligence
bring down those of a higher order to their own level. The latter are
obstructed in their activity, because in general an intensification of emotion
creates unfavourable conditions for sound intellectual work, and further
because the individuals are intimidated by the group and their mental
activity is not free, and because there is a lowering in each individual of his
sense of responsibility for his own performances.
The judgement with which McDougall sums up the psychological
behaviour of a simple 'unorganised' group is no more friendly than that of
Le Bon. Such a group 'is excessively emotional, impulsive, violent, fickle,
inconsistent, irresolute and extreme in action, displaying only the coarser
emotions and the less refined sentiments; extremely suggestible, careless in
deliberation, hasty in judgment, incapable of any but the simpler and

imperfect forms of reasoning; easily swayed and led, lacking in self-
consciousness, devoid of self-respect and of sense of responsibility, and apt
to be carried away by the consciousness of its own force, so that it tends to
produce all the manifestations we have learnt to expect of any irresponsible
and absolute power. Hence its behaviour is like that of an unruly child or an
untutored passionate savage in a strange situation, rather than like that of its
average member; and in the worst cases it is like that of a wild beast, rather
than like that of human beings.' (p. 45.)
Since McDougall contrasts the behaviour of a highly organised group with
what has just been described, we shall be particularly interested to learn in
what this organisation consists, and by what factors it is produced. The
author enumerates five 'principal conditions' for raising collective mental
life to a higher level.
The first and fundamental condition is that there should be some degree of
continuity of existence in the group. This may be either material or formal;
the former, if the same individuals persist in the group for some time; and
the latter, if there is developed within the group a system of fixed positions
which are occupied by a succession of individuals.
The second condition is that in the individual member of the group some
definite idea should be formed of the nature, composition, functions and
capacities of the group, so that from this he may develop an emotional
relation to the group as a whole.
The third is that the group should be brought into interaction (perhaps in
the form of rivalry) with other groups similar to it but differing from it in
many respects.
The fourth is that the group should possess traditions, customs and habits,
and especially such as determine the relations of its members to one another.
The fifth is that the group should have a definite structure, expressed in the
specialisation and differentiation of the functions of its constituents.
According to McDougall, if these conditions are fulfilled, the
psychological disadvantages of the group formation are removed. The
collective lowering of intellectual ability is avoided by withdrawing the

performance of intellectual tasks from the group and reserving them for
individual members of it.
It seems to us that the condition which McDougall designates as the
'organisation' of a group can with more justification be described in another
way. The problem consists in how to procure for the group precisely those
features which were characteristic of the individual and which are
extinguished in him by the formation of the group. For the individual,
outside the primitive group, possessed his own continuity, his self-
consciousness, his traditions and customs, his own particular functions and
position, and kept apart from his rivals. Owing to his entry into an
'unorganised' group he had lost this distinctiveness for a time. If we thus
recognise that the aim is to equip the group with the attributes of the
individual, we shall be reminded of a valuable remark of Trotter's,[20] to the
effect that the tendency towards the formation of groups is biologically a
continuation of the multicellular character of all the higher organisms.

IV

SUGGESTION AND LIBIDO

We started from the fundamental fact that an individual in a group is
subjected through its influence to what is often a profound alteration in his
mental activity. His emotions become extraordinarily intensified, while his
intellectual ability becomes markedly reduced, both processes being
evidently in the direction of an approximation to the other individuals in the
group; and this result can only be reached by the removal of those
inhibitions upon his instincts which are peculiar to each individual, and by
his resigning those expressions of his inclinations which are especially his
own. We have heard that these often unwelcome consequences are to some
extent at least prevented by a higher 'organisation' of the group; but this
does not contradict the fundamental fact of Group Psychology—the two
theses as to the intensification of the emotions and the inhibition of the
intellect in primitive groups. Our interest is now directed to discovering the

psychological explanation of this mental change which is experienced by
the individual in a group.
It is clear that rational factors (such as the intimidation of the individual
which has already been mentioned, that is, the action of his instinct of self-
preservation) do not cover the observable phenomena. Beyond this what we
are offered as an explanation by authorities upon Sociology and Group
Psychology is always the same, even though it is given various names, and
that is—the magic word 'suggestion'. Tarde calls it 'imitation'; but we cannot
help agreeing with a writer who protests that imitation comes under the
concept of suggestion, and is in fact one of its results.[21] Le Bon traces back
all the puzzling features of social phenomena to two factors: the mutual
suggestion of individuals and the prestige of leaders. But prestige, again, is
only recognizable by its capacity for evoking suggestion. McDougall for a
moment gives us an impression that his principle of 'primitive induction of
emotion' might enable us to do without the assumption of suggestion. But
on further consideration we are forced to perceive that this principle says no
more than the familiar assertions about 'imitation' or 'contagion', except for
a decided stress upon the emotional factor. There is no doubt that something
exists in us which, when we become aware of signs of an emotion in
someone else, tends to make us fall into the same emotion; but how often do
we not successfully oppose it, resist the emotion, and react in quite an
opposite way? Why, therefore, do we invariably give way to this contagion
when we are in a group? Once more we should have to say that what
compels us to obey this tendency is imitation, and what induces the emotion
in us is the group's suggestive influence. Moreover, quite apart from this,
McDougall does not enable us to evade suggestion; we hear from him as
well as from other writers that groups are distinguished by their special
suggestibility.
We shall therefore be prepared for the statement that suggestion (or more
correctly suggestibility) is actually an irreducible, primitive phenomenon, a
fundamental fact in the mental life of man. Such, too, was the opinion of
Bernheim, of whose astonishing arts I was a witness in the year 1889. But I
can remember even then feeling a muffled hostility to this tyranny of
suggestion. When a patient who showed himself unamenable was met with
the shout: 'What are you doing? Vous vous contresuggestionnez!', I said to
myself that this was an evident injustice and an act of violence. For the man

certainly had a right to counter-suggestions if they were trying to subdue
him with suggestions. Later on my resistance took the direction of
protesting against the view that suggestion, which explained everything,
was itself to be preserved from explanation. Thinking of it, I repeated the
old conundrum:[22]
Christoph trug Christum,
Christus trug die ganze Welt,
Sag' wo hat Christoph
Damals hin den Fuss gestellt?[23]
Christophorus Christum, sed Christus sustulit orbem:
Constiterit pedibus dic ubi Christophorus?
Now that I once more approach the riddle of suggestion after having kept
away from it for some thirty years, I find there is no change in the situation.
To this statement I can discover only a single exception, which I need not
mention, since it is one which bears witness to the influence of psycho-
analysis. I notice that particular efforts are being made to formulate the
concept of suggestion correctly, that is, to fix the conventional use of the
name.[24] And this is by no means superfluous, for the word is acquiring a
more and more extended use and a looser and looser meaning, and will soon
come to designate any sort of influence whatever, just as in English, where
'to suggest' and 'suggestion' correspond to our nahelegen and Anregung. But
there has been no explanation of the nature of suggestion, that is, of the
conditions under which influence without adequate logical foundation takes
place. I should not avoid the task of supporting this statement by an analysis
of the literature of the last thirty years, if I were not aware that an
exhaustive inquiry is being undertaken close at hand which has in view the
fulfilment of this very task.
Instead of this I shall make an attempt at using the concept of libido for the
purpose of throwing light upon Group Psychology, a concept which has
done us such good service in the study of psycho-neuroses.
Libido is an expression taken from the theory of the emotions. We call by
that name the energy (regarded as a quantitative magnitude, though not at
present actually mensurable) of those instincts which have to do with all
that may be comprised under the word 'love'. The nucleus of what we mean

by love naturally consists (and this is what is commonly called love, and
what the poets sing of) in sexual love with sexual union as its aim. But we
do not separate from this—what in any case has a share in the name 'love'—
on the one hand, self-love, and on the other, love for parents and children,
friendship and love for humanity in general, and also devotion to concrete
objects and to abstract ideas. Our justification lies in the fact that psycho-
analytic research has taught us that all these tendencies are an expression of
the same instinctive activities; in relations between the sexes these instincts
force their way towards sexual union, but in other circumstances they are
diverted from this aim or are prevented from reaching it, though always
preserving enough of their original nature to keep their identity recognizable
(as in such features as the longing for proximity, and self-sacrifice).
We are of opinion, then, that language has carried out an entirely
justifiable piece of unification in creating the word 'love' with its numerous
uses, and that we cannot do better than take it as the basis of our scientific
discussions and expositions as well. By coming to this decision, psycho-
analysis has let loose a storm of indignation, as though it had been guilty of
an act of outrageous innovation. Yet psycho-analysis has done nothing
original in taking love in this 'wider' sense. In its origin, function, and
relation to sexual love, the 'Eros' of the philosopher Plato coincides exactly
with the love force, the libido, of psycho-analysis, as has been shown in
detail by Nachmansohn and Pfister;[25] and when the apostle Paul, in his
famous epistle to the Corinthians, prizes love above all else, he certainly
understands it in the same 'wider' sense.[26] But this only shows that men do
not always take their great thinkers seriously, even when they profess most
to admire them.
Psycho-analysis, then, gives these love instincts the name of sexual
instincts, a potiori and by reason of their origin. The majority of 'educated'
people have taken their revenge by retorting upon psycho-analysis with the
reproach of 'pan-sexualism'. Anyone who considers sex as something
mortifying and humiliating to human nature is at liberty to make use of the
more genteel expressions 'Eros' and 'erotic'. I might have done so myself
from the first and thus have spared myself much opposition. But I did not
want to, for I like to avoid concessions to faint-heartedness. One can never
tell where that road may lead one; one gives way first in words, and then
little by little in substance too. I cannot see any merit in being ashamed of

sex; the Greek word 'Eros', which is to soften the affront, is in the end
nothing more than a translation of our German word Liebe [love]; and
finally, he who knows how to wait need make no concessions.
We will try our fortune, then, with the supposition that love relationships
(or, to use a more neutral expression, emotional ties) also constitute the
essence of the group mind. Let us remember that the authorities make no
mention of any such relations. What would correspond to them is evidently
concealed behind the shelter, the screen, of suggestion. Our hypothesis finds
support in the first instance from two passing thoughts. First, that a group is
clearly held together by a power of some kind: and to what power could this
feat be better ascribed than to Eros, who holds together everything in the
world? Secondly, that if an individual gives up his distinctiveness in a group
and lets its other members influence him by suggestion, it gives one the
impression that he does it because he feels the need of being in harmony
with them rather than in opposition to them—so that perhaps after all he
does it 'ihnen zu Liebe'.[27]

V

TWO ARTIFICIAL GROUPS: THE CHURCH AND THE
ARMY

We may recall from what we know of the morphology of groups that it is
possible to distinguish very different kinds of groups and opposing lines in
their development. There are very fleeting groups and extremely lasting
ones; homogeneous ones, made up of the same sorts of individuals, and
unhomogeneous ones; natural groups, and artificial ones, requiring an
external force to keep them together; primitive groups, and highly organised
ones with a definite structure. But for reasons which have yet to be
explained we should like to lay particular stress upon a distinction to which
the authorities have rather given too little attention; I refer to that between
leaderless groups and those with leaders. And, in complete opposition to the
usual practice, we shall not choose a relatively simple group formation as

our point of departure, but shall begin with highly organised, lasting and
artificial groups. The most interesting example of such structures are
churches—communities of believers—and armies.
A church and an army are artificial groups, that is, a certain external force
is employed to prevent them from disintegrating and to check alterations in
their structure. As a rule a person is not consulted or is given no choice, as
to whether he wants to enter such a group; any attempt at leaving it is
usually met with persecution or with severe punishment, or has quite
definite conditions attached to it. It is quite outside our present interest to
enquire why these associations need such special safeguards. We are only
attracted by one circumstance, namely that certain facts, which are far more
concealed in other cases, can be observed very clearly in those highly
organised groups which are protected from dissolution in the manner that
has been mentioned. In a church (and we may with advantage take the
Catholic Church as a type) as well as in an army, however different the two
may be in other respects, the same illusion holds good of there being a head
—in the Catholic Church Christ, in an army its Commander-in-Chief—who
loves all the individuals in the group with an equal love. Everything
depends upon this illusion; if it were to be dropped, then both Church and
army would dissolve, so far as the external force permitted them to. This
equal love was expressly enunciated by Christ: 'Inasmuch as ye have done it
unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.' He
stands to the individual members of the group of believers in the relation of
a kind elder brother; he is their father surrogate. All the demands that are
made upon the individual are derived from this love of Christ's. A
democratic character runs through the Church, for the very reason that
before Christ everyone is equal, and that everyone has an equal share in his
love. It is not without a deep reason that the similarity between the Christian
community and a family is invoked, and that believers call themselves
brothers in Christ, that is, brothers through the love which Christ has for
them. There is no doubt that the tie which unites each individual with Christ
is also the cause of the tie which unites them with one another. The like
holds good of an army. The Commander-in-Chief is a father who loves all
his soldiers equally, and for that reason they are comrades among
themselves. The army differs structurally from the Church in being built up
of a series of such groups. Every captain is, as it were, the Commander-in-
Chief and the father of his company, and so is every non-commissioned

officer of his section. It is true that a similar hierarchy has been constructed
in the Church, but it does not play the same part in it economically; for
more knowledge and care about individuals may be attributed to Christ than
to a human Commander-in-Chief.[28]
It is to be noticed that in these two artificial groups each individual is
bound by libidinal[29] ties on the one hand to the leader (Christ, the
Commander-in-Chief) and on the other hand to the other members of the
group. How these two ties are related to each other, whether they are of the
same kind and the same value, and how they are to be described
psychologically—these questions must be reserved for subsequent enquiry.
But we shall venture even now upon a mild reproach against the authorities
for not having sufficiently appreciated the importance of the leader in the
psychology of the group, while our own choice of a first object for
investigation has brought us into a more favourable position. It would
appear as though we were on the right road towards an explanation of the
principal phenomenon of Group Psychology—the individual's lack of
freedom in a group. If each individual is bound in two directions by such an
intense emotional tie, we shall find no difficulty in attributing to that
circumstance the alteration and limitation which have been observed in his
personality.
A hint to the same effect, that the essence of a group lies in the libidinal
ties existing in it, is also to be found in the phenomenon of panic, which is
best studied in military groups. A panic arises if a group of that kind
becomes disintegrated. Its characteristics are that none of the orders given
by superiors are any longer listened to, and that each individual is only
solicitous on his own account, and without any consideration for the rest.
The mutual ties have ceased to exist, and a gigantic and senseless dread
[Angst] is set free. At this point, again, the objection will naturally be made
that it is rather the other way round; and that the dread has grown so great as
to be able to disregard all ties and all feelings of consideration for others.
McDougall has even (p. 24) made use of the case of panic (though not of
military panic) as a typical instance of that intensification of emotion by
contagion ('primary induction') upon which he lays so much emphasis. But
nevertheless this rational method of explanation is here quite inadequate.
The very question that needs explanation is why the dread has become so
gigantic. The greatness of the danger cannot be responsible, for the same

army which now falls a victim to panic may previously have faced equally
great or greater danger with complete success; it is of the very essence of
panic that it bears no relation to the danger that threatens, and often breaks
out upon the most trivial occasions. If an individual in panic dread begins to
be solicitous only on his own account, he bears witness in so doing to the
fact that the emotional ties, which have hitherto made the danger seem small
to him, have ceased to exist. Now that he is by himself in facing the danger,
he may surely think it greater. The fact is, therefore, that panic dread
presupposes a relaxation in the libidinal structure of the group and reacts to
it in a justifiable manner, and the contrary view—that the libidinal ties of
the group are destroyed owing to dread in the face of the danger—can be
refuted.
The contention that dread in a group is increased to enormous proportions
by means of induction (contagion) is not in the least contradicted by these
remarks. McDougall's view meets the case entirely when the danger is a
really great one and when the group has no strong emotional ties—
conditions which are fulfilled, for instance, when a fire breaks out in a
theatre or a place of amusement. But the really instructive case and the one
which can be best employed for our purposes is that mentioned above, in
which a body of troops breaks into a panic although the danger has not
increased beyond a degree that is usual and has often been previously faced.
It is not to be expected that the usage of the word 'panic' should be clearly
and unambiguously determined. Sometimes it is used to describe any
collective dread, sometimes even dread in an individual when it exceeds all
bounds, and often the name seems to be reserved for cases in which the
outbreak of dread is not warranted by the occasion. If we take the word
'panic' in the sense of collective dread, we can establish a far-reaching
analogy. Dread in an individual is provoked either by the greatness of a
danger or by the cessation of emotional ties (libidinal cathexes[30]
[Libidobesetzungen]); the latter is the case of neurotic dread.[31] In just the
same way panic arises either owing to an increase of the common danger or
owing to the disappearance of the emotional ties which hold the group
together; and the latter case is analogous to that of neurotic dread.[32]
Anyone who, like McDougall (l.c.), describes a panic as one of the
plainest functions of the 'group mind', arrives at the paradoxical position
that this group mind does away with itself in one of its most striking

manifestations. It is impossible to doubt that panic means the disintegration
of a group; it involves the cessation of all the feelings of consideration
which the members of the group otherwise show one another.
The typical occasion of the outbreak of a panic is very much as it is
represented in Nestroy's parody of Hebbel's play about Judith and
Holofernes. A soldier cries out: "The general has lost his head!" and
thereupon all the Assyrians take to flight. The loss of the leader in some
sense or other, the birth, of misgivings about him, brings on the outbreak of
panic, though the danger remains the same; the mutual ties between the
members of the group disappear, as a rule, at the same time as the tie with
their leader. The group vanishes in dust, like a Bologna flask when its top is
broken off.
The dissolution of a religious group is not so easy to observe. A short time
ago there came into my hands an English novel of Catholic origin,
recommended by the Bishop of London, with the title When It Was Dark. It
gave a clever and, as it seems to me, a convincing picture of such a
possibility and its consequences. The novel, which is supposed to relate to
the present day, tells how a conspiracy of enemies of the figure of Christ
and of the Christian faith succeed in arranging for a sepulchre to be
discovered in Jerusalem. In this sepulchre is an inscription, in which Joseph
of Arimathaea confesses that for reasons of piety he secretly removed the
body of Christ from its grave on the third day after its entombment and
buried it in this spot. The resurrection of Christ and his divine nature are by
this means disposed of, and the result of this archaeological discovery is a
convulsion in European civilisation and an extraordinary increase in all
crimes and acts of violence, which only ceases when the forgers' plot has
been revealed.
The phenomenon which accompanies the dissolution that is here supposed
to overtake a religious group is not dread, for which the occasion is wanting.
Instead of it ruthless and hostile impulses towards other people make their
appearance, which, owing to the equal love of Christ, they had previously
been unable to do.[33] But even during the kingdom of Christ those people
who do not belong to the community of believers, who do not love him, and
whom he does not love, stand outside this tie. Therefore a religion, even if it
calls itself the religion of love, must be hard and unloving to those who do

not belong to it. Fundamentally indeed every religion is in this same way a
religion of love for all those whom it embraces; while cruelty and
intolerance towards those who do not belong to it are natural to every
religion. However difficult we may find it personally, we ought not to
reproach believers too severely on this account; people who are unbelieving
or indifferent are so much better off psychologically in this respect. If to-
day that intolerance no longer shows itself so violent and cruel as in former
centuries, we can scarcely conclude that there has been a softening in
human manners. The cause is rather to be found in the undeniable
weakening of religious feelings and the libidinal ties which depend upon
them. If another group tie takes the place of the religious one—and the
socialistic tie seems to be succeeding in doing so—, then there will be the
same intolerance towards outsiders as in the age of the Wars of Religion;
and if differences between scientific opinions could ever attain a similar
significance for groups, the same result would again be repeated with this
new motivation.

VI

FURTHER PROBLEMS AND LINES OF WORK

We have hitherto considered two artificial groups and have found that they
are dominated by two emotional ties. One of these, the tie with the leader,
seems (at all events for these cases) to be more of a ruling factor than the
other, which holds between the members of the group.
Now much else remains to be examined and described in the morphology
of groups. We should have to start from the ascertained fact that a mere
collection of people is not a group, so long as these ties have not been
established in it; but we should have to admit that in any collection of
people the tendency to form a psychological group may very easily become
prominent. We should have to give our attention to the different kinds of
groups, more or less stable, that arise spontaneously, and to study the
conditions of their origin and of their dissolution. We should above all be

concerned with the distinction between groups which have a leader and
leaderless groups. We should consider whether groups with leaders may not
be the more primitive and complete, whether in the others an idea, an
abstraction, may not be substituted for the leader (a state of things to which
religious groups, with their invisible head, form a transition stage), and
whether a common tendency, a wish in which a number of people can have
a share, may not in the same way serve as a substitute. This abstraction,
again, might be more or less completely embodied in the figure of what we
might call a secondary leader, and interesting varieties would arise from the
relation between the idea and the leader. The leader or the leading idea
might also, so to speak, be negative; hatred against a particular person or
institution might operate in just the same unifying way, and might call up
the same kind of emotional ties as positive attachment. Then the question
would also arise whether a leader is really indispensable to the essence of a
group—and other questions besides.
But all these questions, which may, moreover, have been dealt with in part
in the literature of Group Psychology, will not succeed in diverting our
interest from the fundamental psychological problems that confront us in
the structure of a group. And our attention will first be attracted by a
consideration which promises to bring us in the most direct way to a proof
that libidinal ties are what characterize a group.
Let us keep before our eyes the nature of the emotional relations which
hold between men in general. According to Schopenhauer's famous simile
of the freezing porcupines no one can tolerate a too intimate approach to his
neighbour.[34]
The evidence of psycho-analysis shows that almost every intimate
emotional relation between two people which lasts for some time—
marriage, friendship, the relations between parents and children[35]—leaves
a sediment of feelings of aversion and hostility, which have first to be
eliminated by repression. This is less disguised in the common wrangles
between business partners or in the grumbles of a subordinate at his
superior. The same thing happens when men come together in larger units.
Every time two families become connected by a marriage, each of them
thinks itself superior to or of better birth than the other. Of two
neighbouring towns each is the other's most jealous rival; every little canton

looks down upon the others with contempt. Closely related races keep one
another at arm's length; the South German cannot endure the North German,
the Englishman casts every kind of aspersion upon the Scotchman, the
Spaniard despises the Portuguese. We are no longer astonished that greater
differences should lead to an almost insuperable repugnance, such as the
Gallic people feel for the German, the Aryan for the Semite, and the white
races for the coloured.
When this hostility is directed against people who are otherwise loved we
describe it as ambivalence of feeling; and we explain the fact, in what is
probably far too rational a manner, by means of the numerous occasions for
conflicts of interest which arise precisely in such intimate relations. In the
undisguised antipathies and aversions which people feel towards strangers
with whom they have to do we may recognize the expression of self-love—
of narcissism. This self-love works for the self-assertion of the individual,
and behaves as though the occurrence of any divergence from his own
particular lines of development involved a criticism of them and a demand
for their alteration. We do not know why such sensitiveness should have
been directed to just these details of differentiation; but it is unmistakable
that in this whole connection men give evidence of a readiness for hatred,
an aggressiveness, the source of which is unknown, and to which one is
tempted to ascribe an elementary character.[36]
But the whole of this intolerance vanishes, temporarily or permanently, as
the result of the formation of a group, and in a group. So long as a group
formation persists or so far as it extends, individuals behave as though they
were uniform, tolerate other people's peculiarities, put themselves on an
equal level with them, and have no feeling of aversion towards them. Such a
limitation of narcissism can, according to our theoretical views, only be
produced by one factor, a libidinal tie with other people. Love for oneself
knows only one barrier—love for others, love for objects.[37] The question
will at once be raised whether community of interest in itself, without any
addition of libido, must not necessarily lead to the toleration of other people
and to considerateness for them. This objection may be met by the reply that
nevertheless no lasting limitation of narcissism is effected in this way, since
this tolerance does not persist longer than the immediate advantage gained
from the other people's collaboration. But the practical importance of the
discussion is less than might be supposed, for experience has shown that in

cases of collaboration libidinal ties are regularly formed between the fellow-
workers which prolong and solidify the relation between them to a point
beyond what is merely profitable. The same thing occurs in men's social
relations as has become familiar to psycho-analytic research in the course of
the development of the individual libido. The libido props itself upon the
satisfaction of the great vital needs, and chooses as its first objects the
people who have a share in that process. And in the development of
mankind as a whole, just as in individuals, love alone acts as the civilizing
factor in the sense that it brings a change from egoism to altruism. And this
is true both of the sexual love for women, with all the obligations which it
involves of sparing what women are fond of, and also of the desexualised,
sublimated homosexual love for other men, which springs from work in
common. If therefore in groups narcissistic self-love is subject to limitations
which do not operate outside them, that is cogent evidence that the essence
of a group formation consists in a new kind of libidinal ties among the
members of the group.
But our interest now leads us on to the pressing question as to what may
be the nature of these ties which exist in groups. In the psycho-analytic
study of neuroses we have hitherto been occupied almost exclusively with
ties that unite with their objects those love instincts which still pursue
directly sexual aims. In groups there can evidently be no question of sexual
aims of that kind. We are concerned here with love instincts which have
been diverted from their original aims, though they do not operate with less
energy on that account. Now we have already observed within the range of
the usual sexual object-cathexis [Objektbesetzung] phenomena which
represent a diversion of the instinct from its sexual aim. We have described
them as degrees of being in love, and have recognized that they involve a
certain encroachment upon the ego. We shall now turn our attention more
closely to these phenomena of being in love, in the firm expectation of
finding in them conditions which can be transferred to the ties that exist in
groups. But we should also like to know whether this kind of object-
cathexis, as we know it in sexual life, represents the only manner of
emotional tie with other people, or whether we must take other mechanisms
of the sort into account. As a matter of fact we learn from psycho-analysis
that there do exist other mechanisms for emotional ties, the so-called
identifications, insufficiently-known processes and hard to describe, the

investigation of which will for some time keep us away from the subject of
Group Psychology.

VII

IDENTIFICATION

Identification is known to psycho-analysis as the earliest expression of an
emotional tie with another person. It plays a part in the early history of the
Oedipus complex. A little boy will exhibit a special interest in his father; he
would like to grow like him and be like him, and take his place everywhere.
We may say simply that he takes his father as his ideal. This behaviour has
nothing to do with a passive or feminine attitude towards his father (and
towards males in general); it is on the contrary typically masculine. It fits in
very well with the Oedipus complex, for which it helps to prepare the way.
At the same time as this identification with his father, or a little later, the
boy has begun to develop a true object-cathexis towards his mother
according to the anaclitic type [Anlehnungstypus].[38] He then exhibits,
therefore, two psychologically distinct ties: a straightforward sexual object-
cathexis towards his mother and a typical identification towards his father.
The two subsist side by side for a time without any mutual influence or
interference. In consequence of the irresistible advance towards a
unification of mental life they come together at last; and the normal Oedipus
complex originates from their confluence. The little boy notices that his
father stands in his way with his mother. His identification with his father
then takes on a hostile colouring and becomes identical with the wish to
replace his father in regard to his mother as well. Identification, in fact, is
ambivalent from the very first; it can turn into an expression of tenderness
as easily as into a wish for someone's removal. It behaves like a derivative
of the first oral phase of the organisation of the libido, in which the object
that we long for and prize is assimilated by eating and is in that way
annihilated as such. The cannibal, as we know, has remained at this

standpoint; he has a devouring affection for his enemies and only devours
people of whom he is fond.[39]
The subsequent history of this identification with the father may easily be
lost sight of. It may happen that the Oedipus complex becomes inverted,
and that the father is taken as the object of a feminine attitude, an object
from which the directly sexual instincts look for satisfaction; in that event
the identification with the father has become the precursor of an object tie
with the father. The same holds good, with the necessary substitutions, of
the baby daughter as well.
It is easy to state in a formula the distinction between an identification
with the father and the choice of the father as an object. In the first case
one's father is what one would like to be, and in the second he is what one
would like to have. The distinction, that is, depends upon whether the tie
attaches to the subject or to the object of the ego. The former is therefore
already possible before any sexual object-choice has been made. It is much
more difficult to give a clear metapsychological representation of the
distinction. We can only see that identification endeavours to mould a
person's own ego after the fashion of the one that has been taken as a
'model'.
Let us disentangle identification as it occurs in the structure of a neurotic
symptom from its rather complicated connections. Supposing that a little
girl (and we will keep to her for the present) develops the same painful
symptom as her mother—for instance, the same tormenting cough. Now this
may come about in various ways. The identification may come from the
Oedipus complex; in that case it signifies a hostile desire on the girl's part to
take her mother's place, and the symptom expresses her object love towards
her father, and brings about a realisation, under the influence of a sense of
guilt, of her desire to take her mother's place: 'You wanted to be your
mother, and now you are—anyhow as far as the pain goes'. This is the
complete mechanism of the structure of a hysterical symptom. Or, on the
other hand, the symptom may be the same as that of the person who is loved
—(so, for instance, Dora in the 'Bruchstück einer Hysterieanalyse'[40]
imitated her father's cough); in that case we can only describe the state of
things by saying that identification has appeared instead of object-choice,
and that object-choice has regressed to identification. We have heard that

identification is the earliest and original form of emotional tie; it often
happens that under the conditions in which symptoms are constructed, that
is, where there is repression and where the mechanisms of the unconscious
are dominant, object-choice is turned back into identification—the ego, that
is, assumes the characteristics of the object. It is noticeable that in these
identifications the ego sometimes copies the person who is not loved and
sometimes the one who is loved. It must also strike us that in both cases the
identification is a partial and extremely limited one and only borrows a
single trait from the person who is its object.
There is a third particularly frequent and important case of symptom
formation, in which the identification leaves any object relation to the
person who is being copied entirely out of account. Supposing, for instance,
that one of the girls in a boarding school has had a letter from someone with
whom she is secretly in love which arouses her jealousy, and that she reacts
to it with a fit of hysterics; then some of her friends who know about it will
contract the fit, as we say, by means of mental infection. The mechanism is
that of identification based upon the possibility or desire of putting oneself
in the same situation. The other girls would like to have a secret love affair
too, and under the influence of a sense of guilt they also accept the pain
involved in it. It would be wrong to suppose that they take on the symptom
out of sympathy. On the contrary, the sympathy only arises out of the
identification, and this is proved by the fact that infection or imitation of
this kind takes place in circumstances where even less pre-existing
sympathy is to be assumed than usually exists between friends in a girls'
school. One ego has perceived a significant analogy with another upon one
point—in our example upon a similar readiness for emotion; an
identification is thereupon constructed on this point, and, under the
influence of the pathogenic situation, is displaced on to the symptom which
the one ego has produced. The identification by means of the symptom has
thus become the mark of a point of coincidence between the two egos which
has to be kept repressed.
What we have learned from these three sources may be summarised as
follows. First, identification is the original form of emotional tie with an
object; secondly, in a regressive way it becomes a substitute for a libidinal
object tie, as it were by means of the introjection of the object into the ego;
and thirdly, it may arise with every new perception of a common quality

shared with some other person who is not an object of the sexual instinct.
The more important this common quality is, the more successful may this
partial identification become, and it may thus represent the beginning of a
new tie.
We already begin to divine that the mutual tie between members of a
group is in the nature of an identification of this kind, based upon an
important emotional common quality; and we may suspect that this
common quality lies in the nature of the tie with the leader. Another
suspicion may tell us that we are far from having exhausted the problem of
identification, and that we are faced by the process which psychology calls
'empathy [Einfühlung]' and which plays the largest part in our understanding
of what is inherently foreign to our ego in other people. But we shall here
limit ourselves to the immediate emotional effects of identification, and
shall leave on one side its significance for our intellectual life.
Psycho-analytic research, which has already occasionally attacked the
more difficult problems of the psychoses, has also been able to exhibit
identification to us in some other cases which are not immediately
comprehensible. I shall treat two of these cases in detail as material for our
further consideration.
The genesis of male homosexuality in a large class of cases is as follows.
A young man has been unusually long and intensely fixated upon his mother
in the sense of the Oedipus complex. But at last, after the end of his puberty,
the time comes for exchanging his mother for some other sexual object.
Things take a sudden turn: the young man does not abandon his mother, but
identifies himself with her; he transforms himself into her, and now looks
about for objects which can replace his ego for him, and on which he can
bestow such love and care as he has experienced from his mother. This is a
frequent process, which can be confirmed as often as one likes, and which is
naturally quite independent of any hypothesis that may be made as to the
organic driving force and the motives of the sudden transformation. A
striking thing about this identification is its ample scale; it remoulds the ego
in one of its important features—in its sexual character—upon the model of
what has hitherto been the object. In this process the object itself is
renounced—whether entirely or in the sense of being preserved only in the
unconscious is a question outside the present discussion. Identification with

an object that is renounced or lost as a substitute for it, introjection of this
object into the ego, is indeed no longer a novelty to us. A process of the kind
may sometimes be directly observed in small children. A short time ago an
observation of this sort was published in the Internationale Zeitschrift für
Psychoanalyse. A child who was unhappy over the loss of a kitten declared
straight out that now he himself was the kitten, and accordingly crawled
about on all fours, would not eat at table, etc.[41]
Another such instance of introjection of the object has been provided by
the analysis of melancholia, an affection which counts among the most
remarkable of its exciting causes the real or emotional loss of a loved
object. A leading characteristic of these cases is a cruel self-depreciation of
the ego combined with relentless self-criticism and bitter self-reproaches.
Analyses have shown that this disparagement and these reproaches apply at
bottom to the object and represent the ego's revenge upon it. The shadow of
the object has fallen upon the ego, as I have said elsewhere.[42] The
introjection of the object is here unmistakably clear.
But these melancholias also show us something else, which may be of
importance for our later discussions. They show us the ego divided, fallen
into two pieces, one of which rages against the second. This second piece is
the one which has been altered by introjection and which contains the lost
object. But the piece which behaves so cruelly is not unknown to us either.
It comprises the conscience, a critical faculty [Instanz][43] within the ego,
which even in normal times takes up a critical attitude towards the ego,
though never so relentlessly and so unjustifiably. On previous occasions we
have been driven to the hypothesis[44] that some such faculty develops in
our ego which may cut itself off from the rest of the ego and come into
conflict with it. We have called it the 'ego ideal', and by way of functions we
have ascribed to it self-observation, the moral conscience, the censorship of
dreams, and the chief influence in repression. We have said that it is the heir
to the original narcissism in which the childish ego found its self-
sufficiency; it gradually gathers up from the influences of the environment
the demands which that environment makes upon the ego and which the ego
cannot always rise to; so that a man, when he cannot be satisfied with his
ego itself, may nevertheless be able to find satisfaction in the ego ideal
which has been differentiated out of the ego. In delusions of observation, as
we have further shown, the disintegration of this faculty has become patent,

and has thus revealed its origin in the influence of superior powers, and
above all of parents.[45] But we have not forgotten to add that the amount of
distance between this ego ideal and the real ego is very variable from one
individual to another, and that with many people this differentiation within
the ego does not go further than with children.
But before we can employ this material for understanding the libidinal
organisation of groups, we must take into account some other examples of
the mutual relations between the object and the ego.[46]

VIII

BEING IN LOVE AND HYPNOSIS

Even in its caprices the usage of language remains true to some kind of
reality. Thus it gives the name of 'love' to a great many kinds of emotional
relationship which we too group together theoretically as love; but then
again it feels a doubt whether this love is real, true, actual love, and so hints
at a whole scale of possibilities within the range of the phenomena of love.
We shall have no difficulty in making the same discovery empirically.
In one class of cases being in love is nothing more than object-cathexis on
the part of the sexual instincts with a view to directly sexual satisfaction, a
cathexis which expires, moreover, when this aim has been reached; this is
what is called common, sensual love. But, as we know, the libidinal
situation rarely remains so simple. It was possible to calculate with certainty
upon the revival of the need which had just expired; and this must no doubt
have been the first motive for directing a lasting cathexis upon the sexual
object and for 'loving' it in the passionless intervals as well.
To this must be added another factor derived from the astonishing course
of development which is pursued by the erotic life of man. In his first phase,
which has usually come to an end by the time he is five years old, a child
has found the first object for his love in one or other of his parents, and all
of his sexual instincts with their demand for satisfaction have been united

upon this object. The repression which then sets in compels him to renounce
the greater number of these infantile sexual aims, and leaves behind a
profound modification in his relation to his parents. The child still remains
tied to his parents, but by instincts which must be described as being
'inhibited in their aim [zielgehemmte]'. The emotions which he feels
henceforward towards these objects of his love are characterized as 'tender'.
It is well known that the earlier 'sensual' tendencies remain more or less
strongly preserved in the unconscious, so that in a certain sense the whole of
the original current continues to exist.[47]
At puberty, as we know, there set in new and very strong tendencies with
directly sexual aims. In unfavourable cases they remain separate, in the
form of a sensual current, from the 'tender' emotional trends which persist.
We are then faced by a picture the two aspects of which certain movements
in literature take such delight in idealising. A man of this kind will show a
sentimental enthusiasm for women whom he deeply respects but who do not
excite him to sexual activities, and he will only be potent with other women
whom he does not 'love' but thinks little of or even despises.[48] More often,
however, the adolescent succeeds in bringing about a certain degree of
synthesis between the unsensual, heavenly love and the sensual, earthly
love, and his relation to his sexual object is characterised by the interaction
of uninhibited instincts and of instincts inhibited in their aim. The depth to
which anyone is in love, as contrasted with his purely sensual desire, may
be measured by the size of the share taken by the inhibited instincts of
tenderness.
In connection with this question of being in love we have always been
struck by the phenomenon of sexual over-estimation—the fact that the
loved object enjoys a certain amount of freedom from criticism, and that all
its characteristics are valued more highly than those of people who are not
loved, or than its own were at a time when it itself was not loved. If the
sensual tendencies are somewhat more effectively repressed or set aside, the
illusion is produced that the object has come to be sensually loved on
account of its spiritual merits, whereas on the contrary these merits may
really only have been lent to it by its sensual charm.
The tendency which falsifies judgement in this respect is that of
idealisation. But this makes it easier for us to find our way about. We see

that the object is being treated in the same way as our own ego, so that when
we are in love a considerable amount of narcissistic libido overflows on to
the object. It is even obvious, in many forms of love choice, that the object
serves as a substitute for some unattained ego ideal of our own. We love it
on account of the perfections which we have striven to reach for our own
ego, and which we should now like to procure in this roundabout way as a
means of satisfying our narcissism.
If the sexual over-estimation and the being in love increase even further,
then the interpretation of the picture becomes still more unmistakable. The
tendencies whose trend is towards directly sexual satisfaction may now be
pushed back entirely, as regularly happens, for instance, with the young
man's sentimental passion; the ego becomes more and more unassuming and
modest, and the object more and more sublime and precious, until at last it
gets possession of the entire self-love of the ego, whose self-sacrifice thus
follows as a natural consequence. The object has, so to speak, consumed the
ego. Traits of humility, of the limitation of narcissism, and of self-injury
occur in every case of being in love; in the extreme case they are only
intensified, and as a result of the withdrawal of the sensual claims they
remain in solitary supremacy.
This happens especially easily with love that is unhappy and cannot be
satisfied; for in spite of everything each sexual satisfaction always involves
a reduction in sexual over-estimation. Contemporaneously with this
'devotion' of the ego to the object, which is no longer to be distinguished
from a sublimated devotion to an abstract idea, the functions allotted to the
ego ideal entirely cease to operate. The criticism exercised by that faculty is
silent; everything that the object does and asks for is right and blameless.
Conscience has no application to anything that is done for the sake of the
object; in the blindness of love remorselessness is carried to the pitch of
crime. The whole situation can be completely summarised in a formula: The
object has taken the place of the ego ideal.
It is now easy to define the distinction between identification and such
extreme developments of being in love as may be described as fascination
or infatuation. In the former case the ego has enriched itself with the
properties of the object, it has 'introjected' the object into itself, as Ferenczi
expresses it. In the second case it is impoverished, it has surrendered itself

to the object, it has substituted the object for its most important constituent.
Closer consideration soon makes it plain, however, that this kind of account
creates an illusion of contradistinctions that have no real existence.
Economically there is no question of impoverishment or enrichment; it is
even possible to describe an extreme case of being in love as a state in
which the ego has introjected the object into itself. Another distinction is
perhaps better calculated to meet the essence of the matter. In the case of
identification the object has been lost or given up; it is then set up again
inside the ego, and the ego makes a partial alteration in itself after the model
of the lost object. In the other case the object is retained, and there is a
hyper-cathexis of it by the ego and at the ego's expense. But here again a
difficulty presents itself. Is it quite certain that identification presupposes
that object-cathexis has been given up? Can there be no identification with
the object retained? And before we embark upon a discussion of this
delicate question, the perception may already be beginning to dawn on us
that yet another alternative embraces the real essence of the matter, namely,
whether the object is put in the place of the ego or of the ego ideal.
From being in love to hypnosis is evidently only a short step. The respects
in which the two agree are obvious. There is the same humble subjection,
the same compliance, the same absence of criticism, towards the hypnotist
just as towards the loved object. There is the same absorption of one's own
initiative; no one can doubt that the hypnotist has stepped into the place of
the ego ideal. It is only that everything is even clearer and more intense in
hypnosis, so that it would be more to the point to explain being in love by
means of hypnosis than the other way round. The hypnotist is the sole
object, and no attention is paid to any but him. The fact that the ego
experiences in a dream-like way whatever he may request or assert reminds
us that we omitted to mention among the functions of the ego ideal the
business of testing the reality of things.[49] No wonder that the ego takes a
perception for real if its reality is vouched for by the mental faculty which
ordinarily discharges the duty of testing the reality of things. The complete
absence of tendencies which are uninhibited in their sexual aims contributes
further towards the extreme purity of the phenomena. The hypnotic relation
is the devotion of someone in love to an unlimited degree but with sexual
satisfaction excluded; whereas in the case of being in love this kind of

satisfaction is only temporarily kept back, and remains in the background as
a possible aim at some later time.
But on the other hand we may also say that the hypnotic relation is (if the
expression is permissible) a group formation with two members. Hypnosis
is not a good object for comparison with a group formation, because it is
truer to say that it is identical with it. Out of the complicated fabric of the
group it isolates one element for us—the behaviour of the individual to the
leader. Hypnosis is distinguished from a group formation by this limitation
of number, just as it is distinguished from being in love by the absence of
directly sexual tendencies. In this respect it occupies a middle position
between the two.
It is interesting to see that it is precisely those sexual tendencies that are
inhibited in their aims which achieve such lasting ties between men. But this
can easily be understood from the fact that they are not capable of complete
satisfaction, while sexual tendencies which are uninhibited in their aims
suffer an extraordinary reduction through the discharge of energy every time
the sexual aim is attained. It is the fate of sensual love to become
extinguished when it is satisfied; for it to be able to last, it must from the
first be mixed with purely tender components—with such, that is, as are
inhibited in their aims—or it must itself undergo a transformation of this
kind.
Hypnosis would solve the riddle of the libidinal constitution of groups for
us straight away, if it were not that it itself exhibits some features which are
not met by the rational explanation we have hitherto given of it as a state of
being in love with the directly sexual tendencies excluded. There is still a
great deal in it which we must recognise as unexplained and mystical. It
contains an additional element of paralysis derived from the relation
between someone with superior power and someone who is without power
and helpless—which may afford a transition to the hypnosis of terror which
occurs in animals. The manner in which it is produced and its relationship to
sleep are not clear; and the puzzling way in which some people are subject
to it, while others resist it completely, points to some factor still unknown
which is realised in it and which perhaps alone makes possible the purity of
the attitudes of the libido which it exhibits. It is noticeable that, even when
there is complete suggestive compliance in other respects, the moral

conscience of the person hypnotized may show resistance. But this may be
due to the fact that in hypnosis as it is usually practised some knowledge
may be retained that what is happening is only a game, an untrue
reproduction of another situation of far more importance to life.
But after the preceding discussions we are quite in a position to give the
formula for the libidinal constitution of groups: or at least of such groups as
we have hitherto considered, namely, those that have a leader and have not
been able by means of too much 'organisation' to acquire secondarily the
characteristics of an individual. A primary group of this kind is a number of
individuals who have substituted one and the same object for their ego ideal
and have consequently identified themselves with one another in their ego.
This condition admits of graphic representation:

IX

THE HERD INSTINCT

We cannot for long enjoy the illusion that we have solved the riddle of the
group with this formula. It is impossible to escape the immediate and
disturbing recollection that all we have really done has been to shift the
question on to the riddle of hypnosis, about which so many points have yet
to be cleared up. And now another objection shows us our further path.
It might be said that the intense emotional ties which we observe in groups
are quite sufficient to explain one of their characteristics—the lack of

independence and initiative in their members, the similarity in the reactions
of all of them, their reduction, so to speak, to the level of group individuals.
But if we look at it as a whole, a group shows us more than this. Some of its
features—the weakness of intellectual ability, the lack of emotional
restraint, the incapacity for moderation and delay, the inclination to exceed
every limit in the expression of emotion and to work it off completely in the
form of action—these and similar features, which we find so impressively
described in Le Bon, show an unmistakable picture of a regression of
mental activity to an earlier stage such as we are not surprised to find
among savages or children. A regression of this sort is in particular an
essential characteristic of common groups, while, as we have heard, in
organized and artificial groups it can to a large extent be checked.
We thus have an impression of a state in which an individual's separate
emotion and personal intellectual act are too weak to come to anything by
themselves and are absolutely obliged to wait till they are reinforced
through being repeated in a similar way in the other members of the group.
We are reminded of how many of these phenomena of dependence are part
of the normal constitution of human society, of how little originality and
personal courage are to be found in it, of how much every individual is
ruled by those attitudes of the group mind which exhibit themselves in such
forms as racial characteristics, class prejudices, public opinion, etc. The
influence of suggestion becomes a greater riddle for us when we admit that
it is not exercised only by the leader, but by every individual upon every
other individual; and we must reproach ourselves with having unfairly
emphasized the relation to the leader and with having kept the other factor
of mutual suggestion too much in the background.
After this encouragement to modesty, we shall be inclined to listen to
another voice, which promises us an explanation based upon simpler
grounds. Such a one is to be found in Trotter's thoughtful book upon the
herd instinct, concerning which my only regret is that it does not entirely
escape the antipathies that were set loose by the recent great war.[50]
Trotter derives the mental phenomena that are described as occurring in
groups from a herd instinct ('gregariousness'), which is innate in human
beings just as in other species of animals. Biologically this gregariousness is
an analogy to multicellularity and as it were a continuation of it. From the

standpoint of the libido theory it is a further manifestation of the inclination,
which proceeds from the libido, and which is felt by all living beings of the
same kind, to combine in more and more comprehensive units.[51] The
individual feels 'incomplete' if he is alone. The dread shown by small
children would seem already to be an expression of this herd instinct.
Opposition to the herd is as good as separation from it, and is therefore
anxiously avoided. But the herd turns away from anything that is new or
unusual. The herd instinct would appear to be something primary,
something 'which cannot be split up'.
Trotter gives as the list of instincts which he considers as primary those of
self-preservation, of nutrition, of sex, and of the herd. The last often comes
into opposition with the others. The feelings of guilt and of duty are the
peculiar possessions of a gregarious animal. Trotter also derives from the
herd instinct the repressive forces which psycho-analysis has shown to exist
in the ego, and from the same source accordingly the resistances which the
physician comes up against in psycho-analytic treatment. Speech owes its
importance to its aptitude for mutual understanding in the herd, and upon it
the identification of the individuals with one another largely rests.
While Le Bon is principally concerned with typical transient group
formations, and McDougall with stable associations, Trotter has chosen as
the centre of his interest the most generalised form of assemblage in which
man, that Ϛὡον πολιτικὁν, passes his life, and he gives us its psychological
basis. But Trotter is under no necessity of tracing back the herd instinct, for
he characterizes it as primary and not further reducible. Boris Sidis's
attempt, to which he refers, at tracing the herd instinct back to suggestibility
is fortunately superfluous as far as he is concerned; it is an explanation of a
familiar and unsatisfactory type, and the converse proposition—that
suggestibility is a derivative of the herd instinct—would seem to me to
throw far more light on the subject.
But Trotter's exposition, with even more justice than the others', is open to
the objection that it takes too little account of the leader's part in a group,
while we incline rather to the opposite judgement, that it is impossible to
grasp the nature of a group if the leader is disregarded. The herd instinct
leaves no room at all for the leader; he is merely thrown in along with the
herd, almost by chance; it follows, too, that no path leads from this instinct

to the need for a God; the herd is without a herdsman. But besides this
Trotter's exposition can be undermined psychologically; that is to say, it can
be made at all events probable that the herd instinct is not irreducible, that it
is not primary in the same sense as the instinct of self-preservation and the
sexual instinct.
It is naturally no easy matter to trace the ontogenesis of the herd instinct.
The dread which is shown by small children when they are left alone, and
which Trotter claims as being already a manifestation of the instinct,
nevertheless suggests more readily another interpretation. The dread relates
to the child's mother, and later to other familiar persons, and it is the
expression of an unfulfilled desire, which the child does not yet know how
to deal with in any way except by turning it into dread.[52] Nor is the child's
dread when it is alone pacified by the sight of any haphazard 'member of the
herd', but on the contrary it is only brought into existence by the approach
of a 'stranger' of this sort. Then for a long time nothing in the nature of herd
instinct or group feeling is to be observed in children. Something like it
grows up first of all, in a nursery containing many children, out of the
children's relation to their parents, and it does so as a reaction to the initial
envy with which the elder child receives the younger one. The elder child
would certainly like to put its successor jealously aside, to keep it away
from the parents, and to rob it of all its privileges; but in face of the fact that
this child (like all that come later) is loved by the parents in just the same
way, and in consequence of the impossibility of maintaining its hostile
attitude without damaging itself, it is forced into identifying itself with the
other children. So there grows up in the troop of children a communal or
group feeling, which is then further developed at school. The first demand
made by this reaction-formation is for justice, for equal treatment for all. We
all know how loudly and implacably this claim is put forward at school. If
one cannot be the favourite oneself, at all events nobody else shall be the
favourite. This transformation—the replacing of jealousy by a group feeling
in the nursery and classroom—might be considered improbable, if the same
process could not later on be observed again in other circumstances. We
have only to think of the troop of women and girls, all of them in love in an
enthusiastically sentimental way, who crowd round a singer or pianist after
his performance. It would certainly be easy for each of them to be jealous of
the rest; but, in face of their numbers and the consequent impossibility of

their reaching the aim of their love, they renounce it, and, instead of pulling
out one another's hair, they act as a united group, do homage to the hero of
the occasion with their common actions, and would probably be glad to
have a share of his flowing locks. Originally rivals, they have succeeded in
identifying themselves with one another by means of a similar love for the
same object. When, as is usual, a situation in the field of the instincts is
capable of various outcomes, we need not be surprised if the actual outcome
is one which involves the possibility of a certain amount of satisfaction,
while another, even though in itself more obvious, is passed over because
the circumstances of life prevent its attaining this aim.
What appears later on in society in the shape of Gemeingeist, esprit de
corps, 'group spirit', etc., does not belie its derivation from what was
originally envy. No one must want to put himself forward, every one must
be the same and have the same. Social justice means that we deny ourselves
many things so that others may have to do without them as well, or, what is
the same thing, may not be able to ask for them. This demand for equality is
the root of social conscience and the sense of duty. It reveals itself
unexpectedly in the syphilitic's dread of infecting other people, which
psycho-analysis has taught us to understand. The dread exhibited by these
poor wretches corresponds to their violent struggles against the unconscious
wish to spread their infection on to other people; for why should they alone
be infected and cut off from so much? why not other people as well? And
the same germ is to be found in the pretty anecdote of the judgement of
Solomon. If one woman's child is dead, the other shall not have a live one
either. The bereaved woman is recognized by this wish.
Thus social feeling is based upon the reversal of what was first a hostile
feeling into a positively-toned tie of the nature of an identification. So far as
we have hitherto been able to follow the course of events, this reversal
appears to be effected under the influence of a common tender tie with a
person outside the group. We do not ourselves regard our analysis of
identification as exhaustive, but it is enough for our present purpose that we
should revert to this one feature—its demand that equalization shall be
consistently carried through. We have already heard in the discussion of the
two artificial groups, church and army, that their preliminary condition is
that all their members should be loved in the same way by one person, the
leader. Do not let us forget, however, that the demand for equality in a group

applies only to its members and not to the leader. All the members must be
equal to one another, but they all want to be ruled by one person. Many
equals, who can identify themselves with one another, and a single person
superior to them all—that is the situation that we find realised in groups
which are capable of subsisting. Let us venture, then, to correct Trotter's
pronouncement that man is a herd animal and assert that he is rather a horde
animal, an individual creature in a horde led by a chief.

X

THE GROUP AND THE PRIMAL HORDE

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.[53] 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.
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.[54]
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.
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.
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.
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.[55]
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 and 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.
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.
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.[56] 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.[57]
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.[58]

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.[59] 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.
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.
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.[60]

XI

A DIFFERENTIATING GRADE IN THE EGO

If we survey the life of an individual man of to-day, bearing in mind the
mutually complementary accounts of group psychology given by the
authorities, we may lose the courage, in face of the complications that are
revealed, to attempt a comprehensive exposition. Each individual is a
component part of numerous groups, he is bound by ties of identification in
many directions, and he has built up his ego ideal upon the most various
models. Each individual therefore has a share in numerous group minds—
those of his race, of his class, of his creed, of his nationality, etc.—and he
can also raise himself above them to the extent of having a scrap of
independence and originality. Such stable and lasting group formations,
with their uniform and constant effects, are less striking to an observer than
the rapidly formed and transient groups from which Le Bon has made his
brilliant psychological character sketch of the group mind. And it is just in
these noisy ephemeral groups, which are as it were superimposed upon the
others, that we are met by the prodigy of the complete, even though only
temporary, disappearance of exactly what we have recognized as individual
acquirements.
We have interpreted this prodigy as meaning that the individual gives up
his ego ideal and substitutes for it the group ideal as embodied in the leader.
And we must add by way of correction that the prodigy is not equally great
in every case. In many individuals the separation between the ego and the
ego ideal is not very far advanced; the two still coincide readily; the ego has
often preserved its earlier self-complacency. The selection of the leader is
very much facilitated by this circumstance. He need only possess the typical
qualities of the individuals concerned in a particularly clearly marked and
pure form, and need only give an impression of greater force and of more
freedom of libido; and in that case the need for a strong chief will often
meet him half-way and invest him with a predominance to which he would
otherwise perhaps have had no claim. The other members of the group,
whose ego ideal would not, apart from this, have become embodied in his
person without some correction, are then carried away with the rest by
'suggestion', that is to say, by means of identification.

We are aware that what we have been able to contribute towards the
explanation of the libidinal structure of groups leads back to the distinction
between the ego and the ego ideal and to the double kind of tie which this
makes possible—identification, and substitution of the object for the ego
ideal. The assumption of this kind of differentiating grade [Stufe] in the ego
as a first step in an analysis of the ego must gradually establish its
justification in the most various regions of psychology. In my paper 'Zur
Einführung des Narzissmus' I have put together all the pathological material
that could at the moment be used in support of this separation. But it may be
expected that when we penetrate deeper into the psychology of the
psychoses its significance will be discovered to be far greater. Let us reflect
that the ego now appears in the relation of an object to the ego ideal which
has been developed out of it, and that all the interplay between an outer
object and the ego as a whole, with which our study of the neuroses has
made us acquainted, may possibly be repeated upon this new scene of action
inside the ego.
In this place I shall only follow up one of the consequences which seem
possible from this point of view, thus resuming the discussion of a problem
which I was obliged to leave unsolved elsewhere.[61] Each of the mental
differentiations that we have become acquainted with represents a fresh
aggravation of the difficulties of mental functioning, increases its instability,
and may become the starting-point for its breakdown, that is, for the onset
of a disease. Thus, by being born we have made the step from an absolutely
self-sufficient narcissism to the perception of a changing outer world and to
the beginnings of the discovery of objects. And with this is associated the
fact that we cannot endure the new state of things for long, that we
periodically revert from it, in our sleep, to our former condition of absence
of stimulation and avoidance of objects. It is true, however, that in this we
are following a hint from the outer world, which, by means of the periodical
change of day and night, temporarily withdraws the greater part of the
stimuli that affect us. The second example, which is pathologically more
important, is not subject to any such qualification. In the course of our
development we have effected a separation of our mental existence into a
coherent ego and into an unconscious and repressed portion which is left
outside it; and we know that the stability of this new acquisition is exposed
to constant shocks. In dreams and in neuroses what is thus excluded knocks

for admission at the gates, guarded though they are by resistances; and in
our waking health we make use of special artifices for allowing what is
repressed to circumvent the resistances and for receiving it temporarily into
our ego to the increase of our pleasure. Wit and humour, and to some extent
the comic in general, may be regarded in this light. Everyone acquainted
with the psychology of the neuroses will think of similar examples of less
importance; but I hasten on to the application I have in view.
It is quite conceivable that the separation of the ego ideal from the ego
cannot be borne for long either, and has to be temporarily undone. In all
renunciations and limitations imposed upon the ego a periodical
infringement of the prohibition is the rule; this indeed is shown by the
institution of festivals, which in origin are nothing more nor less than
excesses provided by law and which owe their cheerful character to the
release which they bring.[62] The Saturnalia of the Romans and our modern
carnival agree in this essential feature with the festivals of primitive people,
which usually end in debaucheries of every kind and the transgression of
what are at other times the most sacred commandments. But the ego ideal
comprises the sum of all the limitations in which the ego has to acquiesce,
and for that reason the abrogation of the ideal would necessarily be a
magnificent festival for the ego, which might then once again feel satisfied
with itself.[63]
There is always a feeling of triumph when something in the ego coincides
with the ego ideal. And the sense of guilt (as well as the sense of inferiority)
can also be understood as an expression of tension between the ego and the
ego ideal.
It is well known that there are people the general colour of whose mood
oscillates periodically from an excessive depression through some kind of
intermediate state to an exalted sense of well-being. These oscillations
appear in very different degrees of amplitude, from what is just noticeable
to those extreme instances which, in the shape of melancholia and mania,
make the most painful or disturbing inroads upon the life of the person
concerned. In typical cases of this cyclical depression outer exciting causes
do not seem to play any decisive part; as regards inner motives, nothing
more (or nothing different) is to be found in these patients than in all others.
It has consequently become the custom to consider these cases as not being

psychogenic. We shall refer later on to those other exactly similar cases of
cyclical depression which can nevertheless easily be traced back to mental
traumata.
Thus the foundation of these spontaneous oscillations of mood is
unknown; we are without insight into the mechanism of the displacement of
a melancholia by a mania. So we are free to suppose that these patients are
people in whom our conjecture might find an actual application—their ego
ideal might be temporarily resolved into their ego after having previously
ruled it with especial strictness.
Let us keep to what is clear: On the basis of our analysis of the ego it
cannot be doubted that in cases of mania the ego and the ego ideal have
fused together, so that the person, in a mood of triumph and self-
satisfaction, disturbed by no self-criticism, can enjoy the abolition of his
inhibitions, his feelings of consideration for others, and his self-reproaches.
It is not so obvious, but nevertheless very probable, that the misery of the
melancholiac is the expression of a sharp conflict between the two faculties
of his ego, a conflict in which the ideal, in an excess of sensitiveness,
relentlessly exhibits its condemnation of the ego in delusions of inferiority
and in self-depreciation. The only question is whether we are to look for the
causes of these altered relations between the ego and the ego ideal in the
periodic rebellions, which we have postulated above, against the new
institution, or whether we are to make other circumstances responsible for
them.
A change into mania is not an indispensable feature of the
symptomatology of melancholic depression. There are simple melancholias,
some in single and some in recurring attacks, which never show this
development. On the other hand there are melancholias in which the
exciting cause clearly plays an aetiological part. They are those which occur
after the loss of a loved object, whether by death or as a result of
circumstances which have necessitated the withdrawal of the libido from the
object. A psychogenic melancholia of this sort can end in mania, and this
cycle can be repeated several times, just as easily as in a case which appears
to be spontaneous. Thus the state of things is somewhat obscure, especially
as only a few forms and cases of melancholia have been submitted to
psycho-analytical investigation.[64] So far we only understand those cases in

which the object is given up because it has shown itself unworthy of love. It
is then set up again inside the ego, by means of identification, and severely
condemned by the ego ideal. The reproaches and attacks directed towards
the object come to light in the shape of melancholic self-reproaches.[65]
A melancholia of this kind may also end in a change to mania; so that the
possibility of this happening represents a feature which is independent of
the other characteristics in the symptomatology.
Nevertheless I see no difficulty in assigning to the factor of the periodical
rebellion of the ego against the ego ideal a share in both kinds of
melancholia, the psychogenic as well as the spontaneous. In the
spontaneous kind it may be supposed that the ego ideal is inclined to display
a peculiar strictness, which then results automatically in its temporary
suspension. In the psychogenic kind the ego would be incited to rebellion by
ill-treatment on the part of its ideal—an ill-treatment which it encounters
when there has been identification with a rejected object.

XII

POSTSCRIPT

In the course of the enquiry which has just been brought to a provisional
end we came across a number of side-paths which we avoided pursuing in
the first instance but in which there was much that offered us promises of
insight. We propose now to take up a few of the points that have been left
on one side in this way.
A. The distinction between identification of the ego with an object and
replacement of the ego ideal by an object finds an interesting illustration in
the two great artificial groups which we began by studying, the army and
the Christian church.
It is obvious that a soldier takes his superior, that is, really, the leader of
the army, as his ideal, while he identifies himself with his equals, and

derives from this community of their egos the obligations for giving mutual
help and for sharing possessions which comradeship implies. But he
becomes ridiculous if he tries to identify himself with the general. The
soldier in Wallensteins Lager laughs at the sergeant for this very reason:
Wie er räuspert und wie er spuckt,
Das habt ihr ihm glücklich abgeguckt![66]
It is otherwise in the Catholic Church. Every Christian loves Christ as his
ideal and feels himself united with all other Christians by the tie of
identification. But the Church requires more of him. He has also to identify
himself with Christ and love all other Christians as Christ loved them. At
both points, therefore, the Church requires that the position of the libido
which is given by a group formation should be supplemented. Identification
has to be added where object-choice has taken place, and object love where
there is identification. This addition evidently goes beyond the constitution
of the group. One can be a good Christian and yet be far from the idea of
putting oneself in Christ's place and of having like him an all-embracing
love for mankind. One need not think oneself capable, weak mortal that one
is, of the Saviour's largeness of soul and strength of love. But this further
development in the distribution of libido in the group is probably the factor
upon which Christianity bases its claim to have reached a higher ethical
level.
B. We have said that it would be possible to specify the point in the mental
development of man at which the advance from group to individual
psychology was also achieved by the individual members of the group.[67]
For this purpose we must return for a moment to the scientific myth of the
father of the primal horde. He was later on exalted into the creator of the
world, and with justice, for he had produced all the sons who composed the
first group. He was the ideal of each one of them, at once feared and
honoured, a fact which led later to the idea of taboo. These many
individuals eventually banded themselves together, killed him and cut him
in pieces. None of the group of victors could take his place, or, if one of
them did, the battles began afresh, until they understood that they must all
renounce their father's heritage. They then formed the totemistic community
of brothers, all with equal rights and united by the totem prohibitions which

were to preserve and to expiate the memory of the murder. But the
dissatisfaction with what had been achieved still remained, and it became
the source of new developments. The persons who were united in this group
of brothers gradually came towards a revival of the old state of things at a
new level. Man became once more the chief of a family, and broke down
the prerogatives of the gynaecocracy which had become established during
the fatherless period. As a compensation for this he may at that time have
acknowledged the mother deities, whose priests were castrated for the
mother's protection, after the example that had been given by the father of
the primal horde. And yet the new family was only a shadow of the old one;
there were numbers of fathers and each one was limited by the rights of the
others.
It was then, perhaps, that some individual, in the exigency of his longing,
may have been moved to free himself from the group and take over the
father's part. He who did this was the first epic poet; and the advance was
achieved in his imagination. This poet disguised the truth with lies in
accordance with his longing. He invented the heroic myth. The hero was a
man who by himself had slain the father—the father who still appeared in
the myth as a totemistic monster. Just as the father had been the boy's first
ideal, so in the hero who aspires to the father's place the poet now created
the first ego ideal. The transition to the hero was probably afforded by the
youngest son, the mother's favourite, whom she had protected from paternal
jealousy, and who, in the era of the primal horde, had been the father's
successor. In the lying poetic fancies of prehistoric times the woman, who
had been the prize of battle and the allurement to murder, was probably
turned into the seducer and instigator to the crime.
The hero claims to have acted alone in accomplishing the deed, which
certainly only the horde as a whole would have ventured upon. But, as Rank
has observed, fairy tales have preserved clear traces of the facts which were
disavowed. For we often find in them that the hero who has to carry out
some difficult task (usually a youngest son, and not infrequently one who
has represented himself to the father surrogate as being stupid, that is to say,
harmless)—we often find, then, that this hero can carry out his task only by
the help of a crowd of small animals, such as bees or ants. These would be
the brothers in the primal horde, just as in the same way in dream
symbolism insects or vermin signify brothers and sisters (contemptuously,

considered as babies). Moreover every one of the tasks in myths and fairy
tales is easily recognisable as a substitute for the heroic deed.
The myth, then, is the step by which the individual emerges from group
psychology. The first myth was certainly the psychological, the hero myth;
the explanatory nature myth must have followed much later. The poet who
had taken this step and had in this way set himself free from the group in his
imagination, is nevertheless able (as Rank has further observed) to find his
way back to it in reality. For he goes and relates to the group his hero's
deeds which he has invented. At bottom this hero is no one but himself.
Thus he lowers himself to the level of reality, and raises his hearers to the
level of imagination. But his hearers understand the poet, and, in virtue of
their having the same relation of longing towards the primal father, they can
identify themselves with the hero.[68]
The lie of the heroic myth culminates in the deification of the hero.
Perhaps the deified hero may have been earlier than the Father God and may
have been a precursor to the return of the primal father as a deity. The series
of gods, then, would run chronologically: Mother Goddess—Hero—Father
God. But it is only with the elevation of the never forgotten primal father
that the deity acquires the features that we still recognise in him to-day.[69]
C. A great deal has been said in this paper about directly sexual instincts
and those that are inhibited in their aims, and it may be hoped that this
distinction will not meet with too much resistance. But a detailed discussion
of the question will not be out of place, even if it only repeats what has to a
great extent already been said before.
The development of the libido in children has made us acquainted with the
first but also the best example of sexual instincts which are inhibited in their
aims. All the feelings which a child has towards its parents and those who
look after it pass by an easy transition into the wishes which give expression
to the child's sexual tendencies. The child claims from these objects of its
love all the signs of affection which it knows of; it wants to kiss them, touch
them, and look at them; it is curious to see their genitals, and to be with
them when they perform their intimate excremental functions; it promises to
marry its mother or nurse—whatever it may understand by that; it proposes
to itself to bear its father a child, etc. Direct observation, as well as the
subsequent analytic investigation of the residue of childhood, leave no

doubt as to the complete fusion of tender and jealous feelings and of sexual
intentions, and show us in what a fundamental way the child makes the
person it loves into the object of all its incompletely centred sexual
tendencies.[70]
This first configuration of the child's love, which in typical cases is co-
ordinated with the Oedipus complex, succumbs, as we know, from the
beginning of the period of latency onwards to a wave of repression. Such of
it as is left over shows itself as a purely tender emotional tie, which relates
to the same people, but is no longer to be described as 'sexual'. Psycho-
analysis, which illuminates the depths of mental life, has no difficulty in
showing that the sexual ties of the earliest years of childhood also persist,
though repressed and unconscious. It gives us courage to assert that
wherever we come across a tender feeling it is the successor to a completely
'sensual' object tie with the person in question or rather with that person's
prototype (or imago). It cannot indeed disclose to us without a special
investigation whether in a given case this former complete sexual current
still exists under repression or whether it has already been exhausted. To put
it still more precisely: it is quite certain that it is still there as a form and
possibility, and can always be charged with cathectic energy and put into
activity again by means of regression; the only question is (and it cannot
always be answered) what degree of cathexis and operative force it still has
at the present moment. Equal care must be taken in this connection to avoid
two sources of error—the Scylla of under-estimating the importance of the
repressed unconscious, and the Charybdis of judging the normal entirely by
the standards of the pathological.
A psychology which will not or cannot penetrate the depths of what is
repressed regards tender emotional ties as being invariably the expression of
tendencies which have no sexual aim, even though they are derived from
tendencies which have such an aim.[71]
We are justified in saying that they have been diverted from these sexual
aims, even though there is some difficulty in giving a representation of such
a diversion of aim which will conform to the requirements of
metapsychology. Moreover, those instincts which are inhibited in their aims
always preserve some few of their original sexual aims; even an affectionate
devotee, even a friend or an admirer, desires the physical proximity and the

sight of the person who is now loved only in the 'Pauline' sense. If we
choose, we may recognise in this diversion of aim a beginning of the
sublimation of the sexual instincts, or on the other hand we may fix the
limits of sublimation at some more distant point. Those sexual instincts
which are inhibited in their aims have a great functional advantage over
those which are uninhibited. Since they are not capable of really complete
satisfaction, they are especially adapted to create permanent ties; while
those instincts which are directly sexual incur a loss of energy each time
they are satisfied, and must wait to be renewed by a fresh accumulation of
sexual libido, so that meanwhile the object may have been changed. The
inhibited instincts are capable of any degree of admixture with the
uninhibited; they can be transformed back into them, just as they arose out
of them. It is well known how easily erotic wishes develop out of emotional
relations of a friendly character, based upon appreciation and admiration,
(compare Molière's 'Embrassez-moi pour l'amour du grec'), between a
master and a pupil, between a performer and a delighted listener, and
especially in the case of women. In fact the growth of emotional ties of this
kind, with their purposeless beginnings, provides a much frequented
pathway to sexual object-choice. Pfister, in his Frömmigkeit des Grafen von
Zinzendorf,[72] has given an extremely clear and certainly not an isolated
example of how easily even an intense religious tie can revert to ardent
sexual excitement. On the other hand it is also very usual for directly sexual
tendencies, short-lived in themselves, to be transformed into a lasting and
purely tender tie; and the consolidation of a passionate love marriage rests
to a large extent upon this process.
We shall naturally not be surprised to hear that the sexual tendencies that
are inhibited in their aims arise out of the directly sexual ones when inner or
outer obstacles make the sexual aims unattainable. The repression during
the period of latency is an inner obstacle of this kind—or rather one which
has become inner. We have assumed that the father of the primal horde
owing to his sexual intolerance compelled all his sons to be abstinent, and
thus forced them into ties that were inhibited in their aims, while he
reserved for himself freedom of sexual enjoyment and in this way remained
without ties. All the ties upon which a group depends are of the character of
instincts that are inhibited in their aims. But here we have approached the

discussion of a new subject, which deals with the relation between directly
sexual instincts and the formation of groups.
D. The last two remarks will have prepared us for finding that directly
sexual tendencies are unfavourable to the formation of groups. In the history
of the development of the family there have also, it is true, been group
relations of sexual love (group marriages); but the more important sexual
love became for the ego, and the more it developed the characteristics of
being in love, the more urgently it required to be limited to two people—
una cum uno—as is prescribed by the nature of the genital aim. Polygamous
inclinations had to be content to find satisfaction in a succession of
changing objects.
Two people coming together for the purpose of sexual satisfaction, in so
far as they seek for solitude, are making a demonstration against the herd
instinct, the group feeling. The more they are in love, the more completely
they suffice for each other. The rejection of the group's influence is
manifested in the shape of a sense of shame. The extremely violent feelings
of jealousy are summoned up in order to protect the sexual object-choice
from being encroached upon by a group tie. It is only when the tender, that
is, the personal, factor of a love relation gives place entirely to the sensual
one, that it is possible for two people to have sexual intercourse in the
presence of others or for there to be simultaneous sexual acts in a group as
occurs at an orgy. But at that point a regression has taken place to an early
stage in sexual relations, at which being in love as yet played no part, and
all sexual objects were judged to be of equal value, somewhat in the sense
of Bernard Shaw's malicious aphorism to the effect that being in love means
greatly exaggerating the difference between one woman and another.
There are abundant indications that being in love only made its appearance
late on in the sexual relations between men and women; so that the
opposition between sexual love and group ties is also a late development.
Now it may seem as though this assumption were incompatible with our
myth of the primal family. For it was after all by their love for their mothers
and sisters that the troop of brothers was, as we have supposed, driven to
parricide; and it is difficult to imagine this love as being anything but
unbroken and primitive—that is, as an intimate union of the tender and the
sensual. But further consideration resolves this objection into a

confirmation. One of the reactions to the parricide was after all the
institution of totemistic exogamy; the prohibition of any sexual relation with
those women of the family who had been tenderly loved since childhood. In
this way a wedge was driven in between a man's tender and sensual
feelings, one still firmly fixed in his erotic life to-day.[73] As a result of this
exogamy the sensual needs of men had to be satisfied with strange and
unloved women.
In the great artificial groups, the church and the army, there is no room for
woman as a sexual object. The love relation between men and women
remains outside these organisations. Even where groups are formed which
are composed of both men and women the distinction between the sexes
plays no part. There is scarcely any sense in asking whether the libido
which keeps groups together is of a homosexual or of a heterosexual nature,
for it is not differentiated according to the sexes, and particularly shows a
complete disregard for the aims of the genital organisation of the libido.
Even in a person who has in other respects become absorbed in a group
the directly sexual tendencies preserve a little of his individual activity. If
they become too strong they disintegrate every group formation. The
Catholic Church had the best of motives for recommending its followers to
remain unmarried and for imposing celibacy upon its priests; but falling in
love has often driven even priests to leave the church. In the same way love
for women breaks through the group ties of race, of national separation, and
of the social class system, and it thus produces important effects as a factor
in civilization. It seems certain that homosexual love is far more compatible
with group ties, even when it takes the shape of uninhibited sexual
tendencies—a remarkable fact, the explanation of which might carry us far.
The psycho-analytic investigation of the psycho-neuroses has taught us
that their symptoms are to be traced back to directly sexual tendencies
which are repressed but still remain active. We can complete this formula by
adding to it: or, to tendencies inhibited in their aims, whose inhibition has
not been entirely successful or has made room for a return to the repressed
sexual aim. It is in accordance with this that a neurosis should make its
victim asocial and should remove him from the usual group formations. It
may be said that a neurosis has the same disintegrating effect upon a group
as being in love. On the other hand it appears that where a powerful impetus

has been given to group formation, neuroses may diminish and at all events
temporarily disappear. Justifiable attempts have also been made to turn this
antagonism between neuroses and group formation to therapeutic account.
Even those who do not regret the disappearance of religious illusions from
the civilized world of to-day will admit that so long as they were in force
they offered those who were bound by them the most powerful protection
against the danger of neurosis. Nor is it hard to discern in all the ties with
mystico-religious or philosophico-religious sects and communities the
manifestation of distorted cures of all kinds of neuroses. All of this is bound
up with the contrast between directly sexual tendencies and those which are
inhibited in their aims.
If he is left to himself, a neurotic is obliged to replace by his own
symptom formations the great group formations from which he is excluded.
He creates his own world of imagination for himself, his religion, his own
system of delusions, and thus recapitulates the institutions of humanity in a
distorted way which is clear evidence of the dominating part played by the
directly sexual tendencies.[74]
E. In conclusion, we will add a comparative estimate, from the standpoint
of the libido theory, of the states with which we have been concerned, of
being in love, of hypnosis, of group formation, and of the neurosis.
Being in love is based upon the simultaneous presence of directly sexual
tendencies and of sexual tendencies that are inhibited in their aims, so that
the object draws a part of the narcissistic ego-libido to itself. It is a
condition in which there is only room for the ego and the object.
Hypnosis resembles being in love in being limited to these two persons,
but it is based entirely upon sexual tendencies that are inhibited in their aims
and substitutes the object for the ego ideal.
The group multiplies this process; it agrees with hypnosis in the nature of
the instincts which hold it together, and in the replacement of the ego ideal
by the object; but to this it adds identification with other individuals, which
was perhaps originally made possible by their having the same relation to
the object.

Both states, hypnosis and group formation, are an inherited deposit from
the phylogenesis of the human libido—hypnosis in the form of a
predisposition, and the group, besides this, as a direct survival. The
replacement of the directly sexual tendencies by those that are inhibited in
their aims promotes in both states a separation between the ego and the ego
ideal, a separation with which a beginning has already been made in the
state of being in love.
The neurosis stands outside this series. It also is based upon a peculiarity
in the development of the human libido—the twice repeated start made by
the directly sexual function, with an intervening period of latency. [75] To
this extent it resembles hypnosis and group formation in having the
character of a regression, which is absent from being in love. It makes its
appearance wherever the advance from directly sexual instincts to those that
are inhibited in their aims has not been completely successful; and it
represents a conflict between those instincts which have been received into
the ego after having passed through this development and those portions of
the same instincts which, like other instinctive desires that have been
completely repressed, strive, from the repressed unconscious, to attain direct
satisfaction. The neurosis is extraordinarily rich in content, for it embraces
all possible relations between the ego and the object—both those in which
the object is retained and others in which it is abandoned or erected inside
the ego itself—and also the conflicting relations between the ego and its ego
ideal.

INDEX

Abraham, 62, 108.

Affectivity. See under Emotion.

Altruism, 57.

Ambivalence, 18, 55, 61.

Anaclitic type, 60.

Archaic inheritance, 10, 99.

Army 42-6, 89, 94, 110, 122.

Autistic mental acts, 2.

Bernheim, 35, 100.

Bleuler, 2.

Brothers, 43, 114.
in Christ, 43.
Community of, 90, 112, 122.

Brugeilles, 34.

Caesar, 44.

Cathexis, 18, 20, 28, 117.
Object-, 48, 58, 60-1, 71-2, 76.

Catholic Church, 42-3, 111, 123.

Celibacy of priests, 123.

Censorship of dreams, 16, 69.

Chieftains, Mana in, 96.

Children, 14, 16, 18-19, 30, 67 82, 91.
Dread in, 83, 85-6.
Parents and, 54, 86, 116.
Sexual object of, 72, 116.
Unconscious of, 18.

Christ, 42-5, 50, 111.
Equal love of, 50.
Identification with, 111.

Church, 42-3, 89, 94, 110-11, 122-3.

Commander-in-Chief, 42-5.

Conflict, 18, 107, 126.

Conscience, 10, 28, 68-9, 75, 79.
Social, 88.

Contagion, Emotional, 10-13, 27, 34-5, 46-7.

Crowd, 1, 3, 26, 92.

Danger, Effect on groups, 46-9.

Darwin, 90.

Delusions:
of inferiority, 107.
of observation, 69.

Devotion to abstract idea, 17, 75.

Doubt:
absence in groups, 15-16
interpretation in dreams, 15-16.

Dread:
Children's, 83, 85-6.
in a group, 46-8, 50.
in an individual, 47-8.
Neurotic, 48.
of society, 10.
Panic, 45-9.

Dream, 20, 69, 104.
Interpretation of doubt and uncertainty in, 15-16.
symbolism, 114.

Duty, Sense of, 84, 88, 95.

Ego, 10, 18-19, 62-70, 74, 84, 93, 100-9, 120, 125-7.
Relations between ego ideal and, 68-70, 103, 105-10.
Relations between object and, 62-70, 74-6, 108-10.

Ego ideal, 68-70, 74-7, 80, 100-3, 105-10, 113, 126-7.
Abrogation of the, 105.
Hypnotist in the place of, 77.
Object as substitute for, 74-6, 80, 103, 110.
Relations between ego and, 68-70, 103, 105-10.
Testing reality of things, 77.
The first, 113.

Egoism, 57.

Emotion:
Ambivalent, 18, 55.
Charge of, 28.

Contagion of. See Contagion.
Intensification of, in groups, 16, 23, 27-30, 33, 46, 81.
Primitive induction of, 27, 34, 46-7.
Tender, 72-3, 78, 116-17.

Emotional tie, 40, 43, 45, 52-3, 59-60, 64-5, 81, 88, 91, 94, 100, 117-20.
Cessation of, 46-9.

Empathy, relation to identification, 66, 70.

Enthusiasm, in groups, 25.

Envy, 87-8.

Equality, demand for, 88, 89.

Eros, 38-40.

Esprit de corps, origin of, 87.

Ethical:
conduct of a group, 18.
level of Christianity, 111.
standards of individual, 24-5.

Fairy tales, the hero in, 114.

Family, 70, 95, 100, 113, 120.
a group formation, 95.
and Christian community, 43.
and social instinct, 3.
Primal, 122.

Fascination, 11, 13, 21, 75.

Father, 43, 92, 98-9.

Equal love of, 95.
God, 115.
Identification with, 60-2.
Object tie with, 62.
Primal, 92, 94-5, 99-100, 112-13, 115, 120.
Deification of, 93, 115.
Killing the, 94, 112-13, 122.
Surrogate, 43, 114.

Federn, P., 50.

Felszeghy, Bela v., 48.

Ferenczi, 76, 98.

Festivals, 105.

Folk-lore, 25.

Folk-song, 25.

French Revolution, 26.

Function:
for testing reality, 20, 77.
(Instanz), 15.

Gemeingeist, origin of, 87.

Genital organisation, 19.

God, 85, 96.
Father, 115.

Gregariousness, 83-4, 92.

Group:
Artificial, 41-2, 52, 82, 89, 94, 110, 122.
Different kinds of, 26, 41.
Disintegration of, 49-51.
Dread in, 47.
Equality in, 89.
feeling, 86-7, 121.
Heightened affectivity in. See under Emotion.
ideal, 100, 102.
Intellectual capacity of, 14, 18, 23, 25, 29, 31, 33, 81.
Intensification of emotion in. See under Emotion.
Leaders of. See under Leader.
Libidinal structure of, 37, 40, 44-5, 47, 51, 53-4, 70, 79-80, 102-3.
marriages, 120.
Mental change of the individual in, 6-14, 33-4, 45, 56, 81, 102.
mind, 3, 5-27, 40, 49, 82.
Organisation in, 26, 30-1, 33, 41-2, 80, 82, 90.
Primitive, 31, 33, 41, 80.
psychological character of, 6-32.
psychology, 1-4, 6, 25-6, 33-4, 37, 45, 53, 59, 92-4, 101, 112, 114.
Revolutionary, 26.
Sexual instincts and, 120.
spirit, 37.
Stable, 26, 41, 84, 101.
Suggestibility of, 11, 13, 35, 84-5.
Transient, 25, 41, 84, 101.

Guilt, Sense of, 20, 63, 65, 84, 106.

Gynaecocracy, 113.

Hatred, 53, 56.

Hebbel, 49.

Herd, 83-5, 89.

instinct, 3, 83-6, 105, 121.

Hero, 17, 113-15.

Homosexuality, 57, 66-7, 94, 123.

Horde Primal, 89-95, 99, 113-14, 120.
Father of the. See under Father.

Hypnosis, 10-13, 20-1, 77-9, 81, 95-100, 125-6.
a group of two, 78, 100.
and sleep, 79, 98.
of terror, 79.

Hypnotist, 13, 77, 95-9.

Hysteria, Identification in, 63-5.

Idealisation, 74.
Identification, 59-70, 75-6, 84, 86-9, 94, 101-3, 111, 125.
Ambivalent, 61.
in hysterical symptom, 63-5.
Regression of object-choice to, 64.
with a lost or rejected object, 67-8, 108-9.
with Christ, 111.
with the father, 60-2.
with the hero, 115.
with the leader, 110-11.

Imitation, 34-5, 65, 70.

Individual:
a member of many groups, 101.
Dread in, 47-8.
Mental change in a group, 6-14, 33-4, 45, 56, 81, 102.
Psychology, 1-2, 92-3, 112, 114.

Induction of Emotion, 27, 34, 46-7.

Infection, mental, 64-65.

Inferiority, Delusions of, 57, 106-7.

Inheritance, archaic, 10, 99.

Inhibition:
Collective, of intellectual functioning, 23, 33.
Removal of, 17, 28, 33.

Instinct:
Herd, 3, 83-6, 105, 121.
inhibited in aim, 72-3, 78, 115-26.
Life and death, 56.
Love, 37, 39, 58.
Nutrition, 85.
Primary, 84-5.
Self-preservative, 34, 85.
Sexual, 19, 39, 56, 71-8, 85-5, 94, 115-26.
Social, 3.
unhibited in aim, 73, 77-8, 94, 115-26.
Unconscious, 10.

Intellectual ability, lowering of,
in groups, 14, 18, 23, 25, 29, 31, 33, 81.

Introjection, of object into ego, 65, 67-8, 76.

Jealousy, 121.

Kings, Mana in, 96.

Kraškovič, B. Jnr., 23.

Kroeger, 90.

Language, 25, 38, 71.

Latency, period of, 72, 117, 120, 126.

Leader, 20-2, 41, 44-5, 78, 82, 85, 89, 92, 99, 110.
Abstractions as substitutes for, 53.
Equal love of, 93, 95.
Identification with, 110-11.
Killing the, 90.
Loss of, 49.
Negative, 53.
Prestige of, 21-2.
the group ideal, 100, 102, 110.
Tie with, 49, 52, 66.

Le Bon, 5-25, 29, 34, 82, 84, 100-1.

Libidinal:
structure of the group, 37, 40, 44-5, 47, 53, 70, 79-80, 102-3.
The word, 44.
ties, 44, 56-8, 65, 93, 100.
in the group, 45, 51, 54.

Libido, 33-40, 44, 57, 79, 83, 102, 111, 116, 119, 123, 126.
Narcissistic, 58, 74, 93, 104, 125.
Oral phase of, 61.
theory, 57, 83, 125.
Unification of, 19.
Withdrawal of, 108.

Love, 37-40, 42, 73, 87, 108, 122.
a factor of civilisation, 57, 93.

and character formation, 94, 118-20.
and hatred, 56.
Being in, 58, 71-9, 120-1, 124-6.
Child's, 116-17.
Christ's, 43.
Equal, 42, 50, 89, 93.
Pauline, 118.
Self-. See under Narcissism.
Sensual, 71-3, 78, 117.
Sexual, 37-8, 57, 120-2.
Sublimated homosexual, 57.
The word, 37-9, 71.
Unhappy, 75.
Unsensual, 73.

McDougall, 1, 26-31, 34-6, 46-7, 49, 84.

Magical power of words, 19.

Magnetic influence, 11.

Magnetism, animal, 96.

Mana, 96.

Mania, 106-9.

Marcuszewicz, 68.

Marriage, 54, 120.

Melancholia, 68, 106-9.

Metapsychology, 63, 118.

Moede, Walter, 24.

Molière, 119.

Morality, Totemism the origin of, 90.

Mother deities, 113, 115.

Multicellularity, 7, 32, 83.

Myth, 113-15.

Nachmansohn, 39.

Names, Taboo upon, 19.

Napoleon, 44.

Narcissism, 2, 38, 54-8, 69, 74-5, 93, 94, 104.

Nestroy, 49.

Neurosis, 18, 20, 37, 44, 58, 63, 103-4, 123-26.

Nietzsche, 93.

Nutrition, Instinct of, 84.

Object, 57-8, 62, 68, 74, 87, 93, 104, 125, 127.
cathexis, 48, 58, 60-1, 71-2, 76.
Change of, 18, 119, 121.
Child's, 72.
-choice, 54, 62, 64, 74, 111, 119, 121.
Eating the, 61-62.
Hyper-cathexis of, 76.
Identification with ego, 108.

Less or Renunciation of, 68, 108.
-love, 56, 63, 74, 111.
Relations with the ego, 65, 67-8, 70, 76.
Sexual, 67, 72-3, 116.
Substituted for ego ideal, 74, 80, 103, 125.

Observation, delusions of, 69.

Oedipus complex, 60-61, 63, 66, 117.
Inverted, 62.

Oral phase of organisation of the libido, 61.

Organisation in groups, 26, 30-1, 33, 41-2, 80, 82, 90.

Orgy, 121.

Panic, 45-9.

Pan-sexualism, 39.

Paul, Saint, 39, 118.

Pfister, 39, 119.

Plato, 38.

Poet, the first epic, 113-114.

Power, 9, 15, 28.
of leaders, 21.
of words, 19.

Prestige, 21-2, 34.

Primitive peoples, 14, 18-19, 24, 92, 96, 105.

Psycho-Analysis, 4, 7, 14, 18, 36, 38-9, 59-60, 84, 97.

Psychology:
Group, 1-4, 6, 25-6, 33-4, 37, 45, 53, 59, 92, 94, 101.
Group and individual, 1-2, 92-93, 112, 114.

Psychoses, 66, 103.

Puberty, 67, 72-73.

Races, repugnance between related, 55.

Rank, Otto, 112, 114.

Rapport, 97.

Reality:
Function for testing, 20, 77.
Contrast between Objective and Psychological, 20.

Regression, 82, 91, 117, 121, 126.

Religion, 51, 90.
Wars of, 51.

Repressed:
Sexual tendencies, 74, 117, 123-4.
The, 10, 104, 117-18, 126.

Repression, 9, 54, 64-5, 69, 72, 84, 95, 105, 117, 120.

Resistance, 84, 104.

Responsibility, Sense of, 9-10, 29-30.

Richter, Konrad, 36.

Sachs, Hanns, 16, 115.

Schopenhauer, 54.

Self-:
consciousness, 30-1.
depreciation, 107.
love. See under Narcissism.
observation, 69.
preservation, 15, 34, 84-5.
sacrifice, 11, 38, 75.

Sex, 39.

Sexual:
act, 92, 121.
aims, 58, 72.
Diversion of instinct from, 58.
Infantile, 72.
Obstacles to, 120.
life, 19, 72.
over-estimation, 53-5.
Tendencies, Inhibited and uninhibited. 72-3, 77-8, 94, 115-16, 125-26.
union, 37-8.

Shaw, Bernard, 121.

Sidis, Boris, 84

Sighele, 24-5.

Simmel, E., 44.

Sleep, 98, 104.

and hypnosis, 98.

Smith, Robertson, 70.

Social:
duties, 88, 95.
relations, 2-3, 57.

Socialistic tie, 51.

Society, 24, 26, 28, 90.
Dread of, 10.

Sociology. See under Group Psychology.

Speech, 84.

Sublimated:
devotion, 17, 75.
homosexual love, 57.

Sublimation, 118.

Suggestibility, 11, 13, 35, 84-5.

Suggestion, 12-13, 17, 29, 34-7, 40, 82, 95, 99, 102.
Counter-, 35.
Definition for, 100.
Mutual, 12, 27, 34, 82.

Superman, 93.

Taboo, 19, 96, 112.

Tarde, 34.

Totemism, 90, 112-13.

Totemistic:
clan, 95.
community of brothers, 112.
exogamy, 122.

Tradition, 17, 21.
of the group, 31.
of the individual, 32.

Transference, 97-8.

Trotter, 32, 83-5, 89, 105.

Uncanniness, 95, 99.

Uncertainty, absence in groups, 15-16.
interpretation in dreams, 15-16.

Unconscious, 8, 10, 12, 14-16, 18, 23-4, 64, 67, 72, 97, 100, 104.
Groups led by, 14.
instincts, 10.
Le Bon's, 10, 14, 24.
of children, 18, 117.
of neurotics, 18.
Racial, 9.

Wallenstein, 44.

War neuroses, 44.

War, The, 44.

Wilson, President, 44.

Wishes, Affective cathexis of, 20.

Words, magical power of, 19.

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FOOTNOTES:
[1] ['Group' is used throughout this translation as equivalent to the rather more
comprehensive German 'Masse'. The author uses this latter word to render both McDougall's
'group', and also Le Bon's 'foule', which would more naturally be translated 'crowd' in English.
For the sake of uniformity, however, 'group' has been preferred in this case as well, and has
been substituted for 'crowd' even in the extracts from the English translation of Le Bon.—
Translator..]
[2] The Crowd: a Study of the Popular Mind. Fisher Unwin 12th. Impression, 1920.
[3] [See footnote page 1.]

[4] [References are to the English translation.—Translator.]

[5] [The German translation of Le Bon, quoted by the author, reads 'bewusster'; the
English translation has 'unconscious'; and the original French text 'inconscients'.—
Translator.]
[6] [The English translation reads 'which we ourselves ignore'—a misunderstanding of
the French word 'ignorées'.—Translator.]
[7] There is some difference between Le Bon's view and ours owing to his concept of the
unconscious not quite coinciding with the one adopted by psycho-analysis. Le Bon's
unconscious more especially contains the most deeply buried features of the racial mind,
which as a matter of fact lies outside the scope of psycho-analysis. We do not fail to
recognize, indeed, that the ego's nucleus, which comprises the 'archaic inheritance' of the
human mind, is unconscious; but in addition to this we distinguish the 'unconscious
repressed', which arose from a portion of that inheritance. This concept of the repressed is
not to be found in Le Bon.
[8] Compare Schiller's couplet:

Jeder, sieht man ihn einzeln, ist leidlich klug und verständig;
Sind sie in corpore, gleich wird euch ein Dummkopf daraus.
[Everyone, seen by himself, is passably shrewd and discerning;
When they're in corpore, then straightway you'll find he's an ass.]
[9] 'Unconscious' is used here correctly by Le Bon in the descriptive sense, where it does
not only mean the 'repressed'.
[10] Compare Totem und Tabu, III., 'Animismus, Magie, und Allmacht der Gedanken.'
[Totem and Taboo. New York, Moffat, 1918. London, Kegan Paul, 1919.]
[11] [See footnote p. 69.]

[12] In the interpretation of dreams, to which, indeed, we owe our best knowledge of
unconscious mental life, we follow a technical rule of disregarding doubt and uncertainty

in the narrative of the dream, and of treating every element of the manifest dream as being
quite certain. We attribute doubt and uncertainty to the influence of the censorship to
which the dream-work is subjected, and we assume that the primary dream-thoughts are
not acquainted with doubt and uncertainty as critical processes. They may naturally be
present, like everything else, as part of the content of the day's residue which leads to the
dream. (See Die Traumdeutung, 6. Auflage, 1921, S. 386. [The Interpretation of Dreams.
Allen and Unwin, 3rd. Edition, 1913, p. 409.])
[13] The same extreme and unmeasured intensification of every emotion is also a feature
of the affective life of children, and it is present as well in dream life. Thanks to the
isolation of the single emotions in the unconscious, a slight annoyance during the day will
express itself in a dream as a wish for the offending person's death, or a breath of
temptation may give the impetus to the portrayal in the dream of a criminal action. Hanns
Sachs has made an appropriate remark on this point: 'If we try to discover in consciousness
all that the dream has made known to us of its bearing upon the present (upon reality), we
need not be surprised that what we saw as a monster under the microscope of analysis now
reappears as an infusorium.' (Die Traumdeutung, S. 457. [Translation p. 493.])
[14] In young children, for instance, ambivalent emotional attitudes towards those who
are nearest to them exist side by side for a long time, without either of them interfering
with the expression of the other and contrary one. If eventually a conflict breaks out
between the two, it often settled by the child making a change of object and displacing one
of the ambivalent emotions on to a substitute. The history of the development of a neurosis
in an adult will also show that a suppressed emotion may frequently persist for a long time
in unconscious or even in conscious phantasies, the content of which naturally runs
directly counter to some predominant tendency, and yet that this antagonism does not
result in any proceedings on the part of the ego against what it has repudiated. The
phantasy is tolerated for quite a long time, until suddenly one day, usually as a result of an
increase in the affective cathexis [see footnote page 48] of the phantasy, a conflict breaks
out between it and the ego with all the usual consequences. In the process of a child's
development into a mature adult there is a more and more extensive integration of its
personality, a co-ordination of the separate instinctive feelings and desires which have
grown up in him independently of one another. The analogous process in the domain of
sexual life has long been known to us as the co-ordination of all the sexual instincts into a
definitive genital organisation. (Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie, 1905. [Three
Contributions to the Sexual Theory. Nervous and Mental Disease Monograph Series, No.
7, 1910.]) Moreover, that the unification of the ego is liable to the same interferences as
that of the libido is shown by numerous familiar instances, such as that of men of science
who have preserved their faith in the Bible, and the like.
[15] See Totem and Tabu.

[16] [See footnote p. 48.]

[17] B. Kraškovič jun.: Die Psychologie der Kollektivitäten. Translated [into German]
from the Croatian by Siegmund von Posavec. Vukovar, 1915. See the body of the work as
well as the bibliography.
[18] See Walter Moede: 'Die Massen-und Sozialpsychologie im kritischen Überblick.'
Meumann and Scheibner's Zeitschrift für pädagogische Psychologie und experimentelle
Pädagogik. 1915, XVI.
[19] Cambridge University Press, 1920.

[20] Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War. Fisher Unwin, 1916.

[21] Brugeilles: 'L'essence du phénomèna social: la suggestion.' Revue philosophique,
1913, XXV.
[22] Konrad Richter: 'Der deutsche S. Christoph.' Berlin, 1896, Acta Germanica, V, I.

[23] [Literally:"Christopher bore Christ; Christ bore the whole world; Say, where did
Christopher then put his foot?']
[24] Thus, McDougall: 'A Note on Suggestion.' Journal of Neurology and
Psychopathology, 1920, Vol. I, No. I.
[25] Nachmansohn: 'Freuds Libidotheorie verglichen mit der Eroslehre Platos'.
Internationale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse, 1915, Bd. III; Pfister: 'Plato als Vorläufer der
Psychoanalyse', ibid., 1921, Bd. VII. ['Plato: a Fore-Runner of Psycho-Analysis'.
International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 1922, Vol. III.]
[26] 'Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, I am
become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.'
[27] [An idiom meaning 'for their sake'. Literally: 'for love of them'.—Translator.]

[28] An objection will justly be raised against this conception of the libidinal [see next
foot-note] structure of an army on the ground that no place has been found in it for such
ideas as those of one's country, of national glory, etc., which are of such importance in
holding an army together. The answer is that that is a different instance of a group tie, and
no longer such a simple one; for the examples of great generals, like Caesar, Wallenstein,
or Napoleon, show that such ideas are not indispensable to the existence of an army. We
shall presently touch upon the possibility of a leading idea being substituted for a leader
and upon the relations between the two. The neglect of this libidinal factor in an army,
even when it is not the only factor operative, seems to be not merely a theoretical omission
but also a practical danger. Prussian militarism, which was just as unpsychological as
German science, may have had to suffer the consequences of this in the great war. We
know that the war neuroses which ravaged the German army have been recognized as
being a protest of the individual against the part he was expected to play in the army; and
according to the communication of E. Simmel (Kriegsneurosen and 'Psychisches Trauma'.
Munich, 1918), the hard treatment of the men by their superiors may be considered as
foremost among the motive forces of the disease. If the importance of the libido's claims
on this score had been better appreciated, the fantastic promises of the American
President's fourteen points would probably not have been believed so easily, and the
splendid instrument would not have broken in the hands of the German leaders.
[29] [Here and elsewhere the German 'libidinös' is used simply as an adjectival derivative
from the technical term 'Libido'; 'libidinal' is accordingly introduced in the translation in
order to avoid the highly-coloured connotation of the English 'libidinous'.—Translator.]
[30] ['Cathexis', from the Greek 'κατἑχω', 'I occupy'. The German word 'Besetzung' has
become of fundamental importance in the exposition of psycho-analytical theory. Any
attempt at a short definition or description is likely to be misleading, but speaking very
loosely, we may say that 'cathexis' is used on the analogy of an electric charge, and that it
means the concentration or accumulation of mental energy in some particular channel.
Thus, when we speak of the existence in someone of a libidinal cathexis of an object, or,
more shortly, of an object-cathexis, we mean that the libidinal energy is directed towards,

or rather infused into, the idea (Vorstellung) of some object in the outer world. Readers
who desire to obtain a more precise knowledge of the term are referred to the discussions
in 'Zur Einführung des Narzissmus' and the essays on metapsychology in Kleine Schriften
zur Neurosenlehre, Vierte Folge.—Translator.]
[31] See Vorlesungen zur Einführung in die Psychoanalyse. XXV, 3. Auflage, 1920.
[Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis. Lecture XXV. George Allen and Unwin,
1922.]
[32] Compare Bela v. Felszeghy's interesting though somewhat fantastic paper 'Panik und
Pankomplex'. Imago, 1920, Bd. VI.
[33] Compare the explanation of similar phenomena after the abolition of the paternal
authority of the sovereign given in P. Federn's Die vaterlose Gesellschaft. Vienna,
Anzengruber-Verlag, 1919.
[34] 'A company of porcupines crowded themselves very close together one cold winter's
day so as to profit by one another's warmth and so save themselves from being frozen to
death. But soon they felt one another's quills, which induced them to separate again. And
now, when the need for warmth brought them nearer together again, the second evil arose
once more. So that they were driven backwards and forwards from one trouble to the other,
until they had discovered a mean distance at which they could most tolerably exist.'
(Parerga und Paralipomena, II. Teil, XXXI., 'Gleichnisse und Parabeln'.)
[35] Perhaps with the solitary exception of the relation of a mother to her son, which is
based upon narcissism, is not disturbed by subsequent rivalry, and is reinforced by a
rudimentary attempt at sexual object-choice.
[36] In a recently published study, Jenseits des Lustprinzips (1920) [Beyond the Pleasure
Principle, International Psycho-Analytical Library, No. 4], I have attempted to connect the
polarity of love and hatred with a hypothetical opposition between instincts of life and
death, and to establish the sexual instincts as the purest examples of the former, the
instincts of life.
[37] See 'Zur Einführung des Narzissmus', 1914. Kleine Schriften zur Neurosenlehre,
Vierte Folge, 1918.
[38] [Literally, 'leaning-up-against type'; from the Greek 'ἁνακλἱνω' 'I lean up against'. In
the first phase of their development the sexual instincts have no independent means of
finding satisfaction; they do so by propping themselves upon or 'leaning up against' the
self-preservative instincts. The individual's first choice of a sexual object is said to be of
the 'anaclitic type' when it follows this path; that is, when he choses as his first sexual
object the same person who has satisfied his early non-sexual needs. For a full discussion
of the anaclitic and narcissistic types of object-choice compare 'Zur Einführung des
Narzissmus.—Translator.]
[39] See Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie, and Abraham's 'Untersuchungen über die
früheste prägenitale Entwicklungsstufe der Libido', Internationale Zeitschrift für
Psychoanalyse, 1916, Bd, IV; also included in his Klinische Beiträge zur Psychoanalyse
(Internationale psychoanalytische Bibliothek. Nr. 10, 1921).
[40] [Kleine Schriften zur Neurosenlehre. Zweite Folge.]

[41] Marcuszewicz: 'Beitrag zum autistischen Denken bei Kindern.' Internationale
Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse, 1920, Bd. VI.
[42] ['Trauer und Melancholie.' Kleine Schriften zur Neurosenlehre, Vierte Folge, 1918.]

[43] ['Instanz'—like 'instance' in the phrase 'court of first instance'—was originally a legal
term. It is now used in the sense of one of a hierarchy of authorities or functions.—
Translator.]
[44] 'Zur Einführung des Narzissmus', 'Trauer und Melancholie.'

[45] 'Zur Einführung des Narzissmus.'

[46] We are very well aware that we have not exhausted the nature of identification with
these samples taken from pathology, and that we have consequently left part of the riddle
of group formations untouched. A far more fundamental and comprehensive psychological
analysis would have to intervene at this point. A path leads from identification by way of
imitation to empathy, that is, to the comprehension of the mechanism by means of which
we are enabled to take up any attitude at all towards another mental life. Moreover there is
still much to be explained in the manifestations of existing identifications. These result
among other things in a person limiting his aggressiveness towards those with whom he
has identified himself, and in his sparing them and giving them help. The study of such
identifications, like those, for instance, which lie at the root of clan feeling, led Robertson
Smith to the surprising result that they rest upon the recognition of a common substance
(Kinship and Marriage, 1885), and may even therefore be brought about by a meal eaten
in common. This feature makes it possible to connect this kind of identification with the
early history of the human family which I constructed in Totem und Tabu.
[47] Cf. Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie, l.c.

[48] 'Über die allgemeinste Erniedrigung des Liebeslebens.' Kleine Schriften zur
Neurosenlehre, Vierte Folge, 1918.
[49] Cf. 'Metapsychologische Ergänzung zur Traumlehre.' Kleine Schriften zur
Neurosenlehre, Vierte Folge, 1918.
[50] W. Trotter: Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War. Fisher Unwin, 1916.

[51] See my essay Jenseits des Lustprinzips.

[52] See the remarks upon Dread in Vorlesungen zur Einführung in die Psychoanalyse.
XXV.
[53] Totem und Tabu.

[54] 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.
[55] 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.
[56] 'Das Unheimliche.' Imago, 1919, Bd. V.

[57] See Totem und Tabu and the sources there quoted.

[58] This situation, in which the subject's attitude is unconsciously directed towards the
hypnotist, while he is consciously occupied with the 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.
[59] Ferenczi: 'Introjektion und Übertragung.' Jahrbuch der Psychoanalyse, 1909, Bd. I
[Contributions to Psycho-Analysis. Boston, Badger, 1916, Chapter II.]
[60] 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.
[61] 'Trauer und Melancholie.'

[62] Totem und Tabu.

[63] Trotter traces repression back to the herd instinct. It is a translation of this into
another form of expression rather than a contradiction when I say in my 'Einführung des
Narzissmus' that on the part of the ego the construction of an ideal is the condition of
repression.
[64] Cf. Abraham: 'Ansätze zur psychoanalytischen Erforschung und Behandlung des
manisch-depressiven Irreseins', 1912, in Klinische Beiträge zur Psychoanalyse, 1921.
[65] To speak more accurately, they conceal themselves behind the reproaches directed
towards the person's own ego, and lend them the fixity, tenacity, and imperativeness which
characterize the self-reproaches of a melancholiac.
[66] [Literally: 'How he clears his throat and how he spits, that you have cleverly copied
from him.']

[67] What follows at this point was written under the influence of an exchange of ideas
with Otto Rank.
[68] Cf. Hanns Sachs: 'Gemeinsame Tagträume', a summary made by the lecturer himself
of a paper read at the Sixth Psycho-analytical Congress, held at the Hague in 1920.
Internationale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse, 1920, Bd. VI. ['Day-Dreams in Common'.
International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 1920, Vol. I.]
[69] In this brief exposition I have made no attempt to bring forward any of the material
existing in legends, myths, fairy tales, the history of manners, etc., in support of the
construction.
[70] Cf. Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie.

[71] Hostile feelings, which are a little more complicated in their construction, offer no
exception to this rule.
[72] [Schriften zur angewandten Seelenkunde. Heft 8. Vienna, Deuticke, 1910.]

[73] See 'Über die allgemeinste Erniedrigung des Liebeslebens.'

[74] See Totem und Tabu, towards the end of Part II, 'Das Tabu und die Ambivalenz'.

[75] See Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie, 4. Auflage, 1920, S. 96.

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