Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego quotes

… 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.

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.)

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]

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]

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]

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.

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).

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]

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.

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).

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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]

… 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'.

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];

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 …

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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;

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;

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;

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.