Freud - Complete Works (627 page)

Group Psychology And The Analysis Of The Ego

3771

   ‘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 hypnotized 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 hypnotized subject, from the fact that, the
suggestion being the same for all the individuals in the group, it
gains in strength by reciprocity.’ (Ibid., 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.’ (Ibid.,
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
on one another, while we point to another source for those
manifestations of suggestion in the group which he regards as
similar to 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.

Group Psychology And The Analysis Of The Ego

3772

   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
organized group, a man descends several rungs in the ladder of
civilization. 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.’ (Ibid., 36.)
Le Bon then dwells especially upon the lowering in intellectual
ability which an individual experiences when he becomes merged in a
group.¹

   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 (ibid., 40).

   A group is impulsive, changeable
and irritable. It is led almost exclusively by the
unconscious.² 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 (ibid., 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.³

  
¹
Compare Schiller’s
couplet:

Jeder, sieht man
ihn einzeln, ist leidlich klug und verständig;

       Sind
sie in corpore, gleich wird euch ein Dummkopf daraus.

  
²
‘Unconscious’ is used here
correctly by Le Bon in the descriptive sense, where it does not
mean only the ‘repressed’.

  
³
Compare the third essay in my
Totem and
Taboo
(1912-13).

Group Psychology And The Analysis Of The Ego

3773

   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 agency. The
feelings of a group are always very simple and very exaggerated. So
that a group knows neither doubt nor uncertainty.¹

   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 (ibid., 56).²

   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 to all innovations
and advances and an unbounded respect for tradition (ibid.,
62).

  
¹
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 of course be present, like anything
else, as part of the content of the day’s residues which lead
to the dream.

  
²
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 look in our consciousness at something that has
been told us by a dream about a contemporary (real) situation, we
ought not to be surprised to find that the monster which we saw
under the magnifying glass of analysis turns out to be a tiny
infusorian.’

Group Psychology And The Analysis Of The Ego

3774

   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 (ibid.,
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.¹

  
¹
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 opposite one. If eventually a
conflict breaks out between the two, it is 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 opposition 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 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 his
personality, a co-ordination of the separate instinctual impulses
and purposive trends 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 organization. (
Three Essays
on the Theory of Sexuality
, 1905
d
.) 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
other similar cases. - The various possible ways in which the ego
can later disintegrate form a special chapter in
psychopathology.

Group Psychology And The Analysis Of The Ego

3775

   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 (ibid., 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 or as supernatural powers.’ (Ibid., 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.¹

   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 (ibid., 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
wishful impulses with their affective cathexis.

  
¹
See
Totem and Taboo
(1912-13).

Group Psychology And The Analysis Of The Ego

3776

   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 (ibid., 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.