Freud - Complete Works (629 page)
¹
Instincts of the Herd in Peace and
War
(1916)
²
I differ from what is in other respects an
understanding and shrewd criticism by Hans Kelsen (1922) when he
says that to provide the ‘group mind’ with an
organization of this kind signifies a hypostasis of it - that is to
say, implies an attribution to it of independence of the mental
processes in the individual.
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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 liability
to affect becomes extraordinarily intensified, while his
intellectual ability is 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 ‘organization’ of the group; but
this does not contradict the fundamental fact of group psychology -
the two theses as to the intensification of the affects 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 on
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 (Brugeilles, 1913). 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
makes 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.
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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 contre-suggestionnez!
’, 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 people
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 exempt from
explanation. Thinking of it, I repeated the old
conundrum:¹
Christoph trug Christum,
Christus trug die ganze Welt,
Sag’ wo hat Christoph
Damals hin den Fuss gestellt?
Christophorus Christum, sed Christus sustulit orbem:
Constiterit pedibus dic ubi Christophorus?
¹
Konrad Richter, ‘Der deutsche S.
Christoph.’
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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. (There is one
exception to be made to this statement, and one which bears witness
precisely 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 (e.g. McDougall, 1920
b
). 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 it does 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 enquiry is being undertaken close at
hand which has in view the fulfilment of this very task.¹
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 psychoneuroses.
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 measurable), 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
instinctual impulses; in relations between the sexes these impulses
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).
¹
This work has unfortunately not
materialized.
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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 it 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 Nachansohn (1915)
and Pfister (1921); and when the apostle Paul, in his famous
epistle to the Corinthians, praises love above all else, he
certainly understands it in the same ‘wider’
sense.¹ 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 regarded this nomenclature as an
insult, and 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 faintheartedness. 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
; and finally, he who knows how to wait need make no
concessions.
¹
‘Though I speak with the tongues of
men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding
brass, or a tinkling cymbal.’
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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, which 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
’.
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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 organized ones with a definite structure. But for reasons
which remain to be explained we should like to lay particular
stress upon a distinction to which writers on the subject have been
inclined to give 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 organized, 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 disintegrating¹ 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 organized groups which are protected from dissolution in the
manner that has been mentioned.
¹
In groups, the attributes
‘stable’ and ‘artificial’ seem to coincide
or at least to be intimately connected.
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