Freud - Complete Works (634 page)

   But Trotter’s exposition is
open, with even more justice than the others, 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.

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   It is naturally no easy matter to
trace the ontogenesis of the herd instinct. The fear 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 fear
relates to the child’s mother, and later to other familiar
people, 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 anxiety.¹ Nor is the child’s fear when
it is alone pacified by the sight of any haphazard ‘member of
the herd’, but on the contrary it is 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 first grows up, 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 his successor jealously
aside, to keep it away from the parents, and to rob it of all its
privileges; but in the face of the fact that this younger child
(like all that come later) is loved by the parents as much as he
himself is, and in consequence of the impossibility of his
maintaining his hostile attitude without damaging himself, he is
forced into identifying himself 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 the 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, an instinctual situation is capable of various
outcomes, we shall not be surprised that the actual outcome is one
which brings with it the possibility of a certain amount of
satisfaction, whereas some other outcome, in itself more obvious,
is passed over because the circumstances of life prevent its
leading to any such satisfaction.

  
¹
See the remarks upon anxiety in my
Introductory Lectures
(1916-17), Lecture XXV.

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   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 apt story 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 in the nature of an identification. So far as
we have hitherto been able to follow the course of events, this
reversal seems to occur under the influence of a common
affectionate 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 necessary
precondition 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 realized 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.

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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
organization, is connected with the killing of the chief by
violence and the transformation of the paternal horde into a
community of brothers.¹ 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 English critic; 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 equal 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 focusing
of thoughts and feelings into a common direction, the predominance
of the affective side of the mind and of unconscious psychical
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.²

  
¹
Totem and Taboo
(1912-13)

  
²
What we have just described in our general
characterization 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 existence except
collective ones; there was only a common will, there were no single
ones. An idea did not dare to turn itself into an act of will
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
excretory functions. The one great exception is provided by the
sexual act, in which a third person is at 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 satisfaction)
towards gregariousness, see below.

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   Thus the group appears to us as a
revival of the primal horde. Just as primitive man survives
potentially in every individual, so the primal horde may arise once
more out of any random collection; in so far men are habitually
under the sway of group formation we recognize in it the survival
of the primal horde. We must conclude that the psychology of groups
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 masterful nature, absolutely narcissistic,
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 civilization.

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   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 impulsions; 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
impulsions 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.1

   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 an end of the
importance of those of his sexual impulsions 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
totemic 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.