Freud - Complete Works (626 page)
Beyond The Pleasure Principle
3761
VII
If it is really the case that seeking to
restore an earlier state of things is such a universal
characteristic of instincts, we need not be surprised that so many
processes take place in mental life independently of the pleasure
principle. This characteristic would be shared by all the component
instincts and in their case would aim at returning once more to a
particular stage in the course of development. These are matters
over which the pleasure principle has as yet no control; but it
does not follow that any of them are necessarily opposed to it, and
we have still to solve the problem of the relation of the
instinctual processes of repetition to the dominance of the
pleasure principle.
We have found that one of the
earliest and most important functions of the mental apparatus is to
bind the instinctual impulses which impinge on it, to replace the
primary process prevailing in them by the secondary process and
convert their freely mobile cathectic energy into a mainly
quiescent (tonic) cathexis. While this transformation is taking
place no attention can be paid to the development of unpleasure;
but this does not imply the suspension of the pleasure principle.
On the contrary, the transformation occurs on
behalf
of the
pleasure principle; the binding is a preparatory act which
introduces and assures the dominance of the pleasure principle.
Let us make a sharper distinction
than we have hitherto made between function and tendency. The
pleasure principle, then, is a tendency operating in the service of
a function whose business it is to free the mental apparatus
entirely from excitation or to keep the amount of excitation in it
constant or to keep it as low as possible. We cannot yet decide
with certainty in favour of any of these ways of putting it; but it
is clear that the function thus described would be concerned with
the most universal endeavour of all living substance - namely to
return to the quiescence of the inorganic world. We have all
experienced how the greatest pleasure attainable by us, that of the
sexual act, is associated with a momentary extinction of a highly
intensified excitation. The binding of an instinctual impulse would
be a preliminary function designed to prepare the excitation for
its final elimination in the pleasure of discharge.
Beyond The Pleasure Principle
3762
This raises the question of
whether feelings of pleasure and unpleasure can be produced equally
from bound and from unbound excitatory processes. And there seems
to be no doubt whatever that the unbound or primary processes give
rise to far more intense feelings in both directions than the bound
or secondary ones. Moreover the primary processes are the earlier
in time; at the beginning of mental life there are no others, and
we may infer that if the pleasure principle had not already been
operative in
them
it could never have been established for
the later ones. We thus reach what is at bottom no very simple
conclusion, namely that at the beginning of mental life the
struggle for pleasure was far more intense than later but not so
unrestricted: it had to submit to frequent interruptions. In later
times the dominance of the pleasure principle is very much more
secure, but it itself has no more escaped the process of taming
than the other instincts in general. In any case, whatever it is
that causes the appearance of feelings of pleasure and unpleasure
in processes of excitation must be present in the secondary process
just as it is in the primary one.
Here might be the starting-point
for fresh investigations. Our consciousness communicates to us
feelings from within not only of pleasure and unpleasure but also
of a peculiar tension which in its turn can be either pleasurable
or unpleasurable. Should the difference between these feelings
enable us to distinguish between bound and unbound processes of
energy? or is the feeling of tension to be related to the absolute
magnitude, or perhaps to the level, of the cathexis, while the
pleasure and unpleasure series indicates a change in magnitude of
the cathexis
within a given unit of time
? Another striking
fact is that the life instincts have so much more contact with our
internal perception - emerging as breakers of the peace and
constantly producing tensions whose release is felt as pleasure -
while the death instincts seem to do their work unobtrusively. The
pleasure principle seems actually to serve the death instincts. It
is true that it keeps watch upon stimuli from without, which are
regarded as dangers by both kinds of instincts; but it is more
especially on guard against increases of stimulation from within,
which would make the task of living more difficult. This in turn
raises a host of other questions to which we can at present find no
answer. We must be patient and await fresh methods and occasions of
research. We must be ready, too, to abandon a path that we have
followed for a time, if it seems to be leading to no good end. Only
believers, who demand that science shall be a substitute for the
catechism they have given up, will blame an investigator for
developing or even transforming his views. We may take comfort,
too, for the slow advances of our scientific knowledge in the words
of the poet:
Was man nicht erfliegen kann, muss man erhinken.
. . . . .
Die Schrift sagt, es ist keine Sünde zu hinken.
3763
GROUP PSYCHOLOGY AND THE ANALYSIS OF THE EGO
(1921)
3764
Intentionally left blank
3765
GROUP PSYCHOLOGY AND THE ANALYSIS OF THE EGO
I
INTRODUCTION
The contrast between individual psychology and
social or group 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 instinctual impulses; 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,
in is extended but entirely justifiable sense of the words, is at
the same time social psychology as well.
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.
Group Psychology And The Analysis Of The Ego
3766
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 organized into a group at some particular time for some
definite purpose. When once natural continuity has been severed in
this way, if a breach is thus made between things which are by
nature interconnected, 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 of 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 wide 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.
Group Psychology And The Analysis Of The Ego
3767
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 enquiry
can be attached. We can achieve both of these aims by means of
quotation from Le Bon’s deservedly famous work
Psychologie
des foules
.
Let us make the matter clear once
again. If a psychology, concerned with exploring the
predispositions, the instinctual impulses, 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
interconnections, 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.
Group Psychology And The Analysis Of The Ego
3768
I will now let Le Bon speak for
himself. He says: ‘The most striking peculiarity presented by
a psychological group 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.’ (Trans. 1920, 29.)
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 motives that determine his conduct.
Our conscious acts are the outcome of an unconscious substratum
created in the mind mainly 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. The greater part of our daily actions are
the result of hidden motives which escape our observation.’
(Ibid., 30.)
Group Psychology And The Analysis Of The Ego
3769
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.
As we should say, the mental superstructure, the development of
which in individuals shows such dissimilarities, is removed, and
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.’ (Ibid.,
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 instinctual impulses. 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 ‘social anxiety’ is the essence of
what is called conscience.¹
¹
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 heritage’ of the human mind, is unconscious;
but in addition to this we distinguish the ‘unconscious
repressed’, which arose from a portion of that heritage. This
concept of the repressed is not to be found in Le Bon.
Group Psychology And The Analysis Of The Ego
3770
‘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 which 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.’ (Ibid., 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 hypnotized individual finds
himself in the hands of the hypnotizer. . . . The
conscious personality has entirely vanished; will and discernment
are lost. All feelings and thoughts are bent in the direction
determined by the hypnotizer.