Freud - Complete Works (637 page)

   The lie of the heroic myth
culminates in the deification of the hero. Perhaps the deified hero
may have been earlier than the Father God and may have been a
precursor to the return of the primal father as a deity. The series
of gods, then, would run chronologically: Mother
Goddess-Hero-Father God. But it is only with the elevation of the
never-forgotten primal father that the deity acquires the features
that we still recognize in him to-day.²

  
¹
Cf. Hanns Sachs (1920).

  
²
In this brief exposition I have made no
attempt to bring forward any of the material existing in legends,
myths, fairy tales, the history of manners, etc., in support of the
construction.

Group Psychology And The Analysis Of The Ego

3828

   C. A great deal has been said in
this paper about directly sexual instincts and those that are
inhibited in their aims, and it may be hoped that this distinction
will not meet with too much resistance. But a detailed discussion
of the question will not be out of place, even if it only repeats
what has to a great extent already been said before.

   The development of the libido in
children has made us acquainted with the first but also the best
example of sexual instincts which are inhibited in their aims. All
the feelings which a child has towards its parents and those who
look after it pass by an easy transition into the wishes which give
expression to the child’s sexual impulsions. The child claims
from these objects of its love all the signs of affection which it
knows of; it wants to kiss them, touch them, and look at them; it
is curious to see their genitals, and to be with them when they
perform their intimate excretory functions; it promises to marry
its mother or nurse - whatever it may understand by marriage; it
proposes to itself to bear its father a child, etc. Direct
observation, as well as the subsequent analytic investigation of
the residues of childhood, leave no doubt as to the complete fusion
of tender and jealous feelings and of sexual intentions, and show
us in what a fundamental way the child makes the person it loves
into the object of all its still not properly centred sexual
trends.¹

  
¹
Cf. my
Three Essays
(1905
d
).

Group Psychology And The Analysis Of The Ego

3829

  
This first
configuration of the child’s love, which in typical cases
takes the shape of the Oedipus complex, succumbs, as we know, from
the beginning of the period of latency onwards to a wave of
repression. Such of it as is left over shows itself as a purely
affectionate emotional tie, relating to the same people, but no
longer to be described as ‘sexual’. Psycho-analysis,
which illuminates the depths of mental life, has no difficulty in
showing that the sexual ties of the earliest years of childhood
also persist, though repressed and unconscious. It gives us courage
to assert that wherever we come across an affectionate feeling it
is successor to a completely ‘sensual’ object-tie with
the person in question or rather with that person’s prototype
(or
imago
). It cannot indeed disclose to us without a
special investigation whether in a given case this former complete
sexual current still exists under repression or whether it has
already been exhausted. To speak still more precisely: it is quite
certain that this current is still there as a form and possibility,
and can always be cathected and put into activity again by means of
regression; the only question is (and it cannot always be answered)
what degree of cathexis and operative force it still has at the
present moment. Equal care must be taken in this connection to
avoid two sources of error - the Scylla of underestimating the
importance of the repressed unconscious, and the Charybdis of
judging the normal entirely by the standards of the
pathological.

   A psychology which will not or
cannot penetrate the depths of what is repressed regards
affectionate emotional ties as being invariably the expression of
impulsions which have no sexual aim, even though they are derived
from impulsions which have such an aim.¹

  
¹
Hostile feelings are doubtless a little
more complicated in their construction.

Group Psychology And The Analysis Of The Ego

3830

   We are justified in saying that
they have been diverted from these sexual aims, even though there
is some difficulty in giving a description of such a diversion of
aim which will conform to the requirements of metapsychology.
Moreover, those instincts which are inhibited in their aims always
preserve some few of their original sexual aims; even an
affectionate devotee, even a friend or an admirer, desires the
physical proximity and the sight of the person who is now loved
only in the ‘Pauline’ sense. If we choose, we may
recognize in this diversion of aim a beginning of the
sublimation
of the sexual instincts, or on the other hand we
may fix the limits of sublimation at some more distant point. Those
sexual instincts which are inhibited in their aims have a great
functional advantage over those which are uninhibited. Since they
are not capable of really complete satisfaction, they are
especially adapted to create permanent ties; while those instincts
which are directly sexual incur a loss of energy each time they are
satisfied, and must wait to be renewed by a fresh accumulation of
sexual libido, so that meanwhile the object may have been changed.
The inhibited instincts are capable of any degree of admixture with
the uninhibited; they can be transformed back into them, just as
they arose out of them. It is well known how easily erotic wishes
develop out of emotional relations of a friendly character, based
upon appreciation and admiration (compare Molière’s
‘Kiss me for the love of Greek’), between a master and
a pupil, between a performer and a delighted listener, and
especially in the case of women. In fact the growth of emotional
ties of this kind, with their purposeless beginnings, provides a
much frequented pathway to sexual object-choice. Pfister, in his
Frömmigkeit des Grafen von Zinzendorf
(1910), has given
an extremely clear and certainly not an isolated example of how
easily even an intense religious tie can revert to ardent sexual
excitement. On the other hand it is also very usual for directly
sexual impulsions, short-lived in themselves, to be transformed
into a lasting and purely affectionate tie; and the consolidation
of a passionate love marriage rests to a large extent upon this
process.

   We shall naturally not be
surprised to hear that the sexual impulsions that are inhibited in
their aims arise out of the directly sexual ones when internal or
external obstacles make the sexual aims unattainable. The
repression during the period of latency is an internal obstacle of
this kind - or rather one which has become internal. We have
assumed that the father of the primal horde owing to his sexual
intolerance compelled all his sons to be abstinent, and thus forced
them into ties that were inhibited in their aims, while he reserved
for himself freedom of sexual enjoyment and in this way remained
without ties. All the ties upon which a group depends are of the
character of instincts that are inhibited in their aims. But here
we have approached the discussion of a new subject, which deals
with the relation between directly sexual instincts and the
formation of groups.

Group Psychology And The Analysis Of The Ego

3831

   D. The last two remarks will have
prepared us for finding that directly sexual impulsions are
unfavourable to the formation of groups. In the history of the
development of the family there have also, it is true, been group
relations of sexual love (group marriages); but the more important
sexual love became for the ego, and the more it developed the
characteristics of being in love, the more urgently it required to
be limited to two people -
una cum uno
- as is prescribed by
the nature of the genital aim. Polygamous inclinations had to be
content to find satisfaction in a succession of changing
objects.

   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. Their rejection of the group’s
influence is expressed in the shape of a sense of shame. Feelings
of jealousy of the most extreme violence are summoned up in order
to protect the choice of a sexual object from being encroached upon
by a group tie. It is only when the affectionate, that is,
personal, factor of a love relation gives place entirely to the
sensual one, that it is possible for two people to have sexual
intercourse in the presence of others or for there to be
simultaneous sexual acts in a group, as occurs at an orgy. But at
that point a regression has taken place to an early stage in sexual
relations, at which being in love as yet played no part, and all
sexual objects were judged to be of equal value, somewhat in the
sense of Bernard Shaw’s malicious aphorism to the effect that
being in love means greatly exaggerating the difference between one
woman and another.

   There are abundant indications
that being in love only made its appearance late on in the sexual
relations between men and women; so that the opposition between
sexual love and group ties is also a late development. Now it may
seem as though this assumption were incompatible with our myth of
the primal family. For it was after all by their love for their
mothers and sisters that the mob of brothers was, as we have
supposed, driven to parricide; and it is difficult to imagine this
love as being anything but undivided and primitive - that is, as an
intimate union of the affectionate and sensual. But further
consideration resolves this objection to our theory into a
confirmation of it. One of the reactions to the parricide was after
all the institution of totemic exogamy, the prohibition of any
sexual relation with those women of the family who had been
tenderly loved since childhood. In this way a wedge was driven in
between a man’s affectionate and sensual feelings, one still
firmly fixed in his erotic life to-day.¹ As a result of this
exogamy the sensual needs of men had to be satisfied with strange
and unloved women.

  
¹
See Freud, (1912
d
).

Group Psychology And The Analysis Of The Ego

3832

   In the great artificial groups,
the Church and the army, there is no room for woman as a sexual
object. The love relation between men and women remains outside
these organizations. Even where groups are formed which are
composed of both men and women the distinction between the sexes
plays no part. There is scarcely any sense in asking whether the
libido which keeps groups together is of a homosexual or of a
heterosexual nature, for it is not differentiated according to the
sexes, and particularly shows a complete disregard for the aims of
the genital organization of the libido.

   Even in a person who has in other
respects become absorbed in a group, the directly sexual impulsions
preserve a little of his individual activity. If they become too
strong they disintegrate every group formation. The Catholic Church
had the best of motives for recommending its followers to remain
unmarried and for imposing celibacy upon its priests; but falling
in love has often driven even priests to leave the Church. In the
same way love for women breaks through the group ties of race, of
national divisions, and of the social class system, and it thus
produces important effects as a factor in civilization. It seems
certain that homosexual love is far more compatible with group
ties, even when it takes the shape of uninhibited sexual impulsions
- a remarkable fact, the explanation of which might carry us
far.

Group Psychology And The Analysis Of The Ego

3833

   The psycho-analytic investigation
of the psychoneuroses has taught us that their symptoms are to be
traced back to directly sexual impulsions which are repressed but
still remain active. We can complete this formula by adding -
‘or, to aim-inhibited impulsions, whose inhibition has not
been entirely successful or has made room for a return to the
repressed sexual aim’. It is in accordance with this that a
neurosis should make its victim asocial and should remove him from
the usual group formations. It may be said that a neurosis has the
same disintegrating effect upon a group as being in love. On the
other hand it appears that where a powerful impetus has been given
to group formation neuroses may diminish and, at all events
temporarily, disappear. Justifiable attempts have also been made to
turn this antagonism between neuroses and group formation to
therapeutic account. Even those who do not regret the disappearance
of religious illusions from the civilized world of to-day will
admit that so long as they were in force they offered those who
were bound by them the most powerful protection against the danger
of neurosis. Nor is it hard to discern that all the ties that bind
people to mystico-religious or philosophico-religious sects and
communities are expressions of crooked cures of all kinds of
neuroses. All of this is correlated with the contrast between
directly sexual impulsions and those which are inhibited in their
aims.