ANIMISM, MAGIC AND THE OMNIPOTENCE OF THOUGHT
1
It is a necessary defect of studies which seek to apply the point of
view of psychoanalysis to the mental sciences that they cannot do
justice to either subject. They therefore confine themselves to the rôle
of incentives and make suggestions to the expert which he should take
into consideration in his work. This defect will make itself felt most
strongly in an essay such as this which tries to treat of the enormous
sphere called animism[90].
Animism in the narrower sense is the theory of psychic concepts, and in
the wider sense, of spiritual beings in general. Animatism, the
animation theory of seemingly inanimate nature, is a further
subdivision which also includes animatism and animism. The name animism,
formerly applied to a definite philosophic system, seems to have
acquired its present meaning through E. B. Tylor[91].
What led to the formulation of these names is the insight into the very
remarkable conceptions of nature and the world of those primitive races
known to us from history and from our own times. These races populate
the world with a multitude of spiritual beings which are benevolent or
malevolent to them, and attribute the causation of natural processes to
these spirits and demons; they also consider that not only animals and
plants, but inanimate things as well are animated by them. A third and
perhaps the most important part of this primitive ‘nature philosophy’
seems far less striking to us because we ourselves are not yet far
enough removed from it, though we have greatly limited the existence of
spirits and to-day explain the processes of nature by the assumption of
impersonal physical forces. For primitive people believe in a similar
‘animation’ of human individuals as well. Human beings have souls which
can leave their habitation and enter into other beings; these souls are
the bearers of spiritual activities and are, to a certain extent,
independent of the ‘bodies’. Originally souls were thought of as being
very similar to individuals; only in the course of a long evolution did
they lose their material character and attain a high degree of
‘spiritualization’[92].
Most authors incline to the assumption that these soul conceptions are
the original nucleus of the animistic system, that spirits merely
correspond to souls that have become independent, and that the souls of
animals, plants and things were formed after the analogy of human souls.
How did primitive people come to the peculiarly dualistic fundamental
conceptions on which this animistic system rests? Through the
observation, it is thought, of the phenomena of sleep (with dreams) and
death which resemble sleep, and through the effort to explain these
conditions, which affect each individual so intimately. Above all, the
problem of death must have become the starting point of the formation of
the theory. To primitive man the continuation of
life--immortality--would be self-evident. The conception of death is
something accepted later, and only with hesitation, for even to us it is
still devoid of content and unrealizable. Very likely discussions have
taken place over the part which may have been played by other
observations and experiences in the formation of the fundamental
animistic conceptions such as dream imagery, shadows and reflections,
but these have led to no conclusion[93].
If primitive man reacted to the phenomena that stimulated his reflection
with the formation of conceptions of the soul, and then transferred
these to objects of the outer world, his attitude will be judged to be
quite natural and in no way mysterious. In view of the fact that
animistic conceptions have been shown to be similar among the most
varied races and in all periods, Wundt states that these “are the
necessary psychological product of the myth-forming consciousness, and
primitive animism may be looked upon as the spiritual expression of
man’s natural state in so far as this is at all accessible to our
observation”[94]. Hume has already justified the animation of the
inanimate in his _Natural History of Religions_, where he said: “There
is a universal tendency among mankind to conceive all beings like
themselves and to transfer to every object those qualities with which
they are familiarly acquainted and of which they are intimately
conscious”[95].
Animism is a system of thought, it gives not only the explanation of a
single phenomenon, but makes it possible to comprehend the totality of
the world from one point, as a continuity. Writers maintain that in the
course of time three such systems of thought, three great world systems
came into being: the animistic (mythological), the religious, and the
scientific. Of these animism, the first system is perhaps the most
consistent and the most exhaustive, and the one which explains the
nature of the world in its entirety. This first world system, of mankind
is now a psychological theory. It would go beyond our scope to show how
much of it can still be demonstrated in the life of to-day, either as a
worthless survival in the form of superstition, or in living form, as
the foundation of our language, our belief, and our philosophy.
It is in reference to the successive stages of these three world systems
that we say that animism in itself was not yet a religion but contained
the prerequisites from which religions were later formed. It is also
evident that myths are based upon animistic foundations, but the
detailed relation of myths to animism seem unexplained in some essential
points.
2
Our psychoanalytic work will begin at a different point. It must not be
assumed that mankind came to create its first world system through a
purely speculative thirst for knowledge. The practical need of mastering
the world must have contributed to this effort. We are therefore not
astonished to learn that something else went hand in hand with the
animistic system, namely the elaboration of directions for making
oneself master of men, animals and things, as well as of their spirits.
S. Reinach[96] wants to call these directions, which are known under the
names of ‘sorcery and magic’, the strategy of animism; With Mauss and
Hubert, I should prefer to compare them to a technique[97].
Can the conceptions of sorcery and magic be separated? It can be done if
we are willing on our own authority to put ourselves above the vagaries
of linguistic usage. Then sorcery is essentially the art of influencing
spirits by treating them like people under the same circumstances, that
is to say by appeasing them, reconciling them, making them more
favourably disposed to one, by intimidating them, by depriving them of
their power and by making them subject to one’s will; all that is
accomplished through the same methods that have been found effective
with living people. Magic, however, is something else; it does not
essentially concern itself with spirits, and uses special means, not
the ordinary psychological method. We can easily guess that magic is the
earlier and the more important part of animistic technique, for among
the means with which spirits are to be treated there are also found the
magic kind[98], and magic is also applied where spiritualization of
nature has not yet, as it seems to us, been accomplished.
Magic must serve the most varied purposes. It must subject the processes
of nature to the will of man, protect the individual against enemies and
dangers, and give him the power to injure his enemies. But the
principles on whose assumptions the magic activity is based, or rather
the principle of magic, is so evident that it was recognized by all
authors. If we may take the opinion of E. B. Tylor at its face value it
can be most tersely expressed in his words: “mistaking an ideal
connection for a real one”. We shall explain this characteristic in the
case of two groups of magic acts.
One of the most widespread magic procedures for injuring an enemy
consists of making an effigy of him out of any kind of material. The
likeness counts for little, in fact any object may be ‘named’ as his
image. Whatever is subsequently done to this image will also happen to
the hated prototype; thus if the effigy has been injured in any place he
will be afflicted by a disease in the corresponding part of the body.
This same magic technique, instead of being used for private enmity can
also be employed for pious purposes and can thus be used to aid the gods
against evil demons. I quote Frazer[99]: “Every night when the sun-god
Ra in ancient Egypt sank to his home in the glowing west he was assailed
by hosts of demons under the leadership of the archfiend Apepi. All
night long he fought them, and sometimes by day the powers of darkness
sent up clouds even into the blue Egyptian sky to obscure his light and
weaken his power. To aid the sun-god in this daily struggle, a ceremony
was daily performed in his temple at Thebes. A figure of his foe Apepi,
represented as a crocodile with a hideous face or a serpent with many
coils, was made of wax, and on it the demon’s name was written in green
ink. Wrapt in a papyrus case, on which another likeness of Apepi had
been drawn in green ink, the figure was then tied up with black hair,
spat upon, hacked with a stone knife and cast on the ground. There the
priest trod on it with his left foot again and again, and then burned it
in a fire made of a certain plant or grass. When Apepi himself had thus
been effectively disposed of, waxen effigies of each of his principle
demons, and of their fathers, mothers, and children, were made and burnt
in the same way. The service accompanied by the recitation of certain
prescribed spells, was repeated not merely morning, noon and night, but
whenever a storm was raging or heavy rain had set in, or black clouds
were stealing across the sky to hide the sun’s bright disk. The fiends
of darkness, clouds and rain, felt the injury inflicted on their images
as if it had been done to themselves; they passed away, at least for a
time, and the beneficent sun-god shone out triumphant once more”[100].
There is a great mass of magic actions which show a similar motivation,
but I shall lay stress upon only two, which have always played a great
rôle among primitive races and which have been partly preserved in the
myths and cults of higher stages of evolution: the art of causing rain
and fruitfulness by magic. Rain is produced by magic means, by imitating
it, and perhaps also by imitating the clouds and storm which produce it.
It looks as if they wanted to ‘play rain’. The Ainos of Japan, for
instance, make rain by pouring out water through a big sieve, while
others fit out a big bowl with sails and oars as if it were a ship,
which is then dragged about the village and gardens. But the
fruitfulness of the soil was assured by magic means by showing it the
spectacle of human sexual intercourse. To cite one out of many examples;
in some part of Java, the peasants used to go out into the fields at
night for sexual intercourse when the rice was about to blossom in order
to stimulate the rice to fruitfulness through their example[101]. At the
same time it was feared that proscribed incestuous relationships would
stimulate the soil to grow weeds and render it unfruitful[102].
Certain negative rules, that is to say magic precautions, must be put
into this first group. If some of the inhabitants of a Dayak village had
set out on a hunt for wild-boars, those remaining behind were in the
meantime not permitted to touch either oil or water with their hands, as
such acts would soften the hunters’ fingers and would let the quarry
slip through their hands[103]. Or when a Gilyak hunter was pursuing game
in the woods, his children were forbidden to make drawings on wood or in
the sand, as the paths in the thick woods might become as intertwined as
the lines of the drawing and the hunter would not find his way
home[104].
The fact that in these as in a great many other examples of magic
influence, distance plays no part, telepathy is taken as a matter of
course--will cause us no difficulties in grasping the peculiarity of
magic.
There is no doubt about what is considered the effective force in all
these examples. It is the _similarity_ between the performed action and
the expected happening. Frazer therefore calls this kind of magic
_imitative_ or _homœopathic_. If I want it to rain I only have to
produce something that looks like rain or recalls rain. In a later phase
of cultural development, instead of these magic conjurations of rain,
processions are arranged to a house of god, in order to supplicate the
saint who dwells there to send rain. Finally also this religious
technique will be given up and instead an effort will be made to find
out what would influence the atmosphere to produce rain.
In another group of magic actions the principle of similarity is no
longer involved, but in its stead there is another principle the nature
of which is well brought out in the following examples.
Another method may be used to injure an enemy. You possess yourself of
his hair, his nails, anything that he has discarded, or even a part of
his clothing, and do something hostile to these things. This is just as
effective as if you had dominated the person himself, and anything that
you do to the things that belong to him must happen to him too.
According to the conception of primitive men a name is an essential part
of a personality; if therefore you know the name of a person or a spirit
you have acquired a certain power over its bearer. This explains the
remarkable precautions and restrictions in the use of names which we
have touched upon in the essay on taboo[105]. In these examples
similarity is evidently replaced by relationship.
The cannibalism of primitive races derives its more sublime motivation
in a similar manner. By absorbing parts of the body of a person through
the act of eating we also come to possess the properties which belonged
to that person. From this there follow precautions and restrictions as
to diet under special circumstances. Thus a pregnant woman will avoid
eating the meat of certain animals because their undesirable properties,
for example, cowardice, might thus be transferred to the child she is
nourishing. It makes no difference to the magic influence whether the
connection is already abolished or whether it had consisted of only one
very important contact. Thus, for instance, the belief in a magic bond
which links the fate of a wound with the weapon which caused it can be
followed unchanged through thousands of years. If a Melanesian gets
possession of the bow by which he was wounded he will carefully keep it
in a cool place in order thus to keep down the inflammation of the
wound. But if the bow has remained in the possession of the enemy it
will certainly be kept in close proximity to a fire in order that the
wound may burn and become thoroughly inflamed. Pliny, in his _Natural
History_, <small>XXVIII</small>, advises spitting on the hand which has caused the
injury if one regrets having injured some one; the pain of the injured
person will then immediately be eased. Francis Bacon, in his _Natural
History_, mentions the generally accredited belief that putting a salve
on the weapon which has made a wound will cause this wound to heal of
itself. It is said that even to-day English peasants follow this
prescription, and that if they have cut themselves with a scythe they
will from that moment on carefully keep the instrument clean in order
that the wound may not fester. In June, 1902, a local English weekly
reported that a woman called Matilde Henry of Norwich accidentally ran
an iron nail into the sole of her foot. Without having the wound
examined or even taking off her stocking she bade her daughter to oil
the nail thoroughly in the expectation that then nothing could happen to
her. She died a few days later of tetanus[106] in consequence of
postponed antisepsis.
The examples from this last group illustrate Frazer’s distinction
between _contagious_ magic and _imitative_ magic. What is considered as
effective in these examples is no longer the similarity, but the
association in space, the contiguity, or at least the imagined
contiguity, or the memory of its existence. But since similarity and
contiguity are the two essential principles of the processes of
association of ideas, it must be concluded that the dominance of
associations of ideas really explains all the madness of the rules of
magic. We can see how true Tylor’s quoted characteristic of magic:
“mistaking an ideal connection for a real one”, proves to be. The same
may be said of Frazer’s idea, who has expressed it in almost the same
terms: “men mistook the order of their ideas for the order of nature,
and hence imagined that the control which they have, or seem to have,
over their thoughts, permitted them to have a corresponding control over
things”[107].
It will at first seem strange that this illuminating explanation of
magic could have been rejected by some authors as unsatisfactory[108].
But on closer consideration we must sustain the objection that the
association theory of magic merely explains the paths that magic
travels, and not its essential nature, that is, it does not explain the
misunderstanding which bids it put psychological laws in place of
natural ones. We are apparently in need here of a dynamic factor; but
while the search for this leads the critics of Frazer’s theory astray,
it will be easy to give a satisfactory explanation of magic by carrying
its association theory further and by entering more deeply into it.
First let us examine the simpler and more important case of imitative
magic. According to Frazer this may be practised by itself, whereas
contagious magic as a rule presupposes the imitative[109]. The motives
which impel one to exercise magic are easily recognized; they are the
wishes of men. We need only assume that primitive man had great
confidence in the power of his wishes. At bottom everything which he
accomplished by magic means must have been done solely because he wanted
it. Thus in the beginning only his wish is accentuated.
In the case of the child which finds itself under analogous psychic
conditions, without being as yet capable of motor activity, we have
elsewhere advocated the assumption that it at first really satisfies
its wishes by means of hallucinations, in that it creates the satisfying
situation through centrifugal excitements of its sensory organs[110].
The adult primitive man knows another way. A motor impulse, the will,
clings to his wish and this will which later will change the face of the
earth in the service of wish fulfilment is now used to represent the
gratification so that one may experience it, as it were, through motor
hallucination. Such a _representation_ of the gratified wish is
altogether comparable to the _play_ of children, where it replaces the
purely sensory technique of gratification. If play and imitative
representation suffice for the child and for primitive man, it must not
be taken as a sign of modesty, in our sense, or of resignation due to
the realization of their impotence, on the contrary; it is the very
obvious result of the excessive valuation of their wish, of the will
which depends upon the wish and of the paths the wish takes. In time the
psychic accent is displaced from the motives of the magic act to its
means, namely to the act itself. Perhaps it would be more correct to say
that primitive man does not become aware of the over-valuation of his
psychic acts until it becomes evident to him through the means
employed. It would also seem as if it were the magic act itself which
compels the fulfilment of the wish by virtue of its similarity to the
object desired. At the stage of animistic thinking there is as yet no
way of demonstrating objectively the true state of affairs, but this
becomes possible at later stages when, though such procedures are still
practised, the psychic phenomenon of scepticism already manifests itself
as a tendency to repression. At that stage men will acknowledge that the
conjuration of spirits avails nothing unless accompanied by belief, and
that the magic effect of prayer fails if there is no piety behind
it[111].
The possibility of a contagious magic which depends upon contiguous
association will then show us that the psychic valuation of the wish and
the will has been extended to all psychic acts which the will can
command. We may say that at present there is a general over-valuation of
all psychic processes, that is to say there is an attitude towards the
world which according to our understanding of the relation of reality to
thought must appear like an over-estimation of the latter. Objects as
such are over-shadowed by the ideas representing them; what takes place
in the latter must also happen to the former, and the relations which
exist between ideas are also postulated as to things. As thought does
not recognize distances and easily brings together in one act of
consciousness things spatially and temporally far removed, the magic
world also puts itself above spatial distance by telepathy, and treats a
past association as if it were a present one. In the animistic age the
reflection of the inner world must obscure that other picture of the
world which we believe we recognize.
Let us also point out that the two principles of association, similarity
and contiguity, meet in the higher unity of contact. Association by
contiguity is contact in the direct sense, and association by similarity
is contact in the transferred sense. Another identity in the psychic
process which has not yet been grasped by us is probably concealed in
the use of the same word for both kinds of associations. It is the same
range of the concept of contact which we have found in the analysis of
taboo[112].
In summing up we may now say that the principle which controls magic,
and the technique of the animistic method of thought, is ‘Omnipotence of
Thought’.
3
I have adopted the term ‘Omnipotence of Thought’ from a highly
intelligent man, a former sufferer from compulsion neurosis, who, after
being cured through psychoanalytic treatment, was able to demonstrate
his efficiency and good sense[113]. He had coined this phrase to
designate all those peculiar and uncanny occurrences which seemed to
pursue him just as they pursue others afflicted with his malady. Thus if
he happened to think of a person, he was actually confronted with this
person as if he had conjured him up; if he inquired suddenly about the
state of health of an acquaintance whom he had long missed he was sure
to hear that this acquaintance had just died, so that he could believe
that the deceased had drawn his attention to himself by telepathic
means; if he uttered a half meant imprecation against a stranger, he
could expect to have him die soon thereafter and burden him with the
responsibility for his death. He was able to explain most of these cases
in the course of the treatment, he could tell how the illusion had
originated, and what he himself had contributed towards furthering his
superstitious expectations[114]. All compulsion neurotics are
superstitious in this manner and often against their better judgment.
The existence of omnipotence of thought is most clearly seen in
compulsion neurosis, where the results of this primitive method of
thought are most often found or met in consciousness. But we must guard
against seeing in this a distinguishing characteristic of this neurosis,
for analytic investigation reveals the same mechanism in the other
neuroses. In every one of the neuroses it is not the reality of the
experience but the reality of the thought which forms the basis for the
symptom formation. Neurotics live in a special world in which, as I have
elsewhere expressed it, only the ‘neurotic standard of currency’ counts,
that is to say, only things intensively thought of or affectively
conceived are effective with them, regardless of whether these things
are in harmony with outer reality. The hysteric repeats in his attacks
and fixates through his symptoms, occurrences which have taken place
only in his phantasy, though in the last analysis they go back to real
events or have been built up from them. The neurotic’s guilty conscience
is just as incomprehensible if traced to real misdeeds. A compulsion
neurotic may be oppressed by a sense of guilt which is appropriate to a
wholesale murderer, while at the same time he acts towards his fellow
beings in a most considerate and scrupulous manner, a behaviour which he
evinced since his childhood. And yet his sense of guilt is justified; it
is based upon intensive and frequent death wishes which unconsciously
manifest themselves towards his fellow beings. It is motivated from the
point of view of unconscious thoughts, but not of intentional acts. Thus
the omnipotence of thought, the over-estimation of psychic processes as
opposed to reality, proves to be of unlimited effect in the neurotic’s
affective life and in all that emanates from it. But if we subject him
to psychoanalytic treatment, which makes his unconscious thoughts
conscious to him he refuses to believe that thoughts are free and is
always afraid to express evil wishes lest they be fulfilled in
consequence of his utterance. But through this attitude as well as
through the superstition which plays an active part in his life he
reveals to us how close he stands to the savage who believes he can
change the outer world by a mere thought of his.
The primary obsessive actions of these neurotics are really altogether
of a magical nature. If not magic they are at least anti-magic and are
destined to ward off the expectation of evil with which the neurosis is
wont to begin. Whenever I was able to pierce these secrets it turned out
that the content of this expectation of evil was death. According to
Schopenhauer the problem of death stands at the beginning of every
philosophy; we have heard that the formation of the soul conception and
of the belief in demons which characterize animism, are also traced back
to the impression which death makes upon man. It is hard to decide
whether these first compulsive and protective actions follow the
principle of similarity, or of contrast, for under the conditions of the
neurosis they are usually distorted through displacement upon some
trifle, upon some action which in itself is quite insignificant[115].
The protective formulæ of the compulsion neurosis also have a
counterpart in the incantations of magic. But the evolution of
compulsive actions may be described by pointing out how these actions
begin as a spell against evil wishes which are very remote from anything
sexual, only to end up as a substitute for forbidden sexual activity,
which they imitate as faithfully as possible.
If we accept the evolution of man’s conceptions of the universe
mentioned above, according to which the _animistic_ phase is
_succeeded_ by the _religious_, and this in turn by the _scientific_, we
have no difficulty in following the fortunes of the ‘omnipotence of
thought’ through all these phases. In the animistic stage man ascribes
omnipotence to himself; in the religious he has ceded it to the gods,
but without seriously giving it up, for he reserves to himself the right
to control the gods by influencing them in some way or other in the
interest of his wishes. In the scientific attitude towards life there is
no longer any room for man’s omnipotence; he has acknowledged his
smallness and has submitted to death as to all other natural necessities
in a spirit of resignation. Nevertheless, in our reliance upon the power
of the human spirit which copes with the laws of reality, there still
lives on a fragment of this primitive belief in the omnipotence of
thought.
In retracing the development of libidinous impulses in the individual
from its mature form back to its first beginnings in childhood, we at
first found an important distinction which is stated in the _Three
Contributions to the Theory of Sex_[116]. The manifestations of sexual
impulses can be recognized from the beginning, but at first they are not
yet directed to any outer object. Each individual component of the
sexual impulse works for a gain in pleasure and finds its gratification
in its own body. This stage is called _autoerotism_ and is distinguished
from the stage of object selection.
In the course of further study it proved to be practical and really
necessary to insert a third stage between these two or, if one prefers,
to divide the first stage of autoerotism into two. In this intermediary
stage, the importance of which increases the more we investigate it, the
sexual impulses which formerly were separate, have already formed into a
unit and have also found an object; but this object is not external and
foreign to the individual, but is his own ego, which is formed at this
period. This new stage is called _narcism_, in view of the pathological
fixation of this condition which may be observed later on. The
individual acts as if he were in love with himself; for the purposes of
our analysis the ego impulses and the libidinous wishes cannot yet be
separated from each other.
Although this narcistic stage, in which the hitherto dissociated sexual
impulses combine into a unity and take the ego as their object, cannot
as yet be sharply differentiated, we can already surmise that the
narcistic organization is never altogether given up again. To a certain
extent man remains narcistic, even after he had found outer subjects for
his libido, and the objects on which he bestows it represent, as it
were, emanations of the libido which remain with his ego and which can
be withdrawn into it. The state of being in love, so remarkable
psychologically, and the normal prototype of the psychoses, corresponds
to the highest stage of these emanations, in contrast to the state of
self-love.
This high estimation of psychic acts found among primitives and
neurotics, which we feel to be an overestimation, may now appropriately
be brought into relation to narcism, and interpreted as an essential
part of it. We would say that among primitive people thinking is still
highly sexualized and that this accounts for the belief in the
omnipotence of thought, the unshaken confidence in the capacity to
dominate the world and the inaccessibility to the obvious facts which
could enlighten man as to his real place in the world. In the case of
neurotics a considerable part of this primitive attitude had remained as
a constitutional factor, while on the other hand the sexual repression
occurring in them has brought about a new sexualization of the processes
of thought. In both cases, whether we deal with an original libidinous
investment of thought or whether the same process has been accomplished
regressively, the psychic results are the same, namely, intellectual
narcism and omnipotence of thought[117].
If we may take the now established omnipotence of thought among
primitive races as a proof of their narcism, we may venture to compare
the various evolutionary stages of man’s conception of the universe with
the stages of the libidinous evolution of the individual. We find that
the animistic phase corresponds in time as well as in content with
narcism, the religious phase corresponds to that stage of object finding
which is characterized by dependence on the parents, while the
scientific stage has its full counterpart in the individual’s stage of
maturity where, having renounced the pleasure principle and having
adapted himself to reality, he seeks his object in the outer world[118].
Only in one field has the omnipotence of thought been retained in our
own civilization, namely in art. In art alone it still happens that man,
consumed by his wishes, produces something similar to the gratification
of these wishes, and this playing, thanks to artistic illusion, calls
forth effects as if it were something real. We rightly speak of the
magic of art and compare the artist with a magician. But this comparison
is perhaps more important than it claims to be. Art, which certainly did
not begin as art for art’s sake, originally served tendencies which
to-day have for the greater part ceased to exist. Among these we may
suspect various magic intentions[119].
4
Animism, the first conception of the world which man succeeded in
evolving, was therefore psychological. It did not yet require any
science to establish it, for science sets in only after we have realized
that we do not know the world and that we must therefore seek means of
getting to know it. But animism was natural and self-evident to
primitive man; he knew how the things of the world were constituted, and
as man conceived himself to be. We are therefore prepared to find that
primitive man transferred the structural relations of his own psyche to
the outer world[120], and on the other hand we may make the attempt to
transfer back into the human soul what animism teaches about the nature
of things.
Magic, the technique of animism, clearly and unmistakably shows the
tendency of forcing the laws of psychic life upon the reality of things,
under conditions where spirits did not yet have to play any rôle, and
could still be taken as objects of magic treatment. The assumptions of
magic are therefore of older origin than the spirit theory, which forms
the nucleus of animism. Our psychoanalytic view here coincides with a
theory of R. R. Marett, according to which animism is preceded by a
pre-animistic stage the nature of which is best indicated by the name
Animatism (the theory of general animation). We have practically no
further knowledge of pre-animism, as no race has yet been found without
conceptions of spirits[121].
While magic still retains the full omnipotence of ideas, animism has
ceded part of this omnipotence to spirits and thus has started on the
way to form a religion. Now what could have moved primitive man to this
first act of renunciation? It could hardly have been an insight into the
incorrectness of his assumptions, for he continued to retain the magic
technique.
As pointed out elsewhere, spirits and demons were nothing but the
projection of primitive man’s emotional impulses[122]; he personified
the things he endowed with effects, populated the world with them and
then rediscovered his inner psychic processes outside himself, quite
like the ingenious paranoiac Schreber, who found the fixations and
detachments of his libido reflected in the fates of the ‘God-rays’ which
he invented[123].
As on a former occasion[124], we want to avoid the problem as to the
origin of the tendency to project psychic processes into the outer
world. It is fair to assume, however, that this tendency becomes
stronger where the projection into the outer world offers psychic
relief. Such a state of affairs can with certainty be expected if the
impulses struggling for omnipotence have come into conflict with each
other, for then they evidently cannot all become omnipotent. The morbid
process in paranoia actually uses the mechanism of projection to solve
such conflicts which arise in the psychic life. However, it so happens
that the model case of such a conflict between two parts of an
antithesis is the ambivalent attitude which we have analysed in detail
in the situation of the mourner at the death of one dear to him. Such a
case appeals to us especially fitted to motivate the creation of
projection formations. Here again we are in agreement with those authors
who declare that evil spirits were the first born among spirits, and
find the origin of soul conceptions in the impression which death makes
upon the survivors. We differ from them only in not putting the
intellectual problem which death imposes upon the living into the
foreground, instead of which we transfer the force which stimulates
inquiry to the conflict of feelings into which this situation plunges
the survivor.
The first theoretical accomplishment of man, the creation of spirits
would therefore spring from the same source as the first moral
restrictions to which he subjects himself, namely, the rules of taboo.
But the fact that they have the same source should not prejudice us in
favour of a simultaneous origin. If it really were the situation of the
survivor confronted by the dead which first caused primitive man to
reflect, so that he was compelled to surrender some of his omnipotence
to spirits and to sacrifice a part of the free will of his actions,
these cultural creations would be a first recognition of the [Greek:
ἁνἁγκη anagkê], which opposes man’s narcism. Primitive man would bow to the
superior power of death with the same gesture with which he seems to
deny it.
If we have the courage to follow our assumptions further, we may ask
what essential part of our psychological structure is reflected and
reviewed in the projection formation of souls and spirits. It is then
difficult to dispute that the primitive conception of the soul, though
still far removed from the later and wholly immaterial soul,
nevertheless shares its nature and therefore looks upon a person or a
thing as a duality, over the two elements of which the known properties
and changes of the whole are distributed. This origin duality, we have
borrowed the term from Herbert Spencer[125], is already identical with
the dualism which manifests itself in our customary separation of spirit
from body, and whose indestructible linguistic manifestations we
recognize, for instance, in the description of a person who faints or
raves as one who is ‘beside himself.’[126]
The thing which we, just like primitive man, project in outer reality,
can hardly be anything else than the recognition of a state in which a
given thing is present to the senses and to consciousness, next to which
another state exists in which the thing is _latent_, but can reappear,
that is to say, the co-existence of perception and memory, or, to
generalize it, the existence of unconscious psychic processes next to
conscious ones[127]. It might be said that in the last analysis the
‘spirit’ of a person or thing is the faculty of remembering and
representing the object, after he or it was withdrawn from conscious
perception.
Of course we must not expect from either the primitive or the current
conception of the ‘soul’ that its line of demarcation from other parts
should be as marked as that which contemporary science draws between
conscious and unconscious psychic activity. The animistic soul, on the
contrary, unites determinants from both sides. Its flightiness and
mobility, its faculty of leaving the body, of permanently or temporarily
taking possession of another body, all these are characteristics which
remind us unmistakably of the nature of consciousness. But the way in
which it keeps itself concealed behind the personal appearance reminds
us of the unconscious; to-day we no longer ascribe its unchangeableness
and indestructibility to conscious but to unconscious processes and look
upon these as the real bearers of psychic activity.
We said before that animism is a system of thought, the first complete
theory of the world; we now want to draw certain inferences through
psychoanalytic interpretation of such a system. Our everyday experience
is capable of constantly showing us the main characteristics of the
‘system’. We dream during the night and have learnt to interpret the
dream in the daytime. The dream can, without being untrue to its nature,
appear confused and incoherent; but on the other hand it can also
imitate the order of impressions of an experience, infer one occurrence
from another, and refer one part of its contents to another. The dream
succeeds more or less in this, but hardly ever succeeds so completely
that an absurdity or a gap in the structure does not appear somewhere.
If we subject the dream to interpretation we find that this unstable and
irregular order of its components is quite unimportant for our
understanding of it. The essential part of the dream are the dream
thoughts, which have, to be sure, a significant, coherent, order. But
their order is quite different from that which we remember from the
manifest content of the dream. The coherence of the dream thoughts has
been abolished and may either remain altogether lost or can be replaced
by the new coherence of the dream content. Besides the condensation of
the dream elements there is almost regularly a re-grouping of the same
which is more or less independent of the former order. We say in
conclusion, that what the dream-work has made out of the material of the
dream thoughts has been subjected to a new influence, the so-called
secondary elaboration, the object of which evidently is to do away with
the incoherence and incomprehensibility caused by the dream-work, in
favour of a new ‘meaning’. This new meaning which has been brought about
by the secondary elaboration is no longer the meaning of the dream
thoughts.
The secondary elaboration of the product of the dream-work is an
excellent example of the nature and the pretensions of a system. An
intellectual function in us demands the unification, coherence and
comprehensibility of everything perceived and thought of, and does not
hesitate to construct a false connexion if, as a result of special
circumstances, it cannot grasp the right one. We know such system
formation not only from the dream, but also from phobias, from
compulsive thinking and from the types of delusions. The system
formation is most ingenious in delusional states (paranoia) and
dominates the clinical picture, but it also must not be overlooked in
other forms of neuropsychoses. In every case we can show that a
re-arrangement of the psychic material takes place, which may often be
quite violent, provided it seems comprehensible from the point of view
of the system. The best indication that a system has been formed then
lies in the fact that each result of it can be shown to have at least
two motivations one of which springs from the assumptions of the system
and is therefore eventually delusional,--and a hidden one which,
however, we must recognize as the real and effective motivation.
An example from a neurosis may serve as illustration. In the chapter on
taboo I mentioned a patient whose compulsive prohibitions correspond
very neatly to the taboo of the Maori.[128] The neurosis of this woman
was directed against her husband and culminated in the defence against
the unconscious wish for his death. But her manifest systematic phobia
concerned the mention of death in general, in which her husband was
altogether eliminated and never became the object of conscious
solicitude. One day she heard her husband give an order to have his dull
razors taken to a certain shop to have them sharpened. Impelled by a
peculiar unrest she went to the shop herself, and on her return from
this reconnoitre she asked her husband to lay the razors aside for good
because she had discovered that there was a warehouse of coffins and
funeral accessories next to the shop he mentioned. She claimed that he
had intentionally brought the razors into permanent relation with the
idea of death. This was then the systematic motivation of the
prohibition, but we may be sure that the patient would have brought home
the prohibition relating to the razors even if she had not discovered
this warehouse in the neighbourhood. For it would have been sufficient
if on her way to the shop she had met a hearse, a person in mourning, or
somebody carrying a wreath. The net of determinants was spread out far
enough to catch the prey in any case, it was simply a question whether
she should pull it in or not. It could be established with certainty
that she did not mobilize the determinants of the prohibition in other
circumstances. She would then have said it had been one of her ‘better
days’. The real reason for the prohibition of the razor was, of course,
as we can easily guess, her resistance against a pleasurably
accentuated idea that her husband might cut his throat with the
sharpened razors.
In much the same way a motor inhibition, an abasia or an agoraphobia,
becomes perfected and detailed if the symptom once succeeds in
representing an unconscious wish and of imposing a defence against it.
All the patient’s remaining unconscious phantasies and effective
reminiscences strive for symptomatic expression through this outlet,
when once it has been opened, and range themselves appropriately in the
new order within the sphere of the disturbance of gait. It would
therefore be a futile and really foolish way to begin to try to
understand the symptomatic structure, and the details of, let us say, an
agoraphobia, in terms of its basic assumptions. For the whole logic and
strictness of connexion is only apparent. Sharper observation can
reveal, as in the formation of the façade in the dream, the greatest
inconsistency and arbitrariness in the symptom formation. The details of
such a systematic phobia take their real motivation from concealed
determinants which must have nothing to do with the inhibition in gait;
it is for this reason that the form of such a phobia varies so and is so
contradictory in different people.
If we now attempt to retrace the system of animism with which we are
concerned, we may conclude from our insight into other psychological
systems that ‘superstition’ need not be the only and actual motivation
of such a single rule or custom even among primitive races, and that we
are not relieved of the obligation of seeking for concealed motives.
Under the dominance of an animistic system it is absolutely essential
that each rule and activity should receive a systematic motivation which
we to-day call ‘superstitious’. But ‘superstition’, like ‘anxiety’,
‘dreams’, and ‘demons’, is one of the preliminaries of psychology which
have been dissipated by psychoanalytic investigation. If we get behind
these structures, which like a screen conceal understanding, we realize
that the psychic life and the cultural level of savages have hitherto
been inadequately appreciated.
If we regard the repression of impulses as a measure of the level of
culture attained, we must admit that under the animistic system too,
progress and evolution have taken place, which unjustly have been
under-estimated on account of their superstitious motivation. If we hear
that the warriors of a savage tribe impose the greatest chastity and
cleanliness upon themselves as soon as they go upon the war-path[129],
the obvious explanation is that they dispose of their refuse in order
that the enemy may not come into possession of this part of their person
in order to harm them by magical means, and we may surmise analogous
superstitious motivations for their abstinence. Nevertheless the fact
remains that the impulse is renounced and we probably understand the
case better if we assume that the savage warrior imposes such
restrictions upon himself in compensation, because he is on the point of
allowing himself the full satisfaction of cruel and hostile impulses
otherwise forbidden. The same holds good for the numerous cases of
sexual restriction while he is preoccupied with difficult or responsible
tasks[130]. Even if the basis of these prohibitions can be referred to
some association with magic, the fundamental conception of gaining
greater strength by foregoing gratification of desires nevertheless
remains unmistakable, and besides the magic rationalization of the
prohibition, one must not neglect its hygienic root. When the men of a
savage tribe go away to hunt, fish, make war, or collect valuable
plants, the women at home are in the meantime subjected to numerous
oppressive restrictions which, according to the savages themselves,
exert a sympathetic effect upon the success of the far away expedition.
But it does not require much acumen to guess that this element acting
at a distance is nothing but a thought of home, the longing of the
absent, and that these disguises conceal the sound psychological insight
that the men will do their best only if they are fully assured of the
whereabouts of their guarded women. On other occasions the thought is
directly expressed without magic motivation that the conjugal infidelity
of the wife thwarts the absent husband’s efforts.
The countless taboo rules to which the women of savages are subject
during their menstrual periods are motivated by the superstitious dread
of blood which in all probability actually determines it. But it would
be wrong to overlook the possibility that this blood dread also serves
æsthetic and hygienic purposes which in every case have to be covered by
magic motivations.
We are probably not mistaken in assuming that such attempted
explanations expose us to the reproach of attributing a most improbable
delicacy of psychic activities to contemporary savages.
But I think that we may easily make the same mistake with the psychology
of these races who have remained at the animistic stage that we made
with the psychic life of the child, which we adults understood no better
and whose richness and fineness of feeling we have therefore so greatly
undervalued.
I want to consider another group of hitherto unexplained taboo rules
because they admit of an explanation with which the psychoanalyst is
familiar. Under certain conditions it is forbidden to many savage races
to keep in the house sharp weapons and instruments for cutting[131].
Frazer sites a German superstition that a knife must not be left lying
with the edge pointing upward because God and the angels might injure
themselves with it. May we not recognize in this taboo a premonition of
certain ‘symptomatic actions’[132] for which the sharp weapon might be
used by unconscious evil impulses?