force is employed to prevent them from disintegrating and to check
alterations in their structure. As a rule a person is not consulted or
is given no choice, as to whether he wants to enter such a group; any
attempt at leaving it is usually met with persecution or with severe
punishment, or has quite definite conditions attached to it. It is quite
outside our present interest to enquire why these associations need such
special safeguards. We are only attracted by one circumstance, namely
that certain facts, which are far more concealed in other cases, can be
observed very clearly in those highly organised groups which are
protected from dissolution in the manner that has been mentioned. In a
church (and we may with advantage take the Catholic Church as a type) as
well as in an army, however different the two may be in other respects,
the same illusion holds good of there being a head--in the Catholic
Church Christ, in an army its Commander-in-Chief--who loves all the
individuals in the group with an equal love. Everything depends upon
this illusion; if it were to be dropped, then both Church and army would
dissolve, so far as the external force permitted them to. This equal
love was expressly enunciated by Christ: 'Inasmuch as ye have done it
unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.' He
stands to the individual members of the group of believers in the
relation of a kind elder brother; he is their father surrogate. All the
demands that are made upon the individual are derived from this love of
Christ's. A democratic character runs through the Church, for the very
reason that before Christ everyone is equal, and that everyone has an
equal share in his love. It is not without a deep reason that the
similarity between the Christian community and a family is invoked, and
that believers call themselves brothers in Christ, that is, brothers
through the love which Christ has for them. There is no doubt that the
tie which unites each individual with Christ is also the cause of the
tie which unites them with one another. The like holds good of an army.
The Commander-in-Chief is a father who loves all his soldiers equally,
and for that reason they are comrades among themselves. The army differs
structurally from the Church in being built up of a series of such
groups. Every captain is, as it were, the Commander-in-Chief and the
father of his company, and so is every non-commissioned officer of his
section. It is true that a similar hierarchy has been constructed in the
Church, but it does not play the same part in it economically; for more
knowledge and care about individuals may be attributed to Christ than
to a human Commander-in-Chief.[28]
It is to be noticed that in these two artificial groups each individual
is bound by libidinal[29] ties on the one hand to the leader (Christ,
the Commander-in-Chief) and on the other hand to the other members of
the group. How these two ties are related to each other, whether they
are of the same kind and the same value, and how they are to be
described psychologically--these questions must be reserved for
subsequent enquiry. But we shall venture even now upon a mild reproach
against the authorities for not having sufficiently appreciated the
importance of the leader in the psychology of the group, while our own
choice of a first object for investigation has brought us into a more
favourable position. It would appear as though we were on the right road
towards an explanation of the principal phenomenon of Group
Psychology--the individual's lack of freedom in a group. If each
individual is bound in two directions by such an intense emotional tie,
we shall find no difficulty in attributing to that circumstance the
alteration and limitation which have been observed in his personality.
A hint to the same effect, that the essence of a group lies in the
libidinal ties existing in it, is also to be found in the phenomenon of
panic, which is best studied in military groups. A panic arises if a
group of that kind becomes disintegrated. Its characteristics are that
none of the orders given by superiors are any longer listened to, and
that each individual is only solicitous on his own account, and without
any consideration for the rest. The mutual ties have ceased to exist,
and a gigantic and senseless dread [_Angst_] is set free. At this point,
again, the objection will naturally be made that it is rather the other
way round; and that the dread has grown so great as to be able to
disregard all ties and all feelings of consideration for others.
McDougall has even (p. 24) made use of the case of panic (though not of
military panic) as a typical instance of that intensification of emotion
by contagion ('primary induction') upon which he lays so much emphasis.
But nevertheless this rational method of explanation is here quite
inadequate. The very question that needs explanation is why the dread
has become so gigantic. The greatness of the danger cannot be
responsible, for the same army which now falls a victim to panic may
previously have faced equally great or greater danger with complete
success; it is of the very essence of panic that it bears no relation to
the danger that threatens, and often breaks out upon the most trivial
occasions. If an individual in panic dread begins to be solicitous only
on his own account, he bears witness in so doing to the fact that the
emotional ties, which have hitherto made the danger seem small to him,
have ceased to exist. Now that he is by himself in facing the danger,
he may surely think it greater. The fact is, therefore, that panic dread
presupposes a relaxation in the libidinal structure of the group and
reacts to it in a justifiable manner, and the contrary view--that the
libidinal ties of the group are destroyed owing to dread in the face of
the danger--can be refuted.
The contention that dread in a group is increased to enormous
proportions by means of induction (contagion) is not in the least
contradicted by these remarks. McDougall's view meets the case entirely
when the danger is a really great one and when the group has no strong
emotional ties--conditions which are fulfilled, for instance, when a
fire breaks out in a theatre or a place of amusement. But the really
instructive case and the one which can be best employed for our purposes
is that mentioned above, in which a body of troops breaks into a panic
although the danger has not increased beyond a degree that is usual and
has often been previously faced. It is not to be expected that the usage
of the word 'panic' should be clearly and unambiguously determined.
Sometimes it is used to describe any collective dread, sometimes even
dread in an individual when it exceeds all bounds, and often the name
seems to be reserved for cases in which the outbreak of dread is not
warranted by the occasion. If we take the word 'panic' in the sense of
collective dread, we can establish a far-reaching analogy. Dread in an
individual is provoked either by the greatness of a danger or by the
cessation of emotional ties (libidinal cathexes[30]
[_Libidobesetzungen_]); the latter is the case of neurotic dread.[31] In
just the same way panic arises either owing to an increase of the common
danger or owing to the disappearance of the emotional ties which hold
the group together; and the latter case is analogous to that of neurotic
dread.[32]
Anyone who, like McDougall (l.c.), describes a panic as one of the
plainest functions of the 'group mind', arrives at the paradoxical
position that this group mind does away with itself in one of its most
striking manifestations. It is impossible to doubt that panic means the
disintegration of a group; it involves the cessation of all the feelings
of consideration which the members of the group otherwise show one
another.
The typical occasion of the outbreak of a panic is very much as it is
represented in Nestroy's parody of Hebbel's play about Judith and
Holofernes. A soldier cries out: "The general has lost his head!" and
thereupon all the Assyrians take to flight. The loss of the leader in
some sense or other, the birth, of misgivings about him, brings on the
outbreak of panic, though the danger remains the same; the mutual ties
between the members of the group disappear, as a rule, at the same time
as the tie with their leader. The group vanishes in dust, like a Bologna
flask when its top is broken off.
The dissolution of a religious group is not so easy to observe. A short
time ago there came into my hands an English novel of Catholic origin,
recommended by the Bishop of London, with the title _When It Was Dark_.
It gave a clever and, as it seems to me, a convincing picture of such a
possibility and its consequences. The novel, which is supposed to
relate to the present day, tells how a conspiracy of enemies of the
figure of Christ and of the Christian faith succeed in arranging for a
sepulchre to be discovered in Jerusalem. In this sepulchre is an
inscription, in which Joseph of Arimathaea confesses that for reasons of
piety he secretly removed the body of Christ from its grave on the third
day after its entombment and buried it in this spot. The resurrection of
Christ and his divine nature are by this means disposed of, and the
result of this archaeological discovery is a convulsion in European
civilisation and an extraordinary increase in all crimes and acts of
violence, which only ceases when the forgers' plot has been revealed.
The phenomenon which accompanies the dissolution that is here supposed
to overtake a religious group is not dread, for which the occasion is
wanting. Instead of it ruthless and hostile impulses towards other
people make their appearance, which, owing to the equal love of Christ,
they had previously been unable to do.[33] But even during the kingdom
of Christ those people who do not belong to the community of believers,
who do not love him, and whom he does not love, stand outside this tie.
Therefore a religion, even if it calls itself the religion of love,
must be hard and unloving to those who do not belong to it.
Fundamentally indeed every religion is in this same way a religion of
love for all those whom it embraces; while cruelty and intolerance
towards those who do not belong to it are natural to every religion.
However difficult we may find it personally, we ought not to reproach
believers too severely on this account; people who are unbelieving or
indifferent are so much better off psychologically in this respect. If
to-day that intolerance no longer shows itself so violent and cruel as
in former centuries, we can scarcely conclude that there has been a
softening in human manners. The cause is rather to be found in the
undeniable weakening of religious feelings and the libidinal ties which
depend upon them. If another group tie takes the place of the religious
one--and the socialistic tie seems to be succeeding in doing so--, then
there will be the same intolerance towards outsiders as in the age of
the Wars of Religion; and if differences between scientific opinions
could ever attain a similar significance for groups, the same result
would again be repeated with this new motivation.
VI
FURTHER PROBLEMS AND LINES OF WORK
We have hitherto considered two artificial groups and have found that
they are dominated by two emotional ties. One of these, the tie with the
leader, seems (at all events for these cases) to be more of a ruling
factor than the other, which holds between the members of the group.
Now much else remains to be examined and described in the morphology of
groups. We should have to start from the ascertained fact that a mere
collection of people is not a group, so long as these ties have not been
established in it; but we should have to admit that in any collection of
people the tendency to form a psychological group may very easily become
prominent. We should have to give our attention to the different kinds
of groups, more or less stable, that arise spontaneously, and to study
the conditions of their origin and of their dissolution. We should above
all be concerned with the distinction between groups which have a
leader and leaderless groups. We should consider whether groups with
leaders may not be the more primitive and complete, whether in the
others an idea, an abstraction, may not be substituted for the leader (a
state of things to which religious groups, with their invisible head,
form a transition stage), and whether a common tendency, a wish in which
a number of people can have a share, may not in the same way serve as a
substitute. This abstraction, again, might be more or less completely
embodied in the figure of what we might call a secondary leader, and
interesting varieties would arise from the relation between the idea and
the leader. The leader or the leading idea might also, so to speak, be
negative; hatred against a particular person or institution might
operate in just the same unifying way, and might call up the same kind
of emotional ties as positive attachment. Then the question would also
arise whether a leader is really indispensable to the essence of a
group--and other questions besides.
But all these questions, which may, moreover, have been dealt with in
part in the literature of Group Psychology, will not succeed in
diverting our interest from the fundamental psychological problems that
confront us in the structure of a group. And our attention will first be
attracted by a consideration which promises to bring us in the most
direct way to a proof that libidinal ties are what characterize a
group.
Let us keep before our eyes the nature of the emotional relations which
hold between men in general. According to Schopenhauer's famous simile
of the freezing porcupines no one can tolerate a too intimate approach
to his neighbour.[34]
The evidence of psycho-analysis shows that almost every intimate
emotional relation between two people which lasts for some
time--marriage, friendship, the relations between parents and
children[35]--leaves a sediment of feelings of aversion and hostility,
which have first to be eliminated by repression. This is less disguised
in the common wrangles between business partners or in the grumbles of a
subordinate at his superior. The same thing happens when men come
together in larger units. Every time two families become connected by a
marriage, each of them thinks itself superior to or of better birth than
the other. Of two neighbouring towns each is the other's most jealous
rival; every little canton looks down upon the others with contempt.
Closely related races keep one another at arm's length; the South German
cannot endure the North German, the Englishman casts every kind of
aspersion upon the Scotchman, the Spaniard despises the Portuguese. We
are no longer astonished that greater differences should lead to an
almost insuperable repugnance, such as the Gallic people feel for the
German, the Aryan for the Semite, and the white races for the coloured.
When this hostility is directed against people who are otherwise loved
we describe it as ambivalence of feeling; and we explain the fact, in
what is probably far too rational a manner, by means of the numerous
occasions for conflicts of interest which arise precisely in such
intimate relations. In the undisguised antipathies and aversions which
people feel towards strangers with whom they have to do we may recognize
the expression of self-love--of narcissism. This self-love works for the
self-assertion of the individual, and behaves as though the occurrence
of any divergence from his own particular lines of development involved
a criticism of them and a demand for their alteration. We do not know
why such sensitiveness should have been directed to just these details
of differentiation; but it is unmistakable that in this whole connection
men give evidence of a readiness for hatred, an aggressiveness, the
source of which is unknown, and to which one is tempted to ascribe an
elementary character.[36]
But the whole of this intolerance vanishes, temporarily or permanently,
as the result of the formation of a group, and in a group. So long as a
group formation persists or so far as it extends, individuals behave as
though they were uniform, tolerate other people's peculiarities, put
themselves on an equal level with them, and have no feeling of aversion
towards them. Such a limitation of narcissism can, according to our
theoretical views, only be produced by one factor, a libidinal tie with
other people. Love for oneself knows only one barrier--love for others,
love for objects.[37] The question will at once be raised whether
community of interest in itself, without any addition of libido, must
not necessarily lead to the toleration of other people and to
considerateness for them. This objection may be met by the reply that
nevertheless no lasting limitation of narcissism is effected in this
way, since this tolerance does not persist longer than the immediate
advantage gained from the other people's collaboration. But the
practical importance of the discussion is less than might be supposed,
for experience has shown that in cases of collaboration libidinal ties
are regularly formed between the fellow-workers which prolong and
solidify the relation between them to a point beyond what is merely
profitable. The same thing occurs in men's social relations as has
become familiar to psycho-analytic research in the course of the
development of the individual libido. The libido props itself upon the
satisfaction of the great vital needs, and chooses as its first objects
the people who have a share in that process. And in the development of
mankind as a whole, just as in individuals, love alone acts as the
civilizing factor in the sense that it brings a change from egoism to
altruism. And this is true both of the sexual love for women, with all
the obligations which it involves of sparing what women are fond of, and
also of the desexualised, sublimated homosexual love for other men,
which springs from work in common. If therefore in groups narcissistic
self-love is subject to limitations which do not operate outside them,
that is cogent evidence that the essence of a group formation consists
in a new kind of libidinal ties among the members of the group.
But our interest now leads us on to the pressing question as to what may
be the nature of these ties which exist in groups. In the
psycho-analytic study of neuroses we have hitherto been occupied almost
exclusively with ties that unite with their objects those love instincts
which still pursue directly sexual aims. In groups there can evidently
be no question of sexual aims of that kind. We are concerned here with
love instincts which have been diverted from their original aims, though
they do not operate with less energy on that account. Now we have
already observed within the range of the usual sexual object-cathexis
[_Objektbesetzung_] phenomena which represent a diversion of the
instinct from its sexual aim. We have described them as degrees of being
in love, and have recognized that they involve a certain encroachment
upon the ego. We shall now turn our attention more closely to these
phenomena of being in love, in the firm expectation of finding in them
conditions which can be transferred to the ties that exist in groups.
But we should also like to know whether this kind of object-cathexis, as
we know it in sexual life, represents the only manner of emotional tie
with other people, or whether we must take other mechanisms of the sort
into account. As a matter of fact we learn from psycho-analysis that
there do exist other mechanisms for emotional ties, the so-called
_identifications_, insufficiently-known processes and hard to describe,
the investigation of which will for some time keep us away from the
subject of Group Psychology.
VII
IDENTIFICATION
Identification is known to psycho-analysis as the earliest expression of
an emotional tie with another person. It plays a part in the early
history of the Oedipus complex. A little boy will exhibit a special
interest in his father; he would like to grow like him and be like him,
and take his place everywhere. We may say simply that he takes his
father as his ideal. This behaviour has nothing to do with a passive or
feminine attitude towards his father (and towards males in general); it
is on the contrary typically masculine. It fits in very well with the
Oedipus complex, for which it helps to prepare the way.
At the same time as this identification with his father, or a little
later, the boy has begun to develop a true object-cathexis towards his
mother according to the anaclitic type [_Anlehnungstypus_].[38] He then
exhibits, therefore, two psychologically distinct ties: a
straightforward sexual object-cathexis towards his mother and a typical
identification towards his father. The two subsist side by side for a
time without any mutual influence or interference. In consequence of the
irresistible advance towards a unification of mental life they come
together at last; and the normal Oedipus complex originates from their
confluence. The little boy notices that his father stands in his way
with his mother. His identification with his father then takes on a
hostile colouring and becomes identical with the wish to replace his
father in regard to his mother as well. Identification, in fact, is
ambivalent from the very first; it can turn into an expression of
tenderness as easily as into a wish for someone's removal. It behaves
like a derivative of the first _oral_ phase of the organisation of the
libido, in which the object that we long for and prize is assimilated by
eating and is in that way annihilated as such. The cannibal, as we know,
has remained at this standpoint; he has a devouring affection for his
enemies and only devours people of whom he is fond.[39]
The subsequent history of this identification with the father may easily
be lost sight of. It may happen that the Oedipus complex becomes
inverted, and that the father is taken as the object of a feminine
attitude, an object from which the directly sexual instincts look for
satisfaction; in that event the identification with the father has
become the precursor of an object tie with the father. The same holds
good, with the necessary substitutions, of the baby daughter as well.
It is easy to state in a formula the distinction between an
identification with the father and the choice of the father as an
object. In the first case one's father is what one would like to _be_,
and in the second he is what one would like to _have_. The distinction,
that is, depends upon whether the tie attaches to the subject or to the
object of the ego. The former is therefore already possible before any
sexual object-choice has been made. It is much more difficult to give a
clear metapsychological representation of the distinction. We can only
see that identification endeavours to mould a person's own ego after the
fashion of the one that has been taken as a 'model'.