Part 17

See 'Zur Einführung des Narzissmus', 1914. Kleine Schriften zur Neurosenlehre, Vierte Folge, 1918.

See Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie, and Abraham's 'Untersuchungen über die früheste prägenitale Entwicklungsstufe der Libido', Internationale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse, 1916, Bd, IV; also included in his Klinische Beiträge zur Psychoanalyse (Internationale psychoanalytische Bibliothek. Nr. 10, 1921).

Marcuszewicz: 'Beitrag zum autistischen Denken bei Kindern.' Internationale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse, 1920, Bd. VI.

'Zur Einführung des Narzissmus', 'Trauer und Melancholie.'

'Zur Einführung des Narzissmus.'

We are very well aware that we have not exhausted the nature of identification with these samples taken from pathology, and that we have consequently left part of the riddle of group formations untouched. A far more fundamental and comprehensive psychological analysis would have to intervene at this point. A path leads from identification by way of imitation to empathy, that is, to the comprehension of the mechanism by means of which we are enabled to take up any attitude at all towards another mental life. Moreover there is still much to be explained in the manifestations of existing identifications. These result among other things in a person limiting his aggressiveness towards those with whom he has identified himself, and in his sparing them and giving them help. The study of such identifications, like those, for instance, which lie at the root of clan feeling, led Robertson Smith to the surprising result that they rest upon the recognition of a common substance (Kinship and Marriage, 1885), and may even therefore be brought about by a meal eaten in common. This feature makes it possible to connect this kind of identification with the early history of the human family which I constructed in Totem und Tabu.

Cf. Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie, l.c.

'Über die allgemeinste Erniedrigung des Liebeslebens.' Kleine Schriften zur Neurosenlehre, Vierte Folge, 1918.

Cf. 'Metapsychologische Ergänzung zur Traumlehre.' Kleine Schriften zur Neurosenlehre, Vierte Folge, 1918.

W. Trotter: Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War. Fisher Unwin, 1916.

See my essay Jenseits des Lustprinzips.

See the remarks upon Dread in Vorlesungen zur Einführung in die Psychoanalyse. XXV.

Totem und Tabu.

What we have just described in our general characterisation of mankind must apply especially to the primal horde. The will of the individual was too weak; he did not venture upon action. No impulses whatever came into play except collective ones; there was only a common will, there were no single ones. An idea did not dare to turn itself into a volition unless it felt itself reinforced by a perception of its general diffusion. This weakness of the idea is to be explained by the strength of the emotional tie which is shared by all the members of the horde; but the similarity in the circumstances of their life and the absence of any private property assist in determining the uniformity of their individual mental acts. As we may observe with children and soldiers, common activity is not excluded even in the excremental functions. The one great exception is provided by the sexual act, in which a third person is at the best superfluous and in the extreme case is condemned to a state of painful expectancy. As to the reaction of the sexual need (for genital gratification) towards gregariousness, see below.

It may perhaps also be assumed that the sons, when they were driven out and separated from their father, advanced from identification with one another to homosexual object love, and in this way won freedom to kill their father.

'Das Unheimliche.' Imago, 1919, Bd. V.

See Totem und Tabu and the sources there quoted.

This situation, in which the subject's attitude is unconsciously directed towards the hypnotist, while he is consciously occupied with the monotonous and uninteresting perceptions, finds a parallel among the events of psycho-analytic treatment, which deserves to be mentioned here. At least once in the course of every analysis a moment comes when the patient obstinately maintains that just now positively nothing whatever occurs to his mind. His free associations come to a stop and the usual incentives for putting them in motion fail in their effect. As a result of pressure the patient is at last induced to admit that he is thinking of the view from the consulting-room window, of the wall-paper that he sees before him, or of the gas-lamp hanging from the ceiling. Then one knows at once that he has gone off into the transference and that he is engaged upon what are still unconscious thoughts relating to the physician; and one sees the stoppage in the patient's associations disappear, as soon as he has been given this explanation.

Ferenczi: 'Introjektion und Übertragung.' Jahrbuch der Psychoanalyse, 1909, Bd. I [Contributions to Psycho-Analysis. Boston, Badger, 1916, Chapter II.]

It seems to me worth emphasizing the fact that the discussions in this section have induced us to give up Bernheim's conception of hypnosis and go back to the naïf earlier one. According to Bernheim all hypnotic phenomena are to be traced to the factor of suggestion, which is not itself capable of further explanation. We have come to the conclusion that suggestion is a partial manifestation of the state of hypnosis, and that hypnosis is solidly founded upon a predisposition which has survived in the unconscious from the early history of the human family.

'Trauer und Melancholie.'

Totem und Tabu.

Trotter traces repression back to the herd instinct. It is a translation of this into another form of expression rather than a contradiction when I say in my 'Einführung des Narzissmus' that on the part of the ego the construction of an ideal is the condition of repression.

Cf. Abraham: 'Ansätze zur psychoanalytischen Erforschung und Behandlung des manisch-depressiven Irreseins', 1912, in Klinische Beiträge zur Psychoanalyse, 1921.

To speak more accurately, they conceal themselves behind the reproaches directed towards the person's own ego, and lend them the fixity, tenacity, and imperativeness which characterize the self-reproaches of a melancholiac.

What follows at this point was written under the influence of an exchange of ideas with Otto Rank.

Cf. Hanns Sachs: 'Gemeinsame Tagträume', a summary made by the lecturer himself of a paper read at the Sixth Psycho-analytical Congress, held at the Hague in 1920. Internationale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse, 1920, Bd. VI. ['Day-Dreams in Common'. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 1920, Vol. I.]

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.