X

THE GROUP AND THE PRIMAL HORDE


In 1912 I took up a conjecture of Darwin's to the effect that the
primitive form of human society was that of a horde ruled over
despotically by a powerful male. I attempted to show that the fortunes
of this horde have left indestructible traces upon the history of human
descent; and, especially, that the development of totemism, which
comprises in itself the beginnings of religion, morality, and social
organisation, is connected with the killing of the chief by violence and
the transformation of the paternal horde into a community of
brothers.[53] To be sure, this is only a hypothesis, like so many others
with which archaeologists endeavour to lighten the darkness of
prehistoric times--a 'Just-So Story', as it was amusingly called by a
not unkind critic (Kroeger); but I think it is creditable to such a
hypothesis if it proves able to bring coherence and understanding into
more and more new regions.

Human groups exhibit once again the familiar picture of an individual of
superior strength among a troop of similar companions, a picture which
is also contained in our idea of the primal horde. The psychology of
such a group, as we know it from the descriptions to which we have so
often referred--the dwindling of the conscious individual personality,
the focussing of thoughts and feelings into a common direction, the
predominance of the emotions and of the unconscious mental life, the
tendency to the immediate carrying out of intentions as they emerge--all
this corresponds to a state of regression to a primitive mental
activity, of just such a sort as we should be inclined to ascribe to the
primal horde.[54]

Thus the group appears to us as a revival of the primal horde. Just as
primitive man virtually survives in every individual, so the primal
horde may arise once more out of any random crowd; in so far as men are
habitually under the sway of group formation we recognise in it the
survival of the primal horde. We must conclude that the psychology of
the group is the oldest human psychology; what we have isolated as
individual psychology, by neglecting all traces of the group, has only
since come into prominence out of the old group psychology, by a gradual
process which may still, perhaps, be described as incomplete. We shall
later venture upon an attempt at specifying the point of departure of
this development.

Further reflection will show us in what respect this statement requires
correction. Individual psychology must, on the contrary, be just as old
as group psychology, for from the first there were two kinds of
psychologies, that of the individual members of the group and that of
the father, chief, or leader. The members of the group were subject to
ties just as we see them to-day, but the father of the primal horde was
free. His intellectual acts were strong and independent even in
isolation, and his will needed no reinforcement from others. Consistency
leads us to assume that his ego had few libidinal ties; he loved no one
but himself, or other people only in so far as they served his needs. To
objects his ego gave away no more than was barely necessary.

He, at the very beginning of the history of mankind, was the _Superman_
whom Nietzsche only expected from the future. Even to-day the members of
a group stand in need of the illusion that they are equally and justly
loved by their leader; but the leader himself need love no one else, he
may be of a masterly nature, absolutely narcissistic, but self-confident
and independent. We know that love puts a check upon narcissism, and it
would be possible to show how, by operating in this way, it became a
factor of civilisation.

The primal father of the horde was not yet immortal, as he later became
by deification. If he died, he had to be replaced; his place was
probably taken by a youngest son, who had up to then been a member of
the group like any other. There must therefore be a possibility of
transforming group psychology into individual psychology; a condition
must be discovered under which such a transformation is easily
accomplished, just as it is possible for bees in case of necessity to
turn a larva into a queen instead of into a worker. One can imagine only
one possibility: the primal father had prevented his sons from
satisfying their directly sexual tendencies; he forced them into
abstinence and consequently into the emotional ties with him and with
one another which could arise out of those of their tendencies that were
inhibited in their sexual aim. He forced them, so to speak, into group
psychology. His sexual jealousy and intolerance became in the last
resort the causes of group psychology.[55]

Whoever became his successor was also given the possibility of sexual
satisfaction, and was by that means offered a way out of the conditions
of group psychology. The fixation of the libido to woman and the
possibility of satisfaction without any need for delay or accumulation
made and end of the importance of those of his sexual tendencies that
were inhibited in their aim, and allowed his narcissism always to rise
to its full height. We shall return in a postscript to this connection
between love and character formation.

We may further emphasize, as being specially instructive, the relation
that holds between the contrivance by means of which an artificial group
is held together and the constitution of the primal horde. We have seen
that with an army and a church this contrivance is the illusion that
the leader loves all of the individuals equally and justly. But this is
simply an idealistic remodelling of the state of affairs in the primal
horde, where all of the sons knew that they were equally persecuted by
the primal father, and feared him equally. This same recasting upon
which all social duties are built up is already presupposed by the next
form of human society, the totemistic clan. The indestructible strength
of the family as a natural group formation rests upon the fact that this
necessary presupposition of the father's equal love can have a real
application in the family.

But we expect even more of this derivation of the group from the primal
horde. It ought also to help us to understand what is still
incomprehensible and mysterious in group formations--all that lies
hidden behind the enigmatic words hypnosis and suggestion. And I think
it can succeed in this too. Let us recall that hypnosis has something
positively uncanny about it; but the characteristic of uncanniness
suggests something old and familiar that has undergone repression.[56]
Let us consider how hypnosis is induced. The hypnotist asserts that he
is in possession of a mysterious power which robs the subject of his own
will, or, which is the same thing, the subject believes it of him. This
mysterious power (which is even now often described popularly as animal
magnetism) must be the same that is looked upon by primitive people as
the source of taboo, the same that emanates from kings and chieftains
and makes it dangerous to approach them (_mana_). The hypnotist, then,
is supposed to be in possession of this power; and how does he manifest
it? By telling the subject to look him in the eyes; his most typical
method of hypnotising is by his look. But it is precisely the sight of
the chieftain that is dangerous and unbearable for primitive people,
just as later that of the Godhead is for mortals. Even Moses had to act
as an intermediary between his people and Jehovah, since the people
could not support the sight of God; and when he returned from the
presence of God his face shone--some of the _mana_ had been transferred
on to him, just as happens with the intermediary among primitive
people.[57]

It is true that hypnosis can also be evoked in other ways, for instance
by fixing the eyes upon a bright object or by listening to a monotonous
sound. This is misleading and has given occasion to inadequate
physiological theories. As a matter of fact these procedures merely
serve to divert conscious attention and to hold it riveted. The
situation is the same as if the hypnotist had said to the subject: 'Now
concern yourself exclusively with my person; the rest of the world is
quite uninteresting.' It would of course be technically inexpedient for
a hypnotist to make such a speech; it would tear the subject away from
his unconscious attitude and stimulate him to conscious opposition. The
hypnotist avoids directing the subject's conscious thoughts towards his
own intentions, and makes the person upon whom he is experimenting sink
into an activity in which the world is bound to seem uninteresting to
him; but at the same time the subject is in reality unconsciously
concentrating his whole attention upon the hypnotist, and is getting
into an attitude of _rapport_, of transference on to him. Thus the
indirect methods of hypnotising, like many of the technical procedures
used in making jokes, have the effect of checking certain distributions
of mental energy which would interfere with the course of events in the
unconscious, and they lead eventually to the same result as the direct
methods of influence by means of staring or stroking.[58]

Ferenczi has made the true discovery that when a hypnotist gives the
command to sleep, which is often done at the beginning of hypnosis, he
is putting himself in the place of the subject's parents. He thinks that
two sorts of hypnosis are to be distinguished: one coaxing and soothing,
which he considers is modelled upon the mother, and another threatening,
which is derived from the father.[59] Now the command to sleep in
hypnosis means nothing more nor less than an order to withdraw all
interest from the world and to concentrate it upon the person of the
hypnotist. And it is so understood by the subject; for in this
withdrawal of interest from the outer world lies the psychological
characteristic of sleep, and the kinship between sleep and the state of
hypnosis is based upon it.

By the measures that he takes, then, the hypnotist awakens in the
subject a portion of his archaic inheritance which had also made him
compliant towards his parents and which had experienced an individual
re-animation in his relation to his father; what is thus awakened is the
idea of a paramount and dangerous personality, towards whom only a
passive-masochistic attitude is possible, to whom one's will has to be
surrendered,--while to be alone with him, 'to look him in the face',
appears a hazardous enterprise. It is only in some such way as this that
we can picture the relation of the individual member of the primal horde
to the primal father. As we know from other reactions, individuals have
preserved a variable degree of personal aptitude for reviving old
situations of this kind. Some knowledge that in spite of everything
hypnosis is only a game, a deceptive renewal of these old impressions,
may however remain behind and take care that there is a resistance
against any too serious consequences of the suspension of the will in
hypnosis.

The uncanny and coercive characteristics of group formations, which are
shown in their suggestion phenomena, may therefore with justice be
traced back to the fact of their origin from the primal horde. The
leader of the group is still the dreaded primal father; the group still
wishes to be governed by unrestricted force; it has an extreme passion
for authority; in Le Bon's phrase, it has a thirst for obedience. The
primal father is the group ideal, which governs the ego in the place of
the ego ideal. Hypnosis has a good claim to being described as a group
of two; there remains as a definition for suggestion--a conviction which
is not based upon perception and reasoning but upon an erotic tie.[60]