Freud, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921) (Chapters V-VI)

Here Freud begins to derive the “group mind” and its seemingly unique qualities from the psychoanalytic master-concept of libido. “We will try our fortune, then, with the supposition that love relationships…also constitute the essence of the group mind [Massenseele]” (31). Chapters V and VI carry forward the argument by, first, reviewing several group types — Church and Army — that illustrate Freud’s “bonding” hypothesis in a perspicuous way; and, second, addressing the uneasy relation of “love” to its inescapable shadow, “feelings of aversion and hostility” (42), which taint even the most loving relations with ambivalence. (Freud’s essay, “Mourning and Melancholia,” contains an extensive description of this ambivalence.)

Freud’s reflections on the Church and Army center on the forms of bonding each displays. Notwithstanding their real differences, the elementary emotional bonds holding them in place are essentially identical. Both are examples of “highly organized, lasting, and artificial groups” (32). Groups that lack these qualities — that are disorganized and unstable, that arise and dissolve spontaneously — scarcely qualify as groups at all. A group presupposes the condition of being held together.

The most striking characteristic shared by Church and Army — what for Freud accounts for their basic “morphologies” — is the “parental” figuration. In either case, “the same illusion holds good of there being a head…who loves all the individuals in the group with an equal love. Everything depends upon this illusion” (33). By “everything,” Freud means the continuing existence of the group. Somehow, the “belief” of the group members that they are loved by their leader — paraphrased, provocatively and without elaboration, as an “illusion” — generates in turn their own feelings of attachment, first to the leader and then to one another. This belief represents a necessary, albeit insufficient condition for the perpetuation of these groups. (Here Freud flags the possibility of “leaderless” (40) groups, hinting that “leading ideas” may assume the functions of leaders per se.)

The leaders in whose vital “love” the group members believe are Christ and the Commander-in-Chief. Each is construed, consciously or unconsciously, as a “kind elder brother” or “substitute father” (33) who cares about and looks after the welfare of everyone in his charge. Only on the basis of this original, primary “bond” — between leader and led — can there arise the secondary bond among the group members themselves. These member become united with one another, that is, by virtue of the unity each has individually established with a common leader.

Thus Freud remarks: “Believers call themselves bothers in Christ, that is, brothers through the love which Christ has for them” (33). As perfunctory evidence for these claims, Freud cites incidents of social disintegration — for example, when the members of an Army panic, dissolve their commitments, and turn on one another. Inevitably, Freud argues, this development is catalyzed by the antecedent rupture of the bond between these members and their leader (or more metaphorical “leading idea”), either because that leader has died, or abandoned his charge, or has retracted his “love” (or the basis for trusting it). Under these conditions, in which the principal, “parental” bond is broken, the secondary, “sibling” bonds quickly expire (38).

In this way, Freud has begun to ground the perplexing manifestations of group-mentality in the psychoanalytic theory of libido. The manifestations cited in the literature as suis generis, that is, “suggestibility,” “emotional contagion,” and the like — these may be explained, Freud suggests, as the predictable result of a specific libidinal distribution. In particular, the susceptibility of the individual to radical “alteration" by the group — the reduction of his intellect, and intensification of his affect, until they match the spirit of the group — can be understood along these lines:

“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” (35)

Common to the diverse manifestations of group-mentality is, fundamentally, the “impairment” of individual agency and integrity. But it is precisely libido, Eros, that most plainly activates this impairment. In other words, just this impairment illustrates Freud’s central thesis: “The essence of a group lies in the libidinal ties existing in it” (35).

In fact, Freud continues, “love for oneself knows only one barrier — love for others, love for objects” (43). Love, that is, is “the civilizing factor” (44) that checks every individual’s inborn “narcissism.” But our capacity to suspend this narcissism or “self love” — a precondition both of intimate relations and generic group membership — is finally limited. The mixed success of groups in maintaining themselves is a function of this limitation.

Freud, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921) (Chapters I-IV)

The book’s first sentence evokes and challenges a common perception, namely, that the disciplines of “individual” and “social” psychology are sharply differentiated:

“The contrast between individual psychology and social or group [Masse] Psychology, which at a first glance may seem to be full of significance, loses a great deal of its sharpness when it is examined more closely” (3)

In fact, Freud continues, all efforts to grasp the individual in isolation, to abstract from his or her “relations” with others, and to distinguish this individual from the subsequent “social” creature immersed in that ensemble of relations —these efforts are bound to fail:

“In the individual's mental life someone else is invariably involved, as a model, as an object, as a helper, as an opponent; and so from the very first individual psychology, in this extended but entirely justifiable sense of the words, is at the same time social psychology as well” (3)

These words may surprise readers who regard Freud as the originator, and most uncompromising advocate, of so-called “intrapsychic” images of mind. For, given the occasion to directly address this controversy and articulate his considered view, Freud inclines toward the “interpersonal” or the “relational” — precisely the paradigms that in recent decades have been routinely counterposed to Freud’s thinking.

Not only does Freud question the distinction between individual and social psychology. He also rejects the distinction — drawn by Gustave Le Bon and others — between “interpersonal” reality (the individual restricted to intimate relations) and that of “society” or the “group.” He indicates straightaway, in fact, that the same psychoanalytic concepts will describe and explain both.

In this introductory sketch, then, Freud does little more than question several related distinctions. The separation of individual from social psychology is, he suggests, more conventional and pragmatic than scientific: strictly speaking, the human being is virtually unimaginable apart from his or her “relations,” at the very least to the family. Similarly, the manifestations of our “collective” lives are not as social thinkers before Freud regarded them — suis generis functions of the “group mind,” unprecedented by, and incommensurable with the thought, emotion, and behavior of independent individuals. On the contrary, Freud will argue in Group Psychology that these collective manifestations are continuous with antecedent forms.

In particular, the psychological “expressions” of a member in a numerically great group are not, as Le Bon believes, a qualitatively distinct datum. Hence they do not require novel explanatory concepts, unneeded at the level of “isolated” individuals or small ensembles such as the family. The same psychoanalytic concepts and mechanisms that illuminate the individual and family are, appropriately adapted, sufficient to the group psychologist’s needs.

To motivate these anticipatory gestures, Freud in Chapters II and III canvasses some well-known contemporaneous accounts of Massenpsychologie. He does this, not in order to invalidate or even amend their descriptions and typologies of collective life (Freud accepts these as uncontroversial), but rather to isolate a mystery unresolved in their writings — a mystery camouflaged by “magic words” such as “suggestion,” “influence,” “contagion,” and “imitation,” alongside more scientific-sounding phrases like “primitive induction of emotion.” In fact, these words and phrases are tautological, since they essentially re-describe the explanandum as explanans.

In an autobiographical aside, Freud recounts his mounting dissatisfaction with and even “resistance” to these explanatorily-idle incantations, “protesting against the view that suggestion, which explained everything, was itself to be exempt from explanation” (28). In other words, confronted with phenomena that appear uniquely characteristic of the group-mind and in no way derivable from ordinary human behavior (as individuals in isolation or in small cohorts), Le Bon, Sighele, and McDougal are compelled to postulate novel forces — suggestion, contagion, etc. — to account for the “alterations” conceived as radical. These observers have in mind such alterations as the steep decline of “intellectual functioning” of any individual once interpolated into a large group, as well as the dramatic “intensification of affect” in him or her. These changes, this literature continues, are so discrepant from the ordinary run of things that some novel mechanism, like mass hypnosis, is required to explain them. (Later on, in fact, Freud will turn precisely to clinical experience with patients under hypnosis to make his point. His interest in hypnosis evidently began around the time of his studies with Charcot.)

To be sure, this “alteration” may also take less objectionable directions. Stabler and more highly organized groups may well elevate the moral capabilities of its members, rather than merely disabling their intellectual functioning and relaxing their scruples. The action of group mind is not uniformly regressive; only the frenzied “crowd,” neither stable nor organized, reliably induces regression.

Until this point, Chapter IV, Freud’s text has been mainly expository. Now Freud’s voice becomes innovative and critical, and begins to introduce the psychoanalytic concepts that both demystify the outstanding mystery and, more generally, redeem the Introduction’s promissory note: that, fundamentally, human behavior — whether in isolation or in groups, and whether in groups small or large — is defined by continuity, even homogeneity. There is no stark distinction immanent to human behaviors, hence there is no demand to evolve an incommensurable stock of “forces” attributable to some levels of behavior, but not to others.

The fulcrum of Freud’s argument is the concept of libido — as close to a psychoanalytic master-concept as one could like, which at times appears to explain each and every piece of mental functioning. The group-manifestations that Le Bon and McDougal trace to extraordinary forces are for Freud more or less disguised expressions of love. There follows a brief “deduction” of libido, eros, love, and cognate terms from their narrowly sexual basis: “The nucleus of what we mean by love naturally consists…in sexual love with sexual union as its aim” (29). Freud does not expend himself deriving these connections, which depend upon psychoanalytic observation, but confines himself to stating the axiom and asking: how might libido, once credited as a universal element in human behavior, explain group-manifestations that initially appear exceptional? I will take up this question in the next entry.

An Introduction

I will use this blog to record reflections during my psychoanalytic training at the William Alanson White Institute — mainly, I expect, on the reading that I do. I began this training last year in the Institute’s Intensive Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Program (IPPP), and I regret not having kept any consistent record of my impressions. Ideally, this blog will motivate me to clarify my reactions to this ongoing experience, both for my own reference and for the benefit of anyone kind enough to visit my site. I am not an expert here. My PhD is in the history of philosophy, and while I’ve long been curious about psychoanalysis, I am now reading much of the “canon” for the first time. Perhaps this is an advantage for readers approaching this same material from similar backgrounds or levels: likely they are struggling with similar difficulties, questions about the same texts, and may profit from the example of someone working out tentative solutions on his own. Readers who know more about psychoanalysis than I do, who have had greater experience in this “world” — both clinicians and scholars — are invited to correct my mistakes and fill in any gaps. With your help I won’t mislead myself or others too badly in my efforts to grasp a discourse with a reputation for difficulty.

The White Institute is the originator and contemporary home of interpersonal psychoanalysis, and so I expect that the better part of my reading diet will tilt in this direction, or at least won’t deviate too far from it. Certainly, most of the writing to which IPPP students are exposed falls squarely within these parameters, and I imagine the current track will reflect more continuity than discontinuity. Nonetheless, I will also post my reactions to works that do not connect in any obvious way, or connect only problematically, to the interpersonal tradition.

Finally, I want to append an intellectual-autobiographical note, by way of explanation for my enrollment at this particular institute. What, after all, has drawn me to interpersonal psychoanalysis and the White Institute, rather than the traditions represented at the various other institutes in NYC alone? As I make plain on other parts of this website, my main interests as an academic, my intellectual center of gravity, have been the great German philosopher G.W.F. Hegel and that collection of thinkers now usually glossed with the phrases “Frankfurt School” and “critical theory.” In fact, there are compelling connections between each of these interests and what is now called interpersonal psychoanalysis.

The first is a true elective affinity, rather than a matter of direct or indirect influence. For many of the themes, preoccupations, and claims most characteristic of this tradition received early, systematic attention from Hegel, who among philosophers is now appreciated as the quintessential thinker of “recognition,” “intersubjectivity,” and “sociality” more generally. The second connection — the path from critical theory to the White Institute — is more direct: one of the best known Frankfurt School thinkers, Erich Fromm, was a founder of this Institute. In light of this association, it is unsurprising to find interpersonal psychoanalysis echoing the Frankfurt School premise that an irrational or “sick” culture will undermine the psychological needs of its members.

I hope to post around once a week, usually on Sundays.