On Freud's Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego

Ethel Spector Person, Ethel Spector Person

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780429916939
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychologie
• Subtopic: Angewandte Psychologie

The sixth volume in the series "Contemporary Freud: Turning Points and Critical Issues, " published with the International Psychoanalytic Association, turns to Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921). In this classic text Freud offered an analysis of the roots of group identity, of the contagions of panic and fanaticism, and of the submission of the individual to the leader that only gained cogency with each passing decade of the troubled twentieth century. And Freud's insights have become more relevant still in the aftermath of the shattering events of September 11, 2001.Following an introduction to the volume by Ethel Spector Person and a summary and abridgement of Freud's text by John Kerr, the contributors to this volume - Didier Anzieu, Robert Caper, Abraham Zeleznik, Andre Haynal, Ernst Falzeder, Yolanda Gampel, and Claudio Laks Eisirik - provide commentaries on Freud's work, explicating the multiple ways in which Freud's insights continue to illuminate the irrational dynamics to which all groups, including psychoanalytic institutions, are prey. Serving as both an introduction to, and an elegant expansion of, Freud's texts, this volume demonstrates the role of psychoanalytic hypotheses in obtaining deeper insight into the tectonic shifts in group psychology underlying today's mass society.

PART ONE
Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921)

The Text

JOHN KERR

This is not an easy text to begin, it is not an easy text to read, and it is not an easy text to be done with.

I

It is not an easy text to begin.

A clinician typically begins a text by assuming, a bit boldly but also out of epistemic necessity, that clinical experiences are more or less timeless. In a sense, the clinician reads looking to find and refind the present. This orientation toward the present carries over into how he or she begins. The clinician tries to find a common point of reference, either in the concepts being used or in the descriptions of patients, or in both, with a view to sharing in what is being said. Disagreement is allowed, in principle, but sharing is how one starts. Identification on some level is the price of admission. It is also the basis for intellectual profit.

But Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego is not a clinical text. There are no patients in it. And its concepts, as we shall see, are less accessible to today's clinicians than might be supposed.

The historian of ideas begins quite differently. The text is external, and the historian means to keep it that way. The orientation is toward the past. Processes of empathy do come into play but only insofar as they must to keep matters humanly comprehensible. Otherwise, one begins in an altogether cautious spirit. One tries to date the inception from primary materials, identify the precipitating inspiration, and then, so far as this is possible, chart the inevitable influences and prior experiences leading up to both. For the historian, the proper way to begin a text is by standing back, not jumping in.

In the case of Freud's (1921) Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, this kind of analysis cannot be adequately made. For some idea of just how hard it might be to try, let us consider the only published piece of primary source material we have bearing on the text's inception and inspiration.

On May 12, 1919, Freud wrote Sándor Ferenczi, saying that, on receiving news recently from "Toni" (their mutual friend, patron, and patient, the terminally ill Anton von Freund), "an inhibition in my up to then increased productivity set in." Now tumbles out the mention of the text's inception: "I had not only completed the draft of 'Beyond the Pleasure Principle,' which is being copied out for you, but I also took up the little thing about the 'uncanny' again, and, with a simple-minded idea [Einfall], I attempted a Psy-A foundation for group psychology. Now that should rest" (Falzeder and Brabant, 1996, p. 354).

Historical paydirt? Dust, really. Putting the information in context, we can place Freud's start within a two- to three-week period. Nice. But we are in the dark as to what precisely he was thinking. He is explicit: a chance thought, unbidden, came to mind—literally an Einfall, translated in his clinical works as "free association." It could have come from anywhere and been about anything.

Nor does the documentary record get any better subsequently. From a letter to Abraham a year later, we know that Freud turned his "idea" into a "paper" and planned during the summer of 1920 to turn that into a "small book," which he did (Abraham and Freud, 1965, p. 308). Members of the secret Committee received their copies the following summer, shortly before the week-long rendezvous of the ensemble in the Harz Mountains began on September 21, 1921. One can also deduce from the extant published correspondence that Karl Abraham and Ernest Jones were familiar with it prior to publication, from the text itself that Otto Rank was as well, and it is a very safe bet that Ferenczi had seen it, too. Which may partly explain why there was so little discussion of it after it came out. But none of this information throws any further light on its genesis, nor on any influences prior to it.

There is virtually nothing to go on, save what can be found in the text itself. One is entitled in this situation to follow Freud's lead and see what topics come up and how the argument goes. One is invited, even forced, to read more like a clinician after all, that is, identifying oneself with the concerns of the text, though this need not mean sacrificing one's critical distance. What one discovers this way, to be sure, falls well short of historical understanding. One can hope to illumine the text, not explain it. But this is worth doing if done well. Moreover, the exercise draws one toward a vastly important topic. Indeed, it is principally in its ability to provoke just such attempts at illumination and further reflection that the text has greatest value for today's reader.

In the description and partial abridgment of Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego that follows, the subtext is that there is something very important being said here but that it is up to the reader to finish the argument for himself or herself.

II

It is not an easy text to read.

To begin with, some readers bring their own initial misapprehension to the text. Once the reader hears that the group is "impulsive, changeable and irritable" and also "generous or cruel, heroic or cowardly" (Freud, 1921, p. 77), that it "is extraordinarily credulous and open to influence," that it "goes directly to extremes" (p. 78), and that it "wants to be ruled and oppressed and to fear its masters" (pp. 77-78), the reader assumes, not unreasonably, that we are dealing here with the irrational side of group psychology. The reader may assume further that this irrational side stands in some easy-to-understand relation to the irrational side of the individual.

Readers who start this way, and many do, are off on the wrong foot. For Freud is not saying that the irrational is a side of group psychology; for Freud, it is the whole of it. As to any connection with individual irrationality, especially as found in neurosis, it will take the entire book to clear that up. Given this kind of opening misapprehension on the reader's part, Freud has extra work to do. It will behoove him to be extra clear.

For long stretches, indeed for more than 4/5ths of the book, the style is clear, Freud writing with his customary expository ease. And here let us be clear: When Freud is in his stride, his prose is a pleasure. He generates a back-and-forth rhythm that he can take forward and deeper into the argument, or sideways as he pauses for second and third thoughts, or even backward as he returns to an issue, usually noted at the time, that he has left hanging. Point-counterpoint, thesis-rejoinder, agreement-reservation, boldness-caution, certainty-doubt-certainty. It has become fashionable nowadays to buffet James Strachey about the poor translator's head and ears for things like rendering the German "Ich" as "ego" instead of "I"—this mortal sin appears in the very title of the present work—but he has taken an accomplished German stylist and given us an accomplished English one. Occasionally, we should let ourselves be grateful.

The expository touch comes through in Strachey's rendering. Freud seems always to be musing out loud, contemplating and considering, never merely describing or arguing. This takes more time than a straightforward approach might, but the effect is not labored; it is consistently agreeable. Consider the following, which comes very, very early in the text as Freud tries to establish in chapter one that his version of "I-psychology" may be relevant to "group psychology." Freud has already conceded at the outset that a good portion of individual psychology involves relations with others; if this concession in an interpersonal or relational direction costs him anything, as some modern readers might suppose, he does not show it. Instead, he advances toward his first goal, which is nothing less than his right to speak, while seeming merely to take stock of the situation:

The individual in the relations which have already been mentioned—to his parents and to his bothers and sisters, to the person he is in love with, to his friend, and to his physician—comes under the influence of only a single person, or of a very small number of persons, each of whom has become enormously important to him. Now in speaking of social or group psychology it has become usual to leave these relations on one side and to isolate as the subject of inquiry the influencing of an individual by a large number of people simultaneously, people with whom he is connected by something, though otherwise they may in many respects be strangers to him. Group psychology is therefore concerned with the individual man as a member of a race, or a nation, of a caste, of a profession, of an institution, or as a component part of a crowd of people who have been organized into a group at some particular time for some definite purpose.

So far, Freud seems just to be taking in the territory. Transparently, he wishes to connect the two domains, the small and intimate with the large and ascriptive; but rather than do so actively at this point, his next sentence puts the burden on those who keep them analytically divided. He remains on the sidelines a bit longer, and when he enters the fray, it is almost diffidently. The text continues:

When once natural continuity has been severed in this way, if a breach is thus made between things which are by nature interconnected, it is easy to regard the phenomena that appear under these special conditions as being expressions of a special instinct that is not further reducible—the social instinct ("herd instinct," "group mind"), which does not come to light in any other situations. But we may perhaps venture to object that it seems difficult to attribute to the factor of number a significance so great as to make it capable by itself of arousing in our mental life a new instinct that is otherwise not brought into play. Our expectation is therefore directed toward two other possibilities: that the social instinct may not be a primitive one and insusceptible of dissection, and that it may be possible to discover the beginnings of its development in a narrower circle, such as that of the family [p. 70].

There is a lot going on in those sentences, if you look at them carefully. But nothing to disagree with, not yet at any rate. The tone is altogether companionable.

Yet this is still not an easy text to read. There is a kind of resistance, a distrust, that begins to tug at the reader's sleeve. The problem starts early in chapter two, when Freud takes up Gustav Le Bon's 1895 classic, Psychology of Crowds, and continues on for a good while. Freud lets Le Bon have his say all right, but he also keeps interrupting—as he freely admits. Some of the interruptions are for the purpose of disagreeing, more precisely for entering a mental reservation out ioud: Le Bon fails to consider what it is in an individual that enables him to unite to the group. Le Bon sees new characteristics in the individual's behavior in the group where we see old ones freed from repression. Le Bon distinguishes two features, contagion and suggestibility, where further reflection would derive the former from the latter. Yet, at other times, Freud interrupts to agree. And sometimes, he interrupts to do both:

I have quoted this passage so fully in order to make it quite clear that Le Bon explains the condition of an individual in a group as being actually hypnotic, and does not merely make a comparison between the two states. We have no intention of raising any objection at this point, but wish only to emphasize the fact that the two last causes of an individual becoming altered in a group (the contagion and the heightened suggestibility) are evidently not on a par, since the contagion seems actually to be a manifestation of the suggestibility [p. 76].

For the most part, Freud is at pains to agree with Le Bon on the major points. The interruptions thus often say virtually the same things in Freud's own words: in the group the conscious rationality of the individual is lost and hitherto unconscious impulses rule; there is a kind of emotional contagion between group members; suggestibility runs riot; there is a strong need for and responsiveness to a leader. Freud's passages on such topics are sufficiently harmonious with the Frenchman's that when next he hands the turn back to his Gallic interlocutor, the transition is sometimes so seamless that one has to check who is speaking.

Freud's sign-off on Le Bon, a one-sentence paragraph ending chapter two, combines both ingredients: a reservation coupled with agreement expressed as pure praise: "Le Bon does not give the impression of having succeeded in bringing the function of the leader and the importance of prestige completely into harmony with his brilliantly executed picture of the group mind" (p. 81).

William McDougall's 1920 psychological text, The Group Mind, is not excerpted. Otherwise, in chapter three it gets much the same treatment: paraphrase at considerable length, agreement in the main, obliquely expressed reservations noted on certain points. As McDougall's text takes up "unorganized" groups, as well as staider "organized" groups, we now have three voices—his, Le Bon's, and Freud's—raising the hue and cry on the oddities of crowd behavior. Eventually, Trotter's 1916 best-seller, Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War, will be culled to provide a fourth voice. But consideration of Trotter is reserved for late in the book, by which time a goodly number of issues that were important early in the game already have been disposed of. Freud's need for him will be much more particular. Still, the same use is made: wonderful book, find a lot to agree with, not quite our kind.

Then there is another kind of interruption, Freud just being Freud, Sometimes he has a thought that is just too well formed to wait:

In order to make a correct judgment upon the morals of groups, one must take into consideration the fact that when individuals come together in a group all their individual inhibitions fall away and all the cruel, brutal and destructive instincts, which lie dormant in individuals as relics of a primitive epoch, are stirred up to find free gratification. But under the influence of suggestion groups are also capable of high achievement in the shape of abnegation, unselfishness, and devotion to an ideal. While with isolated individuals personal interest is almost the only motive force, with groups it is very rarely prominent. It is possible to speak of an individual having his moral standards raised by a group [here a citation of Le Bon]. Whereas the intellectual capacity of a group is always far below that of an individual, its ethical conduct may rise as high above his as it may sink deep below it [p. 79].

In general, if Freud finds something interesting to say, he finds more than one way to say it. In particular, the topic of the individual as compared with the group member generates any number of arresting passages in the text. I shall leave these to other contributors to the present volume, who have the time to do them justice. The point just quoted, meanwhile, is a good example of a facet of Freud's expository style. As a point, it fits in well with the deep structure of Freud's argument, though that has not yet been revealed. Then, too, Freud means to get around to the Church and the Army as his two great exemplars of group behavior, so it behooves him to anticipate any reader who might accuse him of underrating the reality of either piety or valor. But Church and Army have not been brought up yet. Thus, in context, Freud seems to be simply honest, observing things as they are, even though the drift of the observation goes against what has heretofore been said about primitivity and impulsiveness in crowd behavior. It is also, we should note, generous as well as honest for Freud to cite Le Bon on the same point.

It is all honest and generous on Freud's part, and seemingly clear each step along the way. Yet the scrupulous use of sources nonetheless makes for a distracted read, in part because it simply is not possible to keep track of all the duly noted reservations amidst the general clamor of agreement. Then, too, some of the time, one has all one can do simply to keep track of who is saying what.

The feeling of distraction is compounded by what is usually one of the more agreeable features of Freud's style. We are accustomed to Freud's speaking in more than one voice, in the service of more than one point of view, as he expresses objections or raises alternatives or whatever, as he slides in and out of his discussions with himself and also with the reader. However, the services ordinarily rendered by these other imagined voices here are provided by real voices, with names and texts and footnotes and all the other accoutrements of being real. This doesn't feel right. These other authorities just cannot be imagined on command and then evaporated without consequence when the argument turns a corner. Their recalcitrant reality ends up interpenetrating with the usual fictive personas of Freud expository voice. Freud's genial, multivocal self seems to be both dispersed and concretized at the same time as parts of it are reassigned to these other members of the circle. Or is it the other way around, with members of the circle taking up residence inside Freud's own narrative ego?

Ultimately, a reader who is trying to keep track of who is saying what, and y...