CHAPTER III

ANIMISM, MAGIC AND THE OMNIPOTENCE OF
THOUGHT

cp

Ir is a necessary defect of studies which seck to
apply the point of view of psychoanalysis to the
mental sciences that they cannot do justice to
cither subject. They therefore confine them-
selves to the rdle of incentives and make sugges-
tions to the expert which he should take into
consideration in his work.. This defect will
make itself felt most strongly in an essay such
as this which tries to treat of the enormous
sphere called animism?.

Animism in the narrower sense is the theory of
psychic concepts, and in the wider sense, of spir-
itual beings in general. Animatism, the anima-

1 Tho necessary crowding of the material also compels us to dis-
ponse with a thorough bibliography. Instead of this the reader is
referred to the well-known works of Herbert Spencer, J. G. Fra-
zer, A, Lang, E. B, Tylor and W. Wundt, from which all the state-
ments concerning animism and magic are taken. The independenco

of the author can manifest itself only in the choivo of the material
and of opinions,

125

126 TOTEM AND TABOO

tion theory of seemingly inanimate nature, is a
further subdivision which also includes animat-
ism and animism. The nameanimism, formerly
applied to a definite philosophic system, seems
to have acquired its present meaning through
E. B. Tylor’.

What led to the formulation of these names is
the insight into the very remarkable coneeptions
of nature and the world of those primitive races
known to us from history and from our own
times. These races populate the world with a
multitude of spiritual beings which are benevo-
lent or malevolent to them, and attribute the
causation of natural processes to these spirits
and demons ; they also consider that not only
animals and plants, but inanimate things as well
are animated by them. A third and perhaps
the most important part of this primitive ‘ na-
ture philosophy * seems far less striking to us
because we ourselves are not yet far enough re-
moved from it, though we have greatly limited
the existence of spirits and to-day explain the
processes of nature by the assumption of imper-
sonal physical forees. For primitive people
believe in a similar ‘ animation * of human indi-
viduals as well. Human beings have souls which
can leave their habitation and enter into. other

FE, loc, Frimitiog Caters Vol sp. 425, fourth ol. 1006.
W. Wundt, Myih and Religion, Vol. Ui, p. 173, 1

THE OMNIPOTENCE OF THOUGHT 127

beings ; these souls are the hearers of spiritual
activities and are, to a certain extent, indepen-
dent of the ‘bodies’. Originally souls were
thought of as being very similar to individ-
uals ; only in the course of a long evolution did
they lose their material character and attain a
high degree of * spiritualization ’*.

Most authors incline to the assumption that
these soul conceptions are the original nucleus
of the animistie systcm, that spirits merely corre-
spond to souls that have become independent,
and that the souls of animals, plants and things
were formed after the analogy of human souls.

How did primitive people come to the peculi-
arly dualistic fundamental conceptions on which
this animistic system rests ? Through the obser-
vation, it is thought, of the phenomena of sleep
(with dreams) and death which resemble sleep,
and through the effort to explain these condi-
tions, which affect each individual so intimately.
Above all, the problem of death must have be-
come the starting point of the formation of the
theory. To primitive man the continuation of
life—immortality —would be self-evident. The
coneeption of death is something accepted later,
and only with hesitation, for even to us it is still
devoid of content and unrealizable. Very likely
discussions have taken place over the part which

* Wundt Ze, Chapter IV: Die Seelenvorstellungen.

128 TOTEM AND TABOO

may have been played by other observations
and experiences in the formation of the funda-
mental animistic conceptions such as dream
imagery, shadows and reflections, but these have
led to no conclusion 4.

If primitive man reacted to the phenomena
that stimulated his reflection with the formation
of conceptions of the soul, and then transferred
these to objects of the outer world, his attitude
will be judged to be quite natural and in no way
mysterious. In view of the fact that animistic
conceptions have been shown to be similar among
the most varied races and in all periods, Wundt
states that these “ are the necessary psychologi-
cal product of the myth-forming consciousness,
and primitive animism may be looked upon as
the spiritual expression of man’s natural state in
so far as this is at all accessible to our observa-
tion” *, Hume has already justified the anima-
tion of the inanimate in his Natural History of
Religions, where he said : “ There is a universal
tendency among mankind to conceive all beings
like themselves and to transfer to every object
those qualities with which they are familiarly
acquainted and of which they are intimatcly
conscious ” *,

+ Compare, besides Wundt and H, Spencer and the instruotive
article in the Bneyclopedia Britannica, 1911 (Animism, Mythology,
and so forth).

Ste,

p. 154.
© See Tylor, Primitive Culture, Vol. 1, p. 477.

THE OMNIPOTENCE OF THOUGHT 129

Animism is a system of thought, it gives not
only the explanation of a single phenomenon,
but makes it possible to comprehend the totality
of the world from one point, as a continuity.
Writers maintain that in the course of time three
such systems of thought, three great world sys-
tems came into being : the animistic (mytholo-
gical), the religious, and the scientific. Of these
animism, the first system is perhaps the most
consistent and the most exhaustive, and the one
which explains the nature of the world in its
entirety. ‚This first world system, of mankind
is now a psychological theory. It would go
beyond our scope to show how much of it can
still be demonstrated in the life of to-day, either
as a worthless survival in the form of supersti-
tion, or in living form, as the foundation of our
language, our belief, and our philosophy.

It is in reference to the successive stages of
these three world systems that we say that anim-
ism in itself was not yet a religion but contained
the prerequisites from which religions were later
formed. It is also evident that myths are based
upon animistic foundations, but the detailed
relation of myths to animism seem unexplained
in some essential points.

2
Our psychoanalytic work will begin at a differ-

ent point. It must not be assumed that man-
x

130 TOTEM AND TABOO

kind came to create its first world system through
a purely speculative thirst for knowledge. 'The
practical need of mastering the world must have
contributed to this effort. We are therefore not
astonished to learn that something else went
hand in hand with the animistic system, namely
the elaboration of directions for making oneself
master of men, animals and things, as well as of
their spirits. S. Reinach* wants to call these
directions, which are known under the names of
“sorcery and magic ’, the strategy of animism ;
With Mauss and Hubert, I should prefer to com-
pare them to a technique °.

Can the conceptions of sorcery and magic be
separated ? It can be done if we are willing on
our own authority to put ourselves above the
vagaries of linguistic usage. Then sorcery is
essentially the art of influencing spirits by treat-
ing them like people under the same circum-
stances, that is to say by appeasing them, recon-
ciling them, making them more favourably dis-
posed to one, by intimidating them, by depriving
them of their power and by making them subject
to one’s will ; all that is accomplished through
the same methods that have been found effective
with living people. Magic, however, is some-
thing else ; it does not essentially concern itself

* Cultes, Mythes et Religions, |. IL: Introduction, p. XV, 1009,
® Annöe Sociologigue, Seventh Vol., 1004.

THE OMNIPOTENCE OF THOUGHT 131

with spirits, and uses special means, not the
ordinary psychological method. We can easily
guess that magic is the carlier and the more im-
portant part of animistic technique, for among
the means with which spirits are to be treated
there are also found the magic kind °, and magic
is also applied where spiritualization of nature
has not yet, as it seems to us, been accomplished.

Magic must serve the most varied purposes.
It must subject the processes of nature to the
will of man, protect the individual against ene-
mies and dangers, and give him the power to
injure his enemies. But the principles on whose
assumptions the magie activity is based, or
rather the principle of magic, is so evident that
it was recognized by all authors. If we may
take the opinion of H. B. Tylor at its face value
it can be most tersely expressed in his words :
“mistaking an ideal connection for a real one ”.
We shall explain this characteristic in the case
of two groups of magic acts.

One of the most widespread magic procedures
for injuring an enemy consists of making an
effigy of him out of any kind of material. The
likeness counts for little, in fact any object may
be ‘named’ as his image. Whatever is subse-
quently done to this image will also happen to

® To frighten away a ghost with noiso and cries is a form of pure
sorcery; to foree him to do something by taking his name is to
employ magic against him,

132 TOTEM AND TABOO

the hated prototype ; thus if the effigy has been
injured in any place he will be afflicted by a dis-
ease in the corresponding part of the body. ‘This
same magic technique, instead of being used for
private enmity can also be employed for pious
purposes and can thus be used to aid the gods
against evildemons. I quote Frazer??: “Every
night when [the sun-god Ralin ancient Egypt
sank to his home in the glowing west he was
assailed by hosts of demons under the leadership
of thearchfiend Apepi. All night long he fought
them, and sometimes by day the powers of dark-
ness sent up clouds even into the blue Egyptian
sky to obscure his light and weaken his power.
To aid the sun-god in this daily struggle, a cere-
mony was daily performed in his temple at
Thebes. A figure of his foe Apepi, represented
as a crocodile with a hideous face or a serpent
with many coils, was made of wax, and on it the
demon’s name was written ingreen ink. Wrapt
ina papyrus case, on which another likeness of
Apepi had been drawn in green ink, the figure
was then tied up with black hair, spat upon,
hacked with a stone knife and cast on the ground.
There the priest trod on it with his left foot
again and again, and then burned it in a fire
made of a certain plant or grass. When Apepi
himself had thus been effectively disposed of,

10 The Magic. Ari, UL, p. 67.

THE OMNIPOTENCE OF THOUGIIT 183

waxen effigies of each of his principle demons,
and of their fathers, mothers, and children, were
made and burnt in the same way. ‘The service
accompanied by the recitation of certain pre-
scribed spells, was repeated not merely morning,
noon and night, but whenever a storm was rag-
ing or heavy rain had set in, or black clouds were
stealing across the sky to hide the sun’s bright
disk, The fiends of darkness, clouds and rain,
felt the injury inflicted on their images as if it
had been done to themselves ; they passed away,
at least for a time, and the beneficent sun-god
shone out triumphant once more”.

There is a great mass of magic actions which
show a similar motivation, but I shall lay stress
upon‘only two, which have always played a great
rdle among primitive races and which have been
partly preserved in themyths and cults of higher
stages of evolution : the art of causing rain and
fruitfulness by magic: Rain is produecd by
magic means, by imitating it, and perhaps also
by imitating the clouds and storm which produce
it. It looks as if they wanted to ‘ play rain’.
The Ainos of Japan, for instance, make rain by
pouring out water through a big sieve, while
age
art, but was probably meant to deprive magic, which the Hebraic

religion proseribed, of one of its instruments. Frazer, lo, p. 87,
te.

184 TOTEM AND TABOO

others fit out a big bowl with sails and oars as
if it were a ship, which is then dragged about
the village and gardens. But the fruitfulness of
the soil was assured by magic means by showing
it the spectacle of human sexual intercourse.
‘To cite one out of many examples ; in some part
of Java, the peasants used to go out into the
fields at night for sexual intercourse when the
rice was about to blossom in order to stimulate
the rice to fruitfulness through their example”.
At the same time it was feared that proscribed
incestuous relationships would stimulate the soil
to grow weeds and render it unfruitful®.

Certain negative rules, that is to say magic
precautions, must be put into this first group,
Ifsome of the inhabitants of a Dayak village had
set out on a hunt for wild-boars, those remaining
behind were in the meantime not permitted to
touch either oil or water with their hands, as such
acts would soften the hunters’ fingers and would
let the quarry slip through their hands“, Or
when a Gilyak hunter was pursuing game in the
woods, his children were forbidden to make draw-
ings on wood or in the sand, as the paths in the
thiek woods might become as intertwined as ‘the
lines of the drawing and the hunter would not
find his way home ®,

= The Magie Art, 11,
38 An echo of this is to be ound in the Oedipus ee of Sophocles,
4 The Magic Art, p. Le, p. 122

THE OMNIPOTENCE OF THOUGHT 185

The fact that in these asin a great many other
examples of magic influence, distance plays no
part, telepathy is taken as a matter of course
—will cause us no difficulties in grasping the
peculiarity of magic.

There is no doubt about what is considered the
effective force in all these examples. It is the
similarity between the performed action and the
expected happening. Frazer therefore calls this
kind of magic imitative or homeopathic. If I
want it to rain I only have to produce something
that looks like rain or recalls rain. In a later
phase of cultural development, instead of these
magic conjurations of rain, processions are ar-
ranged to a house of god, in order to supplicate
the saint who dwells there to send rain. Finally
also this religious technique will be given up and
instead an effort will be made to find out what
would influence the atmosphere to produce rain.

In another group of magie actions the prin-
ciple of similarity is no longer involved, but in
its stead there is another prineiple the nature
of which is well brought out in the following
examples.

Another method may be used to injure an
enemy. You possess yourself of his hair, his
nails, anything that he has discarded, or even a
part of his clothing, and do something hostile
to these things. This is just as effective as if

136 TOTEM AND TABOO

you had dominated the person himself, and any-
thing that you do to the things that belong to
him must happen to him too, According to the
conception of primitive men a name is an essen-
tial part of a personality ; if therefore you know
the name of a person or a spirit you have ac-
quired a certain power over its bearer. ‘This
explains the remarkable precautions and restric-
tions in the use of names which we have touched
upon in the essay on taboo’. In these examples
similarity is evidently replaced by relationship.

The cannibalism of primitive races derives its
more sublime motivation in a similar manner.
By absorbing parts of the body of a person
through the act of eating we also come to possess
the properties which belonged to that person.
From this there follow precautions and restric-
tions as to dict under special circumstances.
Thus a pregnant woman will avoid cating the
meat of certain animals because their undesir-
able properties, for example, cowardice, might
thus be transferred to the child she is nourishing.
It makes no difference to the magic influence
whether the connection is already abolished or
whether it had consisted of only one very im-
portant contact. Thus,-for instance, the belief
in a magic bond which links the fate of a wound
with the weapon which caused it can be followed

16 See preveding chapter, p. 92,

THE OMNIPOTENCE OF THOUGHT 187

unchanged through thousands of years. If a
Melanesian gets possession of the bow by which
he was wounded he will carefully keep it in a cool
place in order thus to keep down the inflamma-
tion of the wound. But if the bow has remained
in the possession of the enemy it will certainly
be kept in close proximity to a fire in order that
the wound may burn and become thoroughly
inflamed. Pliny, in his Natural History, xxvit1,
advises spitting on the hand which has caused
the injury if one regrets having injured some
one; the pain of the jinjured person will then
immediately be eased. Francis Bacon, in his
Natural History, mentions the generally accre-
dited belief that putting a salve on the weapon
which has made a wound will cause this wound
to heal of itself. It is said that even to-day
English peasants follow this prescription, and
that if they have cut themselves with a seythe
they will from that moment on carefully keep
the instrument clean in order that the wound
may not fester. In June, 1902, a local English
weekly reported that a woman called Matilde
Henry of Norwich accidentally ran an iron nail
into the sole of her foot. Without having the
wound examined or even taking off her stocking
she bade her daughter to oil the nail thoroughly
in the expectation that then nothing could
happen to her, She died a few days later of

188 TOTEM AND TABOO

tetanus” in consequence of postponed anti-
sepsis.

The examples from this last group illustrate
Frazer’s distinction between contagious magic
and imitative magic. What is considered as
effective in these examples is no longer the simi-
larity, but the association in space, the conti-
guity, or at least the imagined contiguity, or the
memory of its existence. But since similarity
and contiguity are the two essential principles
of the processes of association of ideas, it must
be concluded that the dominance of associations
of ideas really explains all the madness of the
rules of magie. We can see how true Tylor’s
quoted characteristic of magie : “ mistaking an
ideal connection for a real one ”, proves to be.
The same may be said of Frazer’s idea, who has
expressed it in almost the same terms: “men
mistook the order of their ideas for the order of
nature, and hence imagined that the control
which they have, or seem to have, over their
thoughts, permitted them to have a correspond-
ing control over things ” ».

It will at first seem strange that this illuminat-
ing explanation of magic could have been re-
jected by some authors as unsatisfactory **,

¥ Frazer, The Magic Art, pp. 201-3.

18 The Magic Art, p.
% Compare the article Magic (N. T. W.) in the Zncyelopedia

Britannica, Uth Ea,

THE OMNIPOTENCE OF THOUGHT 139

But on closer consideration we must sustain the
objection that the association theory of magic
merely explains the paths that magic travels,
and not its cssential nature, that is, it does not
explain the misunderstanding which bids it put
psychological laws in place of natural ones. We
are apparenitly in need here of a dynamie factor;
but while the search for this leads the crities of
Frazer's theory astray, it will be easy to give a
satisfactory explanation of magie by carrying
its association theory further and by entering
more deeply into it.

First let us examine the simpler and more im-
portant case of imitative magic. According to
Frazer this may be practised by itself, whereas
contagious magic as a rule presupposes the imi-
tative *°. The motives which impel one to ex-
ercise magic are easily recognized ; they are the
wishes of men. We need only assume that
primitive man had great confidence in the power
of his wishes. At bottom everything which he
accomplished by magic means must have been
done solely because he wanted it. Thus in the
beginning only his wish is accentuated.

In the case of the child which finds itself un-
der analogous psychic conditions, without be-
ing as yet capable of motor activity, we have
elsewhere advocated the assumption that it at

2 he, p. 54.

140 TOTEM AND TABOO

first really satisfies its wishes by means of
hallucinations, in that it creates the satisfying
situation through centrifugal excitements of its
sensory organs*', The adult primitive man
knows another way. A motor impulse, the will,
clings to his wish and this will which later will
change the face of the earth in the service of wish
fulfilment is now used to represent the gratifica-
tion so that one may experience it, as it were,
through motor hallucination. Such a represen-
tation of the gratified wish is altogether compar-
able to the play of children, where it replaces the
purely sensory technique of gratification. If
play and imitative representation suffice for the
child and for primitive man; it must not be
taken as a sign of modesty, in our sense, or of
resignation due to the realization of their impo-
tence, on the contrary; it is the very obvious
result of the excessive valuation of their wish,
of the will which depends upon the wish and of
the paths the wish takes. In time the psychic
accent is displaced from the motives of the
magic act to its means, namely to the act itself.
Perhaps it would be more correct to say that
primitive man does not become aware of the
over-valuation of his psychic acts until it be-
comes evident to him through the means em-

# Formulation of two principles of psychic activity, Jahrb. für
Paychoanalyt, Forschungen, Vol, Ul, 1912, p. 2,

THE OMNIPOTENCE OF THOUGHT 141

_ ployed. It would also seem as if it were the
magic act itself which compels the fulfilment
of the wish by virtue of its similarity to the
object desired. At the stage of animistic thinking
there is as yet no way of demonstrating object-
ively the true state of affairs, but this becomes
possible at later stages when, though such pro-
cedures are still practised, the psychic pheno-
menon of scepticism already manifests itself as
a tendency to repression. At that stage men
will acknowledge that the conjuration of spirits
avails nothing unless accompanied by belief,
and that the magic effect of prayer fails if there
is no piety behind it *.

The possibility of a contagious magic which
depends upon contiguous association will then
show us that the psychic valuation of the wish
and the will has been extended to all psychic
acts which the will can command. We may say
that at present there is a general over-valuation
of all psychic processes, that is to say there is an
attitude towards the world which according to
our understanding of the relation of reality to
thought must appear like an over-estimation of
the latter. Objects as such are over-shadowed
by the ideas representing them; what takes

® The King in Hamlet (Act II, Scene 4):
“My words fly up, my thoughts remain below,
Words without thoughts never to heaven go.”

142 TOTEM AND TABOO

place in the latter must also happen to the for-
mer, and therelations which exist between ideas
are also postulated as to things. As thought
does not recognize distances and easily brings
together in one act of consciousness things spa-
tially and temporally far removed, the magic
world also puts itself above spatial distance by
telepathy, and treats a past association as if it
were a present one. In the animistic age the
reflection of the inner world must obscure that
other picture of the world which we believe we
recognize.

Let us also point out that the two principles
of association, similarity and contiguity, meet in
the higher unity of contact. Association by
contiguity is contact in the direct sense, and
association by similarity is contact in the trans-
ferred sense. Another identity in the psychic
process which has not yet been grasped by us is
probably concealed in the use of the same word
for both kinds of associations. It is the same
range of the concept of contact which we have
found in the analysis of taboo ®.

In summing up we may now say that the
principle which controls magic, and the tech-
nique of the animistic method of thought, is
*Omnipotence of Thought ’.

% Compare Chapter II,

THE OMNIPOTENCE OF THOUGHT 143

3

I have adopted the term ‘ Omnipotence of
Thought’ from a highly intelligent man, a
former sufferer from compulsion neurosis, who,
after being cured through psychoanalytic treat-
ment, was able to demonstrate his efficiency and
good sense *. He had coined this phrase to
designate all those peculiar and uncanny oceur-
rences which seemed to pursue him just as they
pursue others afflicted with his malady. Thus
if he happened to think of a person, he was actu-
ally confronted with this person as if he had con-
jured him up; if he inquired suddenly about
the state of health of an acquaintance whom he
had long missed he was sure to hear that this at-
quaintance had just died, so that he could believe
that the deceased had drawn his attention to
himself by telepathic means; if he uttered a half
meant imprecation against a stranger, he could
expect to have him die soon thereafter and bur-
den him with the responsibility for his death.
He was able to explain most of these eases in the
course of the treatment, he could tell how the
illusion had originated, and what he himself had
contributed towards furthering his superstitious

% Remarks upon a case of Compulsion Neurosis, Jahrb. für
Paychoanalyt, und. Paychopath. Forschungen, Vol. I, 1909.

144 TOTEM AND TABOO

expectations **. All compulsion neuroties arc
superstitious in this manner and often against
their better judgment.

The existence of omnipotence of thought is
most clearly seen in compulsion neurosis, where
the results of this primitive method of thought
are most often found or met in consciousness.
But we must guard against seeing in this a dis-
tinguishing characteristic of this neurosis, for
analytic investigation reveals the same mechan-
ism in the other neuroses, In every one of the
neuroses it is not the reality of the experience
but the reality of the thought which forms the
basis for the symptom formation. Neurotics
live in a special world in which, as I have else-
where expressed it, only the ‘ neurotie standard
of currency * counts, that is to say, only things
intensively thought of or affectively conceived
are effective with them, regardless of whether
these things are in harmony with outer reality.
‘Lhe hysteric repeats in his attacks and fixates
through his symptoms, occurrences which have
taken place only in his phantasy, though in the
last analysis they go back to real events or have
been built up from them. ‘The neurotic’s
guilty conscience is just as incomprehensible

% We scom to attribute the character of the ‘ uneanny’ to all
such impressions which seck to confirm the omnipotence of thought

and the animistic method of thought in general, though our judgment
has long rejected it.

THE OMNIPOTENCE OF THOUGHT 145

if traced to real misdeeds. A compulsion neu-
rotic may be oppressed by a sense of guilt
which is appropriate to a wholesale murderer,
while at the same time he acts towards his
fellow beings in a most considerate and scrupu-
lous manner, a behaviour which he evinced since
his childhood. And yet his sense of guilt is
justified ; it is based upon intensive and fre-
quent death wishes which unconsciously mani-
fest themselves towards his fellow beings. It is
motivated from the point of view of unconscious
thoughts, but not of intentional acts. Thus the
omnipotence of thought, the over-estimation of
psychie processes as opposed to reality, proves
to be of unlimited effeet in the neurotie’s affee-
tive life and in allthat emanates from it. But if
we subject him to psychoanalytic treatment,
which makes his unconscious thoughts con-
scious to him he refuses to believe that thoughts
are free and is always afraid to express evil
wishes lest they be fulfilled in consequence of his
utterance. But through this attitude as well as
through the superstition which plays an active
part in his life he reveals to us how close he
stands to the savage who believes he can change
the outer world by a mere thought of his.
The primary obsessive actions of these neu-
roties are really altogether of a magical nature.
If not magic they are at least anti-magic and are
L

146 TOTEM AND TABOO

destined to ward off the expectation of evil with
which the neurosis is wont to begin. Whenever
I was able to pierce these secrets it turned out
that the content of this expectation of evil was
death. According to Schopenhauer the prob-
lem of death stands at the beginning of every
philosophy ; we have heard that the formation
of the soul conception and of the belicf in
demons which characterize animism, are also
traced back to the impression which death
makes upon man. It ishard to decide whether
these first compulsive and protective actions
follow the principle of similarity, or of contrast,
for under the conditions of the neurosis they
are usually distorted through displacement
upon some trifle, upon some action which in
itself is quite insignificant **. The protective
formule of the compulsion neurosis also have
a counterpart in the incantations of magic.
But the evolution of compulsive actions may be
described by pointing out how these actions be-
gin as a spell against evil wishes which are very
remote from anything sexual, only to end up as
a substitute for forbidden sexual activity, which
they imitate as faithfully as possible.

If we accept the evolution of man’s concep-
tions of the universe mentioned above, accord-

* The following discussions will yield a further motive for this
displacement upon a trivial action.

THE OMNIPOTENCE OF THOUGHT 147

ing to which the animistic phase is succeeded by
the religious, and this in turn by the scientific,
we have no difficulty in following the fortunes of
the ‘ omnipotence of thought ’ through all these
phases. In the animistic stage man ascribes
omnipotence to himself ; in the religious he has
ceded it to the gods, but without seriously giv-
ing it up, for he reserves to himself the right to
control the gods by influencing them in some
way or other in the interest of his wishes. In
the seientific attitude towards life there is no
longer any room for man’s omnipotence; he
has acknowledged his smallness and has sub-
mitted to death as to all other natural necessi-
ties in a spirit of resignation. Nevertheless, in
our reliance upon the power of the human spirit
which copes with the laws of reality, there still
lives on a fragment of this primitive belief in the
omnipotence of thought.

In retracing the development of libidinous im-
pulses in the individual from its mature form
back to its first beginnings in childhood, we at
first found an important distinction which is _
stated in the Three Contributions to the Theory of
Sex”. The manifestations of sexual impulses
can be recognized from the beginning, but at first
they are not yet directed to any outer object.
Each individual component of the sexual impulse

3 Monograph Series, 1916,

148, TOTEM AND TABOO

works for a gain in pleasure and finds its grati-
fication in its own body. This stage is called
autoerolism and is distinguished from the stage
of object selection.

In the course of further study it proved to be
practical and really necessary to insert a third
stage between these two or, if one prefers, to
divide the first stage of autoerotism into two.
In this intermediary stage, the importance of
which increases the more we investigate it, the
sexual impulses which formerly were separate,
“have already formed into a unit and have also
found an object ; but this object is not external
and foreign to the individual, but is his own ego,
which is formed at this period. ‘his new stage
is called narcism, in view of the pathological
fixation of this condition which may be ob-
served later on. The individual acts as if he
were in love with himself; for the purposes of
our analysis the ego impulses and the libidinous
wishes cannot yet be separated from each other.

Although this narcistic stage, in which the
hitherto dissociated sexual impulses combine
into a unity and take the ego as their object,
cannot as yet be sharply differentiated, we can
already surmise that the narcistic organization
is never altogether given up again. To a
certain extent man remains narcistic, even after
he had found outer subjects for his libido, and

THE OMNIPOTENCE OF THOUGHT 149

the objeets on which he bestows it represent, as
it were, emanations of the libido which remain
with his ego and which can be withdrawn into it.
The state of being in love, so remarkable
psychologically, and the normal prototype of
the psychoses, corresponds to the highest stage
of these emanations, in contrast to the state of
self-love.

This high estimation of psychic acts found
among primitives and neurotics, which we feel
to be an overestimation, may now appropriately
be brought into relation to narcism, and
interpreted as an essential part of it. We
would say that among primitive people think-
ing is still highly sexualized and that this
accounts for the belief in the omnipotence of
thought, the unshaken confidence in the capa-
city to dominate the world and the inaceessi-
bility to the obvious facts which could en-
lighten man as to his real place in the world.
In the case of neurotics a considerable part of
this primitive attitude had remained as a con-
stitutional factor, while on the other hand the
sexual repression occurring in them has brought
about a new sexualization.of the processes of
thought. In both cases, whether we deal with
an original libidinous investment of thought
or whether the same process has been accom-
plished regressively, the psychic results are the

150 TOTEM AND TABOO

same, namely, intellectual narcism and omnipo-
tence of thought *.

If we may take the now established omnipo-
tence of thought among primitive races as a
proof of their narcism, we may venture to com-
pare the various evolutionary stages of man’s
conception of the universe with the stages of
the libidinous evolution of the individual. We
find that the animistic phase corresponds in
time as well as in content with narcism, the
religious phase corresponds to that stage of
object finding which is characterized by depen-
dence on the parents, while the scientific stage
has its full counterpart in the individual’s state
of maturity where, having renounced the
pleasure principle and having adapted himself
to reality, he seeks his object in the outer
world *°.

Only in one field has the omnipotence of
thought been retained in our own civilization,
namely inart. In art alone it still happens that
man, consumed by his wishes, produces some-

= It is almost an axiom with writers on this subject that a sort
‘of ‘Solipsism or Berkleianism’ (as Profossor Sully terms it as
he finds it in the child) operates in the savage to make him refuso
to recognize death»as a fact.—Marott, Pre-animistic Religion ;
‚Folklore, Vol. XI, 1900, y

2 We merely wish to indicate here that the original nareism of
the child is decisive for the interpretation of its character develop-
ment and that it precludes the assumption of a primitive fecling
of inferiority for the child,

THE OMNIPOTENCE OF THOUGHT 151

thing similar to the gratification of these wishes,
and this playing, thanks to artistic illusion, calls
forth effects as if it were something real. We
rightly speak of the magic of art and compare
the artist with a magician. But this com-
parison is perhaps more important than it
claims to be. Art, which certainly did not
begin as art for art’s sake, originally served
tendencies which to-day have for the greater
part ceased to exist. Among these we may
suspect various magic intentions**.

4

Animism, the first conception of the world
which man succeeded in evolving, was therefore
psychological. It did not yet require any
science to establish it, for science scts in only
after we have realized that we do not know the
world and that we must therefore seek means of
getting to know it. But animism was natural

3% 8. Reinach, L’Art et la Magie, in tho collection Cultes, Mythes
et Religions, Vol. I, pp. 125-136. Reinach thinks that the primi-
tive artists who have left us the scratched or painted animal pictures
in tho caves of France did not want to ‘arouse’ pleasure, but
to ‘conjure things’. He explains this by showing that these
drawings are in the darkest and most inacoessible part of the caves
and that representations of feared beasts of prey aro absent.” “ Les
modemes parlent souvent, par hyperbole, de la magie du pinocau
ou du ciseau d'un grand artiste et, en général, de la magie de Part.
Entendu en sense propre, qui est celui d'une constrainte mystique
exereée par la volunté de 'homme sur d'autres yolontés ou sur
les choses, cette expression n'est plus admissible ; mais nous arons
yn qu'elle était autrefois rigouresement, vraie, du moins dans
Yopinion des artistes” (p. 136),

152 TOTEM AND TABOO

and self-evident to primitive man; he knew
how the things of the world were constituted,
and as man conceived himself to be. We are
therefore prepared to find that primitive man
transferred the structural relations of his own
psyche to the outer world, and on the other
hand we may make the attempt to transfer
back into the human soul what animism teaches
about the nature of things.

Magic, the technique of animism, clearly and
unmistakably shows the tendency of forcing the
laws of psychic life upon the reality of things,
under conditions where spirits did not yet have
to play any role, and could still be taken as
objects of magic treatment. The assumptions
of magic are therefore of older origin than the
spirit theory, which forms the nucleus of ani-
mism. Our psychoanalytic view here coincides
with a theory of R. R. Marett, according to
which animism is preceded by a pre-animistic
stage the nature of which is best indicated by
the name Animatism (the theory of general ani-
mation). We have practically no further know-
ledge of pre-animism, as no race has yet been
found without conceptions of spirits**.

While magic still retains the full omnipotence

5 Recognized through so-called endopsychio perceptions,
=R. R. Marctt, Pre-animistic Religion, Folklore, Vol. XI,
No, 2, 1900.—Comp. Wundt, Myth and Religion, Vol, II, pı 171.

THE OMNIPOTENCE OF THOUGHT 158

of ideas, animism has ceded part of this omnipo-
tence to spirits and thus has started on the way
to form a religion. Now what could have
moved primitive man to this first act of renun-
ciation ? It could hardly have been an insight
into the incorrectness of his assumptions, for
he continued to retain the magic technique.

As pointed out elsewhere, spirits and demons
were nothing but the projection of primitive
man’s emotional impulses“ ; he personified the
things he endowed with effects, populated the
world with them and then rediscovered his inner
psychic processes outside himself, quite like the
ingenious parangiae Schreber, who found the
fixations and detachments of his libido refleeted
in the fates of the ‘God-rays’ which he in-
vented **.

As on a former occasion **, we want to avoid
the problem as to the origin of the tendency to
project psychic processes into the outer world.
It is fair to assume, however, that this tendency
becomes stronger where the projection into the
outer world offers psychic relief. Such a state

% We assume that in this early narcistic stage feelings from libidi-
nous and other sources of excitement are perhaps still indistinguish
ably combined with each other.

#i Schreber, Denkwürdigkeiten eines Nervenkranken, 1903.—
Freud, Paychoanalytic Observations concerning an autobio-
graphically described case of Paranoia, Jahrbuch für Psychoanalyt.
Forsch, Vol, TI, 1911.

% Compare the latest communication about the Schrober caso,
p. 59,

154 TOTEM AND TABOO

of affairs can with certainty be expected if the
impulses struggling for omnipotence have come
into conflict with each other, for then they evi-
dently cannot all become omnipotent. The
morbid process in paranoia actually uses the
mechanism of projection to solve such conflicts
which arise in the psychic life. However, it so
happens that the model case of such a conflict
between two parts of an antithesis is the ambi-
valent attitude which we have analysed in
detail in the situation of the mourner at the
death of one dear to him, Such a case appeals
to us especially fitted to motivate the creation
of projection formations. Here again weare in
agreement with those authors who declare that
evil spirits were the first born among spirits, and
who find the origin of soul conceptions in the
impression which death makes upon the survi-
vors. We differ from them only in not
putting the intellectual problem which death
imposes upon the living into the foreground,
-instead of which we transfer the force which
stimulates inquiry to the conflict of feelings
into which this situation plunges the survivor.

The first theoretical accomplishment of man,
the ercation of spirits, would therefore spring
from the same source as the first moral restric-
tions to which he subjects himself, namely, the
tules of taboo. But the fact that they have the

THE OMNIPOTENCE OF THOUGHT 155

same source should not prejudice us in favour of
a simultaneous origin. If it really were the
situation of the survivor confronted by the dead
which first caused primitive man to reflect, so
that he was compelled to surrender some of his
omnipotence to spirits and to sacrifice a part of
the free will of his actions, these cultural crea-
tions would be a first recognition of the ävdyen,
which opposes man’s nareism. Primitive man
would bow to the superior power of death with
the same gesture with which he seems to deny it.
If we have the courage to follow our assump-
tions further, we may ask what essential part of
our psychological structure is reflected and re-
viewed in the projection formation of souls and
spirits. It is then difficult to dispute that the
primitive conception of the soul, though still far
removed from the later and wholly immaterial
soul, nevertheless shares its nature and therefore
looks upon a person or a thing as a duality, over
the two elements of which the known properties
and changes of the whole are distributed. This
origin duality, we have borrowed the term from
Herbert Spencer **, is already identical with the
dualism which manifests itself in our customary
separation of spirit from body, and whose inde-
structible linguistic manifestations we recognize,
for instance, in the description of a person who

% Principles of Socioloyy, Vol. I.

156 TOTEM AND TABOO

faints or raves as one who is ‘ beside himself.’*”

The thing which we, just like primitive man,
project in outer reality, can hardly be anything
else than the recognition of a state in which a
given thing is present to the senses and to
consciousness, next to which another state
exists in which the thing is latent, but can re-
appear, that is to say, the co-existence of percep-
tion and memory, or, to generalize it, the exist-
ence of unconscious psychic processes next to
conscious ones**. It might be said that in the
Jast analysis the ‘ spirit’ of a person or thing
is the faculty of remembering and representing
the object, after he or it was withdrawn from
conscious perception.

Of course we must not expect from either the
primitive or the current conception of the
“soul ’ that its line of demarcation from other
parts should be as marked as that which con-
temporary science draws between conscious and
unconscious psychic activity. The animistic
soul, on the contrary, unites determinants from
both sides. Its flightiness and mobility, its
faculty of leaving the body, of permanently or
temporarily taking possession of another body,
all these are characteristics which remind us

* Le, p. 179.

28 Compare my short paper: A Note om the Unconscious im
Paychoanalysis, in the Proceedings ofthe Society for Psychical Research,
Part LXVI, Vol. XXVI, 1912.

THE OMNIPOTENCE OF THOUGHT 157

unmistakably of the nature of consciousness
But the way in which it keeps itself concealed
behind the personal appearance reminds us of
the unconscious ; to-day we no longer ascribe
its unchangeableness and indestructibility to
conscious but to unconscious processes and look
upon these as the real bearers of psychic activity.
We said before that animism is a system of
thought, the first complete theory of the world ;
we now want to draw certain inferences through
psychoanalytic interpretation of such a system.
Our everyday experience is capable of con-
stantly showing us the main characteristics of
the ‘system’. We dream during the night
and have learnt to interpret the dream in the
daytime. Thedream can, without being untrue
to its nature, appear confused and incoherent ;
but on the other hand it can also imitate the
order of impressions of an experience, infer one
occurrence from another, and refer one part
of its contents to another. The dream succeeds
more or less in this, but hardly ever succeeds so
completely that an absurdity or a gap in the
structure does not appear somewhere. .If we
subject the dream to interpretation we find that
this unstable and irregular order of its compo-
nents is quite unimportant for our under-
standing of it. The essential part of the dream
„are the dream thoughts, which have, to be sure,

158 TOTEM AND TABOO

a significant, coherent order. But their order
is quite different from that which we reme ber
from the manifest content of the dream. ‘The
coherence of the dream thoughts has been abol-
ished and may either remain altogether lost or
can be replaced by the new coherence of the
dream content. Besides, the condensation of
the dream elements there is almost regularly a
re-grouping of the same which is more or less
independent of the former order. We say in
conclusion, that what the dream-work has
made out of the material of the dream thoughts
has been subjected to a new influence, the so-
called ‘secondary elaboration,’ the object of
which evidently is to do away with the inco-
herence and incomprehensibility caused by the
dream-work, in favour of a new ‘meaning ’.
This new meaning which has been brought
about by the secondary elaboration is no longer
the meaning of the dream thoughts.

The secondary elaboration of the product of
the dream-work is an excellent example of the
navure and the pretensions of a system. An in-
tellectual function in us demands the unifica-
tion, coherence and comprehensibility of every-
thing perceived and thought of, and does not
hesitate to construct a false connexion if, as a
result of special circumstances, it cannot grasp
the right one. We know such system forma-

THE OMNIPOTENCE OF THOUGHT 159

tion not only from the dream, but also from
phobias, from compulsive thinking and from
the types of delusions. The system forma-
tion is most ingenious in delusional states
(paranoia) and dominates the clinical picture,
but it also must not be overlooked in other
forms of neuropsychoses. In every case we can
show that a re-arrangement of the psychic
material takes place, which may often be quite
violent, provided it seems comprehensible from
the point of view of the system. The best indi-
cation that a system has been formed then lies
in the fact that each result of it can be shown to
have at least two motivations one of which
springs from the assumptions of the system and
is therefore eventually delusional,—and a hid-
den one which, however, we must recognize as
the real and effective motivation.

An example from a neurosis may serve as
illustration. In the chapter on taboo I men-
tioned a patient whose compulsive prohibitions
correspond very neatly to the taboo of the
Maori**. The neurosis of this woman was
directed against her husband and culminated in
the defence against the unconscious wish for his
death. But her manifest systematic phobia
concerned the mention of death in general, in
which her husband was altogether climinated

® p. 26,

160 TOTEM AND TABOO

and never became the object of conscious
solicitude. One day she heard her husband
give an order to have his dull razors taken to a
certain shop to have them sharpened. Impelled
by a peculiar unrest she went to the shop herself,
and on her return from this reconnoitre she
asked her husband to lay the razors aside for
good because she had discovered that there was a
warchouse of coffins and funeral accessories next
to the shop he mentioned. She claimed that he
had intentionally brought the razors into per-
manent relation with the idea of death. This
was then the systematic motivation of the pro-
hibition, but we may be sure that the patient
would have brought home the prohibition rela-
ting to the razors even if she had not discovered
this warchouse in the neighbourhood. For it
would have been sufficient if on her way to the
shop she had met a hearse, a person in mourning,
or somebody carrying a wreath. ‘The net of
determinants was spread out far enough to catch
the prey in any case, it was simply a question
whether she should pull it in or not. It could
be established with certainty that she did not
mobilize the determinants of the prohibition in
other cireumstances. She would then have
said it had becn one of her ‘better days’.
‘The rcal reason for the prohibition of the razor
was, of course, as we can easily guess, her

THE OMNIPOTENCE OF THOUGHT 161

resistance against a pleasurably accentuated
idea that her husband might cut his throat with
the sharpened razors.

In much the same way a motor inhibition, an
abasia or an agoraphobia, becomes perfected
and detailed if the symptom once succeeds in
representing an unconscious wish and of impos-
ing a defence against it. All the patient’s
remaining unconscious phantasies and effective
reminiscences strive for symptomatic expres- ~
sion through this outlet, when once it has been
opened, and range themselves appropriately in
the new order within the sphere of the disturb-
ance of gait. It would therefore be a futile and
really foolish way to begin to try to under-
stand the symptomatic structure, and the
details of, let us say, an agoraphobia, in terms
of its basie assumptions. For the whole logie
and strictness of connexion is only apparent.
Sharper observation can reveal, as in the forma-
tion of the facade in the dream, the greatest
inconsistency and arbitrariness in the symptom
formation. The details of such a systematic
phobia take their real motivation from con-
cealed determinants which must have nothing
to do with the inhibition in gait ; it is for this
reason that the form of such a phobia varies so
and is so contradictory in different people.

If we now attempt to retrace the system of

ar

162 TOTEM AND TABOO

animism with which we are concerned, we may
conclude from our insight into other psycho-
logical systems that ‘ superstition ’ need not be
the only and actual motivation of such a single
rule or custom even among primitive races, and
that we are not relieved of the obligation of
seeking for concealed motives. Under the
dominance of an animistic systemit is absolutely
essential that each rule and activity should
receive a systematic motivation which we to-day
call ‘superstitious’. But ‘ superstition’, like
‘anxiety ’, ‘dreams’, and ‘demons’, is one
of the preliminaries of psychology which have
been dissipated by psychoanalytic investigation.
If we get behind these structures, which like a
screen conceal understanding, we realize that
the psychic life and the cultural level of savages
have hitherto been inadequately appreciated.

If we regard the repression of impulses as a
measure of the level of culture attained, we
must admit that under the animistic system too,
progress and evolution have taken place, which
unjustly have been under-estimated on account
of their susperstitious motivation. If we hear
that the warriors of a savage tribe impose the
greatest chastity and cleanliness upon them-
selves as soon as they go upon the war-path *°,
the obvious explanation is that they dispose of

“© Brazer, Taboo and the Perils of the Soul, p. 158,

THE OMNIPOTENCE OF THOUGHT 168

their refuse in order that the enemy may not
come into possession of this part of their person
in order to harm them by magical means, and
we may surmise analogous superstitious moti-
vations for their abstinence. Nevertheless the
fact remains that the impulse is renounced and
we probably understand the case better if we
assume that the savage warrior imposes such
restrictions upon himself in compensation, be-
cause he is on the point of allowing himself the
full satisfaction of cruel and ‘hostile impulses
otherwise forbidden. The same holds good for
the numerous cases of sexual restriction while
he is preoccupied with difficult or responsible
tasks “. Even if the basis of these prohibitions
can be referred to some association with magic,
the fundamental conception of gaining greater
strength by foregoing gratification of desires
nevertheless remains unmistakable, and be-
sides the magic rationalization of the prohibi-
tion, one must not neglect its hygienic root.
When the men of a savage tribe go away to
hunt, fish, make war, or collect valuable plants,
the women at home are in the meantime sub-
jected to numerous oppressive restrictions
which, according to the savages themselves,
exert a sympathetic effect upon the success of
the far away expedition. But it does not
i © Frazer, he, p. 200,

164 TOTEM AND TABOO

require much acumen to guess that this elernent
acting at a distance is nothing but a thought of
home, the longing of the absent, and that these
disguises conceal the sound psychological in-
sight that the men will do their best only if they
are fully assured of the whereabouts of their
guarded women. On other occasions the
thought is directly expressed without magic
motivation, that the conjugal infidelity of the
wife thwarts the absent husband’s efforts.

The countless taboo rules to which the women
of savages are subject during their. menstrual
periods are motivated by the superstitious
dread of blood which in all probability actually
determines it. But it would be wrong to over-

. look the possibility that this blood dread also
serves esthetic and hygienic purposes which in
every case have to be covered by magic motiva-
tions.

We are probably not mistaken in assuming
that such attempted explanations expose us to
the reproach of attributing a most improbable
delicacy of psychic activities to contemporary
savages.

But I think that we may casily make the
same mistake with the psychology of these races
who have remained at the animistic stage that
we made with the psychic life of the child, which
we adults understood no better and whose rich-

THE OMNIPOTENCE OF THOUGHT 165

ness and fineness of fecling we have therefore
so greatly undervalued.

I want to consider another group of hitherto
unexplained taboo rules because they admit of
an explanation with which the psychoanalyst is
familiar. Under certain conditions it is forbid-
den to many savage races to keep in the house
sharp weapons and instruments for cutting *.
Frazer sites a German superstition that a knife
must not be left lying with the edge pointing up-
ward because God and the angels might injure
themselves with it. May we not recognize in
this taboo a premonition of certain ‘ sympto-
matic actions’ * for which the sharp weapon
might be used by unconscious evil impulses ?

# Frazer, Le, p, 237.

© Froud, Psychopathology of Everyday Life, p. 216, trans, by
A. A. Brill.