CHAPTER Ш

ANIMISM, MAGIC, AND THE OMNIPOTENCE OF
THOUGHT +

1

Ir is a necessary defect of studies which seek to apply
the point of view of psychoanalysis to the mental
sciences that they cannot do justice to either subject.
They therefore confine themselves to the rôle of incen-
tives and make suggestions 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 spiritual
beings in general. Animatism, the animation theory
of seemingly inanimate nature, is a further subdivision
which also includes animatism and animism. The
name animism, formerly applied to a definite philo-

+ The necessary crowding of the material also compels us to
dispense with a thorough bibliography. Instead of this the
reader is referred to the well-known works of Herbert Spencer,
J. С. Frazer, A. Lang, E. B. Tylor, and W. Wundt, from which all
the statements concerning animism and magic are taken. The
independence of the author can manifest itself only in the choice
of the material and of opinions.

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| ANIMISM, MAGIC, OMNIPOTENCE OF THOUGHT
sophic system, seems to have acquired its present mean-
ing through E. B. Tylor ⑧
What led to the formulation of these names is the
insight into the very remarkable conceptions 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
benevolent 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 “ nature philosophy ” seems far less
striking to us because we ourselves are not yet far
enough removed from it, though we have greatly limited
the existence of spirits and to-day explain the processes
of nature by the assumption of impersonal physical
forces. For primitive people believe in a similar
animation ” of human individuals as well. Human
beings have souls which can leave their habitation and
enter into other beings; these souls are the bearers of
spiritual activities and are, to a certain extent, indepen-
dent of the “ bodies.” Originally souls were thought
of as being very similar to individuals; 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

* E. B. Tylor, Primitive Culture, Vol. I, p. 425, fourth ed.
1903. W. Wundt, Myth and Religion, Vol. 11, p. 173, 1906.
= Wundt, Le, Chapter IV: Die Seelenvorstellungen.
123

TOTEM AND TABOO

soul conceptions are the original nucleus of the animisti
system, that spirits merely correspond 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 peculiarly
dualistic fundamental conceptions on which this
animistic system rests? Through the observation, it
is thought, of the phenomena of sleep (with dreams)
and death which resembles sleep, and through the effort
to explain these conditions, which affect each individual
so intimately. Above all, the problem of death must
have become the starting-point of the formation of the
theory. To primitive man the continuation of life—
immortality—would be self-evident. The conception
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 may have been played by other
observations and experiences in the formation of the
fundamental animistic conceptions such as dream
imagery, shadows and reflections, but these have led to
no conclusion.

Tf primitive man reacted to the phenomena that
stimulated his reflection with the formation of concep-
tions of the soul, and then transferred these to objects
of the outer world, his attitude will be judged to be quite

> Compare, besides Wundt and H. Spencer, the instructive
articles in the Encyclopedia Britannica, 1911 (Animism, Mythology,
and so forth).
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IIMISM, MAGIC, OMNIPOTENCE OF THOUGHT
natural and in no way mysterious. In view of the fact
that animistic conceptions have been shown to besimilar 」

among the most varied races and in all periods, Wundt
states that these “ are the necessary psychological pro-
duct of the myth-forming consciousness, and primitive
animism may be looked upon as the spiritual expres-
sion of man’s natural state in so far as this is at all
accessible to our observation.” " Hume has already
justified the animation of the inanimate in his Natural
History of Religions, where he said: “ There is a univer-

. sal 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 intimately conscious.” ?

Animism is a system of thought, it gives not only the
explanation of a single phenomenon, but makes it pos-
sible 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 systems, 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 superstition, or in

1 Le, p 154,
* Sce Tylor, Primitive Culture, Vol. 1, p. 477.

125

TOTEM AND TABOO A
living form, as the foundation of our language, our
belief, and our philosophy.

Itis in reference to the successive stages of these three
world systems that we say that animism 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 seems unexplained
in some essential points.

2

Our psychoanalytic work will begin at a different
point. It must not be assumed that mankind came to
create its first world system through a purely specula-
tive 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 compare 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

1 Cultes, Mythes et Religions, T. TU: Introduction, p. XV, 1909.
? Année Sociologique, Seventh Vol., 1904.
126

с usage. Then sorcery is essentially the art
of influencing spirits by treating them like people
under the same circumstances, that is to say by appeas-
ing them, reconciling them, making them more favour-
ably disposed 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, iš something else; it does
not essentially concern itself with spirits, and uses
special means, not the ordinary psychological method.
We can casily gucss that magic is the earlier and the
more important 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 enemies and
dangers, and give him the power to injure his enemies.
But the principles on whose assumptions the magic
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 E. 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

1 To frighten away a ghost with noise and cries is a form of
pure sorcery to force him to do something by taking his name is
to employ magic against him.

127

TOTEM AND TABOO
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 subsequently done to this image
will also happen to the hated prototype; thus if the
effigy has been injured in any place he will be afflicted
| by a disease in the corresponding part of the body.

This same magic technique, instead of being used for
private enmity, can also be employedfor pious purposes
and can thus be used to aid the gods against evil
. demons. I quote Frazer: “ Every night when the
sun-god Ra in ancient Egypt sank to his home in the
glowing west he was assailed by hosts of demons under
the leadership of the archfiend Apepi. All night long
he fought them, and sometimes by day the powers of
darkness 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 ceremony 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 in green ink.
` Wrapt in a 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

The Magic Art, II, p. 67.
128

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, waxen effigies of each of his principal demons, and —
of their fathers, mothers, and children, were made and
burnt in the same way. The service, accompanied by
the recitation of certain prescribed spells, was repeated
not merely morning, noon and night, but whenever a
storm was raging 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

“önce 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 rôle among
primitive races and which have been partly preserved
in the myths and cults of higher stages of evolution:
the art of causing rain and fruitfulness by magic.
Rain is produced 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 others fit out a big

1 The Biblical prohibition against making an image of any- — |

thing living hardly sprang from any fundamental rejection of
plastic art, but was probably meant to deprive magic, which the
Hebraic religion proscribed, of one of its instruments. Frazer,
Le., p. 87, note.

E 129

TOTEM AND TABOO

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 un-
fruitful.

Certain negative rules, that is to say magic precau-
tions, must be put into this first group. If some 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
drawings on wood or in the sand, as the paths in the
thick woods might become as intertwined as the lines
of the drawing and the hunter would not find his way
home.“

The fact that in these, as in a great many other

* The Magic Art, II, p. 98.

* An echo of this is to be found in the Oedipus Rex of
‘Sophocles.

3 The Magic Art, p. 120.
* Le, p. 122.
130

ANIMISM, MAGIC, OMNIPOTENCE OF THOUGHT
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 happen-

- ing. 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
arranged 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 magic actions the principle of
similarity is no longer involved, but in its stead there
is another principle 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 you had dominated the person himself,
and anything that you do to the things that belong to
him must happen to him too. According to the con-
ception of primitive men a name is an essential part of
a personality; if therefore you know the name of a
person or a spirit you have acquired a certain power

131

TOTEM AND TABOO
over its bearer. This explains the remarkable pre-
cautions and restrictions in the use of names which we
have touched upon in the essay on taboo. In these
examples similarity is evidently replaced by relation
ship.

"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 restrictions as to diet under special circumstances.
Thus a pregnant woman will avoid eating the meat of
certain animals because their undesirable 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
important 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 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 inflammation 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, XXVIII, advises
spitting on the hand which has caused the injury if one

3 See preceding chapter, p. 94.
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EO MAGIC, OMNIPOTENCE OF THOUGHT

regrets having injured some one; the pain of the injured
person will then immediately be eased. Francis Bacon,
in his Natural History, mentions the generally accredited
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 scythe 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 tetanus +
in consequence of postponed antisepsis.

The examples from this last group illustrate Frazer's
distinction between contagious magic and imitative
magic. What is considered as effective in these ex-
amples is no longer the similarity, but the association
in space, the contiguity, or at least the imagined con-
tiguity, 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 con-
cluded that the dominance of associations of ideas
really explains all the madness of the rules of magic.
We can see how true Tylor’s quoted characteristic of
magic: “ mistaking an ideal connection for a real one,”

* Frazer, The Magic Art, pp. 201-3.
133

TOTEM AND TABOO i

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 corresponding control over things.” *

It will at first seem strange that this illuminating
explanation of magic could have been rejected by some
authors as unsatisfactory. 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 essential nature, that is, it does not explain
the misunderstanding which bids it put psychological
laws in place of natural ones. We are apparently in =
need here of a dynamic factor; but while the search for
this leads the critics of Frazer's theory astray, it will be
easy to give ‘a satisfactory explanation of magic by
carrying its association theory farther and by entering
more deeply into it.

First let us examine the simpler and more important
case of imitative magic. According to Frazer this may
be practised by itself, whereas contagious magic as a
rule presupposes the imitative The motives which
impel one to exercise 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

* The Magic Art, p. 420.
* Compare the article Magic (N. T. W.), in the Encyclopedia
Britannica, 11th Ed.
3 Lc, p. 54.
134

"um
SM, MAGIC, OMNIPOTENCE OF THOUGHT
wishes. At bottom everything which he accom-
plished 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 under
analogous psychic conditions, without being as yet
capable of motor activity, we have elsewhere advocated
the assumption that it at first really satisfies its wishes
by means of hallucinations, in that it creates the satis-
fying 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 gratification so that one may experience
it, as it were, through motor hallucination. Such a
representation of the gratified wish is altogether com-
parable 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 impotence ; 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

+ Formulation of two principles of psychic activity, Jahrb. für
Psychoanalyt. Forschungen, Vol. TIT, 1912, p. 2.
135

TOTEM AND TABOO
say that primitive man does not become aware of the
over-valuation of his psychic acts until it becomes
evident to him through the means employed. 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 objectively the
true state of affairs, but this becomes possible at later
stages when, though such procedures are still practised,
the psychic phenomenon of scepticism already mani-
fests 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 com-
mand. 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 am over-estimation of the
latter. Objects as such are over-shadowed by the
ideas representing them ; what takes place in the latter
must also happen to the former, and the relations

3 The King in Hamlet (Act 111, Scene 4):

* My words fly up, my thoughts remain below,

Words without thoughts never to heaven go.”
136

ANIMISM, MAGIC, OMNIPOTENCE OF THOUGHT
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 spatially and temporally far removed, the magic
world also puts itself above spatial distance by tele-
pathy, 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 transferred 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 technique of theanimistic
method of thought, is “ Omnipotence of Thought.”

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 treatment, was able to demonstrate his

3 Compare Chapter II.
= 137 4

TOTEM AND TABOO
efficiency and good sense.‘ He had coined this phrase
to designate all those peculiar and uncanny occurrences
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 actually confronted with this person
as if he had conjured 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 acquaint-
ance had just died, so that he could believe that the
deceased had drawn his attention to himself by tele-
pathic means; if he uttered a half-meant imprecation
against a stranger, he could expect to have him die
soon thereafter and burden him with the responsibility
for his death. He was able to explain most of these
cases in the course of the treatment, he could tell how
the illusion had originated, and what he himself had
contributed towards furthering his superstitious expec-
tations. All compulsion neurotics are superstitious
in this manner and often against their better judg-
ment.

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 distinguishing characteristic of

* Remarks upon a case of Compulsion Neurosis, Jahrb. fiir
Psychoanalyt. und Psychopath. Forschungen, Vol. I, 1909.

5 We seem to attribute the character of the uncanny " to all
such impressions which seek to confirm the omnipotence of
thoughtand the animistic method of thought in general, though
our judgment has long rejected it.

138

| ANIMISM, MAGIC, OMNIPOTENCE OF THOUGHT

this neurosis, for analytic investigation reveals the same
‘mechanism 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 elsewhere expressed it, only the
“ neurotic 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 arc in harmony with outer reality. The

hysteric repeats in his attacks, and fixat

tes 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 incompre-
hensible if traced to real misdceds. A compulsion
neurotic 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 con-
siderate and scrupulous manner, a behaviour which he
evinced since his childhood. And yet his sense of guilt

is justified; it is based upon intensive

and frequent

death wishes which unconsciously manifest themselves
towards his fellow beings. It is motivated from the

point of view of unconscious thought

s, but not of

intentional acts. Thus the omnipotence of thought,

the over-estimation of psychic processes

as opposed to

reality, proves to be of unlimited effect in the neurotic's
affective life and in all that emanates from it. But if
we subject him to psychoanalytic treatment, which

139

TOTEM AND TABOO
. makes his unconscious thoughts conscious to him, he
refuses to believe that thoughts are free and is always
afraid to express evil wishes lest they be fulfilled in con-
„sequence 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 neurotics are
really altogether of a magical nature. If not magic
they are at least antimagic and are 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
problem of death stands at the beginning of every
philosophy; we have heard that the formation of the
soul conception and of the belief in demons which
characterize animism are also traced back to the
impression which death makes upon man. It is hard
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
* The following discussions will yield a further motive for this
displacement upon a trivial action.

140

by pointing out how these actions begin as a spell
against evil wishes which are very remote from any-
thing sexual, only to end up as a substitute for for-
bidden sexual activity, which they imitate as faithfully
as possible.

If we accept the evolution of man's conceptions of
the universe mentioned above, according to which the
animistic phase is succeeded by the religious, and this
in turn by the scientific, we have no difficulty in follow-
ing 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 giving 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 scientific attitude towards life
there is no longer any room for man’s omnipotence; he
has acknowledged his smallness and has submitted to
death as to all other natural necessities 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 impulses
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

Monograph Series, 1916.
141

TOTEM AND TABOO
first they are not yet directed to any outer object. Each
individual component of the sexual impulse works for
a gain in pleasure and finds its gratification in its own
body. This stage is called autoerotism and is dis-
tinguished 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 inyestigate
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. This new stage is called narcism, in view
of the pathological fixation of this condition which may
be observed 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 has
found outer subjects for his libido, and the objects 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
142

A DAE POST ENE
ANIMISM, MAGIC, OMNIPOTENCE OF THOUGHT _

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 over-
estimation, may now appropriately be brought into
relation to narcism, and interpreted as an essential
part of it. We would say that among primitive people
thinking is still highly sexualized and that this accounts
for the belief in the omnipotence of thought, the
unshaken confidence in the capacity to dominate the
world, and the inaccessibility to the obvious facts which
could enlighten man as to his real place in the world.
In the case of neurotics, a considerable part of this
primitive attitude has remained as a constitutional
factor, while on the other hand the sexual repression
occurring in them has brought about a new sexualiza-
tion 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
accomplished regressively, the psychic results are the
same, namely, intellectual narcism and omnipotence of
thought.

If we may take the now established omnipotence of
thought among primitive races as a proof of their
narcism, we may venture to compare the various evolu- |

1 It is almost an axiom with writers on this subject that a sort
of “ Solipsism or Berkleianism ” (as Professor Sully terms it as
he finds it in the child) operates in the savage to make him refuse

to recognize death as a fact.—Marett, Pre-animistic Religion;
Folklore, Vol. XI, 1900, p. 178.

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TOTEM AND TABOO
nary 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 dependence 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 in art.
In art alone it still happens that man, consumed by his
wishes, produces something 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 comparison 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."

1 We merely wish to indicate here that the original narcism of
the child is decisive for the interpretation of its character develop-
/ ment and that it precludes the assumption of à primitive feeling
of inferiority for the child.

3 S. Reinach, L'Art et la Magie, in the 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 the caves of France did not want to “arouse” pleasure,
but to " conjure things.” He explains this by showing that these
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MISM, MAGIC, OMNIPOTENCE OF THOUGHT

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 sets 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
and self-evident to primitive man; he knew how the
things of the world were constituted, and as man con-
ceived 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 un-
mistakably 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 rôle, and |
could still be taken as objects of magic treatment.
The assumptions of magic are therefore of older origin

drawings are in the darkest and most inaccessible part of the caves
and that representations of feared beasts of prey are absent.
“ Les modernes parlent souvent, par hyperbole, de la magie du
pinceau ou du ciseau d'un grand artiste et, en général, de la 」
magie de Гап. Entendu en sens propre, qui est celui d'une
constrainte mystique exercée par la volonté de l'homme sur
d'autres volontés ou sur les choses, cette expression n'est plus
admissible; mais nous avons vu qu’elle était autrefois rigoureuse- | |
ment vraie, du moins dans l'opinion des artistes” (p. 136). |
1 Recognized through so-called endopsychic perceptions.
145

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TOTEM AND TABOO

than the spirit theory, which forms the nucleus of anim-
ism. Our psychoanalytic view here coincides with a
theory of R. R. Marett, according to which animism is
preceded by a preanimistic stage the nature of which
is best indicated by the name Animatism (the theory of
general animation). We have practically no further
knowledge of pre-animism as no race has yet been
found without conceptions of spirits.

While magic still retains the full omnipotence of
ideas, animism has ceded part of this omnipotence 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 renunciation ? 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 redis-
covered his inner psychic processes outside himself,
quite like the ingenious paranoiac Schreber, who found
the fixations and detachments of his libido reflected in
the fates of the “ God-rays “ which he invented.

2 R. R. Marett, Pre-animistic Religion, Folklore, Vol. XI,
No. 2, 1900.—Comp. Wundt, Myth and Religion, Vol. II, р. 171.
We assume that in this carly narcistic stage feelings from
inous and other sources of excitement are perhaps still indis-
tinguishably combined with each other.

3 Schreber, Denkwürdigkeiten eines Nervenkranken, 1903.—
Freud, Psychoanalytic Observations concerning an autobio-

graphically described case of Paranoia, Jahrbuch für Psycho-
analyt. Forsch. Vol. 111, 1911.

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i ANIMISM, MAGIC, OMNIPOTENCE OF THOUGHT

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 of affairs can with certainty be
expected if the impulses struggling for omnipotence
have come into conflict with each other, for then they
evidently 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 ambivalent 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 we are 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 survivors.
We differ from them only in not putting the in-
tellectual 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

3 Compare the latest communication about the Schreber case,
p. 59. j
147

FEN
TOTEM AND TABOO

creation of spirits, would therefore spring from the
same source as the first moral restrictions to which he
subjects himself, namely, the rules of taboo. But the
fact that they have the same source should not prejudice
. us in favour of a simultancous 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 creations would be a first re-
cognition of the dvóryxn, which opposes man's narcism.
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 assumptions
farther, we may ask what essential part of our psycho-
logical structure is reflected and reviewed in the pro-
jection formation of souls and spirits. It is then diffi-
cult 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 indestructible linguistic mani-
— festations we recognize, for instance, in the description

‎Principles of Sociology, Vol. 1.‏ ג
148

IMISM, MAGIC, OMNIPOTENCE OF THOUGHT
of a person who 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 reappear ; that is to say, the co-existence of percep-
tion and memory, or, to generalize it, the existence of
unconscious psychic processes next to conscious ones.
It might be said that in the last 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 contemporary 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 tempor- |
arily taking possession of another body, all these are
characteristics which remind us unmistakably of the
nature of consciousness. But the way in which it keeps
itself concealed behind the personal appearance reminds

1 Le, p. 179. Å
2 Compare my short paper: À Note on the Unconscious in
Psychoanalysis, in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical —
Research, Part LXVI, Vol. XXVI, 1912,
149

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|
|
|
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3
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А Sold № Ts |
| TOTEM AND TABOO

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 inter-
pretation of such a system. Our everyday experience
is capable of constantly showing us the main character-
istics of the “ system.” We dream during the night
and have learnt to interpret the dream in the daytime.
The dream 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 components is quite unimportant for our
understanding of it. The essential part of the dream
is the dream thoughts, which have, to be sure, a
significant, coherent order. But their order is quite
different from that which we remember from the mani-
fest content of the dream. The coherence of the dream
thoughts has been abolished 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-
150

ANIMISI MAGIC, OMNIPOTENCE OF THOUGHT
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 incoherence 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 nature and
the pretensions of a system. An intellectual function
in us demands the unification, coherence and compre-
hensibility of everything perceived and thought of, and
does not hesitate to construct a false connection if, as a
result of special circumstances, it cannot grasp the right
one. We know such system formation not only from
the dream, but also from phobias, from compulsive
thinking and from the types of delusions. The system
formation is most ingenious in delusional states
(paranoia) and dominates the clinical picture, but it
also must not be overlooked in other forms of neuro-
psychoses. 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 com-
prehensible from the point of view of the system. The

„best indication that a system has been formed then lies

in the fact that each result of it can be shown to have
151

TOTEM AND TABOO
at least two motivations, one of which springs from the
assumptions of the system and is therefore eventually
delusional, and a hidden 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 mentioned 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 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 warehouse of coffins and funeral accessories
next to the shop he mentioned. She claimed that he
| had intentionally brought the razors into permanent
relation with the idea of death. This was then the
systematic motivation of the prohibition, but we may
| be sure that the patient would have brought home the

. prohibition relating 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 some-
1 р. ђе.

152

Ч — "TY ⑥ Soocc
ANIMISM, MAGIC, OMNIPOTENCE OF THOUGHT |
body 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 would pull it in
or not. It could be established with certainty that she
did not mobilize the determinants of the prohibition in
other circumstances. She would then have said it had
been one of her better days.” The real reason for
the prohibition of the razor was, of course, as we can
easily guess, her resistance against a pleasurably accen-
tuated 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 uncon- |
scious wish and of imposing 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 disturbance of gait. It would
therefore be a futile and really foolish way to begin to 」
try to understand the symptomatic structure, and the
details of, let us say, an agoraphobia, in terms of its 」

basic assumptions. For the whole logic and strictness

of connection are only apparent. Sharperobservation 」
can reveal, as in the formation of the façade in the |
dream, the greatest inconsistency and arbitrariness in |
the symptom formation. The details of such a syste-
matic phobia take their real motivation from concealed |
determinants which must have nothing to do with the |
153 å

TOTEM AND TABOO
, Muhme-n 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 animism
with which we are concerned, we may conclude from
our insight into other psychological systems that
+ superstition ” need not be the only and actual motiva-
tion of such a single rule or custom even among primi-
| tive races, and that we are not relieved of the obligation
of seeking for concealed motives. Under the domin-
ance of an animistic system it is absolutely essential that
each rule and activity should receive a systematic moti-
vation 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 investiga-
tion. 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. 7

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 superstitious motivation. If we
hear that the warriors of a savage tribe impose the
greatest chastity and cleanliness upon themselves as
soon as they go upon the war-path, the obvious ex-
planation is that they dispose of their refuse in order

1 Frazer, Taboo and the Perils of the Soul, p. 158.
154

" ANIMISM, MAGIC, OMNIPOTENCE OF THOUGHT

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
motivations 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 com-
pensation, because he is on the pointof allowing himself
the full satisfaction of cruel and hostile impulses other-
wise 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 neverthe-
less remains unmistakable, and besides the magic
rationalization of the prohibition, 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 subjected 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
require much acumen to guess that this clement acting
ata distance is nothing but a thought of home, the long-
ing of the absent, and that these disguises conceal the
sound psychological insight 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

Frazer, Lc, p. 200.
155

TOTEM AND TABOO |
_ is directly expressed without magic motivation, that the

| conjugal infidelity of the wife thwarts the absent hus-
band'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 overlook the possibility that this blood
dread also serves æsthetic and hygienic purposes
which in every case have to be covered by magic
‘motivations.

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 easily 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 richness and fineness of feeling we have therefore
so greatly undervalued.

I want to consider another group of hitherto unex-
plained taboo rules because they admit of an explana-
| tion with which the psychoanalyst is familiar. Under
certain conditions it is forbidden to many savage races
to keep in the house sharp weapons and instruments for
cutting? Frazer cites a German superstition that a
- knife must not be left lying with the edge pointing up-
ward because God and the angels might injure them-

> Frazer, Le, p. 237.
156

which the sharp weapon might be used by unconscio
il impulses ? i
= > Freud, EGO of Everyday Life, p. 215, trans.