What communicators can learn from Freud’s analysis of groups
30 November, 2006
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Freud developed his psychoanalytic theories by studying himself, and his patients. Then he used those theories to analyse groups and society at large. His well-known line that individual psychology is from the very first social psychology is a comment very much after the event – I doubt that he would have produced psychoanalysis by studying society.
Towards the end of his life, he almost downgrades his work in psychotherapy, along with the natural sciences and medicine, as ‘a long detour’ he went on, before returning ‘to the cultural problems which had fascinated me long before, when I was a youth, scarcely old enough for thinking.’ (1935, p 181) Is he implying that work on society is a more adolescent pursuit than psychotherapy etc?
When, some 14 years earlier, Freud wrote on Massenpsychologie or group psychology, he did something he had done very rarely – defer to another writer, Le Bon, and simply transcribe large slabs of his work.
‘I will now let Le Bon speak for himself’ …. and he does for 10 pages verbatim. (1921, p 99.) One can only speculate on the reasons for this copying which seems so out of character for Freud. Could if be that he recognised Le Bon as a greater expert on this subject? Could it be that the subject was relatively less interesting to him? Could it be that he had less to say than he originally thought? Could it be that he that he was a loner, and didn’t like groups?
On this last point – Freud’s track record with grouping was, apart from his family, mainly unsuccessful. One has only to think of his relationships and splits with various colleagues, the relationships with the societies he formed in the United States and Europe, with his university and the professorship, and so on. Are we dealing with a lone genius who regards society as savages?
My point is that I do not think the psychology of Kultur and Massen was Freud’s strongest or favourite field of endeavour. We will not find the consistency and cross-referencing found in his analysis of individuals; sometimes there are pages of closely argued explanations, and at others bare assertions. At one extreme it is almost a tired afterthought – an old man returning to his first, adolescent interests. But on the other hand, we see gems of insight which could only come from one who was so eclectic in his knowledge, and so introspective with his observations of himself and fellow man.
If there is a theme through this work it is the jaded view - that a wise but cynical eye sees those things that enthuse one as a youth taking a less glamorous place in later life. Or do we learn to fear, rather than love.
The terminology
One problem is with Freud’s word Massen – and how to translate it. It sounds suspiciously like our word ‘the masses.’
If we translate Massen with our word ‘group’ - I would find it very difficult to tear myself away from the concept of a group of people sitting in a room – a study group, and encounter group, a book reading group, a scout group, group dynamics, a small group (less than 10) a large group (may be 20-50). (I shall describe this category as Type 1.)
Bigger than that and we have an audience (usually indoors) or a crowd (usually outdoors) (Type 2). In both sizes, the people are usually in one place at one time.
If they are not, then a word like society, or the name of the exact class of people is used, as in the soldiers, workers, adolescents, DINKs, doctors, the accounting profession
(Type 3).
I prefer to interpret Massen as the Type 2 definition – a crowd.
Common features of crowd behaviour and thinking
Freud thought that crowds behaved differently to the way the people would behave as individuals. Most crowds had similar characteristics, but some did not fit the pattern.
I will deal with the similarities, and then list the three or four exceptions.
1. Crowds tend to operate more from the unconscious.
This one claim explains most of the significant changes that people go through when they are in a crowd.
“A group is impulsive, changeable and irritable. It is led almost exclusively by the unconscious.” (1921, p 104, with a footnote by Freud that ‘unconscious’ is used here correctly by Le Bon in the descriptive sense, where it does not mean only the ‘repressed.’)
The more ‘repressed’ or rational a society is, the greater the divergence in their crowd behaviour. Compare the English soccer fan behaviour, and the great difference between solo and crowd behaviour in the same individual, with say, the smaller difference in individual behaviour between solo and crowd environment with Australian aborigines or African Americans. These latter groups, from my experience, operate more from the unconscious as individuals.
The characteristics of the primary state, as seen for example in hypnosis, can be observed in parts of crowd behaviour.
Freud quotes Le Bon (1921, p 102) “Such (hypnosis) … is approximately the state of the individual forming part of a psychological group. He is no longer conscious of his acts. In his case, as in the case of the hypnotized subject, at the same time that certain faculties are destroyed, others may be brought to a high degree of exaltation.”
Here are some of the characteristics of hypnosis seen in crowd behaviour, often in combination:
• Suggestibility. ‘Contagion seems actually to be a manifestation of the suggestibility.’ (1921, p 103.) People are more willing to ‘make a decision for Christ’ at a mass evangelical rally, and they are more likely to go as far as the mass suicide behaviour at the suggestion of Jim Jones in Guiana.
• Regression of mental activity to an earlier stage, as found ‘among savages and children.’ (1921, p 148.) A crowd is more willing to do the things that children do – sing, dance, play, be naughty and smutty, look for direction.
• Behaviour to leader (hypnotist.) ‘Out of the complicated fabric of the group (hypnosis) isolates one element for us – the behaviour of the individual to the leader.’ 1921, p 145.) This results in compliance, subjection and absence of criticism – akin to one who is loved. This, says Freud, may lead to “the real essence of the matter, namely, whether the object is put in place of the ego or the ego ideal.” (1921, p 144.)
• Sense of power. “It has a sense of omnipotence, the notion of impossibility disappears for the individual in a group.” (1921, p 104.) Here Freud is returning to a theme re raised some eight years earlier. “If we may regard the existence among primitive races of the omnipotence of thoughts as evidence of narcissism, we are encouraged to attempt a comparison between the phases in the development of man’s view of the universe and the stages of an individual’s libidinal development.” (1913, p 90.)
• Immediate reaction. In Freud’s words “the tendency to the immediate carrying out of intentions as they emerge.” (1921, p 155.) In my experience it is as if the process of implementation is part of the decision to act; sometimes one finds oneself doing certain things, and then realising that a decision to do them had been made, unconsciously. This has been the same for me through hypnosis and as a member of a crowd.
2. Crowds operate as a led horde.
Freud did not go along with Trotter’s theory of the herd instinct – the gregariousness, incompleteness when alone, turning away from anything new or unusual and the requirements which sound remarkably like Abraham Maslow’s ‘Hierarchy of Needs’ – self-preservation, nutrition, sex and of the herd. (1921, p 150.)
He thought, however, that a ‘horde’ wanted to be “governed by unrestricted force; it has a thirst for obedience.” (1921, p 160.) Using the examples of the church and the army, Freud held “that their necessary precondition is that all their members should be loved in the same way by one person, the leader.” (1921, p 153.) The herd instinct left no room for this. “The herd is without a herdsman.” (1921, p 150.)
3. Love.
After using the concept of the libido in his study of psychoneuroses, Freud now applies it to crowd psychology. He proposes that “love relationships (or, to use a more neutral expression, emotional ties) also constitute the essence of the group mind.” (1921, p 120.)
He gives two reasons for this. First, that a group is clearly held together by a power of some kind, and what better power than Eros, which holds together everything in the world? “Secondly, that if an individual gives up his distinctiveness in a group and lets other members influence him by suggestion, it gives on the impression that he does it because he feels the need of being in harmony with them rather than in opposition to them.” (1921, pp 120-121.)
In his book Freud: The Mind of the Moralist, Philip Reiff makes the point that as individuals transfer their love from a private capacity into groups, “the condition of obedience is erotic. If everywhere we are born free, it is because we are, according to Freud, born perfect egoists; if everywhere man puts himself in chains (and here he quotes Freud 1921 p 121) ‘perhaps after all he does it ‘ihnen zu Liebe’ “ (Reiff 1965 p 234.) “Such libidinal bonds include directly sexual feelings as well as others which are diverted from the sexual aim or prevented form reaching it, such as the tie of male comradeship.” (Reiff p 234.)
My interpretation of Freud on this issue of love as a factor in crowd dynamics, is that the love is both with others in the group (“in harmony with them”) and with the leader. If the relationship with the leader deteriorates, then the mutuality within the crowd dwindles.
4. Enthusiasm
It’s hard to think of a crowd which is not enthusiastic. We now even have the standing ovation to show more enthusiasm than ordinary applause. The audience laughs at even the weakest of jokes. Even the hiss-boo reaction is done with more gusto than an individual’s reaction.
Freud relies heavily here on McDougall’s The Group Mind, which was published after he had started work on Group Psychology. It is hardly surprising that the obvious points about enthusiasm (helps achievement, contagious, emotion heightened, intensified by mutual interaction) do not seem enmeshed in psychoanalytic theory.
5. Fear of not going along with the crowd
This is the flip-side of the love/mutuality effect described above. We don’t like to swim against the current. Again, effect is intensified by size or existing mutuality up to what Freud calls the experience of ‘insurmountable peril,’ “ It is clearly perilous for (the individual) to put himself in opposition to (authority), and it will be safer to follow the example of those around him and perhaps even ‘hunt with the pack’” (1921, p 113.)
6. Lowering of intelligence
Again drawing on McDougall, Freud points to the ‘collective inhibition’ of intelligence in groups – the lower bring down the higher. He gives three reasons – the atmosphere inhibits sound intellectual work, there is intimidation, and there is less individual responsibility.
[In an associated area, the electoral procedures of abstention or secret ballot give an escape from these inhibitions.]
Lack of similarity
We now turn to the ways in which crowds can differ.
A strong sub-text here is my earlier point about definitions. If you use an English word such as ‘group’ to represent Massen and other kinds of group, you will obviously find that Freud’s analysis of such ‘groups’ is not applicable to all groups.
Having quoted Le Bon at length, and with only a few ‘glosses of our own’ (1921, p 99), Freud lists ways in which groups can differ:
1. Long-term, stable groups and organisations.
Here, we get into problems of definition. Surely Massen does not refer to such groups. A crowd or horde is neither long-term nor stable. In seeking to differ from Le Bon and others, Freud says their assertions about groups “relate to groups of a short-lived character, which some passing interest has hastily agglomerated out of various individuals… The opposite opinions owe their origin to the consideration of stable groups or associations in which mankind pass their lives, and which are embodied in the institutions of society.” (1921 p 111-112.)
So, says Freud, a crowd will not be like these more stable groups or organisations, unless it has
• something in common,
• a similar emotional bias,
• some degree of reciprocal influence, or
• mental homogeneity.
2. Morality
As distinct to the savage horde, Freud points out that the morals of a group can be higher than those of the individuals who compose it. Personal interest is subservient to the group wishes, and it is society which prescribes ethical standards for individuals. Again we are crossing the defining parameters of group, horde, crowd, and society.
3. Lack of individual freedom
This is the split between ego and ego ideal, with a measure of fear thrown in. We value our individual freedom and rights, yet we trade them off for group harmony, strength of leadership, fear of penalty, and downright coercion. Again, a problem of definition, as we move across into what could be better classed as society and civilisation.
The collective is an example of an environment where the above problems occur, but we would hardly class it as a crowd or horde.
4. Antipathy to leader
Examples abound through history, where the horde turns on the leader whose time has come, as we say.
Some ‘leaders’ rarely seem to have support, such as a boss talking to union rank-and-file in his organisation. But we have to put the word leader in inverted commas to make such a statement.
A director of a government agency in Canberra organised an overnight orienteering exercise through bushland for his staff in an attempt to improve morale and in ‘team building.’ The staff members got the boss lost, and went home. It is not known whether the boss, who nearly died of hypothermia, and found his way back to civilisation the following day, ever got the point.
5. The paying crowd.
A crowd at a sporting or other outdoor entertainment, where individuals have paid an entrance fee, can turn feral – the savages. Here, they believe that they have not received a fair bargain in the transaction between their money and the expected entertainment value.
6. Winners and losers.
A strong identification with a losing team or a team which is subjected to a questionable umpiring decision can also change from a crowd to a horde of savages.
When a sporting team is seen as mistreated, or indeed simply loses, its supporters act as if the misfortune had occurred to them personally. It is a threat to their ego.
7. Panic.
Freud has no problem with panic such as in a theatre fire – where a crowd has no emotional ties, and the danger is real. “…the truly instructional case…is that in which a body of troops breaks into a panic although the danger has not increased beyond a degree which is usual and has often been previously faced.” (1921, p 126.) In the sense that ‘panic’ is related to collective fear, he says that this “is provoked either by the greatness of the danger or by the cessation of emotional ties (libidinal cathexes); the latter is the case of neurotic fear or anxiety” (1921, p 126.) Here the group drops the feelings of consideration they would normally show each other.
8. The porcupines.
Like cold porcupines pricking each other as they huddle together for warmth, there is a mean distance of toleration between members of a group. After saying this simile applies obviously in smaller groups, Freud extrapolates to larger groupings and strangers (1921, p 130.) “In the undisguised antipathies and aversions which people feel towards strangers with whom they have to do we may recognise the expression of self-love – of narcissism. This self©(-love works for the preservation of the individual, and behaves as though the occurrence of any divergence from his own particular lines of development involved a criticism of them and a demand for their alteration.” (1920, p 131.)
Conclusion
When is a group not a group? We have problems both with translation from German, highlighted by using ‘group’ for Massen. But there are also problems in English itself, in that we have so many words, and demarcation lines are often vague.
Perhaps we should turn the whole linguistic process around, and use more specific descriptive terms, including terms which took the seeming exceptions, and gave them descriptions which incorporated the exception, such as ‘an intimacy threatening group’, ‘a group against its leader’, or ‘a group panicking against a real threat.’
Given this, Freud’s analysis of groups shows remarkable consistency. In many cases where it does not seem to apply, when have come up against a problem of terminology. That all ‘groups ain’t groups,’ with apologies to the man from Castrol oil on television.
References
Freud, S. Totem and Taboo. Norton, New York, 1950 (1913).
Freud, S. Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego. PFL Vol 12. London 1921.
Freud, S. Postscript to an Autobiographical Study. PFL Vol 15. London. 1935.
Le Bon, G. The Crowd: a Study of the Popular Mind. London 1920 (Trans from French of 1895) (Quoted by Freud.)
McDougall, W. The Group Mind Cambridge. London 1920. (Quoted by Freud.)
Reiff, P. Freud: The Mind of the Moralist. Methuen, London. 1965
Trotter,W. Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War. London. 1916 (Quoted by Freud.)
© Roger Fry 2006.