Group Psychology and The Analysis of The Ego — John Shaqi
Group Psychology and The Analysis of The EgoFreud, Sigmund
Science
Group Psychology and The Analysis of The Ego
Freud, Sigmund
Ego (Psychology); Psychoanalysis; Social psychology
The fifth is that the group should have a definite structure, expressed
in the specialisation and differentiation of the functions of its
constituents.
According to McDougall, if these conditions are fulfilled, the
psychological disadvantages of the group formation are removed. The
collective lowering of intellectual ability is avoided by withdrawing
the performance of intellectual tasks from the group and reserving them
for individual members of it.
It seems to us that the condition which McDougall designates as the
'organisation' of a group can with more justification be described in
another way. The problem consists in how to procure for the group
precisely those features which were characteristic of the individual and
which are extinguished in him by the formation of the group. For the
individual, outside the primitive group, possessed his own continuity,
his self-consciousness, his traditions and customs, his own particular
functions and position, and kept apart from his rivals. Owing to his
entry into an 'unorganised' group he had lost this distinctiveness for a
time. If we thus recognise that the aim is to equip the group with the
attributes of the individual, we shall be reminded of a valuable remark
of Trotter's,[20] to the effect that the tendency towards the formation
of groups is biologically a continuation of the multicellular character
of all the higher organisms.
IV
SUGGESTION AND LIBIDO
We started from the fundamental fact that an individual in a group is
subjected through its influence to what is often a profound alteration
in his mental activity. His emotions become extraordinarily intensified,
while his intellectual ability becomes markedly reduced, both processes
being evidently in the direction of an approximation to the other
individuals in the group; and this result can only be reached by the
removal of those inhibitions upon his instincts which are peculiar to
each individual, and by his resigning those expressions of his
inclinations which are especially his own. We have heard that these
often unwelcome consequences are to some extent at least prevented by a
higher 'organisation' of the group; but this does not contradict the
fundamental fact of Group Psychology--the two theses as to the
intensification of the emotions and the inhibition of the intellect in
primitive groups. Our interest is now directed to discovering the
psychological explanation of this mental change which is experienced by
the individual in a group.
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