Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis III 1922 1.djvu/111

 BOOK REVIEWS

103

in asserting the strong individualism of the savage (p 72) Its co existence with the prominence of the group can be understood if M-e explain these phenomena by the strong narcissism of savage man This IS what makes him observe an individual religion (secret name cult of guardian spirit, etc.; seeRoheim: 'Das Selbst", Imago, Bd VII)' and at the same time it is the projection of the narcissistic ego-ideal which forms the affective background of all his concepts concerning the srouD Ultimately we must say that the organism is continually wagint war against the stimuli of the outward world, so that everything ttiat is 'not we- {kura-pd) is 'bad', i.e. unpleasant. The Group is that part of the World which has been introjected into the Ego; and this in slightlv different terms is also the conclusion arrived at by McDougall (pp ?q 80) 'In this way, that is by extension to the group the egoistic impulses are transmuted, sublimated and deprived of their individualistic selfish character'. He justly criticises the erroneous ideas of collectivists of all ages, who to get additional energy for the State, desire to eJiminate the family in education, for, as we all know, the smaller group is the prototype and foundation of the larger one, and if these reformers could succeed in their efforts they would destroy the mental foun- dations of all possibility of collective life of the higher type (p. S3)

The next chapter gives us a classification of human groups as natural and artificial, traditional and purposive, showing how occupational and purposive groups are slowly replacing those formed by common geographical circumstances. In dealing with the question 'What is a nation?' the author sides with those who regard nationhood as essen- tially a psychological problem. The problem of national deities would well deserve a more thorough discussion in this connection (p. 102), Chapter vn is concerned chiefly with the part played by racial factors in 'forming the mind of a nation'. Although the author professes to take a via media between the views of Gobineau and Houston Stewart Chamberlain on the one side and Mills and Buckle on the other, yet on the whole he seems to be following rather the lead of 'Racial' An- thropology' than of evolutionism. He regards racial qualities as being evolved in an immeasurably long period before the dawn of historj- and tending to repress certain other variations which are contrary to their general tendency, thus moulding the whole complex known as the culture of a given area. He even goes so far in this view of un- changed inherited faculties as to deny progress in a certain sense saying that we have only the advantage of accumulated tradition over our savage ancestors who were in other respects our equals- while the superiority of Europeans over negroes is not derived from civilisation but IS rather the reason why the European has reached a level beyond the limited faculties of the negro (p. 120). I do not think that biology has deiimtely settled the problem of the transmissibiUty of acquired