Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War

by W. Trotter

The embryology of the body is to those who have had no biological training far from being a gratifying subject of contemplation. The stages through which the body passes before reaching its familiar form have a superficial aspect of ugly and repulsive caricature with which only a knowledge of the great compressed pageant of nature they represent can reconcile the mind. The stages through which, according to the doctrines of Freud, the developing mind passes are not less repulsive when judged from the purely human point of view than are the phases of the body, which betray its cousinship with the fish and the frog, the lemur and the ape. The works of Nature give no support to the social convention that to be truly respectable one must always have been respectable. All her most elaborate creations have “risen in the world” and are descended in the direct line from creatures of the mud and dust. It is characteristic of her method to work with the humblest materials and to patch and compromise at every step. Any given structure of her making is thus not by any means necessarily the best that could conceivably be contrived, but a workable modification of something else, always more or less conditioned in its functioning by the limitations of the thing from which it was made.

To the biologist, therefore, the fact that Freud’s investigations of the development of the mind have shown it passing through stages anything but gratifying to self-esteem will not be either surprising or a ground for disbelief. That Freud’s conclusions are decidedly unpalatable when judged by a narrowly human standard is very obvious to any one who is at all familiar with the kind of criticism they have received. It must be acknowledged, moreover, that his methods of exposition have not always tended {89} to disguise the nauseousness of the dose he attempts to administer. Such matters, however, lie altogether apart from the question whether his conclusions are or are not just, though it is perhaps justifiable to say that had these conclusions been immediately acceptable, the fact would be presumptive evidence that they were either not new or were false.

The work of Freud embodies the most determined, thorough, and scientific attempt which has been made to penetrate the mysteries of the mind by the direct human method of approach, making use of introspection—guided and guarded, it is true, by an elaborate technique—as its essential instrument. To have shaped so awkward and fallacious an instrument into an apparatus for which accuracy and fruitfulness can be claimed is in itself a notable triumph of psychological skill.

The doctrines of Freud seem to be regarded by his school as covering all the activities of the mind and making a complete, though of course not necessarily exhaustive, survey of the whole field. I have already pointed out directions in which it appears to me that inquiries by other methods than those of the psycho-analytic school can be pursued with success. Regarded in a broad way, the Freudian body of doctrine which I have already ventured to describe as essentially an embryology of the mind gives one the impression of being mainly descriptive and systematic rather than dynamic, if one may with due caution use such words. It is able to tell us how such and such a state of affairs has arisen, what is its true significance, and to describe in minute detail the factors into which it can be analysed. When the question of acting upon the mind is raised its resources seem less striking. In this direction its chief activities have been in the treatment of abnormal mental states, and these are dealt with by a laborious process of analysis {90} in which the subject’s whole mental development is retraced, and the numerous significant experiences which have become excluded from the conscious field are brought back into it.

When the unconscious processes which underlie the symptoms have been assimilated to the conscious life of the patient, the symptoms necessarily disappear, and the patient’s mind gains or regains the “normal” condition. However precious such a cure may be to the patient, and however interesting to the physician, its value to the species has to be judged in relation to the value of the “normal” to which the patient has been restored—that is, in relation to the question as to whether any move, however small, in the direction of an enlargement of the human mind has been made. Until some clearer evidence has been furnished of a capacity for development in this direction the Freudian system should, perhaps, be regarded as more notably a psychology of knowledge than a psychology of power.

It is interesting to notice that in discussing the mechanism of psycho-analysis in liberating the “abnormal” patient from his symptoms, Freud repeatedly lays stress on the fact that the efficient factor in the process is not the actual introduction of the suppressed experiences into the conscious field, but the overcoming of the resistances to such an endeavour. I have attempted to show that these resistances or counter-impulses are of environmental origin, and owe their strength to the specific sensitiveness of the gregarious mind. Resistances of similar type and identical origin are responsible for the formation of the so-called normal type of mind. It is a principal thesis of an earlier essay in this book that this normal type is far from being psychologically healthy, is far from rendering available the full capacity of the mind for foresight and {91} progress, and being in exclusive command of directing power in the world, is a danger to civilization. An investigation of the resistant forces that are encountered by the developing mind is clearly, then, a matter of the utmost importance. They are now allowed to come into being haphazard, and while they undoubtedly contain elements of social value and necessary restraints, they are the products, not of a courageous recognition of facts but of fears, prejudices, and repressed instinctive impulses, and are consolidated by ignorance, indolence, and tribal custom.

The interest of the psycho-analytic school has been turned remarkably little into this field. The speculation may be hazarded that in this direction it might find the sources of a directer power over the human mind, and at least some attenuation of that atmosphere of the consulting-room and the mad-house which does so much to detract from its pretensions to be a psychological system of universal validity.

SOME PRINCIPLES OF A BIOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY.

The third method by which it has been attempted to attack the problems of psychology is that which I have called the comparative. Its characteristic note is a distrust of that attitude towards phenomena which I have called the human point of view. Man’s description and interpretation of his own mental experience being so liable to distortion by prejudice, by self-esteem, by his views as to his own nature and powers, as well as so incomplete by reason of his incapacity to reach by ordinary introspection the deeper strata of his mind, it becomes necessary to make action as far as possible the subject of observation rather than speech, and to regard it as a touchstone of motive more important than the actor’s own views. The principle {92} may be exemplified in a simple and concrete form. If a given piece of human behaviour bears the closest resemblance to behaviour which is characteristic of the ape, the sheep, or the wolf, the biologist in attempting to arrive at the actual cause will ascribe an importance to this resemblance at least no less than that he will give to any explanation of the action as rational and deliberate which may be furnished by the actor or by his own intelligence.

A second principle of the method will be by a study of the whole range of animal life, and especially of forms whose conduct presents obvious resemblances to that of man, to discover what instinctive impulses may be expected to operate in him.