The Group Mind: A Sketch of the Principles of Collective Psychology / With Some Attempt to Apply Them to the Interpretation of National Life and Character

by William McDougall

This restriction of the intercourse of the young savage to the members of his own small society and his absolute dependence upon it for all that makes his survival possible would in themselves suffice to develop his group consciousness in a high degree. But two other conditions, well-nigh universal in savage life, tend strongly towards the same result.

When the young savage begins to come into contact with persons other than those of his own group, he learns to know them, not as individuals, John Smith or Tom Brown, but as men of such or such a group; and he himself is known to them as a man of his group, as representing his group, his village community, tribe, or what not; and he displays usually some mark or marks of his group, either in dress or ornament or speech.

The other great condition of the development of the group spirit in primitive societies is the general recognition of communal responsibility. This no doubt is largely the result of the two conditions previously mentioned, especially of the recognition of an individual by members of other groups as merely a representative of his group, rather than as an individual, and of the fact that his deeds, or those of any one of his fellows, determine the attitudes of other groups towards his group as a whole. But the influence of the principle of communal responsibility, thus established, becomes immensely strengthened by its recognition in a number of superstitious and religious observances. The savage lives, generally speaking, bound hand and foot by tabus and precise prescriptions of behaviour for all ordinary situations; and the breach of any one of these by any member of the community is held to bring down misfortune or punishment on the whole group; so far is this principle carried, that the breach of custom by some individual is confidently inferred from the incidence of any communal misfortune[34].

The recognition of communal responsibility is the great conservator of savage society and customary law, the very root and stem of all savage morality; it is the effective moral sanction without which the superstitious and religious sanctions would be of little effect. By its means, the idea of the community is constantly obtruded on the consciousness of the individual. Through it he is constantly led, or forced, to control his individualistic impulses and to undertake action with regard to the welfare of the group rather than to his own private interest. Through it the tendency of each to identify himself and each of his fellows with the whole group is constantly fostered; because it identifies their interests.

We may then say that, just as the direct induction of emotion and impulse by sense-perception of their bodily expressions is the cement of animal societies, so group self-consciousness is the cement and harmonising principle of primitive human societies.

And the group spirit is not only highly effective in promoting the life and welfare of the group; it is also the source of peculiar satisfactions. The individual revels in his group-consciousness; hence the principle is apt to run riot in savage societies, and we find that in very many parts of the world a great variety of complex forms of association is maintained, beside the primary and fundamental form of association of the village community or nomadic band (the kinship or subsistence group), apparently for no other reason than the attainment and intensification of the satisfactions of the group spirit. Hence, among peoples so low in the scale of savagery as the Australians, we find a most complex system of grouping cutting across the subsistence grouping; hence totem clans and phratries, exogamous groups, secret societies, initiation ceremonies.

I lay stress on the satisfaction which group self-consciousness brings as a condition or cause of these complexities of savage society, because, I think, it has been unduly neglected as a socialising factor and a determinant of the forms of association. If we ask—What are the sources of this satisfaction?—we may find two answers. First, the consciousness of the group and of oneself as a member of it brings a sense of power and security, an assurance of sympathy and co-operation, a moral and physical support without which man can hardly face the world. In a thousand situations it is a source of settled opinions and of definite guidance of conduct which obviates the most uncomfortable and difficult necessity of exerting independent judgment and making up one’s own mind. And in many such situations, not only does the savage find a definite code prescribed for his guidance, but he shares the collective emotion and feels the collective impulse that carries him on to action without hesitation or timidity.

Secondly, we may, I think, go back to a very fundamental principle of instinctive life, the principle, namely, that, in gregarious animals, the satisfaction of the gregarious impulse is greater or more complete the more nearly alike are the individuals congregated together. This seems to be true of the animals, but it is true in a higher degree of man; and, in proportion as his mind becomes more specialised and refined, the more exacting is he in this respect. To the uncultivated any society is better than none; but in the cultivated classes we become extraordinarily exacting; we find the gregarious satisfaction in our own peculiar set only—a process carried furthest, perhaps, in university circles. In savage life this shows itself in practices which accentuate the likeness of members of a group and mark it off more distinctly from other groups—for example, totems, peculiarities of dress, ornaments and ceremonies; things which are closely paralleled by the clubs, blazers, colours, cries, and so forth of our undergraduate communities.

The life of the savage, then, is in general dominated by that of the group; and this domination is not effected by physical force or compulsion (save in exceptional instances) but by the group spirit which is inevitably developed in the mind of the savage child by the material circumstances of his life and by the traditions, especially the superstitious and religious traditions, of his community. Such group self-consciousness is the principal moralising influence, and to this influence is due in the main the fact that savages conform so strictly to their accepted moral codes.

Group self-consciousness in savage communities brings then, I suggest, two great advantages which account for the spontaneous development and persistence among so many savage peoples of what, from a narrowly utilitarian point of view, might seem to be an excess of group organisation, such as the totemic systems of the Australians and of the American Indians;—namely, firstly, the moralising influences of the group spirit; secondly, the satisfactions or enjoyments immediately accruing to every participant in active group life.