The Blessing of the Kohenites*

Freud, in his “The Case History of an Infantile Neurosis,” says that “We bring with us phylogenetic patterns that, like some philosophical ‘categories,’ receive the life-impressions. … They are deposits from the civilized history of humanity. The Oedipus Complex that contains the child's relationships to his parents belongs to them.… If the impressions don't fit into the hereditary patterns, phantasy does them over again.… Just such cases prove the independent existence of the patterns. We can observe that pattern wins over experience.”

Needless to say, not only the Oedipus Complex belongs to the patterns mentioned by Freud. As I see it, these phylogenetic patterns play a great part in group-psychology, and without them we can hardly get on in the psychology of a people. In the life of the individual, as Freud says, the life-impressions don't occur according to pattern. My investigations resulted in the recognition that the individual, when in the group, returns to the phylogenetic patterns. In this lies the strength of the customs, rites, and ceremonies. Path-finding analysts, Freud, and after him especially Reik, Roheim, and others, have given us the methods with which to work profitably in the hard and delicate field of folk-psychology. We must rest content that the investigation here is not so sure as in the analysis of an individual. But if we do it with due caution, the probability of the correctness of our findings may be accepted.

I applied the following method: A. I thoroughly searched the whole history of the object of my investigation. I examined what it is today and what it was at the beginning. B. I endeavored to find out the mental attitude towards the rite of those who have preserved and practiced it throughout the ages, and C. what effect the rite had on those who believed in it. D. I sought parallels to the rite in other ethnological fields. In A, B, and D, the investigations