Chapter IV: Ethnology and Linguistics

The facts important for the ethnological consideration can be brought to a folk-group both by physical and by psychical interaction of definite factors, such as religion, economic relations, climate and the like; the majority of these determinants disclose their influence simultaneously in both ways. Hence, a sharp separation is made difficult; nevertheless, the method of investigation may not be a matter of no consequence, since the physical results of every influence must be explained by biology, the psychical by psychology. To put it differently, every interesting ethnological phenomenon needs investigation in both directions, for a one-sided conception can afford no complete solution of the problem.

It is obvious that psychoanalysis comes into consideration only in the psychological part, but for this, it gains a preeminent significance. We know that very much in the views and customs of a whole people, it may be that the field of customs and manners, (it may be in that of religion and morality) cannot be traced back to processes in the conscious mental life of its members. If we would keep away from the mystical conception of a “folk-soul” hovering over them, which is not derived from the summation of individual minds, we are forced to the assumption that we are dealing with unconscious impulses. These must repeat themselves in typical foi-m in almost all individuals of a civilized society, because otherwise the readiness of the members of the whole community to submit themselves to the influences proceeding from them would be inexplicable. The greatest service of psychoanalysis consists in having helped us become acquainted with this typical unconscious mental content. When confronted by ethnological material we will ask ourselves, just as in an individual psychological investigation, what bit of the unconscious may be incorporated therein and by what mechanism it may have come to expression, during which we will never forget that after the conclusion of this i