You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
The successive theories of war—as indeed of any subject—represent a series of approximations towards the truth. New theories supplement, rather than supersede, their predecessors.
Biologists used to attribute war to the struggle for existence, pre-psycho-analytical psychologists, to such motives as ambition, vengeance or fear. These theories were true enough as far as they went; but they were superficial because they neglected unconscious motives.
Coming to psycho-analytical theories, perhaps four may be distinguished: sexual, Oedipean, paranoic and (added in a postscript to the paper) restitutive. The first stressed the phallic symbolism of offensive weapons and regarded war as an outbreak of sadistic perversion sanctioned by the state. The second introduced the two aspects of the father Imago as the beloved leader and hated foe (who threatened the motherland). The third emphasized the paranoid projection of aggression between rival groups, each taking defensive measures which confirm the other's fears. Finally, the fourth regards peace, with its constructive (restitutive) drives, as the normal condition, and war as a reaction to the despondency that follows their apparent failure.
On the basis of these theories of the motive of war, it is possible to build a (tentative) theory of the development of war. The higher animals are aggressive for a variety of reasons, but seldom attack their own species except when stirred by sexual jealousy. They do not make war, that is, they do not fight as a group, under a leader, against another group. As man's infancy period lengthened, parental authority became a permanent endopsychic force, which inhibited intra-group sexual and aggressive impulses. Man became exogamous and 'extrahomicidal'; loyal to his own group and its leader, and paranoic in his attitude to strangers and strange groups. The first wars were possibly wife-hunting raids. But, even among primitive peoples, the conscious sexual motive has been replaced