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The author states that it is not scientifically permissible to assign to groups and nations the diagnoses and interpretations that may be correct for individuals. However, by an attempt at analogies between group behaviour and the behaviour of individual patients, certain hypotheses may be formulated. The author draws analogies between current German and Japanese behaviour and the behaviour of some children in the phallic stage of development, and of patients whose main difficulty centres round their inability to solve the conflicts of the phallic phase. A summary of common German and Japanese attributes includes unlimited greediness and inability or lack of will to keep promises, disregard and distortion of facts, release of aggressiveness against those who are weaker and glorification of one's self coupled with extreme servility towards one's leader. The author finds similar attitudes in some children in the pre-latency period of development. German and Japanese contempt for women, who are to-day mere instruments for male aggrandizement through reproduction, may be derived from the wish to prove their manliness and phallic supremacy by grandiose reproduction. Feelings of superiority may derive not only from latent feelings of inferiority but also from the retention or reawakening of early infantile conceptions regarding one's own body.