Magic and Psychoanalysis*

Mysterious phenomena such as symbolic communications and unexpected transformations have sometimes been attributed to supernatural influences, i.e., magic, in our daily lives. Psychoanalysis understands these experiences as the manifestations of unconscious mental processes. The study of magic in life and in literature provides another way of accessing these processes. The relationship between magical thinking and rational thinking was central to two of the most influential books of the twentieth century: “The Interpretation of Dreams” by Sigmund Freud (1900/1953) and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum (1900). Coming from completely different intellectual domains, these two works presented strikingly similar approaches to the problem of how to integrate conscious and unconscious experience in the interests of survival in the real world. This paper demonstrates the existence of apparent magical influences in everyday life, describes Baum's modern theory of magic, and further illustrates the overlap between psychoanalysis and magic by giving some examples of psychoanalytic spells.