Certain well-known analytic concepts (e.g., 1, infantile omnipotence of speech and thought; 2, libidinization of speech, thought, and intellect; 3, speech, thought, and intellect as modes of ego defense) are used toward a description in psychological terms of a sociological group of people called 'intellectuals'.

The recent interest of large groups of people in the search for absolute truths is also investigated along the following lines: the irrational emotional response to a rational mode of thought is felt to be a compromise between the search for instinctual gratification and the mature ego's striving for the betterment of society. The search for the 'absolute' is a regressive phenomenon wherein an affectful, mystic, preoedipal union is denied by many thinkers in the act of thinking—only to have the content of thought (social utopias, unity with God, etc.) reveal a return of the repressed.