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“The Greek Miracle” is a psychoanalytic study based upon the Hellenic culture, originally offered in the French Psychoanalytic Review.
The author explains the evolution of two forms of civilization: one pharaonic and mystic the other democratic in its principle and scientific in its essence. However, these two forms of culture are not exactly heterogenous to each other. Under scientific aspects Greece, as well as our contemporary civilization, has always known tendencies toward mysticism. On the other hand it cannot be excluded that certain priests of ancient Egypt had attained a scientific attitude. However, it is a fact that the pre-hellenic civilizations in toto had not surpassed the pharanoic stage at a time when Greek civilization had reached the scientific stage.
The explanation is offered based upon the differences in the social structure and its psychological consequences. Primarily the two civilizations differed in their origin; the pharaonic and mystic one arose from totemism, the democratic-scientific one from organizations of the well bred. However there is not a complete independence of these two original social forms. The family itself is perhaps an issue of totemism and yet