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In 1925, Malinowski wrote:
Looking from far and above from our high places of safety in the developed civilization, it is easy to see all the crudity and irrelevance of magic, but without its power and guidance early man could not have mastered his practical difficulties as he has done nor could man have advanced to the higher stages of civilization.23
This concept of Western science replacing primitive magic has been echoed by historians, both general medical and psychiatric,1, 16, 38 and is the central theme of our education. Several years before Malinowski's statement, however, Freud10 and Ferenczi7 had already pointed out that magic persists in our culture in the infant, in psychopathology, in art and in fairy tales.
My observations are that magic is very much alive in all the areas of our scientific, industrialized culture, including our own field of psychoanalysis. Further, there seems to be evidence of an increased interest in magic among some segments of educated youth; a reversal of the historical trend from science back to magic. This paper attempts to point out the existence of magic in our world, both social and psychoanalytic, and offer some possible explanations for the revival of interest in magic recently. Frazer's conception of magic, religion and science serves well to establish our definitions: in magic, man depends on his own supernatural power to cope with the environment; in religion, man ceases to rely on his own power and, instead, turns to an unseen power outside himself; in science, man postulates an order to natural phenomena and he attempts, by