Chapter I. The Sociological Significance of Communism Considered in the Light of Psychoanalysis1 (1935)

Perhaps the most significant of the later developments in psychoanalytical thought is to be found in the extension of psychoanalytical modes of interpretation to the field of sociological study. So far as its historical origin is concerned, this development dates from the publication in 1913 of Freud's Totem and Taboo. It was, however, only after the appearance of Freud's Group Psychology and the Analysis of The Ego in 1921 and his The Ego and The Id in 1923 that the psychoanalyst came into possession of explanatory principles which enabled him to do justice to that complex mass of phenomena which constitutes the material of sociology. The two most outstanding contributions to existing knowledge made by Freud in these latter works were: (1) his demonstration of the part played by aggression no less than libido within the economy of the individual mind and consequently in social life generally; (2) his demonstration of the influence upon human conduct of unconsciously accepted ideals, which have their origin in the reactions of the individual to his first social contacts, and which, during individual development, become organized into an internal psychical structure (the ‘ego ideal’ or ‘super-ego’) representing external social agencies. The development of psychoanalytical theory resulting from these discoveries has placed in the hands of the psychoanalyst a body of explanatory principles, in the light of which he feels justified in attempting to interpret sociological no less than psychological phenomena.