You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
[Introductory Note, 1977 - This paper was originally written in 1964 for and at the request of the 20th Century. Then I was asked to shorten it for the Observer (under the same ownership). But in fact neither this paper nor the shortened version of it, appeared in either.]
If we wish to investigate the psychology of politics, it may help to start with a glance at the last half million years of human evolution. For it was in this period that man, having outstripped all other species, became his own chief rival in the struggle for existence. Such conditions, according to the late Sir Arthur Keith,1 favoured in us the development of a double attitude towards our fellow men - an attitude which admirably fitted us to co-operate in groups for the purpose of war with neighbouring groups. In other words, while developing a capacity for love and loyalty, we lost the built-in inhibition against killing our own kind which most other species possess. In particular, this must have added a new bitterness to sexual rivalry, seldom lethal in other species, but potentially lethal in man wherever there is no law and order to keep him in check. At any rate, no psycho-analyst can have any doubt about the murderous ferocity which struggles in the unconscious against opposite feelings whenever jealousy or envy are aroused. That they are aroused already in infancy in relation to the child's own parents and siblings was one of Freud's least welcome discoveries.
One must suppose that our remote forbears were at first unaware of the problem which the simultaneous presence of both loyalty and ruthlessness in their relations with each other