DISCOVERY 



221 



in robbing him of one of his subjects. When tliey shouted 

 it the men fled, leaving the bull. The guard of the 

 Bamuroga's men, who kept the royal gate, and guarded 

 the sacred drum in the court, gave chase, and if any of 

 the messengers were caught, they were liable to severe 

 punishment, and might even be killed. The guard, 

 however, did not follow far, for they had to catch the 

 bull, kill it, and cook and eat some of the meat before the 

 sun rose. Whatever was uneaten by the time the sun 

 appeared had to be buried quickly in a pit, which had 

 been dug by some of the guard while the others killed the 

 bull and cooked the meat, for the sun might not be allowed 

 to shine upon it. They dared not try to hide any away 

 and eat it later, for not only would their chief punish 

 them, but the ghost would be revenged upon them if 

 they ate any of it in the sunlight." 



The Bakitara are a peaceful and intelligent people. 

 They have many industries ; iron-smelting is fully 

 developed and the art of pottery is of a high order. In 

 the art of healing, however, they are little advanced. 

 Most of their efforts to alleviate suffering depend on the 

 art of the medicine-man, who devotes his attention to 

 exorcising ghosts. On the other hand, the art of mid- 

 wifery shows considerable advance, especially with regard 

 to the preservation of aseptic conditions. 



Every part of the life of these people is described with 

 great care, and there are a number of striking photographs. 

 It is not possible in the space available to give an adequate 

 impression of the rich mine of interest and entertainment 

 urovided, but perhaps one more quotation may be per- 

 mitted as an example of an ingenious punishment for an 

 unsuccessful rain-maker. 



" Should the rain-makers fail to bring rain when it was 

 wanted, the king had a special punishment for them. 

 Their chiefs had to come to court, where the king ordered 

 to be prepared for them a meal of liver, usually from 

 a sheep or a goat, mixed with blood and fat, and cooked 

 with as much salt as possible. The men had to eat this 

 and sit perspiring in the sun until they were tortured by 

 thirst, but no man dared give them water. Sometimes 

 they were kept like this for several days, fed at intervals 

 with salted meat, but allowed no water ; and when 

 they begged for a drink, they were told they must get 

 it as rain or die. Their sufferings often caused them to 

 faint, and they have been known to die without any 

 compassion being sho\vn to them." 



This certainly was making the punishment fit the 

 crime. And if it rained too hard, they were sent out in the 

 open with huge pots of rain before them, which they had 

 to drink, until the rain stopped. Apparently, to be a 

 medicine-man in Central Africa is no light or easy task ! 



R. J. V. P. 



PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AND GROUP PSYCHOLOGY 



Group Psychology and the A nalysis of the Ego. By Sigmund 

 Freud. Translated by James Strachey. (Allen 

 & Unwin, 7s. (>d.) 



In this monograph Freud applies the latest develop- 

 ments of the psycho-analytical theories to the explanation 



of the phenomena of group psychology. Setting upon 

 one side the transient type of group, such as the lynch 

 mob or the crowd at a football match, he devotes his 

 attention to the more highly organised herd, or, as he 

 prefers to distinguish it, the herd with a leader, which 

 he considers to be the more primitive type. He brings 

 forward the theory that the individual in the group 

 identifies the other members of the group with his own 

 ego in virtue of their common interest, and he is thus able 

 to extend to them the affection and tolerance that he 

 feels towards himself, and even share his property with 

 them. 



The bond with the leader is of another kind : the indi- 

 vidual substitutes the leader for his owm " ego ideal," 

 and by this term Freud means not only the individual's 

 conception of what he fain would be, but also his " con- 

 science," the aspect of himself that criticises and re- , 

 strains the activities of the more primitive side of his 

 personality. The leader is also something more definite : 

 he is the image of the father or, in the light of racial 

 memory, of the patriarch, and here we have Freud s 

 reason for considering the organised herd to be more 

 primitive than the leaderless crowd. 



These two emotional ties Freud uses very ingeniously 

 and logically to explain those characteristics of group be- 

 haviour (emotionalism, suggestibility, reduction of critical 

 activity, etc.) that have hitherto been attributed to one 

 irreducible factor, such as suggestion or the herd instinct, 

 and brings these characteristics into line with the pheno- 

 mena of hypnotism on the basis of the theory, already 

 put forward by the psycho-analytical school, that the 

 relationship between the hypnotist and his subject con- 

 tains an emotional element comparable to that between 

 parent and child. 



In dealing with the more highly organised groups, such 

 as the Church and the Army, Freud brings very interest- 

 ingly into the foreground the social value of repression 

 a value that is often obscured in psycho-analytical litera- 

 ture owing to its frequent preoccupation with morbid 

 psychology. Freud holds that the energy and altruism 

 displayed by members of the group, and therefore, one 

 might say, the social virtues generally, derive their 

 emotional force from the well-spring of sexual energy that 

 has been diverted into this channel by the repression of 

 it in its primitive form. There is a hint almost of cynicism 

 in the deduction that the social virtues are enduring 

 because the impulse of which they are the sublimation is 

 never completely gratified. 



To account for the repression, Freud brings forward an 

 hypothesis that he first published in his book Totem and 

 Taboo, in which he imagines the most primitive society 

 as consisting of a large family group ruled over by a 

 jealous patriarch who restrains the sexual instinct of the 

 younger members, and by so doing converts the unused 

 emotion into a spirit of devotion to himself, so long, that 

 is, as they do not revolt against his authority. 



By applying to group psychology the results obtained 

 from the study of the unconscious mind of the individual, 

 Freud illuminates the subject with a new light, and, 

 though many of his readers may question his findings, 



