The application of psychoanalytic principles to the study of "magic"

In this paper Freud's work on animism and magic is elaborated. Those two subjects are presented mainly in his work "Totem and Taboo" (1913). The true motives, which lead primitive man to practice magic are, according to Freud, human whishes and his immense belief in their power. Importance attached to wishes and to the will has been extended from them to all those psychical acts, which are subjected to will. A general overvaluation has thus come about of all mental processes. Things become less important than ideas of things. Relations, which hold between the ideas of things, are equally hold between the things. The principle of governing magic or the technique of animistic way of thinking is one of the 'omnipotence of thoughts'. The overvaluation of psychic acts could be brought into relation with narcissism and megalomania, a belief in the thaumaturgic force of words and a technique for dealing with the external world--'magic'--which appears to be a logical application of these grandiose premises. Recent psychoanalytic authors dealing with the problem of magic emphasize that magic survived culturally to the present days and even in adults who are otherwise intellectually and scientifically 'modern'. Their explanations for that derive from Ferenczi's and especially Róheim's work that pointed out that magic facilitates adaptive and realistically effective endeavors. Balter pointed out that magic employs ego functioning, and conversely ego functioning includes magic.