The Lure of Magic Thinking JOSEPH WILDER, M.D.* j

Tannersville,

N.Y.

The development of the thinking processes from childhood to maturity is analyzed and three stages are distinguished: the magic omnipotent stage of the preschool child, the development of the realistic ego, and the future-directed value-building superego. The role of the lure to return to the magic thinking in our culture is described.

The following is a discussion of one aspect of the intellectual development of man, based on a somewhat modified psychoanalytic theory. Man's psyche is born as a bundle of instincts, some fully, some yet incompletely developed. The fluctuations of instinctual demands, some of the "fight," others of the "flight" type, are seen as the real moving force of our psychic processes throughout life. In the first two years of life reflexes and "unfiltered" instinctual demands dominate our psychic life and our motor activities almost exclusively. Among these instincts the imitation instinct and the increasing number of conditioned reflexes play a growing role. In the brain the hypothalamus and its centers are the seat of the instincts. It is the approximate age between two and six with which I am especially concerned in this article. This is the age of almost pure magic think¬ ing, that is, thinking in terms of absolutes, in terms of omnipotence and omniscience, in terms of magic certainties, pleasant or unpleasant. Only slowly does some more mature realistic-probabilistic thinking infiltrate this magic thinking, with the help of parental influences and some of our own experiences. We must assume that the functionally not yet fully developed "retrofrontal" cerebral cortex is the anatomic substrate of this thinking which gradually develops further. The ages around six to eighteen are devoted to a progressive development of realistic thinking and retrogression of the magic thinking which, however, always remains in the background as potentiality ready to be revived. Realistic thinking is a response of our intellect and our ego to instinctual demands in terms of reality. This means using all available experiences, memories, test methods, measurements of various sorts, learning, calculations, and so forth for the purpose of fulfillment of our instinctual demands, always considering also the immediate—and only the immediate—conse* Clinical

Professor Emeritus, New York Medical College.

Mailing

address:

Main Street, P.O. Box 54, Tannersville, N.Y. 12485.

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quences of such wish-fulfillment. There is weighing, comparing, testing— all marked by various degrees of uncertainty. This, however, would be a very incomplete picture of civilized man. He responds to instinctual demands not only by aiming at the obtainment of immediate pleasure and the avoidance of immediate pain; he also very seriously considers the future consequences of such instinctual gratification in terms of pain and pleasure, be it in an hour, a year, in 50 years, or even posthumous. This includes consideration of the long-term effects on the environment in which he lives, socialf and natural. Psychologically speaking, such long-range decisions and choices are the task of the superego. Physiologically speaking, they are localized in the frontal lobes of the brain, which are so strongly developed in man (and in man only) that they comprise 30 per cent of the total brain cortex. In pursuing this task, the sugerego sets up a personal system of values as points of reference. It is by no means difficult to study the various types of functioning of these mental apparatus since many drugs interfere with or selectively destroy the described mental functions step by step, from the highest down. So do physiologic substances, for example, insulin. The mysterious and poorly understood effects of frontal lobotomy can be best explained by the weakening of prospective thinking. Unfortunately, this viewpoint in psychic research has been neglected to such an extent that most intelligence tests hardly test this important prospective thinking which distinguishes man from beast. Magic Thinking The peculiarities of thinking in children at the ages of two to six have been known to parents, educated and uneducated, intelligent and stupid, since time immemorial. This finds expression in parental behavior and vocabulary, in fairy tales and customs. One does not speak to a small child the same way as to an adult; one does not expect or demand from a child the same kind of thinking and acting that one expects from an adult. The thinking of the preschool child would be handicapped by a number of deficiencies. The child is not yet capable of classification, an important factor in realistic thinking. Contradictions are united; contiguity or sequences are confused with causes; reasoning is loose. Even at the ages of seven to eleven thinking is still handicapped by marked egocentricity and only around the age of twelve does realistic thinking begin to predominate (1). Where do grownups acquire this mysterious knowledge of infantile thinkt This does not mean denying that there are also instincts of a social nature, for example, the maternal instinct.

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ing so different from their own? In my opinion, mainly from the memory of their own early period of magic thinking. But this is not all: I hope to show that this lower type of thinking does not perish without a trace at the age of six, but remains in us underneath the realistic and rational thinking all our life, in a gradually decreasing measure. I t is always possible to function at a lower than optimal level of efficiency. Nonetheless it is interesting to observe how much we have added to this more intuitive knowledge of magic thinking since we started (less than 2 0 0 years ago) systematically to study the persistent magic thinking in primitive tribes. We know how much Sigmund Freud was influenced by Sir James Frazier's studies (The Golden Bough) on which he based his own important work on "Totem and Taboo." Today we know—but do not sufficiently consider—the role which "regression" into the magic type of thinking plays in neuroses and psychoses. It is not the purpose of this article to give a detailed description of the magic type of thinking in the period between two and six. We know that this thinking centers around the assumption of omnipotence (our own and/ or our parents') and omniscience. I t is a black or white, good or evil world, a world of certainties with no concept of probabilities. In contrast to the mature-realistic view, it is a world of absolute, though often mysterious, justice. There is the belief in the magic power of words, gestures, actions and inactions, of thoughts, fantasies, wishes. They all may be either aggressive or submissive (we are not speaking here of instincts), protective, expiating. Countless more or less dramatic, solitary, or social, games are played with an involvement and devotion greater than in the "real" situations of life. Fairy tales, adapted as a rule to the magic thinking of a child, play an enormous role. Many scientists have studied the common features of those tales throughout the world. Dreams, fantasies, and reality are not seldom confused or given equal importance. Various objects assume magic powers. For our purposes I wish to re-emphasize here one quality of the child's world: I t is a world of certainties, good or bad, where probabilities, statistics, tests do not exist. If we define fear as response to an external danger and anxiety—no matter what mask it wears—as fear of ourselves, that is, of internal danger, the distinction is often blurred in our magic period, since on the one hand thoughts and wishes are omnipotent and thus potentially dangerous and on the other, external dangers are often seen as punishments for our thoughts and actions. In the world of the child between two and six logic does not play the same dominating role as in the adult mind, and the fact that the child spoke to Saint Nicholas the same day at three different stores and on four streets does not annul the idea that he comes from the North Pole and through the

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chimney. The moment the child begins to ask embarrassing questions is often a sign of beginning realistic thinking. If you answer a question of a child of that age truthfully: " I t may be so or it may not be so," you can see that the child is bewildered and confused. The word "maybe" is often misunderstood as a positive assurance. If a child stumbles and falls and you say "You see?" don't imagine that the child "sees" the same as you do. Fortunately, parents as a rule realize that they cannot change this magic type of thinking at that early age. They adapt themselves to it at first. They even often talk "baby language" themselves (unnecessarily). In this they are helped and prompted by their own often subconscious recollections, mostly of a pleasant type, of their own magic age. At the same time they particularly bask in the role of omnipotent magician for whom problems do not exist. Children's stories, books, comic strips, T V movies are full of the crudest magic. They keep Santa Claus alive by all means ("Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus!") sometimes long after their children stopped believing in him. Some parents even talk "baby talk" longer than their children do. Yet an undue prolongation of this unrealistic magic type of thinking in nonmagic cultures has its dangers. Realistic parents characteristically emphasize the difference between the way of thinking of "little" children as compared with the "bigger children." Words like "perhaps" or "maybe" or "it depends" are taken to mean that the parent knows but would not tell—which makes it a taboo thought. I f father and mother give different answers this leads to confusion and often neurosis (2), since then any course of action is taboo. Attempts at generalization and categorization based on experience are at first still crude and arbitrary: burned by touching a hot radiator the child may link the pain to all radiators, cold or warm; only to this specific radiator; to all objects adjoining walls; to all warm objects, and so on. Whatever connections it establishes, it will mean certainty, not just probability. One only has to observe the child's interpretation of realistic stories as compared with his reaction to fairy tales. Like the primitives, children thus live in a constant fear of almost everything (panphobia) mastered promptly by the use of various effective, because self-fulfilling, magic devices. They do not weigh, measure, compare, choose. This is a matter for grownups. The child of that age does not comprehend the question: "Do you want the apple or the orange?" His answer is: " I want both." The child does not really think in terms of causality (3). We are all familiar with the often annoying period of constant asking "why?" about everything toward the end of this magic period, the discovery of causality. The desperate and annoyed parent who does not enjoy this, or cannot answer the many "whys" would sometimes try to push this welcome de-

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velopment back by shouting: "Stop always asking: why? So it is an that's that." Since neither ego (realistic appraisal) nor superego (value system) are yet developed, there can be no problems of guilt and conscience, and realistic parents know this. Fear of punishment is fear of omnipotent avengers and has nothing to do with guilt and conscience. Many of us remember, with or without the help of psychoanalysis, that important "moment of truth" when the first doubt of the omnipotence of a parent appeared. From that moment on our faith in parental omnipotence and omniscience is shaken and we are strongly tempted to test it— with predictable results—until we see ourselves faced with a big, unpredictable and partly incomprehensible world and often alone. There come moments when we long for and try to get back to the earlier magic world, and the child who has seen quite a few realistic pictures on television scurries back to his Superman comics. The individual differences in this dramatic period are very great and may still be observed over many years, well into late adolescence. Orthodox psychoanalysis sees a boy as wanting to castrate or kill his father, a girl her mother, in order to have sex with the parent of the opposite sex. In my own experience, this is only a fringe benefit. The main motivation for the death wishes against the parent (conceptualized only after the vague concept of death has been formed) is to take over his or her omnipotence. And this is a greater, more daring sin than incest. In the Old Testament the incest between Adam's and Eve's children is overlooked but the main temptation by the snake was: "Ye shall be like gods knowing good and evil." The well-known fact that memories of the ages from six to ten, the so-called "latency period," are as a rule very scanty is being explained by a strong repression of this oedipal situation. We do not pay enough attention to the fact that at this age the magic mechanism (to "make it disappear") of denial is one of the last to be given up. Often it even survives in adults. Regression to Childhood To this well-known topic I shall say only as much as my subject requires. In psychoanalysis we often deal with regression of adolescents and adults into magic thinking (often observable in our dreams) and relate it mostly to certain unresolved traumatic situations of childhood. Less attention is paid to artificial prolongation of magic thinking by an immature, magically indoctrinated, neurotic, or psychotic parent. Not enough emphasis is laid on the fact that regressions to or fixations on various infantile stages of libido are also regressions to more primitive, immature forms of thinking. cc

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Another difficulty met by the analyst is that magic ways of thought may be camouflaged by realistic styles of expression. Most analysts are adept at uncovering this and soon recognize, for example, that the patient who complains about absolute lack of success with women in reality expects success without the slightest risk, the slightest realistic effort, just by way of omnipotence. From a cold, realistic, intellectually oriented viewpoint it is easy to understand that it is less difficult to make ourselves more stupid and more childish than the opposite transformation, which may even prove impossible. Here is the place to throw a little light upon the unending controversy between organicists and psychologically oriented psychiatrists as to the psychogenic versus organic origin of many mental diseases and symptoms. In my opinion, identical or similar regressions are obtained by organic impairment or destruction of certain parts of our brain just as much as by voluntary relinquishing of their optimal or total function. After all, I can create a practical paralysis of an arm either by deciding not to use it or by cutting its nerves. From my viewpoint, the easiest of these transformations (regressions) is the one from the superego level to the ego level, that is, the giving up of the long-range view. Most of us have such moments, either spontaneously or under the influence of alcohol and drugs or under certain cultural influences where we encourage ourselves and others "not to think about tomorrow." This means giving up our personal value system and restricting our thinking to a realistic (ego) satisfaction of our instinctual impulses. Many poets have praised and advocated such a "romantic" attitude, often without following it in their personal lives. The dignified, well-heeled Indian Nobelist Rabindranath Tagore wrote: "Let us be drunk, be without dignity and go to the dogs"; his life style, though, was quite the opposite. Few of those anarchists of the mind, of those who profess "live for today, the future will take care of itself," realize that they are repeating the behavior of small children but without the benefit of powerful parents to protect them. Fortunately for them, most of these "carefree" individuals do not literally practice what they preach, otherwise they would soon perish. The modern variety of various religious youth groups (Jesus children, and others) mostly show clearly the first, magic, approach and I was shocked, though not surprised, to hear them singing an obviously favorite refrain " I want to be a baby! I want to be a baby!" I t can be said that intellectually we are supposed to be born three or four times: the infant changes into a young (preschool) child, the child into the adolescent, the adolescent into the mature, the mature into the senile individual (who often becomes "childish). The relinquished earlier stages do not die, they are only being suppressed, pushed into the background, and may emerge at any moment

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for short or longer periods of time, under a variety of conditions. On the other hand, there are cases where the young child or the adolescent in us stubbornly refuses to give up its rule, why, even regresses to the stage of the newborn. Those are severe anomalies, emotional or intellectual: psychoses, pseudo dementias, autism, severe psychopathies. The child of two to six does not yet have the ability or the need to criticize his or her parents. There were quite a few periods in history (Calvinism, Nazism, Communism) where children were encouraged to spy on their parents or to criticize them mercilessly (present psychoanalytic trends). These influences, however, were not directed at children below the age of six. And yet under special social circumstances an adult magic thinker (or one who well understands magic thinking in others) may achieve for a while very great special powers and induce large civilized groups of people to revert at least in part to the magic type of thinking of the primitives. This also happens in many only partly intellectually mature children of school age (gang wars, group persecutions, drug abuse). Prospective thinking, like all higher functions, is sometimes even more vulnerable in overprotected children. A critical approach to magic thinking in adults usually provokes passionate resentment. I t is sheer robbery. Seen from this specific viewpoint, present day exposure to television and movies also includes some advantages when compared with the old fashioned fairy tales: it mixes magic with realism. It is not an exaggeration if we see in man a degree of constant struggle between the realistic-progressive and the magic-regressive tendencies of our mind. I n some of us the former, in others the latter are above average. We have in our culture big movements catering either to the realistic (science, industry, economics) or to the magic side of us (arts, poetry, plays, music). We all consciously or subconsciously seek freedom from fear, absolute security, and this is not provided by a realistic or scientific approach to our probabilistic world. Let me admit that I have here idealized a bit the image of the happy years of preschool childhood; that there are numerous cases when those magic years were in spite of all omnipotence made quite unhappy by the parents. Numerous individual psychoanalyses have shown that in such cases the tendency to return to that childhood and correct what was wrong in it may even be stronger than in the average person and become a dominant factor in our psychic make-up. A well-known example is the person who has lost his or her mother in that period and remains obsessed throughout life with seeking the good mother. The question arises: does there not exist in such cases a longing for a still deeper regression, to the stage of the completely powerless and com-

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pletely protected younger infant, whose "premagic" world is one chain of instinctual needs and satisfactions? Unfortunately the answer is "yes." There are such very sick, deeply regressed individuals in hospitals, "human vegetables" of a sort. From the little I know about it, however, I gather that this freedom from needs and desires is also a high goal which some Far Eastern religions try to achieve. Carl Jung, who knew very much more about that subject, did not think of these phenomena as stages of regression but as basic differences between the Eastern and Western mind. But even he, an admirer of the East, writes: " I n the East there is wisdom, peace, detachment and inertia of the psyche that has returned to its dim origins, having left behind all sorrow and joy of existence as it is and presumably ought to be." Science is for Jung "a sacrifice, inasmuch as we bid farewell to that world in which mind-created things and beings move and live." But even he criticizes people who, contrary to Christ, try to remain children instead of becoming like children. According to the modern Western viewpoint, human life consists of instinctual needs and "decisions! decisions! decisions!" I t is not a permanent "Waiting for Godot." I f you reject decision making, for whatever reasons, the alternatives are regression to the baby stage or even into nothingness, that is, suicide. One thousand persons a day on this globe choose and another 9,000 attempt this solution, according to the World Health Organization. Cultural Changes and Realistic Thinking The concept of "reality" has been much debated and never solved by philosophers. As Bertrand Russell admits, the distinction between appearance and reality is "one of the distinctions that cause most trouble in philosophy." From our viewpoint, reality does not exist—only realistic modes of thinking—implying besides the function of our senses categorization, classification, combinations, variations, measuring, comparing, prediction of immediate consequences of our actions on the object, and many other viewpoints simultaneously. What primarily interests us here is that realism excludes complete certainties and deals only with probabilities of greater or lesser degree. This principle of uncertainty was already known to the realistic ancient Greeks. As Alkmaion said: "About the invisible as well as the terrestrian the gods only have certainty. To us men only guessing is left." How ever, there were still certainties—for the omniscient gods. Yet mankind—at least in the West—has developed very slowly through many centuries from the totemistic stage of certainties to the present scientific-probabilistic era of realism. The transition took place very gradually, going through stages very similar to those of the individual but on the scale of centuries instead of years. In both cases traces of magic thinking r

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still remain in adulthood (see below). At the same time progress takes place from the "pleasure principle/' with its direct and immediate, to the "reality principle" (Freud) with its retarded and controlled instinctual satisfactions. Our Culture and Magic Thinking We may safely assume that our original ancestors were magic thinkers. Yet we know a number of phenomena in primitive cultures which point to beginning development of realistic thinking, like the invention of the wheel, of agriculture, pottery, and so on. This seems obvious: even the primitive tribes studied were partly realistic. They would not have survived otherwise. We can discover traces of realism even in baboons. If we follow the history of European culture, we find realistic thinking slowly growing. Yet even the most highly developed realistic standards of Judaeo-Christian ethics had to be coated with plenty of magic to be acceptable to the people. People were called "believers"; "faith" was the most important virtue and although there were time and again attempts to base ethical standards on logic and realism (the Talmud, St. Thomas Aquinas) the guideline prevailed: Credo quia absurdum (If it were not absurd, I would not need faith). Scholastic science was not a denial of miracles but a kind of scientific study of miracles. I n general, the Catholic Church took an antiscientific view and Luther and Calvin even more so (4). Thus our Western culture up to about the sixteenth century was based on the belief in certainties, not probabilities. I t was in our terms a basically magic culture with a slowly growing probabilistic trend. I t was dogmatic: the earth and the stars were created in six days; the earth circles around the sun. Doubts about these absolute truths were not tolerated. One can still see in the seventeenth century the inner resistances and inhibitions against this new antidogmatic realism. Descartes started his critical way of thinking by " I doubt, therefore I think; I think, therefore I am." Pascal developed his philosophical approach on the basis of his theory of gambling (Bet on God! If he exists, you win; if not, you have not lost anything). Even the critical mind of a Baruch Spinoza ended up with the assumption of pantheism. Simultaneously with this gradual liberation from the assumption of certainties science began with progressive acceleration to produce discoveries and inventions which were changing not only our views but our lives. The conditions for the spread of these realistic views also became progressively favorable. We had no general or compulsory schooling until the middle of the nineteenth century, not to speak of the many modern ways of telecommunication. Voices advocating probabilism in science—today a leading view—

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began to be raised. In 1740 David Hume emphasized that the link of a specific cause with a specific effect is only empirical, not a necessary one. Bronowski and Mazlish (4) point out that only in the eighteenth century did thinkers seriously begin to assume that our world is bound to change and the concepts of "progress," "evolution," foreign to magic thinking, became popular. The highest achievement of the human race, prospective thinking, that is, calculation and consideration of future and even remote effects of our actions and omissions have been with us since the beginning of our culture (5). However, future, distances, sizes, weights were beginning to extend far beyond the conceptions of older scientists in both directions: into millions and billions of miles, giant sizes, inconceivable speeds, and on the other hand, into the microcosm of atoms, electrons, genes, and new micromeasures of speed, size, charges, inconceivable to scientists even of the nineteenth century. Thus the "realities" with which we are dealing were becoming incomparably more numerous, more difficult to grasp and a new breed of mankind is developing and growing—the "specialist" of whom it is ironically said that he knows everything about almost nothing, while the nonspecialists know almost nothing about everything. There are cases of specialization, that is, of specialized realism, where an individual may see realistically only in his own field and be an immature, magic thinker in other areas. This is a danger of which mankind must be aware because this may put great special power into very immature hands. Fortunately "the mad scientist" has only been a figure of fiction until now. I still see the widespread forebodings of apocalypse not so much as the danger of a material catastrophe but as the psychologic danger of mankind getting tired of increasingly complex decision making and regressing into a magic way of thinking. True, there are still millions among us who live in a stochastic world using only the crude evidence of our senses. There are those who do not even use the needed eyeglasses. However, that does not make them magic thinkers; one can be ignorant and realistic at the same time. It remains true that science can never give us the same kind of peace of mind as religions can. The first duty of the scientist is to doubt. As the Polish poet Leopold Staff once wrote regretfully: "By doubt you toppled the gods from Olympus and in their place you put . . . Doubt." Yet we see the puzzling phenomena of great scientific pioneers of our time making peculiar (for them) statements. Alfred Einstein once said: " I doubt that God plays dice with the world." And Max Planck thought that there must be some higher intelligence behind all this. None of them was religious. If magic thinking is inferior to realistic thinking, do magic thinkers

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live fewer years and are they subject to more catastrophes than the realists? History leaves us little doubt about it. To give one small example: According to Sims and Baumann (6) : during a recent tornado in the United States the death rate in Alabama was five times higher than in Illinois. The only explanation the authors could detect was that the people of Illinois are predominantly realistic, Alabamans fatalistic magic thinkers. The magic truth—or the "gut" truth of our young generation—is, as Gh. Frankel (7) explains, based on a tacit assumption that the whole universe is integrated with human (or as I say, my personal) needs. This is omnipotence. Frankel names the many sources in our culture which profit from such needs and reinforce them. This is not difficult because the inner temptation is great: what has life to offer that is better than omnipotence? In the mental battle between science and magic thinking science suffers from a serious handicap: it does not claim that it knows everything and that anything is beyond doubt. Why, doubt is one of the first duties of science. A deep conviction is the goal of the magic thinker; it is always suspect to the scientist. The survival rates of scientific and of magic theories are, however, longer in some of the magic ones (for example, astrology) because they cannot easily be affected even by the best scientific proofs to the contrary and always find some magic excuses for the failure of their predictions. It is very difficult to figure out how much magic survives in our Western culture. There are great differences between societies, groups of societies, and parts of societies in this respect. We find almost everywhere whole groups of devotees of magic thinking: religious sects and cults, astrologers, palm readers, crystal ball gazers, phony graphologists, sorcerers, ward healers, gurus, prophets, and others—most of them rather preying on believers than being believers themselves. We also find within the major churches cults and priests with weaker or stronger magic elements. We find isolated minor magic beliefs, habits or compulsions like "knock on wood," "cross my heart," "don't start things on Friday," "the 13th is an unlucky date." And there are many others scattered unevenly through the various segments of our multinational population. The ease with which some people accept various kinds of miracles often contrasts with the difficulty of accepting certain unpleasant scientific facts. Even printed prophecies from a slot machine or from Chinese fortune cookies find takers. All these behavior patterns may be more playful, more serious, or even severe compulsive symptoms. Often believers believe only if and when the magic predictions suit them. We cannot and should not stop worrying if we observe how the danger of regression into magic thinking increases with the difficulties and failures of realistic thinking and with the complexity of our value systems. Not only individuals but whole groups may become

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endangered by this. I t leads to various mystic cults, drug abuse, and other ways of regression into magic thinking. It is understandable that in the United States, with its realism and the prevailing goals of financial success and productivity, there are strong tendencies against magic thinking. The magic concept of "genius," for example, has been turned into a number on an I Q scale or is being ridiculed, as in the form of a printed sign on the desk of subaltern employees: "Quiet! Genius at work." On the other hand, the psychiatrist Lange in Hamburg, who in the twenties wrote a serious book on genius showing that this epithet is simply the result of a consent by contemporaries, was promptly discharged when the "genius" Hitler came to power. After all—as the psychiatrist Leopold Bellak (8) says—we all somewhere share four delusions: immortality, freedom of will, attainable state of bliss and—in our youth—unlimited possibilities. The last does not mean that the realist knows the limits of an individual's possibilities correctly; he may overestimate or underestimate them. After all, we have managed to fly through the air, to walk on the moon, to talk from one point on the earth to any other—all wild fantasies only yesterday. Ernst Gassirer (9) points out that the older anthropologists were not aware of the unreality of magic thinking. And he warns: "Myth has not been really vanquished and subjugated. I t is always there lurking in the dark and waiting for its hour and opportunity." Gassirer is particularly concerned with the intrusion of magic thinking into politics. I ask: is such intrusion considered a reason for impeachment of a candidate, delegate, president—is it should be? Friedrich Nietzsche said there is in each of us a child who wants to play. Often, unfortunately, this means playing with fire and becomes particularly dangerous as a mass phenomenon and because of the easy identification with it by mature people. The omnipotent " I " turns into the much more dangerous omnipotent "We," unrestrained by the realism of society. There develops the heat of omnipotence in which all values melt. Religion and Magic Thinking If we speak of the relation of magic thinking to culture, the question of magic thinking in religion arises. The role of magic thinking (faith, dogma, prohibition of doubt, certainties, overcoming of death, omnipotent deities, and saints) is great in religions, although there are great differences in this respect between various faiths and denominations. Speaking of the Western world one cannot deny credit to the various churches for introducing and maintaining numerous highly realistic and practical ethical values while mankind was still thinking magically. Any other, for example a scientific way was doomed to failure.

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However, as the importance and acceptance of the realistic and scientific mode of thinking was growing; as mankind was maturing, a new important and difficult problem was facing the churches, and today we live in an era of a growing split between the magic and the scientific thinkers within the churches. Even in the individual reformer-priests of today, like the adherents of the "God is dead" theory, or Teilhard de Ghardin, one has the impression that they are only paying lip service to magic thinking and are longing for a scientific religion. We shall not analyze the many concessions which even the most conservative Catholic church has made in the last 50 years, for example, the infallibility (omniscience) of the Pope. Friedrich Nietzsche perhaps defined the omnipotence character of religion most sincerely when he exclaimed: " I f there were Gods, how could I endure not to be God?" Both the blind devotion to, and bitter antagonism against, various successful "gurus," Eastern and Western, are colored mostly by our own desire to be God. So is the widespread quest for possessing the "absolute truth." "Ye shall be as gods" Adam was promised by the snake, with the opposite result: expulsion from the paradise of absolute protection and magic thinking of childhood into the hell of realistic decision making of adulthood. With the ever faster and broader progress of science and education we see the great churches modifying and adapting their dogmatic magic stance. One could thus establish a whole hierarchy of unchanging, of rarely and of frequently changing moral values in religions. A modern theologian, Paul Tillich, in his "Pacem in Terris," goes so far as to admit that a realistic view of man and history need not be laid to cynicism. But it may often be forced to ask for hope against hope and for courage to risk where realistic chances of success are small. I must repeat here that religions are not the only sources of magic beliefs in our present culture. Especially among modern youth there are many who bemoan our inability "to sneak away from the suffocating consensus of modern man" and "our obstinate trek toward the Utopia of despair and apathy because of short-sighted rationalism" (10). I do not feel competent enough to discuss here the magic aspect of Eastern, especially Indian, religions (Hinduism and Buddhism). They seem to me to seek flight from reality, regression to the magic level, why, even beyond that to the mental status of a newborn, and to shy away from reality much more deliberately and consistently than do Western religions.} Undoubtedly, there are two ways of dealing with the problems and incertitudes of reality: by making a greater effort to focus on them or by making oneself unconscious of them—the old "fight or flight" pattern of animals. % In contrast, the Far Eastern religions stress mainly the social values (Confucianism) or the rules of nature (Taoism).

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Art and Magic Thinking To be brief on a very large subject I shall assume that it is generally known that artistic activity requires a certain regression into the naive-infantile stage of creativity par excellence, of absolute certainties, of magic omnipotence. Our enjoyment of art and poetry is based partly on our identification with this mood of the creator. Modern nonobjective art and the dadaistic type of poetry are seeking a regression even beyond the age of magic thinking, to our first two years. This is not negated by the fact that the execution of such fantasies requires quite a bit of realism. The Lure of Magic Thinking I have explained why the magic way of thinking with its omnipotence, omniscience, its certainties, its easy ways of dealing with fear exerts such an attraction way beyond the preschool childhood years. Although various taboos prevent the child from certain instinctual gratification, there are also many magic tricks to help him and there are the good parents who work toward their gratification. All in all an enviable situation compared with the world of the grownup who lives in an uncertain, and that means frightening, world, has constantly to make difficult decisions, does not possess any magic tricks to neutralize threatening dangers, has to postpone, give up, limit his instinctual gratifications much more often and much longer than the child does and has no omnipotent parental helpers and protectors. The difficulties to be overcome and the choices to be made in this realistic world are sometimes smaller and bearable, sometimes unbearably great. Besides, our capability to make those choices may be temporarily or even permanently affected by fatigue, physical or emotional illness, alcohol, and drugs. And in addition to these temporary conditions we have to mention unsettled personality problems which keep fixation on a certain childhood level the main business of our lives instead of the present. Our tolerance of uncertainty varies interindividually and intraindividually: for some of us even a small uncertainty is distressing, for others it almost equals certainty. Yet nothing remains for the realistic thinker but the uncertainty of our knowledge and the knowledge of our uncertainty. And there is the hope that with the progress of our knowledge the range of our uncertainty may diminish unless further knowledge increases it. The tolerance of uncertainty plays a great role in neuroses and, although known to psychoanalysts, would deserve a more concentrated study. We know that the worst mistake many parents make here with children over the age of six is to present themselves as being completely free from fear and worry. Thus what we call the "lure of magic thinking" is in reality ever-present

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in us in varying degrees and with it the benefits and dangers of such a regression to childhood in the middle of a maturely conceived world. I would like to illustrate this with at least a few examples. As soon as we become aware of our thoughts and emotions we are inclined to see them as unique and mysterious. We later correct such ideas, why, we may even accept the Marxist theory that our consciousness is formed by society or that our thoughts depend on production methods, the food we eat, genetic inheritance, and other factors. Interestingly, even scientists are sometimes inclined to believe in some magic "stroke of genius" rather than accepting certain results as predictable probable consequences of prior thinking. This is even true for mathematicians like Poincaré, Hadamar, and others. When lovers like to look at their fixations on the beloved as the most mysterious magic events, a favorite topic of poetry, the psychoanalyst in laborious realistic study may unmask them as fixation on an omnipotent figure of early childhood. The philosopher Peirce (11) explains such regressions dryly: "The irritation of doubt causes a struggle to attain a state of belief." And that is what our early childhood is in the first place: an era of strong, absolute belief. One of the most realistic philosophers of his time, Baruch Spinoza (12), approached this problem gingerly: "A man of ripe age deems the nature of infants so unlike his own that he can hardly be persuaded that he too has been an infant by analogy of other men. However, I prefer to leave such questions undiscussed, lest I should give ground to the superstitious for raising new issues." It took 300 years for mankind to overcome that fear through Sigmund Freud. The period of early childhood has been recognized by Moreno and many others as an outspoken period of creativity. And how could it be otherwise? Although subsequently corrected and directed by his parents, the child encounters every day completely novel problems requiring for their recognition and solution at first great creativity and originality. Child psychologists have shown us that "naive" babies like "naive" rats react to new stimuli differently. Is it possible that a dim memory of this lost creativity is what lures the artist to try and become a child again? Is it possible that the age-old Faustian dilemma between being a believer or a seeker of truth is rooted in such childhood memory? However, I must repeat the warning that a successful regression to early childhood thinking, if prolonged and conceived too broadly, may destroy us. We mostly underestimate the spread of magic thinking in our era. For example, one would assume that governments send their most realistic members as delegates to the United Nations. And yet (13) peacocks decorating

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the lawn of the United Nations building in New York City had to be removed because certain delegates are afraid of any eye-like design. Schools, in my opinion, still assume that at the age of six all children have reduced their magic thinking to the same extent and adopted an equal measure of realistic thinking. This assumption is false. The same word may at this stage have for one child a realistic, for another a magic significance. The customary tests of "knowledge" or of I Q can only be misleading here. It seems to me in our present era a particularly sad sight to watch even scientists fall prey to the lure of magic thinking. Thus the psychologist T. Roszak (14) calls mankind back to the "vision born of transcendent knowledge" which he calls "Old Gnosis" and to the creation of a science of "rhapsodic intellect." The physicist L. S. Whyte (15) speaks of "the pathological unconscious of the disillusioned older generations" as compared with the "healthier unconscious plus consciousness with insight of youth." Stanley H . Dean (16), a professor of psychiatry, describes at length "the ultraconscious summit," including a light that floods the brain (sic!) and tilts the mind; the conception of an omnipotent "over-self"; awareness of the meaning of the universe; uncovering of latent genius and leadership. He does not doubt that before long science will study these phenomena "dissociated from religious dogma." Yes, psychiatrists are also human and not free from the nostalgia for magic thinking. They appreciate and even practice poetry, painting, and music. Things become a problem where they carry this nostalgia into the science of psychiatry. An outstanding example is R. D. Laing, recently so popular among young people. To me it is obvious that his leading attitude toward schizophrenia is one of admiration and envy. One example out of many (17) may illustrate this: "True sanity entails in one way or another the dissolution of the normal ego, that false self competently adjusted to our alienated social reality; the emergence of the "inner" archetypal mediators of divine power, and this death a rebirth, and the eventual reestab¬ lishment of a new kind of ego-functioning, the ego now being the servant of the divine, no longer its betrayal." This is, of course, not the voice of the majority of scientifically oriented writers, for instance, Lionel Trilling (18), who pleads for sustaining such values as objectivity, rationality, intentionality, coherence, and inclusiveness. Or Ch. Frankel (8) who says that "only an extraordinarily sanguine attitude about the inherent reasonableness of man's instinctual life, only a confident faith, belied by all experience, in the unforced, providential symmetry between the needs of human nature and the structure of the universe, can explain the willingness to take such a one-sided chance on human impulse and spontaneity."

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Can there be a greater contrast to realistic thinking than the impact of the present day "gurus" of all denominations on rather large groups of population, mostly of a rather high level of education? Here is the reaction of one such "converted" woman from Brooklyn to a sixteen-year old guru from India (19) : " I did not understand a word of what he was saying. I was not really listening to the translation. But something started happening to me. Not in the head, in the chest. I knew Baba knew the answers to all questions about life and death. He knew everything about me. . . . " I think this is how we all would speak about our parents at the age of three if we could express our thoughts. I hope that the day will come when educators will recognize that not differences in intelligence, race, and socioeconomic background alone are responsible for the great differences in prospective thinking, in visualizing and calculating the future, in personal values (which include the value of education). How much had the slaves to decide about their future? How great—even in our "egalitarian" society—is the power of the poor to determine or even imagine their future? Must not the range of their prospective thinking, their value formation differ from the rest of us? Since there are many (how many?) fears in the magic era in our childhood and we also know that primitives suffer from what has been termed "panphobia" (fear of everything) it would seem that the lure of magic thinking contradicts the universal pleasure principle. This is not so. We must not forget how easily and simply those fears are removed by magic acts, words, or even thoughts. Even in our culture, groups full of superstitions are not more unhappy than others. The exasperation with a realistic world of probabilities and the corresponding temptation to regress into magic thinking is more likely to occur where our prospective thinking tells us that our real chances of success are below 50:50 and nonetheless our instincts insist on pursuing the chance. Then we become like the gambler who insists on beating the rigged roulette and can easily become desperate and hope for some magic miracle. The person who cannot tolerate uncertainty thinks along the lines of " I don't care whether it is real as long as it is certain." The mature person prefers any uncertainty to unreality. Magic thinking is less dangerous where its aims are only imaginary rewards. Then it brings only a seasoning of romanticism into our sober reality. The relapse into magic thinking becomes dangerous where, on its basis, individuals or groups tamper with reality. The least dangerous degrees of magic thinking, in which most of us gladly participate, namely those of limited depth and duration in the form of art, fantasy, recreation depend to a great extent on the approval or disapproval of our society. The society may approve of the most fantastic

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poet or composer or dancer and disapprove of the consistent daydreamer, of the violent seeker of unlimited power, or of the man convinced that he knows everything better than all others. Yet whatever society accepts we can never get rid completely of that memory of the paradise of our childhood and of moments of nostalgia for it. Perhaps without such moments, even if they are limited to our dreams and day dreams, we may perish by attrition in our realistic world of doubt and indecision. Sometimes a real, creative, new idea emerges from such regressive moments. In some of us our own ego ideal even requires us to show that kind of participation in magic. Some use these moments to stimulate our realistic strivings by a slight touch of hope of omnipotence. There are, however, whole groups of people who use various tricks to force their minds back to the magic-infantile stage (meditation, drugs) without achieving creativity or originality. At any rate we must be aware of the lure of this magic thinking in its many forms. We must be aware of its ever present hiding in the background. And we must realize that it is not only a source of pleasure, relaxation, even creativity but that it may occasionally overwhelm and destroy us. To many of us it appears that the attraction of magic thinking has grown recently in our otherwise scientifically oriented society. If this is so it may be due to the increased amount of uncertainty about the future, even the near future and its future values. We are busy predicting great changes in the expected "postindustrial era" but nobody (not even father) knows what they will be. And this means greater uncertainty and more than many can bear. SUMMARY

The author sketches the development of the individual from the early instinctual and magic stage to the stage of ego with its realism to the superego with its future-directed value system. The peculiarities of the magic thinking and the role of the parents in its suppression are depicted. The desire for parents' omnipotence is considered more important than for their love. The desire for this magic power remains in us in various degrees and various forms. I t explains many social currents in our present fast-changing world and especially the antiscientific and mystic trends. The struggle between magic and realism affects even the churches. Art and poetry are outlets for magic thinking. Even sciences, including psychiatry, are not immune to the lure of magic thinking. REFERENCES

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Springfield, 111., 1968. 3. Arieti, S. The Psychic Self. Basic Books, New York, 1967. 4. Bronowski, J . and Mazlish, B. The Western Intellectual Tradition. Harper & Row, New York, 1960. 5. Wilder, J . Values and the Psychology of the Superego. Am. J. Psychother., 27:187, 1973. 6. Sims, J . H . and Baumann, D. D. The Tornado Threat, Coping Styles in North and South. Science, 176:1386, 1972. 7. Frankel, Ch. The Nature and Sources of Irrationalism. Science, 180:927, 1973. 8. Bellak, L . The Porcupine Dilemma. Citadel Press, New York, 1970. 9. Gassirer, E . The Myth of the State. Yale University Press, New Haven, Conn., 1961. 10. Arndt, M. Letter to the Editor. Time Magazine, April 30, 1973. 11. Peirce, C. S. Values in a Universe of Chance. Stanford University Press, Stanford, Calif. 1958. 12. Spinoza, B. The Road to Inner Freedom. In The Ethics. Philosophical L i brary, New York, 1957. 13. Reader's Digest, November 1972. 14. Roszak, T . Where the Wasteland Ends:

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J . B., Eds., Gordon & Breach, New York, 1970. 16. Dean, S. R. Metapsychiatry: the Interface between Psychiatry and Mysticism. Am. J. Psychiat., 130:1036, 1973. 17. Laing, R. D. The Politics of Experience. Pantheon Books, New York, 1967. 18. Trilling, L . Science 178, November 3, 1972. 19. New York Times Magazine, April 30,

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The lure of magic thinking.

The development of the thinking processes from childhood to maturity is analyzed and three stages are distinguished: the magic omnipotent stage of the...
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