However, regardless of the form magic assumes, it always satisfies the same need -human desire -and expresses mankind's overconfidence in the omnipotence of his desires and his ideas. Magic, which is more primitive, corresponds to a preanimist phase when nature is alive and spiritualization has not yet been concentrated in 'spirits.' Referring to Frazer, Freud distinguishes between imitative, or homeopathic, magic, which produces the desired phenomenon by carrying out a similar action with symbolic value, and 'contagious' magic, whose efficacy is not tied to any similarity but temporal contiguity. Returning to an idea already introduced concerning the epistemophilic drive in children, Freud stresses the fact that the practical need to subjugate the world together with simple speculative curiosity pushed humans to create their first cosmic systems.įreud identifies sorcery as a tool to influence 'spirits' by treating them as one would human beings, that is by appeasing and subjugating them through magic. They reflect not only the utility of such ideas for psychoanalysis and psychopathology (obsessional neurosis, paranoia) but also the modifications that the psychoanalytic approach can provide to our understanding of the concept of magic.

His remarks are taken directly from his reading of sociologists and anthropologists like Marcel Mauss, Salomon Reinach, Sir Edward Tylor, and Sir James Frazer. In chapter three of Totem and Taboo (1912-1913a), Freud develops his ideas about magic and a modality of thought -'magical thought' -that he compares to the omnipotence of ideas. The magical practices of primitive peoples are compared by Freud to children's play, art, and neurosis. It seeks to impose on objects in the external world laws that are part of mental life and, more generally, to subject natural phenomena to human will.

Magic is the technique associated with an animist conception of the world.

Magical thinking