Freud and the Ideal Self 235
to assume that his ego had few libidinal ties; he loved no one but
himself, or other people only in so far as they served his needs.
To objects his ego gave away no more than was barely necessary”
(SE.XVIII, 123).
The importance of such fi gures in the history of mankind is very
great, Freud says. We are drawn to leaders for many reasons, but
one is that they seem to possess an assurance and authority that
we do not have. They know what is true and false, right and wrong.
We are tormented by having two sources of authority within: the ego
and the superego. They constantly contend with each other,
creating endless confusion. Individuals of the leader type appear to
have merged their two sources of authority and to be at one inter-
nally on all worldly questions. This is a dramatically attractive con-
dition, and we often wish to make it our own.
What ever in de pen dent being we had we surrender to the leader,
who performs a kind of hypnotism on us. He who makes himself
into a beast evades the pain of being a man, the poet says, and to
Freud the crowd is a sort of beast. The individual need no longer
be tormented by his own internal disunity. The leader becomes the
executive function: he can be both ego and superego to the indi-
vidual. And if what he demands is in line with the rages of the It,
then a complete fusion of inner agencies can take place and the in-
dividual be liberated from the disjunction that he fi nds so painful
moment to moment. He attains unity of Self.
But the cost of this unity, which is manifest as a kind of inebria-
tion, is often horrible. The members of the crowd surrender them-
selves to the great leader, who allows them to think of themselves
as fulfi lling high ideals even as they behave bestially. Hitler per-
suades his countrymen that by eliminating the Jews and taking
their property, they are serving the grandest possi ble destiny. They
are acting on behalf of Germany and the world. The guards in the
concentration camps were told all the time how much they were