![]() ![]() The difference between this situation and that of realistic anxiety lies in two points: that the danger is an internal instead of an external one and that it is not consciously recognized. ![]() What he is afraid of is evidently his own libido. His description of it in the New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis is well known: For Freud, the chief symptom of hysterical anxiety is phobia. At a stroke, these communities provide themselves with a means not just to understand the forces of nature but to affect them, by propitiating their gods with sacrifices and incantations.īibó borrowed the notion of hysteria from psychiatry, and above all from Freud, although he does not explicitly cite him. Communities which feel themselves defenceless before a nature that they cannot control will people it with invisible powers-gods, djinns, spirits-that are its masters. ![]() Anthropologists have explained the magical practices of ‘primitive’ societies along similar lines. It experiences a sense of relief and thus feels itself able to carry on as before. In grappling with the former, the community can convince itself that it has successfully confronted the latter. It will substitute a fictional problem, which can be mediated purely through words and symbols, for the real one that it finds insurmountable. Bibó’s central hypothesis was that when a community fails to find within itself the means or energy to deal with a problem that challenges, if not its existence, then at least its way of being and self-image, it may be tempted to adopt a peculiar defensive ploy. In doing so he proposed a new concept, that of political hysteria. In a series of mid-twentieth century essays the Hungarian historian, István Bibó, attempted to explain the blindness and irresponsibility that had characterized the interwar politics of the Central European states-Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary-and led them to catastrophe. ![]()
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