Group psychology and the analysis of the ego--a lifetime later.

In a retrospective evaluation of Freud's essay, the author discusses the formation of emotionally fused mass movements, the implications of drastically changing social patterns and staggering population increases. He sees the critical faculty of the individual ego as the only safeguard against the pull of mass regressions. However, for people long held in subjection, fusion in a common political purpose can constitute a first step toward individual self-awareness, although their leaders may be terrorists, agents of the accumulated aggression. Only the concept of a death drive fully explains the recurrence of mass regression; only the fear of our enormous destructive power may offset its terrible seduction.