In his fight against the powers of the surrounding world his first weapon was magic, the first forerunner of our modern technology. We suppose that this confidence in magic is derived from the over-estimation of the individual’s own intellectual operations, from the belief in the ‘omnipotence of thoughts’, which, incidentally, we come across again in our obsessional neurotics. Sigmund Freud
About This Quote

In the struggle against the world, magic was a way for those who lived in those times to fight against those powers. Magic allowed them to have a measure of control over the world they lived in. In the modern world, technology has become a way for us to fight back against forces that threaten us with destruction. However, we also use technology for the same purpose as magic was used in the past.

We use technology to try and control or influence events around us. The idea of using magic as a weapon is an interesting one because it reminds us that we are still not completely in control of our own lives. We may be able to shape things around us with technology but we cannot eliminate that which we don’t even know exists.

Source: New Introductory Lectures On Psychoanalysis

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