How talismans help us

This collector began each morning by greeting a Chinese figurine, a porcelain figurine of the god of contentment, standing on his desk. “He never deviated from the ritual, and for the statuette it was a great honor, because he removed everyone else from the office!” – recalled the housekeeper … Sigmund Freud. Interesting behavior for a man who exposed superstition, described the phenomenon of magical thinking and had no respect for religion.

However, among the so-called rational people, he is far from the only one who had some kind of fetish, “magical” trinket or personal ritual to establish relations with fortune. So, Winston Churchill stroked black cats for this very purpose, and Sergei Korolev never appointed the launch of spacecraft on Monday.

In this sense, we are not much different from the celebrities of the past. According to the survey, only 7% of Psychologies readers do not recognize superstition at all. The rest, in one circumstance or another, still hope for the help of talismans, folk signs or certain rituals.

Forever alive

So-called superstitions are one of the most enduring things in the world: objects supposedly bringing good luck or bad luck, and rituals to ensure a favorable development of events, mankind has been using since ancient times. Many of them managed to survive more than one change of centuries and cultures, despite the confrontation of the ministers of religion.

In medieval Europe, wearing a rabbit’s foot or a four-leaf clover for good luck was equated by the Catholic Church with witchcraft. In Petrine Russia, following popular beliefs could lead to coercion to public church repentance, and sometimes even the death penalty.

In the XNUMXth century, enlightenment philosophers – Voltaire, Diderot, Montesquieu, Helvetius and others, entered the fight against superstitions, proclaiming that such prejudices are absurd, because they are contrary to reason, and at the same time that all religions, in the final analysis, are also nothing but superstitions. . And for the science of the twentieth century, the attitude that everything that contradicts the laws of rationality (including ghosts, the afterlife, telepathy, etc.) has no right to exist has become an axiom.

Today, by superstitious behavior, we usually understand the belief that certain actions or objects can magically cause favorable or unfavorable consequences for us … and it seems that we are not ready to give up this belief.

The birth of a ritual

Olympic champion Tatyana Navka admits that she always puts on skates starting with her left foot, her colleague Evgeni Plushenko avoids shaving during competitions. Famous tennis player Elena Dementieva tries not to step on the marking lines on the court.

“Superstitions are tenacious because the dangers that are an integral part of our lives are tenacious,” says Jungian psychotherapist Yulia Kazakevich. – We are driven by the desire to protect ourselves from them – by all available means. In addition, behind each such gesture there is usually a story that once happened to a person and made a strong impression on him.

“Sometimes it’s enough that an object once turns out to be connected with a happy situation, and it already becomes a talisman, acquiring a special meaning for its owner,” adds Jungian psychotherapist Lev Khegai.

What place do superstitions occupy in the structure of the human psyche? As psychoanalyst Werner Münsterberger explains, our special attachment to certain objects begins in early childhood. A newborn baby does not distinguish between himself and his mother, lives in a state of merger with her. But one day he discovers that his mother can leave, disappear. Overwhelmed with anxiety, he stretches out his hands, grasping an object, and holds it near him.

British psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott in his book Transitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena. The study of the first “non-self” object called this object a “transitional object”: it is not part of the infant’s body, but is not yet perceived by him as belonging to external reality. Such an object can be a soft toy, a corner of a diaper, or another thing that symbolically serves as an extension of the child in the outside world, allowing him to alleviate the fear of loneliness and focus on himself.

“So in adulthood, we find accessible “transitional objects” with which we calm ourselves,” explains Jungian analyst Madina Slutskaya.

Another explanation is provided by the Jungian theory of the collective unconscious, according to which each of us from birth carries with him the common memory of humanity, where all the universal symbols are stored, the themes that Carl Gustav Jung called “archetypes”.

A dragon, a hero, a princess or an old woman – all these images are charged with emotional energy, they are the ones that pop up in our dreams when some problem or situation involves a similar topic … which allows us to decipher it later and solve it more successfully for ourselves. According to Madina Slutskaya, “any talisman is endowed with a certain archetypal content that helps the psyche to get used to what is happening, reduce the level of anxiety in a variety of life situations.”

Good omens…and not so good omens

“In order to understand what function our superstitions serve, we also need to place them in a temporal context,” says psychoanalyst André Bonaly. “Each of us is constantly building our future in relation to the past and our own deepest desires.

There are those among us who are able to manage their own time and prefer to manage the future themselves. Such people usually do not need “magic” items or encouraging rituals, because they have a habit of using all possibilities to fulfill their desires and believe in only one thing – in themselves.

And there are those who “endure”: such people seem to be waiting for circumstances to decide everything for them. They tend to acquire a talisman or resort to superstitious behavior aimed at ensuring that circumstances turn out according to their desires.

Of course, in reality, our behavior does not always clearly fit into the described framework: “passive” may not believe in anything, and “decisive” may also have some kind of fetish. “In any case, the possession of a cherished talisman or the following of a ritual is not necessarily bad in itself, on the contrary,” adds the psychoanalyst. “It helps to concentrate internal forces and, having overcome anxiety, make our actions more effective.”

It is important to add, however, that over-reliance on the magic of items can also be dangerous. “If a person loses self-confidence, becomes completely passive, he may develop obsessive-compulsive disorder,” emphasizes Madina Slutskaya. “With this personality disorder, he will experience a constant desire to perform actions that are objectively inappropriate, but for him endowed with special meaning.”

In addition, “magical” objects – “charged” amulets, crosses, rings – can become a means of manipulation. But, except for such extremes, a drop of superstitious eccentricity allows us to relate to life a little easier, sometimes to retreat from the habit of controlling everything, managing every moment. Signs and beliefs add charm to life, keeping a share of mystery in it.

“Any faith,” says Lev Khegay, “gives us an irrational way of relating to the world, the ability for paradox and ambivalence, tolerance for ignorance and our own non-omnipotence. It activates the intuitive-sensual knowledge of the world and serves as the basis for any spontaneous creativity.

In other words, a small fraction of superstitions is not a hindrance to a reasonable attitude towards life. What became clear to a student who once visited the laboratory of the Danish physicist, Nobel Prize winner in 1922, Niels Bohr. Seeing a horseshoe nailed over the door of a famous scientist, the student was surprised: “I would never have thought that a person like you could believe in such prejudices!” Niels Bohr replied to this: “I don’t believe it. But it looks like a horseshoe brings happiness whether you believe it or not!”

“Plush Mouse Brings Good Luck”

Elena, 28, editor