20 | MP introduction

indirect form.

Menninger[23] gives a useful survey of the various ways in which
the desire to cut, or to shed blood, manifests itself indirectly:

By repressing something in our mind, we do not get rid of it.
Everybody is familiar with the fact that persons who repress their
sex instinct fail to destroy it that way. It crops up in innumer-
able disguises, in dreams, for instance. Freud and his school have
considerably enriched our knowledge of the various substitute
satisfactions in which our sex instinct seeks an outlet. Dancing
is, of course, a fairly obvious one. There are others, so clever-
ly disguised, that only a trained psychologist can detect them.
A woman who can not satisfy her 'maternal instinct', because she
has no child, will at a certain age look for a substitute for a
child. She may find it in other peoples' children, or in a parrot,
or a cat. In suburban districts, the dearth of children is com-
pensated for by a superabundance of dogs.

Psychology is to a great extend the science of substitute
satisfactions. Propaganda is very largely the art of providing
public substitute satisfactions for frustrated private wants.

The mobilisation of instincts and emotions, however, is only
one of the tasks of propaganda. Essentially dishonest, propaganda
veils the results of the actions taken in response to it, whether
the propagandist is aware of his interested aim, or not. Lumley's[24]