The sense of omnipotence that arises in the fundamental misapprehension of reality which is central to the period of primary narcissism, during which the infant hallucinates its original love-object, persists into childhood and is found among prehistoric and prelite-rate peoples who overestimate the power of wishful thinking and the real-world effect of psychic acts. Infantile omnipotence is also a feature of obsessional pathology, in which it appears as superstitious or magical thinking; in psychosis, as delusions of grandeur; and, finally and to a lesser extent, in creative people who are able to momentarily escape reality and manipulate a world of fantasy. Sigmund Freud treated the concept of omnipotent thinking at length through investigations of primitive peoples and their beliefs in telepathic and animistic thought, and also through pathologies such as obsessional neurosis and psychotic megalomania.

Although Freud did not...