The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind
Also known as Psychologie des Foules
Gustave Le Bon's 1895 study of crowd psychology: how a crowd thinks, feels and follows leaders.
At a glance
Key ideas
Mental unity of crowds, Descent down the ladder, Convictions take a religious shape …
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Gustave Le Bon and Sigmund Freud
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- Le Bon argues that a person in a crowd enters a state like hypnosis and acts by instinct.
- He lists the crowd's traits as impulsiveness, irritability, incapacity to reason and exaggerated feeling.
- The book covers the opinions and beliefs of crowds, their leaders, and kinds of crowds from criminal juries to parliaments.
- He holds that civilisations are made by a small intellectual elite and that crowds are powerful only for destruction.
Why it matters
- One of the seminal works of crowd psychology; Freud built on it, and it is likely among the sources Hitler drew on for propaganda.
Key facts
- Author
- Gustave Le Bon1
- Published
- 1895 (French)1
- Spread
- Translated into nineteen languages within a year of its appearance2
- German translation
- Psychologie der Massen, 19081
- Drew on
- Scipio Sighele's The Criminal Crowd (1891)1
Key ideas
-
Mental unity of crowds1
A crowd forms one mind that overrides its members' opinions and judgement.
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Descent down the ladder1
"Isolated, he may be a cultivated individual; in a crowd, he is a barbarian."
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Convictions take a religious shape1
Crowds hold beliefs with the intolerance and fanaticism of religion.
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Institutions follow character1
A nation does not choose its institutions at will; they come from its inherited character.
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Parliaments are crowds1
Assemblies show crowd traits: simplicity, suggestibility and the sway of a few leaders.
Connections
Links
Sources
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