Overcoming Fear

Crowds are only cognisant of simple and extreme sentiments; the opinions, ideas, and beliefs suggested to them are accepted or rejected as a whole, and considered as absolute truth...

The invariability of certain general beliefs--They shape the course of a civilisation--The difficulty of uprooting them--In what respect intolerance is a virtue in a people--The ph...

Different varieties of them--The influence of race--The spirit of the crowd is weak in proportion as the spirit of the race is strong--The spirit of the race represents the civilis...

When it is wanted to stir up a crowd for a short space of time, to induce it to commit an act of any nature--to pillage a palace, or to die in defence of a stronghold or a barricad...

What will decide whether a human being can resist, successfully, bad tendencies in heredity, or in environment, or in both, and keep a reasonably balanced mind? It demands insight,...

We took a glimpse at random into the mental life of an adult consciousness, and found it very complicated, constantly changing. We found it packed with shifting material, which, on...

When we consider the accumulated possibilities for disorder which the family tree of almost any one of us can show, the wonder is not that there are so many nervous or insane, but...

A close parallel exists between the anatomical and psychological characteristics of living beings. In these anatomical characteristics certain invariable, or slightly variable, ele...

How to Study.--You learn sooner or later from experience that the quickest and best way to learn anything new is to give it your undivided attention at the moment; to perceive one...

In the use of its functions the mind manifests certain powers and certain modes of expression which can act as powerful allies or as damaging enemies of health. We speak of man as...

The whole philosophy of politics comes down at last to a question of four words. Who is to govern? Compared with this question the problem of the form of government is relatively u...

We have seen that Democracy in and of itself is no more sure a guarantee of liberty than other forms of government. This does not necessarily mean that we have been forced by our p...

The crowd-mind is seen at its best and at its worst in revolution. To many minds, revolution is so essentially a crowd phenomenon that the terms revolution and crowd-rule are almos...

So much for the psychology of the revolutionary propaganda. Now let us look at what happens in the moment of revolutionary outbreak. We have dwelt at some length on the fact that a...

Probably the most telling point of likeness between the crowd-mind and the psychoneurosis--paranoia especially--is the "delusion of persecution." In cases of paranoia the notion th...

Wherever conscious thinking is determined by unconscious mechanisms, and all thinking is more or less so, it is dogmatic in character. Beliefs which serve an unconscious purpose do...

The unconscious egoism of the individual in the crowd appears in all forms of crowd-behavior. As in dreams and in the neurosis this self feeling is frequently though thinly disguis...

Throughout the discussion thus far I have been making repeated reference to the psychology of the unconscious, without going into detail any more than was necessary. Let us now tak...

In his well-known work on the psychology of the crowd Le Bon noted the fact that the unconscious plays a large part in determining the behavior of crowds. But he is not clear in hi...

Every one at times feels himself in the grip of social forces over which he has no control. The apparently impersonal nature of these forces has given rise to various mechanistic t...