Public opinion; Public relations; Publicity; Social psychology
“Even an honest, critical understanding of the demands of the opposing
crowd is discouraged, possibly because it is rightly felt that the
critical habit of mind is as destructive of one crowd-complex as the
other, and the old crowd prefers to remain intact and die in the last
ditch rather than risk dissolution, even with the promise of averting
a revolution. Hence the Romans were willing to believe that the
Christians worshiped the head of an ass. The medieval Catholics, even
at Leo’s court, failed to grasp the meaning of the outbreak in North
Germany. Thousands saw in the reformation only the alleged fact that
the monk Luther wanted to marry a wife....”[14]
The main satisfaction, Mr. Martin thinks, which the individual derives
from his group association is the satisfaction of his vanity through
the creation of an enlarged self-importance.
The Freudian theories upon which Mr. Martin relies very largely for
his argument lead to the conclusion that what Mr. Henry Watterson has
said of the suppression of news applies equally to the suppression of
individual desire. Neither will suppress. With the normal person,
the result of this social suppression is to produce an individual who
conforms with sufficient closeness to the standards of his group to
enable him to remain comfortably within it.
The tendency, however, of the instincts and desires which are thus
ruled out of conduct is somehow or other, when the conditions are
favorable, to seek some avenue of release and satisfaction. To the
individual most of these avenues of release are closed. He cannot, for
example, indulge his instinct of pugnacity without running foul of
the law. The only release which the individual can have is one which
commands, however briefly, the approval of his fellows. That is why
Mr. Martin calls crowd psychology and crowd activity “the result of
forces hidden in a personal and unconscious psyche of the members of
the crowd, forces which are merely released by social gatherings of
a certain sort.” The crowd enables the individual to express himself
according to his desire and without restraint.
He says further, “Every crowd ‘boosts for’ itself, gives itself airs,
speaks with oracular finality, regards itself as morally superior, and
will, so far as it has the power, lord it over every one. Notice how
each group and section in society, so far as it permits itself to think
as crowd, claims to be ‘the people.’”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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