The Behavior of Crowds: A Psychological StudyMartin, Everett Dean
Science
The Behavior of Crowds: A Psychological Study
Martin, Everett Dean
Crowds
Hence the crowd is a device by which the individual's "right" may be
baptized "righteousness" in general, and this personality by putting on
impersonality may rise again to new levels of self-appreciation. He
"belongs to something," something "glorious" and deathless. He himself
may be but a miserable clod, but the glory of his crowd reflects upon
him. Its expected triumph he already shares. It gives him back his lost
sense of security. As a good crowd man, true believer, loyal citizen,
devoted member, he has regained something of his early innocence. In
other members he has new brothers and sisters. In the finality of his
crowd-faith there is escape from responsibility and further search. He
is willing to be commanded. He is a child again. He has transferred his
repressed infantilism from the lost family circle to the crowd. There is
a very real sense in which the crowd stands to his emotional life _in
loco parentis_.
It is to be expected, therefore, that wherever possible the crowd-state
of mind will be perpetuated. Every sort of device will be used to keep
the members of the crowd from coming to. In almost every organization
and social relationship there will be a tendency on part of the
unconscious to behave as crowd. Thus permanent crowds exist on every
hand--especially wherever political, moral, or religious ideas are
concerned. The general and abstract character of these ideas makes them
easily accessible instruments for justifying and screening the
unconscious purpose. Moreover it is in just those aspects of our social
life where repression is greatest that crowd-thinking is most common,
for it is by means of such thinking and behavior that the unconscious
seeks evasions and finds its necessary compensations.
The modern man has in the printing press a wonderfully effective means
for perpetuating crowd-movements and keeping great masses of people
constantly under the sway of certain crowd-ideas. Every crowd-group has
its magazines, press agents, and special "literature" with which it
continually harangues its members and possible converts. Many books, and
especially certain works of fiction of the "best-seller" type, are
clearly reading-mob phenomena.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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