The Behavior of Crowds: A Psychological StudyMartin, Everett Dean
Science
The Behavior of Crowds: A Psychological Study
Martin, Everett Dean
Crowds
Without pausing to review the criticisms of this argument which were
made at the beginning of our discussion, our own view may be summarized
as follows: (1) The crowd is not the same as the masses, or any class or
gathering of people as such, but is a certain mental condition which may
occur simultaneously to people in any gathering or association. (2) This
condition is not a "collective mind." It is a release of repressed
impulses which is made possible because certain controlling ideas have
ceased to function in the immediate social environment. (3) This
modification in the immediate social environment is the result of mutual
concessions on the part of persons whose unconscious impulses to do a
certain forbidden thing are similarly disguised as sentiments which meet
with conscious moral approval. (4) Such a general disguising of the real
motive is a characteristic phenomenon of dreams and of mental pathology,
and occurs in the crowd by fixing the attention of all present upon the
abstract and general. Attention is thus held diverted from the
individual's personal associations, permitting these associations and
their accompanying impulses to function unconsciously. (5) The abstract
ideas so entertained become symbols of meanings which are unrecognized;
they form a closed system, like the obsessions of the paranoiac, and as
the whole group are thus moved in the same direction, the "compulsory"
logic of these ideas moves forward without those social checks which
normally keep us within bounds of the real. Hence, acting and thinking
in the crowd become stereotyped and "ceremonial." Individuals move
together like automatons. (6) As the unconscious chiefly consists of
that part of our nature which is habitually repressed by the social, and
as there is always, therefore, an unconscious resistance to this
repressive force, it follows that the crowd state, like the neurosis,
is a mechanism of escape and of compensation. It also follows that the
crowd-spirit will occur most commonly in reference to just those social
forms where repression is greatest--in matters political, religious, and
moral. (7) The crowd-mind is then not a mere excess of emotion on the
part of people who have abandoned "reason"; crowd-behavior is in a sense
psychopathic and has many elements in common with somnambulism, the
compulsion neurosis, and even paranoia. (8) Crowds may be either
temporary or permanent in their existence. Permanent crowds, with the
aid of the press, determine in greater or less degree the mental habits
of nearly everyone. The individual moves through his social world like a
popular freshman on a college campus, who is to be "spiked" by one or
another fraternity competing for his membership. A host of crowds
standing for every conceivable "cause" and "ideal" hover constantly
about him, ceaselessly screaming their propaganda into his ears,
bullying and cajoling him, pushing and crowding and denouncing one
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