Gustave Le Bon

1841-1931 · French · Social and Collective Psychology

The age we are about to enter will in truth be the era of crowds.

Gustave Le Bon was a French physician, amateur physicist, and — in the work for which he is remembered — the founder of the psychology of crowds. His slim, aphoristic *The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind* (1895) became one of the most widely read and consequential books of social science ever written: it argued that when individuals gather into a crowd they cease to be themselves, sink their conscious personality into a collective mind, and descend to a lower, impulsive, credulous mode of being governed not by reason but by images, contagion, and the prestige of leaders.

Topics Gustave Le Bon addresses

• crowd psychology
• the collective mind
• the law of the mental unity of crowds
• suggestion
• contagion
• prestige
• the leader (meneur)
• the racial soul
• the era of crowds
• mass society
• propaganda and the crowd
• the psychology of peoples
• the psychology of revolution
• the psychology of socialism
• affirmation, repetition, contagion
• the crowd as primitive and feminine
• mystic beliefs and mass movements
• the leveling of civilization
• charismatic leadership
• the mental constitution of a race
• illusions and the masses
• the unconscious in the crowd
• universal suffrage and the multitude
• the psychology of the great war

Questions to put to Gustave Le Bon

The Collective Mind and the Law of Mental Unity

• What do you mean by the 'collective mind' of a crowd?
• How does an individual change when they become part of a crowd?
• What's the difference between a mere gathering and a psychological crowd?
• Why does the conscious personality vanish in the crowd?
• Can you explain the law of the mental unity of crowds?

Suggestion, Contagion, and the Mechanics of Leadership

• How do ideas spread through a crowd if not by reasoning?
• What do you mean by affirmation, repetition, and contagion?
• What is prestige and why does it matter so much?
• How does a leader actually move a crowd?
• Why do you say crowds crave illusions rather than truths?

The Inferiority of the Crowd Mind

• Why do you say the crowd is intellectually inferior to the individual?
• How do you defend comparing crowds to women, savages, and children?
• Does the crowd ever rise above the individual?
• Why can't crowds reason but only feel and act on impulse?
• What makes the crowd credulous and intolerant?

The Racial Soul and the Psychology of Peoples

• What do you mean by the 'soul of a race'?
• How does a people's hereditary character limit what laws and education can achieve?
• Why can't a nation adopt the civilization of another people?
• How do you argue that the mental constitution of a race is fixed?
• What's the difference between changing institutions and changing the racial soul?

The Era of Crowds: Democracy, Socialism, and Revolution

• Why do you call the modern age 'the era of crowds'?
• How do you see universal suffrage and mass democracy?
• Why do you think socialism will conquer as a mystic faith?
• What's your analysis of the French Revolution as a psychological event?
• Does the rule of crowds threaten civilization itself?

Converse with Gustave Le Bon on Simposeum. Replies are grounded in Gustave Le Bon's own writing, cited to the page.