The Crowd

What happens to a person in a crowd? The French social psychologist Gustave Le Bon argues that individuals in a crowd lose their sense of responsibility and their reasoning, and become part of a single 'collective mind' that is impulsive, credulous and suggestible, capable of both heroism and terrible violence. Crowds, he says, are moved not by facts but by images, slogans and the prestige of leaders who know how to affirm, repeat and spread ideas by contagion.

Published in 1895 as Psychologie des foules, the book was studied by Freud and by twentieth-century politicians, including Mussolini, and it remains a founding text of mass psychology. Le Bon (1841–1931) also wrote a famous study of Arab civilisation, La Civilisation des Arabes (1884), which has long been read in Arabic translation. See Freud's life.

Gustave Le Bon (1841–1931) was a French physician who became a traveller, anthropologist and popular writer on society and psychology. He journeyed through North Africa, the Middle East and India, and his book The Civilisation of the Arabs (1884) admired the achievements of Arab science and culture at a time when such views were rare in Europe; translated by Adel Zuaiter, it became a classic in Arabic.

His most influential book, The Crowd (1895), argued that people in a crowd lose their individual judgement, and was read by Freud as well as by politicians of every kind. The library holds several of his works in Arabic translation.