Freud's Group Psychology and the History of the Crowd

Bibliographic Data

ID4954311
AuthorsD Pick (0000-0002-4378-2001, corresponding author)
Year1995
Volume40
Issue1
Pages39-62
Publication date1995-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueHistory Workshop Journal (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1363-3554 • E-ISSN: 1477-4569
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/hwj/40.1.39
PMID11608962
OpenAlexW2087886437
LanguageEN
Citations received7

Two questions: how should we place Freud's remarkable paper Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921) in the history of the representation of crowds, masses and mobs? And how might this work be brought to bear upon nationalism and national identity in particular, politics in general? For whilst uneven and in some ways tantalisingly cursory, Freud's foray into group psychology, I will argue, cannot simply be consigned to the methodological past or explained away as just another example in the eccentric and odiously anti-democratic canon of early crowd 'science'. It poses problems not only of an historical but also of a political and psychological nature. In short its concern with the unconscious in collective experience and with the identity of the group and the individual merit attention and reappraisal. Whilst we may endeavour to situate the work in its formative contexts, we may also need to recognise its power to displace us from our own.

Crowd psychology · Group (periodic table) · History of psychology · Library science · Media studies · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Academic and Historical Perspectives in Psychology · Computer Science · Psychology · Social Psychology

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