The Crowd Book Summary

In 'The Crowd,' Gustave Le Bon delves into the psychology of the masses, revealing how individuals lose their rationality when surrounded by a group. He explores the mechanisms of crowd behavior, illustrating how thoughts and emotions can be transformed by collective influence. The book uncovers the alarming power of suggestion and its implications for social movements and revolutions. Le Bon's insights offer a fresh perspective on the dynamics of human interaction in societal contexts. Can we truly understand the crowd, or are we forever at its mercy?

By Gustave Le Bon

Published: 2017

""In the crowd, the individual is engulfed, and the collective mind emerges, where thoughts are transformed into impulses, guided by the emotions that bind us all.""

Book Review of The Crowd

The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind is a book authored by Gustave Le Bon that was first published in 1895.In the book, Le Bon claims that there are several characteristics of crowd psychology: "impulsiveness, irritability, incapacity to reason, the absence of judgement of the critical spirit, the exaggeration of sentiments, and others...". Le Bon claimed "that an individual immersed for some length of time in a crowd soon finds himself - either in consequence of magnetic influence given out by the crowd or from some other cause of which we are ignorant - in a special state, which much resembles the state of fascination in which the hypnotized individual finds himself in the hands of the hypnotizer."

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"In the crowd, the individual is engulfed, and the collective mind emerges, where thoughts are transformed into impulses, guided by the emotions that bind us all."

The Crowd

By Gustave Le Bon