Freud's group psychology and the history of the crowd

Pick, Daniel (1995) Freud's group psychology and the history of the crowd. History Workshop Journal 40 (1), pp. 39-61. ISSN 1363-3554.

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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1093/hwj/40.1.39

Abstract

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.

Metadata

Item Type:	Article
School:	Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Historical Studies
Depositing User:	Sarah Hall
Date Deposited:	13 Mar 2017 10:59
Last Modified:	02 Aug 2023 17:32
URI:	https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/18335

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