Le Bon. Biography
Gustav Lebon, whose books are still of great interest to psychologists, sociologists, historians, and others, is considered the creator of social psychology. It was he who was able to describe as accurately as possible the behavior of the crowd and the reasons for the blind subordination of the masses to dictators. Despite the fact that most of his works were written by him in the 19th century, the 20th century was impressively influenced by the results of his research. The most important direction in which Gustav Le Bon worked was psychology.
Education
Gustave Lebon was born in Nogent-le-Rotrou, France, into a noble family. Despite the high-profile title, the Lebon family lived very modestly, without luxury.
After graduating from classical school, Gustav entered the University of Paris at the Faculty of Medicine. His further education was associated with frequent movement between European, Asian and African educational institutions. Already while studying at the university, Lebon began to publish his articles, which were positively perceived by readers and aroused interest in scientific circles.
Contribution to the development of medicine
Lebon never engaged in medical practice, although his contribution to the development of medicine is highly valued, but he was carried out mainly through scientific publications. For example, based on the results of his research work, in the 60s of the nineteenth century, he wrote an article about diseases that occur in people living in damp areas.
Hobbies and the first attempts to understand the reasons for this or that behavior of people in various situations
In addition to medicine, Lebon enjoyed studying anthropology, archeology and sociology. For some time he worked as a military doctor at the front. The goal was to be able to observe and explore how people behave in critical conditions. In the early 1870s, an interest in psychology awakened in him, which determined the further direction of his activity.
The most important works
The main theme that Gustav Le Bon adhered to in his works is the philosophy of the crowd, its characteristics and motives. The most important and most popular work of Gustav Le Bon was the book "Psychology of Peoples and Masses".
Staying at the front and observing a large number of people gave the necessary basis for conclusions, and on the pages of this publication he managed to talk about how the motives of a particular human behavior are determined, and on the basis of these data he tried to explain the reasons for a number of historical events. Later, the Psychology of the Crowd was also written, which won no less recognition, and then the Psychology of Socialism.
Impact on the course of history
Carrying out all these studies and clearly formulating conclusion after conclusion on the pages of his books, Le Bon did not suspect that his works would form the basis for the formation of fascists. However, sadly, a kind of textbook for Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini was the "Psychology of the Crowd".
Gustav Lebon certainly did not expect to have such a significant impact on the course of history. Many of his conclusions were confirmed quite accurately, because the above dictators largely achieved their goals.
Unconscious instincts at the head of the crowd
Being in fact the father of social psychology, Le Bon first attempted to explain the onset of a period in the existence of mankind, when it is the masses that become especially important. He believed that being in a crowd leads to a decrease in a person's intellectual abilities, a sense of responsibility and criticality in relation to the situation. Instead, the reins of government are taken by unconscious instincts, which determine the complex, but sometimes primitive behavior of large masses of people.
Le Bon believed that the peoples of the countries in which the largest number of mestizos are concentrated are the least controlled. For such states, a very strong ruler is needed, otherwise unrest and anarchy cannot be avoided.
Interesting conclusions were also drawn about how mass religions were instilled. According to Le Bon, when this or that religion was planted, the people accepted it, but not completely, but only by joining it to their old faith, that is, in fact, changing the name and content, adapting the innovation to the usual religion. Thus, those religions that "descended" to the masses underwent many changes in the process of adaptation among the people of one or another nation.
Gustav Lebon: crowd and leader
A person who is among many others like him, as if descending the ladder of his development, easily abandons his principles, the conclusions that usually move him when he is outside the crowd. He turns out to be prone to violence, excessive activity, which manifests itself both in a predisposition to arbitrariness and aggression, and in the manifestation of unprecedented enthusiasm in achieving goals. Often an individual in a crowd acts contrary to his own interests and beliefs.
When working with the crowd, it is most effective to use simple and clear images that do not carry anything superfluous. Unless they can be supported by some unusual, amazing fact, for example, something from the category of miraculous or phenomenal.
According to Lebon's theory, leaders are rarely among the people who think and reflect. More often than not, they are more inclined to act. It is extremely rare that they see the depth of the problem, because this weakens the will of the leader, leads to doubt and slowness. The leader is often unbalanced and impressionable, almost crazy. His idea, landmarks can be ridiculous, insane, but it is difficult to stop him on the way to achieving the goal. The negative attitude inspires him, the torment he experiences is what brings real satisfaction to the real leader. Their belief in their own ideas, their point of view is so firm and unshakable that the power with which they influence the minds of others increases a hundredfold. Masses of people tend to listen to just such a person who manages to retain his will, strength and aspiration. People who find themselves in the crowd most often do not possess them, therefore they unconsciously reach out to a stronger and more strong-willed person.
Leaders, according to Lebon's theory, are categorical and resolute in the manifestation of power. Thanks to this decisiveness, as well as a comprehensive uncompromisingness, they manage to force even the most obstinate and recalcitrant people to do their will, even if this is contrary to the true interests of man. Leaders make changes in the existing order of affairs, force the majority to agree with their decisions and obey them.
Whoever the crowd consists of, it strives to be in subjection. The manifestation of power is alien to her, she is too weak for this, which is why she completely submits to the decisive leader, rejoicing at the opportunity to be in a position of obedience.
Education and erudition rarely keep pace with the qualities of a real leader, but if they are, then most likely they will bring misfortune to their owner. Being smart, a person inevitably becomes softer, because he has the opportunity to look deep into the situation, understand certain aspects of people subordinate to him and involuntarily loosen his grip, shake his power. That is why most leaders at all times, as Gustav Lebon believed, were very narrow-minded people, moreover, the more limited a person was, the greater his influence on the crowd.
This was the point of view of Gustav Le Bon. It was these thoughts that formed the basis of two fundamental books that became textbooks for the most cruel dictators of the twentieth century. Of course, the scientist himself did not expect that his works would have such admirers and followers.
Gustave Lebon died at the age of 90 in 1931, at his home in the outskirts of Paris.
The famous French psychologist, sociologist, anthropologist and historian, founder of social psychology - Gustave Le Bon was born in France, Nogent-le-Rotra, on May 7, 1841. The family, despite the noble title, was not rich and belonged to the middle class.
Little is known about the childhood of the future scientist. After graduating from the classical lyceum, Gustave studied medicine at the University of Paris, traveled around Europe, North Africa, Asia.
Although Gustave Lebon was considered a doctor, he never practiced, and his contribution to medicine is based on his scientific articles. So, at the beginning of 1860, Le Bon published a work on chronic diseases of people who live in swampy areas. A little later, he wrote an article on the phenomenon of fever during intoxication of the body.
It is known that in addition to medicine, Lebon's scientific interests included archeology, anthropology and sociology.
In 1870-1771. Gustave went as a volunteer to the front, where he worked as a military doctor, and this experience gave him material for research on human behavior in extreme conditions.
Later, Lebon was actively involved in psychology. He was one of the first to theoretically substantiate the onset of the "era of the masses" and to associate with this the general decline of culture. He believed that due to the underdevelopment and low intellectual level of large masses of people, they are ruled by unconscious instincts, especially if a person finds himself in a crowd. Here there is a decrease in the level of intelligence, responsibility, independence, criticality fall, the personality as such disappears.
The real recognition came to the scientist by the middle of 1890, along with the release of his book "Psychology of Peoples and Masses". This work turned out to be widely discussed, and subsequently Le Bon wrote many more works on a similar topic, including The Psychology of the Crowd, The Psychology of Socialism (1908) and The Evolution of Matter (1912).
The tragedy was that dictators skillfully used his methods of influencing the crowd, carefully studying his works, and how true Le Bon's thoughts and studies turned out to be can be judged in the course of history.
So, for example, the work of the scientist "Psychology of the Crowd" in many ways became a tool for the formation of the fascist theory of leadership, being a kind of textbook for Hitler. In addition, he paid tribute to the work of Lebon and Mussolini, for whom The Psychology of the Crowd was almost a reference book.
In general, the books of Gustave Lebon were studied by the Russian politician Plekhanov, the French philosopher Sorel, the politician Gabriel Ganoto and also Sigmund Freud.
Gustave Lebon died on December 13, 1931, in the Parisian suburb of Marne-la-Coquette, at the age of 90.
The emergence and development of the idea of equality. - The consequences produced by it. – How much did her application cost. Its current influence on the masses. – Tasks outlined in this work. – Study of the main factors of the general evolution of peoples. Does this evolution emerge from institutions? - Do not the elements of each civilization - institutions, arts, beliefs, etc. - contain certain psychological foundations that are characteristic of each people separately? - The significance of chance in history and immutable laws. – Difficulty in changing hereditary ideas in a given subject.
The ideas that govern the institutions of peoples undergo a very long evolution. Formed very slowly, they also disappear very slowly. Having become obvious delusions for enlightened minds, they remain undeniable truths for the crowd for a very long time and continue to exert their effect on the ignorant masses of the people. If it is difficult to inspire a new idea, then it is no less difficult to destroy an old one. Humanity is constantly clinging desperately to dead ideas and dead gods.
Almost a century and a half has passed since the poets and philosophers, extremely ignorant of the primitive history of man, the diversity of his mental structure and the laws of heredity, threw into the world the idea of the equality of people and races.
Very seductive for the masses, this idea was soon firmly established in their souls and was not slow to bear fruit. It shook the foundations of old societies, produced one of the most terrible revolutions, and threw the Western world into a whole series of violent convulsions with no end in sight.
No doubt some of the inequalities that separate individuals and races were too obvious to be seriously challenged; but people were easily reassured by the fact that these inequalities are only the consequences of differences in education, that all people are born equally intelligent and kind, and that institutions alone could corrupt them. The remedy for this was very simple: reorganize the institutions and give all people the same education. In this way, institutions and education have become the great panaceas of modern democracies, a means to correct inequalities that offend the great principles that are the only gods of modernity.
Incidentally, the latest advances in science have exposed all the futility of egalitarian theories and have shown that the mental abyss created by the past between people and races can only be filled by very slow hereditary accumulations. Modern psychology, together with the harsh lessons of experience, has shown that education and institutions adapted to well-known persons and well-known peoples can be very harmful to others. But it is not in the power of philosophers to withdraw from circulation the ideas they have put into the world when they are convinced of their falsity. Like a river bursting its banks, which no dam is able to hold back, the idea continues its devastating, majestic and terrible flow.
And look what an invincible power of an idea! There is not a single psychologist, not a single enlightened statesman, and especially not a single traveler, who would not know how false is the chimerical concept of the equality of people, which turned the world upside down, caused a gigantic revolution in Europe and threw America into a bloody war for secession of the Southern States from the North American Union; no one has the moral right to ignore how disastrous our institutions and education are for the lower peoples; and behind all this there is not a single person - at least in France - who, having attained power, could resist public opinion and not demand this education and these institutions for the natives of our colonies. The application of the system, derived from our ideas of equality, ruins the mother country and gradually brings all our colonies into a state of deplorable decline; but the principles from which the system springs are not yet shaken.
Far from declining, however, the idea of equality continues to grow. In the name of this equality, socialism, which apparently must soon enslave the majority of the peoples of the West, seeks to ensure their happiness. In his name, a modern woman demands for herself the same rights and the same upbringing with a man.
Of the political and social upheavals produced by these principles of equality, and of those much more important ones which they are destined to give rise to, the masses do not care in the least, and the political life of statesmen is too short for them to worry about it any more. However, the supreme ruler of modernity is public opinion, and it would be absolutely impossible not to follow it.
There is no surer measure of the social importance of an idea than the power it exercises over minds. The share of truth or falsehood contained in it can be of interest only from a philosophical point of view. When a true or false idea has passed into feeling among the masses, then all the consequences arising from it should gradually manifest themselves.
So, through education and institutions, we must begin to realize the modern dream of equality. With their help, we try, by correcting the unjust laws of nature, to cast into one form the brains of Negroes from Martinique, Guadeloupe and Senegal, the brains of Arabs from Algeria and, finally, the brains of Asiatics. Of course, this is a completely unrealizable chimera, but hasn't the constant pursuit of chimeras been the main occupation of mankind so far? Modern man cannot evade the law that his ancestors obeyed.
I have elsewhere shown the deplorable results produced by European education and institutions on the lower peoples. In the same way I have presented the results of the modern education of women, and I do not intend here to return to the old. The questions that we have to study in this work will be of a more general nature.
Leaving aside the details, or touching upon them only insofar as they prove necessary for the proof of the principles stated, I will investigate the formation and mental structure of historical races, that is, artificial races formed in historical times by the accidents of conquest, immigration and political changes, and I will try to prove that their history follows from this mental structure. I will establish the degree of stability and variability of the characters of the races, and I will also try to find out whether individuals and peoples are moving towards equality or, on the contrary, strive to be as different from each other as possible. Having shown that the elements out of which civilization is formed (art, institutions, beliefs) are the direct products of the racial soul and therefore cannot pass from one people to another, I will determine those irresistible forces from the action of which civilizations begin to fade and then die out. These are questions that I have already had to discuss more than once in my writings on the civilizations of the East. This little volume should be regarded only as a brief synthesis of them.
The most striking impression that I have received from my long travels in various countries is that every people has a mental structure as stable as its anatomical features, and it is from it that its feelings, its thoughts, its institutions, its beliefs and his art. Tocqueville and other famous thinkers thought to find in the institutions of peoples the reason for their development. But I am convinced otherwise and hope to prove, taking examples from precisely those countries that Tocqueville studied, that institutions have an extremely weak influence on the development of civilizations. They are most often effects, but very rarely causes.
Gustave Lebon
Crowd psychology
G. Le Bon
La Psychologie des foules
Published according to the edition:
G. Lebon. "Psychology of peoples and masses",
F. Pavlenkov publishing house, St. Petersburg, 1898,
bringing the text to the norms of the modern Russian language.
BOOK I
PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES
Introduction
MODERN IDEAS OF EQUALITY
AND THE PSYCHOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS OF HISTORY
The emergence and development of the idea of equality. - The consequences produced by it. - What did it cost already to apply it -
zhenie. Its current influence on the masses. - Tasks outlined in this work. - Research of the main factors -
tori of the general evolution of peoples. - Does this evolution arise from institutions? - Do not contain elements
cops of every civilization - institutions, arts, beliefs, etc. - known psychological foundations, their own
relevant to each people individually? - The significance of chance in history and immutable laws. - Difficulty
change hereditary ideas in a given subject.
The ideas that govern the institutions of peoples undergo a very long evolution. Forming very slowly, they, together with
those disappear very slowly. Having become obvious delusions for enlightened minds, they are still a very long time
remain indisputable truths for the crowd and continue to exert their influence on the ignorant masses of the people. If
It is difficult to inspire a new idea, but it is no less difficult to destroy an old one. Mankind constantly clings in desperation to
dead ideas and dead gods.
Almost a century and a half have passed since poets and philosophers, extremely ignorant of the primitive
human history, the diversity of his mental structure and the laws of heredity, threw into the world the idea of equality
people and races.
Very seductive for the masses, this idea was soon firmly established in their souls and was not slow to bear fruit.
It shook the foundations of the old societies, produced one of the most terrible revolutions, and threw the Western world into a whole series of
violent convulsions, to which it is impossible to foresee the end.
No doubt some of the inequalities that separate individuals and races were too obvious to be
it was possible to challenge them seriously; but people were easily reassured by the fact that these inequalities are only consequences of differences
in education, that all people are born equally intelligent and kind, and that institutions alone could corrupt them
tit. The remedy for this was very simple: reorganize the institutions and give all people the same education.
In this way, institutions and education have become the great panaceas of modern democracies, the means for the
rule of inequalities offensive to the great principles who are the only deities of the modern
However, the latest advances in science have revealed all the futility of egalitarian theories and proved that the mental abyss, 1
created by the past between people and races, can only be filled by very slow hereditary accumulations.
leniya. Modern psychology, together with the harsh lessons of experience, has shown that education and institutions
belonging to famous people and to famous peoples, can be very harmful to others. But not in the power of philosophers
withdraw from circulation the ideas that they put into the world when they are convinced of their falsity. Like a river bursting its banks, which no dam is able to hold, the idea continues its devastating, majestic and terrible
ny stream.
And look what an invincible power of an idea! There is not a single psychologist, not a single enlightened go-
statesman, and in particular - not a single traveler who would not know how falsely chimera-
the concept of the equality of people, which turned the world upside down, caused a gigantic revolution in Europe and abandoned America
riku in a bloody war to secede the Southern States from the North American Union; nobody has a moral
the right to ignore how disastrous our institutions and education are for the lower peoples; and for all that you can’t find
there will not be a single person - at least in France - who, having reached power, could oppose society
Gustave Le Bon was born in 1841 in Nogent-le-Rotrou, France (Nogent-le-Rotrou, France), in a family with Breton and Burgundian roots. His family, despite the title of nobility, did not differ in special wealth and belonged to the so-called "middle class". Little is known about the childhood of the future scientist. It is known that after graduating from the classical lyceum, Gustave began to study medicine at the University of Paris (University of Paris), and later he continued to study in Europe (Europe), Asia (Asia) and North Africa (North Africa). It was in the period 1860-1880, and then Lebon had already begun to write his works, which were published at various times in medical publications.
Although Gustave Lebon is considered a doctor, he never practiced, and his contribution to medicine is based on his scientific articles.
So, in the early 1860s, Le Bon published a work on chronic diseases of people who live in swampy areas. A little later, he wrote an article on the phenomenon of fever during intoxication of the body, later this article was supplemented by a number of other works on the topic of the same fever.
It is known that in addition to medicine, Lebon's scientific interests included archeology, anthropology and sociology.
His theme was both the statement and definition of the concept of human death, and in 1866 he published a book about this, but these works began to be of interest only a century later. During the same period (1860s), Le Bon also wrote on the topic of the reproduction of species in humans and animals, and this work of his has withstood many reprints.
In 1870-1771 Gustave went as a volunteer to the front, where he worked as a military doctor, and this experience gave him material for research on human behavior in extreme conditions.
Later (after the 1870s) Le Bon was actively involved in the issues of psychology, and it was he who was the first to put forward the theory that "psychology is a science necessary for the study of sociology and understanding of the history of peoples."
Real recognition came to the scientist by the mid-1890s, along with the publication of his book "Psychology of Peoples and Masses" ("Les Lois psychologiques de l" évolution des peuples", English "The Psychology of Peoples"). This book was a detailed analysis of the psychology of the masses, thereby determining the motives of the individual's behavior and the causes of historical events.This work turned out to be widely discussed, and subsequently Le Bon wrote many more works on a similar topic, including "Psychology of the Crowd" ("La psychologie des foules", The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind), Psychology of Socialism (Psychologie du socialisme, English The Psychology of Socialism, 1908) and The Evolution of Matter (1912 ).
Best of the day
It is believed that the work of the scientist "Psychology of the Crowd" in many ways became a tool for the formation of the fascist theory of leadership, being a kind of "textbook" for Hitler (Adolf Hitler), who even referred to this book in his infamous book "Mein Kampf".
In addition, he paid tribute to the work of Lebon and Benito Mussolini (Benito Mussolini), for which "Psychology of the Crowd" was almost a reference book.
The tragedy was that his "methods of influencing the crowd" were skillfully used by dictators, carefully studying them, and how true Le Bon's thoughts and studies turned out to be can be judged in the course of history.
In general, the books of Gustave Lebon were studied by the Russian politician Plekhanov, the French philosopher Georges Eugène Sorel, Mussolini, Hitler, the politician Gabriel Hanotaux, and Sigmund Freud.
Gustave Lebon died on December 13, 1931, in the Parisian suburb of Marne-la-Coquette (Marnes-la-Coquette), at the age of 90 years.
