by Academy of Ideas
“Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one.”
Charles MacKay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
In a functioning society, one can assume that most people, most of the time, will behave in a sane and civilized manner. But sometimes we cannot make this assumption; sometimes acute levels of fear and anxiety spread throughout a population and trigger a widespread psychological regression to a herd psychology. In this video we explore how social crises make us susceptible to this type of regression, which can lead to widespread immorality, outright madness, and even totalitarian rule.
“The masses always incline to herd psychology, hence they are easily stampeded; and to mob psychology, hence their witless brutality and hysterical emotionalism…”
Carl Jung, The Practice of Psychotherapy
To understand the nature of a herd psychology, we must look back in time. For as Jung noted:
“[The psyche] has been built up in the course of millions of years and represents a history of which it is the result. Naturally it carries with it the traces of that history, exactly like the body, and if you grope down into the basic structure of the mind you naturally find traces of the archaic mind.”
Carl Jung, Collected Works Volume 18
For much of human evolution, our ancestors lacked a well-developed sense of individuality – that is, they did not feel or perceive themselves to be separate from the group or tribe. Rather, their sense of self was tightly tied to their membership in a tribe and hence their capacity to think and act independently was limited.
“Primitive man thinks and acts collectively. Without his fellows, the individual is nothing. His family, his tribe acts in him.”
Marie-Louise Von Franz, Collected Works Volume 2
The term participation mystique, coined by the French anthropologist Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, captures the essence of this tribal, or herd, psychology. Participation mystique refers to the way in which primitive man was psychologically merged with others – his psyche existing in a state of unity, or unconscious identity, with his clan. Or as Carl Jung put it:
“The further we go back into history, the more we see personality disappearing beneath the wrappings of collectivity. And if we go right back to primitive psychology, we find absolutely no trace of the concept of an individual. Instead of individuality we find only collective relationship or what Lévy-Bruhl calls participation mystique.”
Carl Jung, Psychological Types
Lévy-Bruhl believed that the psyche of modern man has outgrown the participation mystique of herd psychology. Carl Jung disagreed. According to Jung, while modern humans have evolved the capacity for individuality, we still possess a latent herd psychology that can supplant our capacity to think and act independently.
“Once the I was hidden in the herd: and now the herd is still hidden in the I.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
In summarizing Jung’s thoughts on modern man’s susceptibility to a herd psychology, the psychologist Erich Neumann wrote in the Origins and History of Consciousness:
“Group unity in participation [mystique] is still so widely prevalent, even in modern man…Although enjoying a higher conscious development, probably, than any previously attained by man, modern individuals, for all their conscious achievements, are still deeply embedded in the tissue of their group and its unconscious laws.”
Erich Neumann, Origins and History of Consciousness
In the modern day a mass regression to a herd psychology is typically triggered by a social crisis, be it a war, economic collapse, political upheaval, or a public health crisis. For when men and women feel in danger and incapable of facing up to a threat on their own, they instinctively seek safety in numbers. This can take the form of a physical gathering, where people band together to defend against a threat. But this seeking of safety can also manifest psychologically, via a regression to the primitive state of participation mystique and a psychological merging with the group. In this state, even those who are socially isolated or alone seek security by instinctively mimicking others and conforming to the collective in matters of thought, behavior, and belief. This herd psychology is based on the following idea: if I am too weak to deal with the threat individually, the best option is to think and act as others do, to blend in with the crowd, and to hope that in so doing I will be safe. Depending on the nature of the threat this strategy can be somewhat effective, however, it comes with a cost. For a regression to a herd psychology is accompanied by a weakening of consciousness and the erosion of critical thinking, reason, and free will, which leaves the psyche undefended against the more primitive and irrational elements, such as emotions, instincts, and unconscious forces.
“Helplessness and panic lead to group formation, or rather to a clustering together in masses for the sake of gregarious security…Group formation under the influence of panic cannot be called an organization because it is not an attempt based on reason and will but on a fundamentally emotional movement.”
Carl Jung, Collected Works Volume 18
Or as Erich Neumann echoes:
““The group [or herd] psyche…is characterized by the primary preponderance of unconscious elements and components, and by the recession of individual consciousness…when consciousness is insufficiently differentiated from the unconscious, and the ego from the group, the group member finds himself as much at the mercy of group reactions as of unconscious constellations. The fact that he is preconscious and preindividual leads him to experience and react to the world in a way that is more collective than individual, and more mythological than rational.”
Erich Neumann, Origins and History of Consciousness
In regressing to a herd psychology, modern man adopts the thought and behavior patterns of primitive man. One such pattern is deference to authority and blind obedience to leaders.
“It seems to be unavoidable that…group formations regress to primitive tribal associations that are held together…by a chief.”
Carl Jung, Analytical Psychology: Its Theory and Practice
In his book Religion and Myth, published in 1883, James Macdonald provided a sweeping survey of primitive tribes in Africa, and he notes that in every one of them there existed the belief that the chief or king was a conduit of god or an embodiment of the divine. Disobedience to the commands of the ruler was equivalent to disobedience to a god, and hence, unthinkable. In the words of Macdonald, primitive man believed his ruler to be “supreme, not only in matters of faith and sacrifice, but in questions of war and state policy…Whatever the divine man orders must be done. If he takes a fancy for a trifle of five hundred heads as a sacrifice, the king’s executioners must post themselves on the highways to catch wayfarers till the requisite number is made up. Or should his fancy suggest the extermination of a weak neighbouring tribe, the warriors must be called by beat of drum, and be on the war-path before the dawn of day.” (James Macdonald, Religion and Myth)
While primitive man submitted his will to chiefs and kings, when a social crisis triggers a regression to a primitive herd psychology, modern man, in our hyper-politicized world, submits to politicians and bureaucrats. He obeys whatever those in the ruling class demand and accepts their word as if it were divine. He becomes a true believer in political authority and he places his fate – for good or ill – completely at the mercy of politicians. While he may not explicitly believe in the divinity of his rulers, the enthusiasm with which he prostrates himself before political authority is indicative of the mythological, or religious nature of his allegiance. Or as Carl Jung noted:
“…group formations all show unmistakable traces of infantile and archaic psychology, infantile inasmuch as they always look for the father, and archaic inasmuch as the father [i.e., leader] appears in a mythological [or religious] setting.”
Carl Jung, Analytical Psychology: Its Theory and Practice
That a social crisis triggers a regression to a herd mentality is apparent when we reflect on the fact that social crises were the prelude to all the authoritarian and totalitarian movements of the last century. Social and economic problems, and political unrest, functioned as the soil which gave rise to the Nazi movement, to communism in the Soviet Union, and to fascism in Italy. In these countries, instead of resisting the strong arm of dictators, most people, in their primitive and psychologically regressed state, worshipped their leaders, and proudly obeyed their every command.
“Fear and catastrophe fortify the need to identify with a strong leader. They lead to herding together of people, who shy away from wanting to be individual cells any longer; they prefer to be part of a huge mystic social organization that protects against threat and distress, in oneness with the leader.”
Joost Meerloo, The Rape of the Mind
Tribalism, or an extreme “us vs. them” mentality, is another characteristic of herd psychology. Throughout evolutionary history tribalism was the norm. As modern humans we have developed value systems and conscious psychological structures that enable us to see beyond our differences and treat other human beings with respect. But in the deeper and more primitive recesses of the psyche we retain an instinctive proclivity to strongly identify with a group or tribe and to be suspicious, or even hateful, of anyone who does not look, think, or act like us.
“There is no message more powerful, primal, or primitive than the evocation of the need to protect the “tribe.” We are genetically primed and culturally shaped to alert, defend, and aggress, and even to sacrifice the self in the service of that protection.”
Stevan E. Hobfoll, Tribalism
When a social crisis stimulates fear and leads to a psychological submersion in the group, a primitive “us vs them” mentality is re-activated. Anyone who shares our beliefs and acts like us is on the side of good and a part of our tribe. Anyone who thinks or acts differently is seen as an enemy deserving of hateful or vicious treatment. In the midst of social crises people ostracize friends and family, support banning people from public places, snitch on neighbors, wish death or imprisonment upon fellow citizens, and resort to fits of rage or acts of violence against anyone who dares to disobey the commands of those in power.
“To the collective…every individual development is hateful that does not directly serve the ends of collectivity…”
Carl Jung, Psychological Types
…the greatest infamy on the part of his group will not disturb him, so long as the majority of his fellows steadfastly believe in the exalted morality of their social organization.”
Carl Jung, Two Essays on Analytical Psychology
The irrationality, brutality, and emotional hysteria that overtakes so many people during social crises is not only due to tribalism, but also to the fact that, since a regression to a herd psychology involves a weakening of consciousness, it leaves people vulnerable to possession by primitive unconscious forces.
“Emotional conditions always call up instinctive reactions. The hierarchy of human reason becomes weakened and disintegrated, leaving a door open for the intrusion of primitive instinctive forces.”
Carl Jung, Analytical Psychology: Its Theory and Practice
Or as Anthony Storr echoed:
“There are extremely primitive, irrational mental forces at work in the minds of all of us which are usually overlaid and controlled by reason, but which find overt expression in the behaviour of those whom we call mentally ill, and which also manifest themselves in the behaviour of normal people when under threat or other forms of stress.”
Anthony Storr, Solitude: A Return to the Self
In normal times, these primitive unconscious forces are kept in check by the discernment of consciousness, free will, individual responsibility, conscience, empathy, and the fear of punishment. But when a mass psychological regression takes place, these forces come to the surface of the psyche and people begin to think and act in deranged and destructive ways. Regarding the existence of the primitive forces that accompany a mass regression to a herd psychology, Carl Jung wrote:
“…if people crowd together and form a mob, [then] the dynamisms of the collective man are let loose – beasts or demons that lie dormant in every person until he is part of a mob. Man in the mass sinks unconsciously to an inferior moral and intellectual level, to that level which is always there, below the threshold of consciousness, ready to break forth as soon as it is activated by the formation of a mass… It is certainly a good thing to preach reason and common sense, but what if you have a lunatic asylum for an audience or a crowd in a collective frenzy? There is not much difference between them because the madman and the mob are both moved by impersonal, overwhelming forces…”
Carl Jung, Psychology and Religion: West and East
When unconscious primitive forces simultaneously erupt in the minds of many people at once, a psychic epidemic takes place.
“…[the] masses are always breeding-grounds of psychic epidemics.”
Carl Jung, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
For example, in 1945, Carl Jung described the Nazi movement as a psychic epidemic that was driven by the emergence of unconscious forces, which he characterized as forces associated with the ancient German god Wotan.
“…the gods are without doubt personifications of psychic forces…what is more than curious – indeed, piquant to a degree – is that an ancient God of storm and frenzy, the long quiescent Wotan, should awake, like an extinct volcano, to new activity, in a civilized country that had long been supposed to have outgrown the Middle Ages. We have seen him come to life in the German Movement…The Hitler movement literally brought the whole of Germany to its feet, from five-year-olds to veterans…Wotan the wanderer was on the move.”
Carl Jung, Wotan
And as Jung further wrote regarding the psychic epidemic that took place in Nazi Germany:
“…the history of the last twelve years is the case-chart of an hysteric patient. The phenomenon we have witnessed in Germany was nothing less than the outbreak of epidemic insanity, an irruption of the unconscious into what seemed to be a tolerably well-ordered world.”
Carl Jung, After the Catastrophe
Given that a regression to a herd psychology transforms otherwise moral and civilized human beings into blindly obedient agents of immorality, or even destructive madmen, what the world needs are more individuals capable of resisting the “all-engulfing force of attraction” which pulls us downward into the grip of a primitive herd psychology. For we will inevitably face social crises in the future, and unless enough of us can be what Carl Jung called a “true leader of mankind”, and “consciously [hold] aloof from the blind momentum of the mass in movement” (Carl Jung, Civilization in Transition), another psychic epidemic will take hold and lead society down a destructive path. Or as Erich Neumann wrote:
“The impulsiveness of primitive man and of people in the mass, who are likely to be stampeded into catastrophic action on the slightest provocation, is so dangerous, so unpredictable in its “brainless” suggestibility, that it is highly desirable for the community that it should be replaced by conscious directives.”
Erich Neumann, Origins and History of Consciousness
As a herd psychology is characterized by a lowering of consciousness and a decline of individuality, to develop immunity to this primitive mentality we must make a conscious effort to strengthen our individuality. Towards this end, we can practice nonconformity in speech and action and acknowledge that the masses and its leaders are often wrong, infected with pathologies, and dangerously misguided. Hence the need to think critically, rely on our intuition, and cultivate our own value system and worldview.
“Resistance to the organized mass can be effected only by the man who is as well organized in his individuality as the mass itself.”
Carl Jung, Undiscovered Self
When we sufficiently strengthen our individuality, we develop a rare and heroic power – that being, the power to stand firm in our beliefs, obey our conscience, and follow our own path, even when all those around us are trying to force us to conform. For as Hannah Arendt wrote:
“…few indeed have been found to resist the crowd, to stand up alone before misguided masses, to face their implacable frenzy without weapons and with folded arms to dare a no when a yes is demanded.”
Hannah Arendt, The Origins and History of Consciousness
©2024. Academy of Ideas. All rights reserved.
