Mass Psychology

These works reveal Freud at his most iconoclastic, asking challenging questions about the powerful attraction of group identity - how this has the power to bind us and drive us to hatred.In Mass Psychology (1921) he explores the psyche as a social force, with a compelling analysis of how institutions such as the Church and army can generate unquestioning loyalty to a leader and provoke us to commit atrocities - Freud's findings would prove all too prophetic in the years that followed. Works such as Moses the Man, written at the time of Freud's flight from Nazism in 1938, warn of the dangers of nationalism. And other writings like The Future of an Illusion examine religion and ritual in an unrelenting critique of religious faith.
Freud's religious unbeliefs are too easily dismissed as the standard scientific rationalism of the twentieth-century intellectual, yet he scorned the high-minded humanism of his contemporaries. This title explores the notion of 'mass-psychology'.
Freud's religious unbeliefs are too easily dismissed as the standard scientific rationalism of the 20th-century intellectual, yet he scorned the high-minded humanism of his contemporaries. InMass Psychology and Analysis of the "I" he explores the notion of "mass-psychology"—his findings would prove all too prophetic in the years that followed. Writings such asA Religious Experience and The Future of an Illusion continue earlier work on the essential savagery of the civilized mind, andMoses the Man and Monotheistic Religion excavates the roots of religion and racism, which he concludes are inextricably intertwined. This remarkable collection reveals Freud not only at his most radically pessimistic, but also at his most personally courageous—engaging with his own adherences, his own antecedents, his own identity.
Freud's religious unbeliefs are too easily dismissed as the standard scientific rationalism of the twentieth-century intellectual, yet he scorned the high-minded humanism of his contemporaries. In Mass Psychology and Analysis of the 'I' he explores the notion of 'mass-psychology' - his findings would prove all too prophetic in the years that followed. Writings such as A Religious Experience and The Future of an Illusion continue earlier work on the essential savagery of the civilized mind, and Moses the Man and Monotheistic Religion excavates the roots of religion and racism, which he concludes are inextricably intertwined. This remarkable collection reveals Freud not only at his most radically pessimistic, but also at his most personally courageous - engaging with his own adherences, his own antecedents, his own identity.