THE GROUP MIND: Exploring the Power and Dynamics of Collective Thought (2024 Guide for Novices)

By WARD TODD

Dive into the fascinating world of collective consciousness with "The Group Mind." This thought-provoking book explores how individual thoughts and behaviors can transform when people come together in groups. By examining the power, influence, and dynamics of collective thought, this book provides a comprehensive understanding of how group inter

• Language: English
• Publisher: WARD TODD
• Release date: Jun 6, 2024
• ISBN: 9783689441852

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Ward Todd

The Group Mind :A Sketch of the principles of Collective Psychology (William McDougall)

Copyright © 2024 by Ward Todd

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

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Contents

1. Preface

2. Chapter III.The Highly Organised Group

3. Chapter V.Peculiarities of Groups of Various Types

4. Chapter XI.The Will of the Nation

1

Preface

I have outlined the fundamentals of group mentality in this work and have attempted, if imperfectly, to apply these ideas to the comprehension of national life. Although I’ve had the book’s content in lecture notes for a while, I’ve been hesitant to publish it. I’ve been hampered in part by my awareness of the scope and complexity of the issue and the lack of my own preparedness to handle it, as well as in part by my desire to establish a solid foundation of widely acknowledged human nature principles.

I envisioned a comprehensive social psychology treatise that would have made up the bulk of this volume almost fifteen years ago.

This area of psychology struggles greatly because its practitioners, unlike scientists in other fields, are unable to present their findings as revelations that will be inevitably acknowledged by all reasonable minds. All he can do is express his ideas and reasoning in the hopes that his colleagues may eventually come to agree with him. For to the obscure problems of truth with which he deals it is in the nature of things impossible to reply replies supported by unambiguous experimental proofs. In this discipline, an author’s ability to approximate reality can only be demonstrated by the degree to which he is able to progressively win over knowledgeable others to his point of view. However, there are strong signs that public opinion is gradually shifting in favor of the theory I described before. This is particularly evident in the way that psycho-pathology has developed, which has been heavily influenced by the esoteric beliefs of the Freudian school. Any theory of human nature can only be put to the test and verified by practical application in the areas of controlling and directing behavior, particularly in the two major departments of education and health, as well as in the explanation of the tangible phenomena of human existence. Furthermore, I’ve been really gratified to learn that several professionals in these two sectors have found my plan useful in their work and have, in a few instances, even offered.

And I’ve made the decision to try to put my plan to the test right now, without further delay. The thought that a man’s years are limited and that, even though I should wait another fifteen years, I might find that I had made little progress towards securing the firm foundation I desired, as well as the fact that five of the best years of my life have been entirely devoted to military service and the practical difficulties of psychotherapy, compel me to embark on what may seem like a premature publication.

The fact that I am now admitting that the majority of this book was written before to World War I may appear shocking to some people.

I want everyone who might be interested in reading this book to know that it is a continuation of my Introduction to Social Psychology, builds on it, and expects that the reader has read it already. Critics have pointed out that the previous book was an attempt at a social psychology overview. Although it may be solid psychology, some critics point out that book contains very little social science. Another reviewer puts it this way: Mr. McDougall gives a full account of the genesis of instincts that act in society, but he hardly shows how they issue into society. It appears that he packs a lot in anticipation of a voyage he never embarks on. The novel is best described in the final words. Like many others, I discovered myself.

I would gladly acknowledge that the inspiration I have received from Dr. James Drever’s recently released work, Instinct in Man, has played a significant role in giving me the resolve to move forward without needing to spend additional time preparing. Because the author of that work has thoroughly examined the most essential aspect of my social psychology and has a broad understanding of related literature, he has determined that it is generally acceptable.

A hurried reader could assume, based on the title and much of the content in this volume, that I am sympathetic to or even influenced by the political theory associated with German idealism. I would therefore like to take this occasion to both avoid any such mistaken conclusion and, in a more straightforward manner than it seemed conceivable to use prior to the conflict, express my stance towards that system of thought. I have argued that it is appropriate to refer to a group mentality and that all of the world’s most industrialized countries may be considered to be in the process of creating one. This raises the possibility that I support the political theory that views the state as a superindividual.

The recent release of Prof. L. T. Hobhouse’s The Metaphysical Theory of the State relieves me of the need to try to defend these harsh restrictions. I believe that Prof. Hobhouse’s critique of the political philosophy of German idealism, particularly as it is presented by Dr. Bosanquet, in that volume should be sufficient to reveal the fallacies of its claims to be true for all time. I cannot think of a better way to convey how I feel about it than to say that I fully agree with Mr. Hobhouse’s insightful critique of his essay. I was encouraged to believe as a young person that the German people possessed a unique knowledge, and I have spent a significant portion.

I have no desire to wrestle with the great systems of idealism, and I believe it is a cruel waste of many young men’s best years to spend stumbling over the cryptic phrases that Kant used to try to express his profound and nuanced thought. However, I can always read the works of some German philosophers, especially Hermann Lotze. My initial scientific endeavor was gathering proof for a novel theory about muscle contraction. As I examined the many German ideas, I was shocked by their deficiency of precise mechanical concepts. My next endeavor was in the field of visual physiology, which was nearly entirely German at the time.

This presented me with the major issue of the relationship between the mind and the body. After discovering that German idealism and extreme materialism were practically identical in this regard and that Germans claiming to be able to reconcile the two were little more than Ernst Haeckel’s irrational missteps, I published my History and Defense of Animism. And in this area, even though I found a lot to appreciate in Lotze’s works, Prof. Bergson gave me the most inspiration and motivation. Working at the roots of human nature, German psychology was not very helpful to me; instead, French books—especially those written by Prof. Ribot—were more helpful. I appeared to discover in psychopathology that the assertions made by the German and Austrian.

Fouillée, Boutmy, Tarde, and Demolins; though I would not be understood to hold in low respect the writings of many English and American authors, particularly those of Buckle, Bagehot, Maine, Lecky, Lowell, and of many others, to some of which I have made reference in the chapters of this book.

In other words, I have sought to determine and present the facts and principles of social life as it is and has been, without expressing my view as to what it should be. I have tried to make this book absolutely scientific rather than philosophical. However, in order to further protect myself from the connotations German idealism placed on the idea of a communal consciousness, I would want to say that.

The insightful words of Mr. F. H. Bradley, which I have taken from his well-known article on My Station and its Duties, eloquently capture this ideal. Since the person’s nature is now indistinguishable from his artificial self, their awareness of themselves as an organ of the whole is inextricably linked. His relationship to the living moral system is too inward even for faith, as faith suggests a certain distance. He is not attached to it as to an external entity. There is no other world that he cannot see but must believe in; he feels both a part of it and of himself in it; the only way to resolve ethical dilemmas is to believe in this genuine moral organism. It disintegrates. Political and social structures, as well as individual morals, are inextricably linked, and the better one is, generally speaking, the better the other. Personal morality is moral because it understands the moral total, and the society is moral because it recognizes personal morality.

I would like to draw readers’ attention to two recent works whose teachings are so in line with mine that I became familiar with them after editing the proofs of this volume. One is The Crowd in Peace and War by Sir Martin Conway, which offers several insightful examples of group dynamics. The other is The New State; Group Organization the Solution of Popular Government by Miss M. P. Follett, which eloquently and perceptively explains the benefits and tenets of group discussion.

I owe a great deal to Prof. G. Dawes Hicks, the general editor of this series. He has read the manuscript and offered me a lot of helpful advice, but he is obviously not accountable for the opinions contained in it.

Part I. General Principles of Collective Psychology

Chapter I. Introduction

The Province of Collective Psychology

As long as these disciplines are developing and changing, it will always be impossible to fully identify the relationships between the many special sciences. The biological sciences provide a particularly challenging issue as there is still a lack of consensus over the underlying theories that these fields should adopt. I simply need to mention a recent Aristotelian Society conference to demonstrate this challenge, when a number of eminent biologists and philosophers addressed the topic of Are physical, biological, and psychological categories irreducible? The debate did not succeed in bringing the parties involved closer to a shared understanding and instead exposed stark divisions of opinion. It is much more challenging when it comes to the human sciences—psychology, anthropology, ethics,

After some deliberation, I have decided to go with The Group Mind as my title rather than the more sensible Collective Psychology. The benefit of the latter is that it has previously been employed by a number of continental writers, particularly psychologists from France and Italy. However, I believe the title I have picked better captures the essence of English and makes my desired topic more apparent.

An Outline of Social Psychology might have been a suitable alternative title, but there were two reasons why it was not chosen. First, the term Social Psychology is an acronym that most people use to refer to my Introduction to Social Psychology. This was an undesirable designation and an unexpected outcome because, as I have shown in the Preface of this volume, that other work.

This is the most concrete aspect of psychology and naturally comes last in the science’s development hierarchy. This is because, similar to other sciences, psychology started with the most abstract concepts—the general forms of mental activity—and then, with the help of earlier researchers’ abstract conceptions, moved on to the study of more concrete issues, such as those raised by real people in all of their infinite complexity and richness.

Psychology remained almost entirely focused on the abstract conception of the human mind up until the last decades of the nineteenth century. This abstraction did not refer to the mind of any one specific person, but rather to the mind of a representative individual viewed as something given in his social context.

Two significant shifts in contemporary thinking have demonstrated the need for a more hands-on approach to treating psychological issues. The first has been the emergence of the genesis issues, which, although not having been Darwin’s original idea, have benefited much from his research. The second has been the growing realization that all scientific disciplines require a more synthetic approach, and that analysis by itself only serves to distance us from practical issues and produces a system of highly abstract conceptions that, while potentially helpful in the physical sciences, are incredibly detached from reality. Particularly the biological and human sciences have been significantly impacted by these two shifts in contemporary thinking. The necessity for the vue d’ensemble, or the synthetic mode of viewing organisms, people, and institutions as merely nodes or meeting points of all the forces of the world acting and reacting in infinite time and space, has become more and more apparent, as Theodore Merz so eloquently demonstrates in the fourth volume of his monumental work1.

Until recently, psychology was the science of the individual mind in abstract form. Through self-reflection, each worker sought to provide an analytical account of the stream of his own consciousness, a consistent classification of the elements or features he perceived to be present there, and some general laws or rules governing the succession and conjunction of these features. Additionally, he proposed one or more explanatory principles or active agencies, such as the will or the desire for pleasure, the aversion to pain, or the association of ideas, to help explain the flow of the distinct elements of consciousness. Even if the psychology these research produced was important and beneficial, males could not really benefit from it.

But, as I have pointed out in the Introduction to my Social Psychology, those who approached these problems were generally stimulated to do so by their interest in questions of right and wrong, in questions of norms and standards of conduct, the urgency of which demanded immediate answers for the practical guidance of human life in all its spheres of activity, for the shaping of laws, institutions, governments, and associations of every kind; or, as frequently perhaps, for the justification and defence of standards of conduct, modes of belief, and forms of institution, which men had learnt to esteem as supremely good.

Therefore, Hobbes’ political science was an attempt to defend the monarchy that the Tudors had built and was in danger due to the Stuart monarchs’ shortcomings, but Locke’s political science was also a result of his desire to defend the revolution of 1668. Hobbes thought it worthwhile to include a fantastical portrayal of human nature and primitive society at the beginning of his monumental work on political philosophy; but, as Mr. Gooch points out, neither Hobbes nor his contemporaries knew anything of the actual life of primitive communities2. It might also be stated that their understanding of the fundamentals of human nature was limited. Once more, Rousseau’s social theories, with all of its erroneous psychology, were developed to incite people to revolt.

The endeavor to demonstrate what ought to be has therefore been intricately linked to and hindered the quest for what is in all of the human sciences, and the further back in their histories we go, the more dominant the normative point of view becomes. All of them start out trying to explain what should be, and then they present a somewhat false or fictitious description of what is, only to keep the normative doctrines in place. Furthermore, when we go ahead in their history to the present, we see that the positive aspect is becoming more and more prominent, to the point where it occasionally overrides and even entirely replaces the normative goal.

Psychology currently forms the most significant portion of the social sciences’ positive foundation. As a result, the social sciences first ignored psychology before gradually returning to it; as a result, they grew increasingly more psychological and, correspondingly, more valuable. There are two groups of contemporary authors on these subjects: those who have tried to build their writing on a psychological foundation and those who have disregarded or rejected the necessity of one. Even though the earlier works of the former kind—among them the works of Adam Smith, Bentham, and the Mills—had a significant impact on legislation and practice overall, they nevertheless damaged the reputation of the psychological method because they used psychological principles that.

Other writers on the social sciences were happy to overlook psychology’s accomplishments, but since they wrote about human behavior and its byproducts, like laws, institutions, and customs, they were unable to avoid discussing the human mind and its processes at all. Instead, they relied on the rudimentary, unanalyzed psychological conceptions of popular speech, and frequently they went further, making enormous assumptions about the makeup and functions of the human mind in an attempt to explain the phenomena they described. Renan, for instance, was used, like many others, to attributing certain historical features to an odd instinct that he conjectured for this same reason whenever he attempted to explain them.

The topic of the origin of the developed human mind—that is, the problem of its evolution in the race and its development in the individual—was brought to the attention of psychologists by the general increase in interest in genetic issues, which was notably sparked by Darwin’s work. Subsequently, it became evident that these processes are fundamentally social in nature; they involve interactions between the individual and his social environment and are shaped by them at every stage. The development of an individual’s mind is influenced by the mental forces of the society in which it grows up, but those forces are also the result of the interactions between the individual’s mind and the minds that make up the society. Consequently, we can only comprehend the lives of individuals.

Realizing that each man is an individual only in the narrowest sense—that is, a unit in a vast system of vital and spiritual forces that express themselves as human societies and are working toward goals that no man can predict—it was realized that each man is but a unit whose primary function is to transmit these forces unimpaired, which has little significance and cannot be explained when taken out of the context of the system. It became evident that the way this system of forces plays out at any given time in history is mostly influenced by circumstances that have themselves resulted from an incredibly lengthy process of evolution.

Social psychology can refer to any branch of psychology that acknowledges these realities and makes an effort to illustrate the mutual impacts between the person and the community in which he functions. Thus, group or collective psychology is a subfield of this bigger one. It must investigate the mental lives of all types of civilizations. Social psychology must then use this understanding of group dynamics to make our understanding of the individual life more comprehensive and concrete.

Group psychology is ideally divided into two sections: one that looks for the broadest principles governing group behavior, and the other that uses these principles to examine specific types and instances of group behavior. Though it is practically impossible to keep them completely apart, the former is logically previous to the second. The present book is concerned largely with the former branch. Social psychology won’t be able to return to the individual and provide an adequate account of it in all its concrete fulness until the general principles of group life have been applied to the understanding of specific societies, of nations, and the varied system of groups within the nation.

Herbert Spencer’s theory of sociology may be used to explain the nature of group psychology. Spencer pointed out that the shapes and characteristics of these units determine the kind of structure that results when you set out to build a stable pile of solid bodies of a particular shape. For example, if the units are spheres, there are very few stable forms that the pile can assume. He asserted that the same holds true for physical processes like crystallization, wherein the characteristics of the constituent units dictate the form and attributes of the final product. He less convincingly asserted that the same applies to vegetable and animal forms, as well as the constituent parts of each.

Only a very limited portion of the last claim is accurate. Because of its past experiences, the aggregate known as a society possesses positive attributes that do not originate from the individual units that make up the society at any given time. Because of these attributes, the society interacts with its individual units in a very different way than the individual units do.

Moreover, each unit exhibits traits or modes of response that it does not exhibit when it joins a group; these traits or modes of response are merely latent or prospective while the unit is outside the group. Therefore, the only way to find these potentialities of the units is to examine them as components.

The mental life of the society is more complex than the sum of the mental lives of its constituent units existing as separate entities, and even if we knew everything there was to know about the constituent units as isolated entities, we would still not be able to infer, as Spencer suggests, the nature of the life of the whole from them.

It may be argued that a society has a collective mind, or as some like to say, a collective soul, in addition to a collective mental life, as the social aggregate now has a collective mental life that is not just the sum of the mental lives of its units.

Group psychology’s tasks are to: identify the main types of collective mental life or group mind; describe the peculiarities of those types and try to account for them; examine the concept of the collective or group mind to determine whether and in what sense this is a valid conception; and display the general principles of collective mental life that cannot be inferred from the laws of the mental lives of isolated individuals. In brief, the first task of group psychology is to define the basic rules governing group behavior (general collective psychology); the second is to put these rules into practice in the process of trying to comprehend specific instances of group behavior.

I have no wish to claim Sociology as a whole for Group Psychology. That province, in my opinion, is far more expansive than group psychology.

In essence, sociology is a discipline that must adopt a wide and synthetic perspective on human existence. It also must embrace and use the findings of several other, more specialized sciences, among which psychology—and particularly group psychology—may be the most significant. However, other specialized sciences can make significant, if less personal, contributions to it. Therefore, if it is accurate to say that major civilizations have declined due to climatic changes in their natural environments or the advent of illnesses like malaria, then climatology.

This book will argue