Mass Psychology of the Led and the Leaders: With Some Thoughts on Current World Events

In 1921, in his ground-breaking Massenpsychologie und Ich-Analyse, Freud momentously redefined psychoanalysis, until then an individual psychology, as a social psychology. Whereas individual psychology had previously already been viewed as, de facto, interpersonal, even though not explicitly defined as such, Freud (1933a) unambiguously stated that “sociology, too, dealing as it does with the behaviour of people in society, cannot be anything but applied psychology,” and, by extension, applied social psychology as well. An essential part of social psychology is the relationship between the leader and the led. The latter applies not only to leader-led dynamics in small groups, but even more dramatically to the leaders of masses and mobs. Mass phenomena are seen as crucial to understanding diverse mass events in history: the two great World Wars of the 20th century and dictatorial fundamentalist political ideologies such as Fascism and Communism; and current events such as international terrorism and regional conflicts, and their relationship to a renewal of fundamentalist religious ideologies. Once again, political, social, and ideological differences are being addressed by violence and war. In the spirit of Freud's reply to Einstein “Why War?,” this paper is also a plea for using the peaceful method of interpersonal dialog and negotiation.