Their spirit is that of the crowd which, like every spirit, is part of the unconscious; but this is a very low-level part of the unconscious, archaic or primitive from a historical point of view and medullar from a physiological one. Carnot chose a statuette which Le Bon quickly indicated was not appropriate because it carried a curse. In Psychology of Crowds, he explores theories of national traits and behaviour as opposed to the behaviour of individuals. ." After Le Vau and Mansart, the most inventive French architect of C17. Because of this wide range, many have thought of Le Bon's work as shallow and dilettantish. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). He published the majority of his own writings as part of the collection, as well as Henri Poincaré's La Science et l'Hypothèse and Marie Bonaparte's Guerres militaires et Guerres sociales. He pa…, Adam, Adolphe (Charles) . https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences/applied-and-social-sciences-magazines/le-bon-gustave, "Le Bon, Gustave No one in the course of a lifetime could possibly master all the disciplines observed in Le Bon's scholarly work. Thus, when Le Bon dealt with pedagogy and politics, he carefully transposed to children and peoples what he had earlier learned about horses. In his 1894 publication, The Psychology of Peoples,he developed the thesis that the development of a people depends on their national character, and is drive… Le Bon was a man with an extended field of interests. Freud wanted to clarify the irrationality of the group in order to reduce it, while Le Bon appeared to systematically cultivate it. He began his adult life with travels in Europe, north Africa, and Asia. But these works in social psychology have links not only with the books of the period of his travels but also with those of what might be called his scientific phase. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Retrouvez toutes les phrases célèbres de Gustave Le Bon parmi une sélection de + de 100 000 citations célèbres provenant d'ouvrages, d'interviews ou de discours. Le Bon was born in Nogent-le-Rotrou, France, and died in Marnes-la-Coquette. Gustave Le Bon, né le 7 mai 1841 à Nogent-le-Rotrou et mort le 13 décembre 1931 à Marnes-la-Coquette, est un médecin, anthropologue, psychologue social et sociologue français. One of these eternal laws that Le Bon constantly invoked is the futility of rationality in the affairs of society: an idea does not prevail because it is true, but by virtue of psychological mechanisms that have nothing to do with reason, such as repetition and “mental contagion.” These mechanisms permit an idea to penetrate into the unconscious, and it is only when an idea does become part of the unconscious that it becomes effective for action. In particular, the “law of the mental unity of crowds” was widely accepted and taught, and perhaps still is. Gustave Le Bon (n. 7 mai 1841 Nogent-le-Rotrou, Franța - d. 13 decembrie 1931 la Marnes-la-Coquette, Franța), a fost un sociolog francez. Their ideas of the social also diverged. His best-known book is La Psychologie des foules (1895; translated as The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind, 1897). Freud, Sigmund. London: Allen & Unwin. Nationality: French. Encyclopedia.com. He also indicated that crowds are capable of engaging in positive social actions as well. Gustave Le Bon, (born May 7, 1841, Nogent-le-Rotrou, France—died Dec. 13, 1931, Marnes-la-Coquette), French social psychologist best known for … Moreover, according to Le Bon, it is these fundamental beliefs that produce lack of understanding and intolerance between peoples and groups and thus account for the irreducibility of what may be called ideological conflicts and the inevitability of civil strife and international wars. A prolific author, Le … They may even have special merit, for it was precisely such arbitrary assertions of Le Bon that contained his happiest insights. ." This was nothing less than an attempt to synthesize Comte and Spencer with Michelet and Tocqueville. (1912) 1913 The Psychology of Revolutions. “The unconscious minds of the charmer and the charmed, the leader and the led, penetrate each other by a mysterious mechanism” (1910, p. 139). Gustave Le Bon est un psychologue, et a également été physicien amateur et sociologue. How, then, does it happen that in a crowd situation even the most rational of men are transformed into brutes? ." . (1921c). Just as a people cannot choose its appearance, it cannot freely opt for its cultural institutions. With a new introduction by Robert A. Nye. Instead, a new distillation of traits emerged, primarily unconscious in nature, which reflected racially inherited characteristics. All of Le Bon's work bears the mark of the intellectual climate of fin-de-siècle France: an attraction to the irrational, the primacy of feeling over reason, and the role of heredity and race. Studies ranging from components of tobacco smoke, through physical anthropology, to atomic energy and structure describe the broad range of scholarly interests Le Bon maintained until his death. Allport insisted instead that collective behaviour involves merely a group of people…, Le Bon suggested that in a period of widespread discontent crowd action serves to destroy an old order in preparation for a new one. 5 Le Bon Gustave - The Influence of Education and Es.pdf. According to his system of evaluation, animals, the insane, socialists, children, degenerates, and primitives were inferior beings. To concentrate criticism on this particular problem of explanation would be misleading, for these theories of mental contagion and of the role of leaders are no more gratuitous, no more confused, and no more based on obsolete psychology than is the entire core of Le Bon’s system. Although he was originally trained as a physician, Le Bon's primary contribution was in sociology, where he developed major theories on crowd behavior. Paris: Flammarion. About the author: Charles-Marie Gustave le Bon (1841–1931) was one of France’s most famous polymaths, who wrote and studied extensively in the fields of anthropology, psychology, and science. The second characteristic of crowd behavior is its emotionality: the actions of the crowd are sudden, simple, extreme, intense, and very changeable, so betraying the feminine nature of crowds. A prophet and harsh critic of mass society, he ushered in the "age of the crowd," "the most recent sovereign of the modern age.". by Gustave le Bon and Robert K. Stevenson | Mar 7, 2020. He stated that crowds maintained a collective mind and that the group mind was not simply a summary of the individual persons. Therefore, be sure to refer to those guidelines when editing your bibliography or works cited list. These tautologous passages suggest that on occasion Dr. Le Bon also believed in the contagion of ideas in a crowd such that individual members, in a heightened state of suggestibility and with feelings of omnipotence, are subjugated to the will and emotion of the crowd mind. 6 Le Bon Gustave - … Adam, Adolphe (Charles), noted French composer, son of Jean (Louis) Adam; b. Paris, July 24, 1803; d.…, Prévert, Jacques Paris: Flammarion. La meilleure citation de Gustave Le Bon préférée des internautes. Within the “Cite this article” tool, pick a style to see how all available information looks when formatted according to that style. One of the most constant characteristics of beliefs is their intolerance. He studied medicine and toured Europe, Asia and North Africa in the 1860s to 1880s while writing on archaeology and anthropology, making some money from the design of scientific apparatus. SE, 18: 65-143. Merton, Robert K. (1960) 1963 The Ambivalences of Le Bon’s The Crowd. His basic approach was that human beings collectively develop behaviors that they would never develop individually. Le Bon believed that the psychology of men in a crowd differs essentially from their individual psychology; they be-come simple automata, instances of a sort of new being. Retrieved January 13, 2021 from Encyclopedia.com: https://www.encyclopedia.com/psychology/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/le-bon-gustave-1841-1931. Most online reference entries and articles do not have page numbers. But what do these explanations amount to? "Le Bon, Gustave Gustave Le Bon was an eminent psychologist and sociologist. He saw this mental unity accompanied by an awareness of unanimity that has important consequences: dogmatism and intolerance, a feeling of irresistible power, and a sense of irresponsibility. The son of a civil servant, this country doctor developed an early interest in anthropology, then sociology and psychology. 13 Jan. 2021 . Thus he asserted the existence of a hierarchy of races, based on psychological criteria (such as degree of reasoning ability, power of attention, mastery over instinctual drives; see the Psychology of Peoples 1894) and confirmed on anatomical grounds by the alleged greater differentiation of the superior races and the greater consequent incidence of individuals who rise above the mean. The Crowd appeared in 1895, when he was 54. Nevertheless, men such as Sigmund Freud and Gordon Allport acknowledged the vital importance of Le Bon's work. One of these eternal laws that Le Bon constantly invoked is the futility of rationality in the affairs of society: an idea does not prevail because it is true, but by virtue of psychological mechanisms that have nothing to do with reason, such as repetition and “mental contagion.” These mechanisms permit an idea to penetrate into the unconscious, and it is only when an idea does become part of the unconscious that it becomes effective for action. The vital implication of this theory for politics is that laws are illusory and ineffective if they lack a basis in the national psychology. Encyclopedia.com. Leonard Joe (Saskatchewan), Gustavus Adolphus College: Narrative Description, https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences/applied-and-social-sciences-magazines/le-bon-gustave, https://www.encyclopedia.com/psychology/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/le-bon-gustave-1841-1931, https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/gustave-le-bon. ." ." Le Bon received a doctorate of medicine without any vocation for the profession. Transaction Publishers, 1997 - 232 pages. The warning was disregarded, and on June 24, 1894, Carnot, the fourth president of the French Republic, was assassinated by an Italian anarchist at Lyons. Therefore, they stop feeling responsible for their actions because the… Therefore, that information is unavailable for most Encyclopedia.com content. . □. While Le Bon made contributions to theories of social evolution and political revolution, probably his most widely known work concerned the psychology of crowd behavior. 13 Jan. 2021 . On the last day of his life he repeated the theme that where the common people continue to maintain, or gain, control of government, civilization is moved in the direction of barbarism. Le Bon's ideas about social evolution and political revolution were related again to racial stock. Encyclopedia.com. © 2019 Encyclopedia.com | All rights reserved. PRÉVERT, Jacques Picard, Edmond 1909 Gustave Le Bon et son oeuvre. But as French sociologist Gustave Le Bon astutely points out in The Psychology of Revolution, more personal variables enter into the revolutionary equation, as well. Marie François Sadi Carnot, then the minister of public works, was given an opportunity to choose for himself an artifact from a group Le Bon had brought back. A tireless worker, he made a living as a writer and editor. Le Bon, Gustave. . سيكولوجية الجماهير The psychology of the masses. 1892 L’équitation actuelle et ses principes: Recherches expérimental s. Paris: Firmin-Didot. It was this view that earned Le Bon the occasional label of antidemocrat and elitist. Retrieved January 13, 2021 from Encyclopedia.com: https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/gustave-le-bon. FREE Shipping on orders over $25 shipped by Amazon. International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. Gustave Le Bon (1841-1931) was a French social scientist and philosopher. Updates? (1995). The fact remains that these two sentences went unnoticed. Government officials, writers and scientists attended his "lunches": Théodule Ribot, Bergson, Valéry, Henri and Raymond Poincaré, Aristide Briand, and Marie Bonaparte, who introduced him to the work of Sigmund Freud and who remained Le Bon's friend until his death. New York: Macmillan. This inferiority is so obvious that no one can contest it for a moment; only its degree is worth discussion. He postulated another, very interesting kind of inferiority: this is the inferiority of the crowd, or of man in the crowd. After receiving a doctorate of medicine, Le Bon traveled in Europe, North Africa, and Asia and wrote several books on anthropology and archaeology. It is, of course, chiefly by virtue of the works of this third phase that Le Bon belongs to the history of social science. Paris: Flammarion. In spite of, or perhaps because of, the book's phenomenal success—it has been translated into several languages and was reprinted many times—Le Bon has been disparaged and misunderstood by the scientific community. It was by the most reckless, the most false, and the most harmful of his theories that Le Bon exerted his greatest influence, in France and even more so abroad. 1902 Psychologie de l’éducation. Il a donné un rôle fondamental à l’exagération, qu’on retrouve dans la politique européenne d’aujourd’hui. He established a hierarchy of the sexes using the same kind of criteria. Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. He has been reproached for the summary, polemical, even reactionary nature of his analysis. ——. By signing up for this email, you are agreeing to news, offers, and information from Encyclopaedia Britannica. This rudimentary theory of learning was first formulated when he was st… 1910 Psychologie politique et la defense sociale. L’intelligence de Gustave Le Bon réside dans sa capacité à anticiper le futur. His first great success however was the publication of Les Lois psychologiques de l'évolution des peuples (1894; The Psychology of Peoples), the first work in which he hit upon a popularising style that was to make his rep… Similarly, he claimed to support his ideas on the psychological hierarchy of races and sexes with material from his study of the variations in the volume of the brain. Barrès fused ethnic rootedness with authoritarian nationalism and contended that too much civilization led to decadence and that hatred and violence were energizing remedies.…, Allport’s criticism of Le Bon and William McDougall, a British-born U.S. psychologist, for their concept of “group mind,” and for their apparent assumption that collective behaviour makes people do things to which they are not predisposed. The third descriptive theme is that the intellectual processes of crowds are rudimentary and mechanical: crowds are very credulous, their ideas are schematic, and their logic is infrarational and ignores the principle of noncontradiction. Pages v-xxxix in Gustave Le Bon, The Crowd. In La psychologie des foules (1895; The Crowd), his most popular work, he argued that the conscious personality of the individual in a crowd is submerged and that the collective crowd mind dominates; crowd behaviour is unanimous, emotional, and intellectually weak. The stronger the belief, the … Gustave Le Bon, عادل زعيتر (Translator, Editor) 3.70 avg rating — 376 ratings — published 1911 — 18 editions In 1902, Le Bon began editing a collection of scientific works for Flammarion, the "Bibliothèque de philosophie scientifique," intended for the lay reader. Join Facebook to connect with Gustave Le Bon and others you may know. International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. A paperback edition was published in 1960 by Viking. Paris: Mercure de France. The stronger the belief, the … History, for Le Bon, is a consequence of racial temperament; to understand the history of a people, one must look to the soul of the people. (1894) 1898 The Psychology of Peoples. 1968). 4 Le Bon Gustave - How Races and Peoples Transform Their Civilization and Arts.pdf. He designed the Chapelle de Port-Royal, Paris (16…, Gabin, Jean Looking for books by Gustave Le Bon? Although he was never an academic, he was well known, much more so than someone like Emile Durkheim. Omissions? "Le Bon, Gustave New York: Fraser. . New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books. (1910). Others, like Sigmund Freud and Gordon Allport, have acknowledged the importance of Le Bon’s work. Taine's influence on Le Bon was considerable, but so was that of Ribot and Charcot. . See all books authored by Gustave Le Bon, including La Psychologie des Foules, and The Crowd/Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, and more on ThriftBooks.com. → First published as Psychologie du socialisme. These are sentences that would not surprise us if they appeared in The People’s Choice or in The American Soldier. Learning Journal Unit 8 Gustave Le Bon, a French psychologist born May 7, 1841, in Nogent-le-Rotrou, France died and on 13 day of December, 1931. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. Refer to each style’s convention regarding the best way to format page numbers and retrieval dates. Paris: Firmin-Didot. Born: Jacques Henri Marie Prévert in Neuilly-sur-Seine, 4 February 1900. Pour retrouver tous les vins que vous aimez ! Although he was originally trained as a physician, Le Bon's primary contribution was in sociology, where he developed major theories on crowd behavior. ." This rudimentary theory of learning was first formulated when he was studying the training of horses and then extended to human education and to politics. [For the historical context of Le Bon’s work, see the biographies ofTarde; Tocqueville.For discussion of the subsequent development of his ideas, see Collective Behavior.]. Encyclopedia of World Biography. New York: Macmillan. 1916 The Psychology of the Great War. Post a Review . First of all, a human being perceives the group as an invincible power. However, when he was in his late thirties Le Bon’s interests began to shift radically: he invented recording instruments (exhibited in 1878), studied racial variations in cranial capacity, analyzed the composition of tobacco smoke, published a photo-graphic method for making plans and maps, as well as a treatise that put the training of horses on an experimental basis, and, finally, devoted more than ten years to research on black light, intra-atomic energy, and the equivalence of matter and energy. Le Bon's work is discussed in its historical context in Gardner Lindzey and Elliot Aronson, eds., Handbook of Social Psychology, vol. Gustave Le Bon. Paperback $11.95 $ 11. 1 (1954; rev. From these travels there resulted a half-dozen books, chiefly on anthropology and archeology. ." Paris: Flammarion. 2 Reviews . However, the date of retrieval is often important. (January 13, 2021). Le Bon's beliefs with respect to political behavior consistently revealed a basic mistrust of the masses. Because of this, many have regarded his works as superficial. In addition to the MLA, Chicago, and APA styles, your school, university, publication, or institution may have its own requirements for citations. → First published as La révolution francaise et la psychologic des révolutions. Group psychology and the analysis of the ego. → First published as Lois psychologiques de l’évolution des peuples. gustave le bon 108. ont 106. fait 106. tout 105. toujours 101. leurs 101. peut 97. bien 97. lui 92. et les 89. tous les 88. que les 85. les plus 85. croyances 83. qu'il 82. sentiments 82. dans les 80. prestige 78. dont 76. peu 75. encore 72. opinions 69. aussi 69. puissance 68. toutes les 67 . Le Bon told Carnot that the owner of the statuette would be killed upon reaching the highest office in France. 13 Jan. 2021 . The psychological characteristics of crowds, as analyzed at length in the celebrated The Crowd, may be grouped around three themes. Paris: Flammarion. “Contagion is a phenomenon that is readily observed, but has not yet been explained, and had best be related to the phenomena of hypnotism...” (1895, p. 17). Gustave Le Bon is particularly famous for his book The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind. https://www.encyclopedia.com/psychology/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/le-bon-gustave-1841-1931, Ohayon, Annick "Le Bon, Gustave (1841-1931) https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/gustave-le-bon, "Gustave Le Bon Le Bon believed that modern life was increasingly characterized by crowd assemblages. Fittingly, 2016 marks the 175th anniversary of the birth of Gustave Le Bon, the French polymath who popularized this durable and dire idea. See also: Bonaparte, Marie León; Christians and Jews: A Psychoanalytical Study ; Fascination; Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego ; Otherness; Suggestion. The electric interests and abilities of Gustave Le Bon led to a full and productive life. Gustave Le Bon was an eminent psychologist and sociologist. ed. Retrieved January 13, 2021 from Encyclopedia.com: https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences/applied-and-social-sciences-magazines/le-bon-gustave. He died on Dec. 13, 1931, at Marnela-Coquette near Paris. In Les Lois psychologiques de l’évolution des peuples (1894; The Psychology of Peoples) he developed a view that history is the product of racial or national character, with emotion, not intelligence, the dominant force in social evolution. 3 Le Bon Gustave - Experimental Researches on the Variations of the Volume of the Brain and Skull.pdf. Le Bon practiced medicine in Paris after finishing his medical studies in 1866. Translation of extract in the text provided by the editors. "Gustave Le Bon Encyclopedia.com gives you the ability to cite reference entries and articles according to common styles from the Modern Language Association (MLA), The Chicago Manual of Style, and the American Psychological Association (APA). The French Revolution and the psychology of revolution. (Original work published 1895). The crowd. (January 13, 2021). Ohayon, Annick "Le Bon, Gustave (1841-1931) Nationality: French. 1893 Les monuments de I’Inde. He pointed out that the main reasons why individuals lose themselves within a group are: 1. Also useful is Edward Ellsworth Jones and Harold B. Gerard, Foundations of Social Psychology (1967). Learn about this topic in these articles: discussed in biography. 95. An interesting incident attributed to Le Bon concerns his return in 1884 from an anthropological expedition to India, where he was commissioned by France to study Buddhist monuments. London: Allen & Unwin. With a new introduction by Robert A. Nye. Gustave Le Bon Often, revolts and uprisings are regarded as being solely the results of a perfect storm of geopolitical, societal, and economic factors. Gustave Le Bon, (born May 7, 1841, Nogent-le-Rotrou, France—died Dec. 13, 1931, Marnes-la-Coquette), French social psychologist best known for his study of the psychological characteristics of crowds. His best-known work was The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind, which laid the foundation for the modern science of the study of crowd psychology. As a French social psychologist he was best known for his study of the psychological characteristics of crowds. His watchword was: let the conscious become the unconscious. Translation of extract in the text provided by the editors. Téléchargez l’application Le Bon Gustave et les dénicheurs de vins retrouveront votre bouteille, simplement avec une photo de son étiquette. Thus a people, or a civilization, or a race, properly so-called, must have a national soul, that is, shared sentiments, shared interests, and shared ways of thinking. But Freud eliminated the notions of heredity, mentality, and suggestion and replaced them with a model of unconscious identification. Le Bon's name has for years been associated with The Crowd (1895/1995), which made him one of the founders of group psychology. Ohayon, Annick "Le Bon, Gustave (1841-1931) Le Bon was convinced that contingent events as well as social behavior are guided by eternal laws (1912, p. 322). His writings range from studies of atomic energy, to physical anthropology and sociology, to the studies of the components of tobacco smoke. → First published in the same year as Enseignements psychologiques de la guerre européenne. International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis. Although Gustave Le Bon (1841–1931) is most generally known for his book The Crowd, his career in fact had three overlapping phases, the successive focuses of his interest being anthropology and archeology, experimental and theoretical natural science, and only finally social psychology. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, c1995. Gustave Le Bon (1841-1931) was a French social scientist and philosopher. Before sketching the main outlines of the doctrine underlying all of Le Bon’s psychological work, one trait of this work—perhaps at the time the most original—should be stressed. Writer. In other words, groups have a determining influence on individuals. Be on the lookout for your Britannica newsletter to get trusted stories delivered right to your inbox. (January 13, 2021). The national soul is produced by such nonrational mechanisms as suggestion and heredity; all metaphysical, religious, political, and social beliefs are so rooted in the national soul of each people. (1898) 1965 Psychology of Socialism. "Gustave Le Bon ." View the profiles of people named Gustave Le Bon. (1895) 1947 The Crowd. Like Le Bon he sought to explain the phenomena of collective life through individual psychology. Encyclopedia.com. Le Bon was a physician, anthropologist in the field, and finally professor of psychology and allied sciences at the University of Paris. . Gustave Le Bon (1841-1931), a French social psychologist, is often seen as the father of the study of crowd psychology. Therefore, it’s best to use Encyclopedia.com citations as a starting point before checking the style against your school or publication’s requirements and the most-recent information available at these sites: http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html, Gustave Le Bon, a French physician and philosopher, was born in 1841 in Nogent-le-Rotrou and died on December 24, 1931, in Paris. Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. 1911 Les opinions et les croyances. Gustave Le Bon (1879) “In the most intelligent races, there are a large number of women whose brains are closer in size to those of gorillas than to the most developed male brains. ." Le Bon wrote a primer on how to divert the barbarism of the masses from revolution to reaction. The principle that only the unconscious produces effective action applies, according to Le Bon, not only to individuals but also to whole peoples (or races, so long as it is well understood that what is meant are “historical races,” created by the events of history, and not races in the anthropological sense). 1913 Aphorisme du temps present. Adam, Adolphe (Charles) Then, copy and paste the text into your bibliography or works cited list. International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis. His interests later shifted to natural science and social psychology. Le Bon claimed that "an individual immersed for some length of time in a crowd soon finds himself – either in consequence of magnetic influence given out by the crowd or from some other cause of which we are ignorant – in a special state, which much resembles the state of fascination in which the hypnotized individual finds himself in the hands of the hypnotizer." He believed that “the action of a group consists mainly in fortifying hesitant beliefs. → First published as Psychologie des foules. Encyclopedia.com. During this period, furthermore, Le Bon began the work in social psychology that was to become the predominant concern of the final phase of his career. As a specific instance of such hierarchical ordering, Le Bon repeatedly compared the mental constitution of the Anglo–Saxon race with that of the Latin peoples, and down to World War i he considered the Anglo–Saxons superior in every way. Le Bon's idea of the unconscious as an archaic heritage of the human soul was closer to Jung than to Freud. International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis. Because each style has its own formatting nuances that evolve over time and not all information is available for every reference entry or article, Encyclopedia.com cannot guarantee each citation it generates. International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. The last of the works on these subjects, Les monuments de I’Inde, appeared in 1893, when Le Bon was 52. The first and most general characteristic attributed by Le Bon to crowd behavior is that of unanimity; he called this the law of the mental unity of crowds and asserted it as a dogma. Ironically, the fame of some men is based on their mistakes and thereby confronts their critics with a painful dilemma: either to blame such a man for the very things that made him popular or to praise him for contributions that would not have existed were it not for the mistakes. (1980). Gustave Le Bon was born on May 7, 1841, in Nogent-le-Retrou. In Gustave Le Bon. Cite this article Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. Born: Jean-Alexis Moncorgé in Paris, 17 May 1904; some sources give surname as Monçorge and Morcorge; father a cafe…, Gustafson, Hon. Military Serv…, Pautre, Antoine Le (1621–79). Any individual conviction that is weak is rein- forced when it becomes collective” (1912, p. 102); or that, during World War i, “isolated individuals regained their military value when they rejoined a familiar group, but not when they were merged into other groups” (1916, p. 243). La psychologie politique et la défense sociale. Le Bon believed an understanding of crowd psychology was essential for a proper understating of the both history and the nature of man.