Massenpsychologie und Ich-Analyse

The text analyzes how individuals change psychologically when incorporated into a mass, arguing that number alone does not create a new drive but that existing libidinal and identification processes are reorganized; it reviews Le Bon and other observers, and examines suggestion, erotic transference, and the role of identification in binding members together. Two institutional forms—religious organization and the military—are studied as engineered masses, and the herd instinct, hypnotic susceptibility, and comparisons with primal family dynamics are used to trace connections between group life and ego formation. The work closes by outlining further questions and theoretical and therapeutic directions for mass-psychology research.