Collectivity, Human Fulfilment and the “Force of Life”: Wilfred Trotter's Concept of the Herd Instinct in Early 20th-Century Britain (2014)
The article traces the origination of the psychological concept of the `herd instinct', popularized by British surgeon Wilfred Trotter, locating this in a distinctive moment of dialogue between the natural and human sciences. It challenges the incorrect association of Trotter's model with the crowd theory of Gustave Le Bon and negative commentaries on mass culture. In contrast, it shows that Trotter's model rests on imitation and suggestion not as the sign of a derogated culture but as the ground of associated life, with altruism as its highest expression. His argument that individuals possessed an inherent capacity for association and a disposition to act in the interests of the social group was designed to challenge the hierarchical models of Social Darwinism. Instead, he highlighted the evolutionary importance of variability and innovation and proposed a horizontal model of cooperation as the basis of adaptation. Trotter's narrative of human potential pre-dated and informed Freud's own collective psychology, as well as providing an influential challenge to his theory of repression. The widespread take-up of Trotter's model of the herd instinct in the context of futures thinking, forming the basis of an egalitarian approach to governance that proposed human fulfilment and social progress as complementary aims, supports the article's argument that psychological approaches to collectivity were well established prior to the First World War rather than formed in response to it, and that these were embedded within social thinking across the political spectrum, rather than derived for instrumentally conservative purposes.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Book
Sklansky, Jeffrey;
(2002)
The Soul's Economy: Market Society and Selfhood in American Thought, 1820--1920
(/isis/citation/CBB000302281/)
Article
Rodgers, Diane M.;
(2013)
Insects, Instincts and Boundary Work in Early Social Psychology
(/isis/citation/CBB001252832/)
Book
Ginneken, Jaap van;
(2007)
Mass Movements in Darwinist, Freudian and Marxist Perspective: Trotter, Freud, and Reich on War, Revolution and Reaction 1900--1933
(/isis/citation/CBB000930477/)
Article
Noon, David Hoogland;
(2005)
The Evolution of Beasts and Babies: Recapitulation, Instinct, and the Early Discourse on Child Development
(/isis/citation/CBB000671019/)
Article
Jacobs, Glenn;
(2009)
Influence and Canonical Supremacy: An Analysis of How George Herbert Mead Demoted Charles Horton Cooley in the Sociological Canon
(/isis/citation/CBB000932848/)
Book
Salerno, Roger A.;
(2007)
Sociology Noir: Studies at the University of Chicago in Loneliness, Marginality, and Deviance, 1915--1935
(/isis/citation/CBB000831303/)
Article
Laffey, John F.;
(1985)
Social psychology as political ideology: The case of Wilfred Trotter and William McDougall
(/isis/citation/CBB000037524/)
Book
Trotter, Wilfred;
(1985)
Instincts of the herd in peace and war, 1916-1919. With an introduction by Holdstock, Douglas
(/isis/citation/CBB000053608/)
Article
Donina, Irina Nikolaevna;
(2008)
“Autobiographies of the Godless” as a Source on Mass Social Psychology in the Late 1920s and the Early 1930s (From Materials in the Manuscript Department of the State Museum of the History of Religion)
(/isis/citation/CBB001030529/)
Article
Gitre, Edward J. K.;
(2011)
The Great Escape: World War II, Neo-Freudianism, and the Origins of U.S. Psychocultural Analysis
(/isis/citation/CBB001250191/)
Article
Bendersky, Joseph W.;
(2007)
“Panic”: The Impact of Le Bon's Crowd Psychology on U.S. Military Thought
(/isis/citation/CBB000772496/)
Article
Sensales, Gilda;
Dal Secco, Alessandra;
(2014)
The Rise of a Science in the Early Twentieth Century: The Forgotten Voice of Gualtiero Sarfatti and the First “Social Psychology” Volumes in Italy
(/isis/citation/CBB001214425/)
Book
Beer, Daniel;
(2008)
Renovating Russia: The Human Sciences and the Fate of Liberal Modernity, 1880--1930
(/isis/citation/CBB000850348/)
Article
Bottom, William P.;
Kong, Dejun Tony;
(2012)
“The Casual Cruelty of Our Prejudices”: On Walter Lippmann's Theory of Stereotype and Its “Obliteration” in Psychology and Social Science
(/isis/citation/CBB001211212/)
Article
Dunn, Dana S.;
(2011)
Situations Matter: Teaching the Lewinian Link between Social Psychology and Rehabilitation Psychology
(/isis/citation/CBB001220674/)
Thesis
Pettit, Michael John;
(2006)
The Science of Deception: The Human Sciences, the Law, and Commercial Culture in America, 1860s--1920s
(/isis/citation/CBB001560609/)
Article
Beatty, Barbara;
(2009)
Transitory Connections: The Reception and Rejection of Jean Piaget's Psychology in the Nursery School Movement in the 1920s and 1930s
(/isis/citation/CBB001231180/)
Thesis
Smith, Anthony Woodruff;
(2007)
Ethics and Interaction: The Democratic Origins of George Herbert Mead's SocialPsychology
(/isis/citation/CBB001561350/)
Book
Jahoda, Gustav;
(2007)
A History of Social Psychology: From the Eighteenth-Century Enlightenment to the Second World War
(/isis/citation/CBB000830160/)
Article
Sensales, Gilda;
Areni, Alessandra;
Dal Secco, Alessandra;
(2011)
Building the Boundaries of a Science: First Representations of Italian Social Psychology between 1875 and 1954
(/isis/citation/CBB001220673/)
Be the first to comment!