The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind

Author: Gustave Le Bon

This book is by the French psychologist of crowds or collective psychology, Gustave Le Bon. The Arabic version was translated and introduced by Hashem Saleh, and the first Arabic edition was published by Dar Al Saqi in 1991. Although it is a single book, its internal structure includes three books: Book One, Book Two, and Book Three. After the translator's introduction, the scientific principles resulting from the author's discoveries, the preamble, introduction, and the book's preface, Book One begins, and the book concludes with Book Three, followed by footnotes providing a detailed account of the marginalia and references the author used in writing his book, "Psychology of Crowds." It is known that Le Bon's long life allowed him to witness the triumph of science in the late 19th century, the crises of parliamentary democratic systems, the rise of socialism, and the emergence of popular forces that accompanied it and greatly concerned him. Within this context, one can better approach and understand Le Bon's thought, which succeeded in formulating his theory related to the psychology of peoples or the psyche of peoples and human races. For Gustave Le Bon, crowds became a tangible reality, so he scientifically studied the phenomenon of crowds through the lens of psychology. His fundamental idea in this theory focused on the belief that the recent catastrophes suffered by France and all its defeats and the difficulties it faced were due to the crowds' assault on the stage of history and the inability to confront it. This explains that the weakness of the democratic parliamentary system is due to ignorance of the laws of psychology and the ways to manage crowds.