The Madness of Crowds

Freud&s;s analysis of group psychology looks at the “willingness to believe what others believe.” Freud, like Mackey in Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds , notes that ordinary sane people may behave differently in crowds. While Mackey focuses on religious and financial delusions, Freud looks more closely at the way in which people may come to hold delusional beliefs. Freud notes that there are two groups he does not address, the Church and the military, and this chapter takes up consideration of those two groups. Abraham Lincoln feared “mobocracy” in his famous Lyceum Address of 1838. Interlude: Julius Caesar and the Seditious Conspiracy