Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War

Last updated April 25, 2025

Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War is the title of an influential book by English surgeon Wilfred Trotter, published in 1916. Based on the ideas of Gustave Le Bon, it was very influential in the development of group dynamics and crowd psychology, and the propaganda of Edward Bernays. Trotter's book was also a key influence on Q. D. Leavis' book Fiction and the Reading Public (1932).^[1]

Quotes

From Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War (1942 ed., pg. 90):

"It has already been pointed out how dangerous it would be to breed man for reason — that is, against suggestibility. The idea is a fit companion for the device of breeding against “degeneracy”. The degenerate — that is, the mentally unstable – have demonstrated by the mere fact of instability that they possess the quality of sensitiveness to feeling and to experience, for it is this which has prevented them from applying the remedy of rationalization or exclusion when they have met with experience conflicting with the herd suggestion."
"It is interesting to notice that in discussing the mechanism of psychoanalysis in liberating the ‘abnormal’ patient from his symptoms, Freud repeatedly lays stress on the fact that the efficient factor in the process is not the actual introduction of the suppressed experiences into the conscious field, but the overcoming of the resistances to such an endeavour. I have attempted to show that these resistances or counter-impulses are of environmental origin, and owe their strength to the specific sensitiveness of the gregarious mind. Resistances of similar type and identical origin are responsible for the formation of the so-called normal type of mind. It is a principal thesis of an earlier essay in this book that this normal type is far from being psychologically healthy, is far from rendering available the full capacity of the mind for foresight and progress, and being in exclusive command of directing power in the world, is a danger to civilization."^[2]

Response

Writer Vernon Lee owned a first edition of Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War: Lee wrote marginalia into her copy taking issue with Trotter's ideas. Lee's notes criticised Trotter's ideas of organicism and his use of "crowd theory", and disagreed with Trotter's support for the First World War.^[3]^[4] Lee later wrote her 1932 book Music and its Lovers partly as a response to Trotter's book.^[3]

Popular culture

In the James Bond novel: Live and Let Die , the villain of the book, Mister Big, speaks about and quotes this book to James Bond, from chapter 21: "You have doubtless read Trotter’s Instincts of the Herd in War and Peace, Mister Bond. Well, I am by nature and predilection a wolf and I live by a wolf’s laws. Naturally the sheep describe such a person as a “criminal”. ‘The fact, Mister Bond,’ The Big Man continued after a pause, ‘that I survive and indeed enjoy limitless success, although I am alone against countless millions of sheep, is attributable to the modern techniques I described to you on the occasion of our last talk, and to an infinite capacity for taking pains. Not dull, plodding pains, but artistic, subtle pains. And I find, Mister Bond, that it is not difficult to outwit sheep, however many of them there may be, if one is dedicated to the task and if one is by nature an extremely well-equipped wolf."

References

↑ Baldick, Chris, The Social Mission of English Criticism, 1848-1932. Oxford: Clarendon, 1987. ISBN 0-19-812979-3 (p. 194)
↑ Trotter, Wilfred (2016). Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War.
1 2 Beer, Gillian, "The Dissidence of Vernon Lee: Satan the Waster and the Will to Believe", in Suzanne Raitt, and Trudi Tate (eds), Women’s Fiction and the Great War Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1997. ISBN 9780198182832 (pgs. 107-131).
↑ Mahoney, Kristin. Literature and the Politics of Post-Victorian Decadence. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2015. ISBN 9781107109742, (pgs.57-83 )

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[1] Baldick, Chris, The Social Mission of English Criticism, 1848-1932. Oxford: Clarendon, 1987. ISBN 0-19-812979-3 (p. 194)

[2] Trotter, Wilfred (2016). Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War.

[A-3] 1 2 Beer, Gillian, "The Dissidence of Vernon Lee: Satan the Waster and the Will to Believe", in Suzanne Raitt, and Trudi Tate (eds), Women’s Fiction and the Great War Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1997. ISBN 9780198182832 (pgs. 107-131).

[4] Mahoney, Kristin. Literature and the Politics of Post-Victorian Decadence. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2015. ISBN 9781107109742, (pgs.57-83 )

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