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]
From Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War (1942 ed., pg. 90):
Writer Vernon Lee owned a first edition of Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War: Leen 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]
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."
Peace means societal friendship and harmony in the absence of hostility and violence. In a social sense, peace is commonly used to mean a lack of conflict and freedom from fear of violence between individuals or groups.
Wilfred Ruprecht Bion DSO was an influential English psychoanalyst, who became president of the British Psychoanalytical Society from 1962 to 1965.
In philosophy, rationalism is the epistemological view that "regards reason as the chief source and test of knowledge" or "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification", often in contrast to other possible sources of knowledge such as faith, tradition, or sensory experience. More formally, rationalism is defined as a methodology or a theory "in which the criterion of truth is not sensory but intellectual and deductive".
Instinct is the inherent inclination of a living organism towards a particular complex behaviour, containing innate (inborn) elements. The simplest example of an instinctive behaviour is a fixed action pattern (FAP), in which a very short to medium length sequence of actions, without variation, are carried out in response to a corresponding clearly defined stimulus.
Collies form a distinctive type of herding dogs, including many related landraces and standardized breeds. The type originated in Scotland and Northern England. Collies are medium-sized, fairly lightly-built dogs, with pointed snouts. Many types have a distinctive white color over the shoulders. Collies are very active and agile, and most types of collies have a very strong herding instinct. Collie breeds have spread through many parts of the world, and have diversified into many varieties, sometimes mixed with other dog types.
Sirius is a 1944 science fiction novel by the British philosopher and author Olaf Stapledon, whose title character is a dog named Sirius with humanlike intelligence. A sense of existential questioning suffuses the book, as the author delves into aspects of Sirius's psyche. The novel deals with many human issues through Sirius and his experiences, his unusual nature, his ideas and his relationships with humans. The characters go to great lengths to prevent Sirius from becoming a circus-type wonderdog, and instead, they seek to develop Sirius's character much like a family would create and foster that of a human child.
Herd mentality is the tendency for people’s behavior or beliefs to conform to those of the group they belong to. The concept of herd mentality has been studied and analyzed from different perspectives, including biology, psychology and sociology. This psychological phenomenon can have profound impacts on human behavior.
Violet Georgina Milner, Viscountess Milner was an English socialite of the Victorian and Edwardian eras and, later, editor of the political monthly National Review. Her father was close friends with Georges Clemenceau, she married a son of Prime Minister Salisbury, Lord Edward Cecil, and after his death, Alfred Milner, 1st Viscount Milner.
The Polish Lowland Sheepdog, is a medium-sized, shaggy-coated, sheep dog breed native to Poland.
Peace News (PN) is a pacifist magazine first published on 6 June 1936 to serve the peace movement in the United Kingdom. From later in 1936 to April 1961 it was the official paper of the Peace Pledge Union (PPU), and from 1990 to 2004 was co-published with War Resisters' International.
Queenie Dorothy Leavis was an English literary critic and essayist.
In classical Freudian psychoanalytic theory, the death drive is the drive toward death and destruction, often expressed through behaviors such as aggression, repetition compulsion, and self-destructiveness. It was originally proposed by Sabina Spielrein in her paper "Destruction as the Cause of Coming Into Being" in 1912, which was then taken up by Sigmund Freud in 1920 in Beyond the Pleasure Principle. This concept has been translated as "opposition between the ego or death instincts and the sexual or life instincts". In Beyond thePleasure Principle, Freud used the plural "death drives" (Todestriebe) much more frequently than the singular.
Wilfred Batten Lewis Trotter, FRS was an English surgeon, a pioneer in neurosurgery. He was also known for his studies on social psychology, most notably for his concept of the herd instinct, which he first outlined in two published papers in 1908, and later in his famous popular work Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War, an early classic of crowd psychology. Trotter argued that gregariousness was an instinct, and studied beehives, flocks of sheep and wolf packs.
Mark Rowlands is a Welsh writer and philosopher. He is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Miami, and the author of several books on the philosophy of mind, the moral status of non-human animals, and cultural criticism. He is known within academic philosophy for his work on the animal mind and is one of the principal architects of the view known as vehicle externalism, or the extended mind, the view that thoughts, memories, desires and beliefs can be stored outside the brain and the skull. His works include Animal Rights (1998), The Body in Mind (1999), The Nature of Consciousness (2001), Animals Like Us (2002), and a personal memoir, The Philosopher and the Wolf (2008).
The No More War Movement was the name of two pacifist organisations, one in the United Kingdom and one in New Zealand.
Decentralized decision-making is any process where the decision-making authority is distributed throughout a larger group. It also connotes a higher authority given to lower level functionaries, executives, and workers. This can be in any organization of any size; it may be present in a governmental authority to a corporation. However, the context in which the term is used is generally that of larger organizations. This distribution of power, in effect, has far-reaching implications in the fields of management, organizational behavior, and government.
Henry Rutgers Marshall was an American architect and psychologist.
Herd behavior is the behavior of individuals in a group acting collectively without centralized direction. Herd behavior occurs in animals in herds, packs, bird flocks, fish schools and so on, as well as in humans. Voting, demonstrations, riots, general strikes, sporting events, religious gatherings, everyday decision-making, judgement and opinion-forming, are all forms of human-based herd behavior.
Richard Saumarez FRS FRSE FSA FRCS was a British surgeon and medical author.
Crystallizing Public Opinion is a book written by Edward Bernays and published in 1923. It is perhaps the first book to define and explain the field of public relations.