The 1895 debate on the origins of crowd psychology.

Abstract

The relations among the early authors and works on crowd psychology have remained largely obscure. The most well-known of these theorists, Gustave Le Bon, seems to have derived a number of his key concepts from earlier authors without properly crediting them. Specifically, Scipio Sighele, who first tried to integrate the various fragmentary analyses on crowd behavior; Gabriel Tarde, who played an intermediary role which can be reconstructed from the unpublished correspondence; and Henry Fournial, an obscure author, all contributed to Le Bon's thought.