Who's Afraid of "Dr. Lebon"?

Abstract

That there might be a relationship between Emile Durkheim's work and the intellectual work of Gustave Le Bon has practically never received serious consideration in Durkheimian research, with the exception of Guenther Roth (1989-90). Admittedly, Mary Douglas (1966, p. 20) drew attention to the possible influence of Le Bon's crowd psychology on Durkheim. Her reference, however, was restricted to Durkheim's sociology of religion, and thus to his late work; furthermore, Steven Lukes, with the authority of the biographer, completely rejected this notion: can find no basis for Mary Douglas's suggestion that Durkheim 'seems to have freely drawn upon' Le Bon's theory of crowd psychology: Durkheim would have been the last person to regard Le Bon as a serious social scientist (Lukes 1985, p. 462). As far as I can tell, Lukes's assessment remains the accepted opinion of Durkheimian research today. Nevertheless, Lukes's evaluation of the relationship between Durkheim and Le Bon is not in accordance with the facts and needs to be revised thoroughly. It turns out that even the first edition (1893) of Durkheim's dissertation, De la division du travail social, contains reference to Le Bon. Even though Le Bon's major work, the Psychologie desfoules, was first published in 1895, and thus two years after Durkheim's dissertation, it is merely a summation of the findings of his earlier research in a more popular form. All his basic theses in crowd psychology, however, already are contained in a book published in 1881, L'homme et les societes: leurs origines et leur histoire, deuxieme partie: leurs origines et leur developpement (Le Bon 1881). This is precisely the book to which Durkheim refers in his dissertation.