# Mass Hypnosis Mass hypnosis is a *contested concept* with two largely-separate intellectual lineages and a contemporary politically-loaded deployment. The *first* lineage runs through the late-19th-c. crowd-psychology tradition (Gustave Le Bon's *Psychology of Crowds* / *Psychologie des Foules* 1895; subsequent work by Gabriel Tarde, Sigmund Freud's *Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego* 1921) and uses the term as a *metaphorical* description of how individuals in large groups under specific conditions appear to suspend independent judgment in favor of group-aligned cognition. The *second* lineage is the contemporary post-2020 deployment by Belgian psychologist Mattias Desmet, popularized in the United States by Robert Malone on [[Joe Rogan]]'s December 31, 2021 podcast, which uses the term (and the related *mass formation psychosis*) as a specifically-clinical-sounding framework for delegitimizing public acceptance of COVID-19 public-health measures. The two lineages are *not* equivalent, and conflating them produces confusion. This entry treats them separately. The contemporary rhetorical-deployment is also documented at the paired [[Mass Formation Psychosis]] entry, which focuses on the *political-rhetoric-work* of the specific term rather than the broader phenomenon-history. ## The crowd-psychology lineage Gustave Le Bon's 1895 *The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind* (*Psychologie des Foules*) is the foundational text. Le Bon argued that crowds — large gatherings of individuals operating as a temporary collective — exhibit cognitive and behavioral patterns systematically-different from those exhibited by the same individuals in isolation. The crowd, in Le Bon's account, shows: - Lowered intellectual capacity relative to its constituent members - Heightened emotional intensity and contagion - Suggestibility and openness to charismatic-leader-direction - Loss of individual moral inhibition - Capacity for actions individual members would not commit alone Le Bon explicitly used the metaphor of *hypnosis* to describe the cognitive-state of crowd members — *the individual forming part of a crowd acquires, solely from numerical considerations, a sentiment of invincible power which allows him to yield to instincts which, had he been alone, he would perforce have kept under restraint*. The hypnosis metaphor was *not* claiming that crowds produce literal hypnotic states; it was claiming the cognitive-behavioral patterns *resembled* hypnotic-state characteristics. Sigmund Freud's *Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego* (1921) extended the Le Bon framework with psychoanalytic infrastructure — adding analysis of the *libidinal-tie* between crowd members and the leader, the regression to earlier developmental stages crowds can produce, and the *ego ideal* projection onto leader figures. The Freud extension became foundational for subsequent fascism-studies analysis of leader-cult dynamics (see [[Cathexis]] for the related concept). Wilhelm Reich's *Mass Psychology of Fascism* (1933) extended both Le Bon and Freud specifically to the case of fascist-mobilization; the work has remained influential in contemporary fascism-studies and is one of the foundational texts the [[Frankfurt School]] built on. The contemporary academic *crowd-psychology* literature (Stephen Reicher, John Drury, Clifford Stott) has substantially complicated the Le Bon framework — the *contagion* and *de-individuation* models the early-20th-c. tradition presupposed are not well-supported by modern empirical research; crowd behavior turns out to be more socially-structured and rationally-purposive than the Le Bon framework suggested. The *mass hypnosis* metaphor has correspondingly lost much of its academic standing as a description of actual crowd dynamics. ## The Desmet / Malone 2020-era deployment A specifically-political contemporary deployment of the term emerged through the COVID-19 pandemic discourse. Belgian psychologist Mattias Desmet (Ghent University) developed a framework he called *mass formation* (related to but distinct from earlier *mass hypnosis* vocabulary) which he argued explained the public's acceptance of pandemic-era public-health measures including lockdowns, masking, and vaccination programs. Desmet's book *The Psychology of Totalitarianism* (English translation 2022) develops the framework at length. The Desmet framework identified four conditions that supposedly produce *mass formation*: 1. **Generalized loneliness and social isolation** in the population 2. **Lack of meaning** in everyday life 3. **Free-floating anxiety** with no clear specific target 4. **Free-floating frustration and aggression** with no clear specific target When all four conditions are present, according to Desmet, the population becomes *hypnotically receptive* to political-narrative frames that supply an *object* for the anxiety and the aggression — and is willing to participate in collective programs that would otherwise be rejected. The framework was substantially popularized in the United States through Robert Malone's December 31, 2021 appearance on *The Joe Rogan Experience* podcast — one of the highest-listenership podcasts in the world at the time. Malone applied the framework to public acceptance of COVID-19 vaccination programs, claiming that the public was in a *mass formation psychosis* state that explained their willingness to accept vaccines Malone believed were dangerous. ## The clinical-and-empirical critique of the Desmet framework The Desmet / Malone deployment of mass-formation / mass-hypnosis vocabulary has been substantially criticized within both clinical psychology and contemporary social-psychology research: 1. **The construct is not clinically-recognized** — *mass formation psychosis* is not a clinical diagnosis in DSM-5, ICD-11, or any other major diagnostic system; the term is not used in contemporary peer-reviewed clinical literature outside Desmet's own work and adjacent commentary 2. **The empirical basis is weak** — Desmet's framework relies substantially on theoretical-tradition argument (Le Bon, Arendt, Jung) rather than empirical-research support; the contemporary crowd-psychology empirical literature substantially does not support the foundational claims 3. **The conditions are unfalsifiable** — *generalized anxiety / lack of meaning / loneliness / aggression* are sufficiently broad that any population in any era could plausibly be claimed to satisfy them; the framework's diagnostic specificity is therefore limited 4. **The application to specific cases is politically-motivated** — the Desmet / Malone deployment specifically applies the framework to *public health acceptance* but not to *anti-vaccine community formation*, which by the framework's own criteria would equally qualify as mass-formation phenomenon 5. **The framework substitutes for empirical investigation** — rather than studying *why* specific populations responded to pandemic-public-health measures in specific ways (an empirically-tractable question), the framework labels the response *mass psychosis* and treats the label as explanatory The 2022–2024 academic and clinical response substantially rejected the framework. The American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, and a wide range of individual clinicians published statements distinguishing the *mass formation* / *mass hypnosis* vocabulary from contemporary clinical or empirical-research consensus. ## KB applications ### The pair with [[Mass Formation Psychosis]] The /Terminology/Media/ entry on *Mass Formation Psychosis* covers the *rhetorical-work* of the specific Desmet / Malone term in contemporary American political discourse — the operational deployment as a [[Reputation Mining]] vehicle by which a credentialed-academic framework is repurposed to legitimize anti-public-health and anti-establishment political positions. The two entries are paired: this Concept entry covers the broader *phenomenon* (such as it exists) and intellectual-tradition history; the Terminology entry covers the specific *word's* political deployment. ### The empirical alternative: structural-discourse analysis The post-2018 disinformation-research literature provides empirically-grounded analytical alternatives to the *mass hypnosis* framework for explaining mass-discourse phenomena. The [[Propaganda Feedback Loop]] (Benkler/Faris/Roberts), [[Wallpaper Effect]] (Ailes-era programming-discipline), [[Cultivation Theory]] (Gerbner), and [[Selective Exposure]] (Lazarsfeld / Festinger / Klapper) frameworks all provide empirically-grounded structural-mechanism accounts of mass-discourse phenomena without invoking the unfalsifiable *mass hypnosis* construct. The methodological-honesty observation: *if you want to explain mass-discourse phenomena empirically, the post-2018 disinformation-research literature offers substantially better-grounded frameworks than the early-20th-c. crowd-psychology tradition or the post-2020 Desmet revival of it*. ### The fascism-studies cousin literature The crowd-psychology and Frankfurt-School lineage of *Le Bon → Freud → Reich → Adorno → Marcuse* developed substantially-richer analyses of authoritarian-leader-mass dynamics than the contemporary mass-hypnosis deployment captures. The [[Cathexis]] entry, [[Authoritarianism (Term)]] umbrella, and [[Authoritarian Personality Theory]] entries in this KB cover the substantive analytical-tradition that contemporary mass-hypnosis vocabulary gestures toward but does not engage rigorously. For substantive analysis of authoritarian-mass dynamics, those entries provide better starting points than the *mass hypnosis* construct. ## See Also - [[Mass Formation Psychosis]] — the paired Terminology entry on the specific Desmet / Malone vocabulary - [[Gustave Le Bon]] — the foundational late-19th-c. crowd-psychology figure - [[Sigmund Freud]] — the *Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego* (1921) psychoanalytic extension - [[Mattias Desmet]] — the contemporary post-2020 deployer - [[Authoritarian Personality Theory]] — the more-empirically-grounded political-psychology framework for adjacent phenomena - [[Cathexis]] — the libidinal-investment Frankfurt-school analytical concept - [[Cultivation Theory]] — the empirically-grounded mass-media-effects alternative - [[Propaganda Feedback Loop]] — the empirically-grounded structural-ecosystem alternative - [[Reputation Mining]] — the strategic-rhetorical-deployment mechanism the Desmet / Malone case exemplifies