Group Mind

The author, William McDougall was an early 20th century psychologist who spent the first part of his career in the United Kingdom and the latter part in the United States. He wrote a number of highly influential textbooks, and was particularly important in the development of the theory of instinct and of social psychology in the English-speaking world.

After teaching at University College London and Oxford, he was recruited to occupy the William James chair of psychology at Harvard University in 1920, where he served as a professor of psychology from 1920 to 1927. He then moved to Duke University, where he established the Parapsychology Laboratory.

His highly influential works include:
– Physiological Psychology (1905)
– An Introduction to Social Psychology
– Body and Mind: A History and a Defense of Animism (1913)
– The Group Mind: A Sketch of the Principles of Collective Psychology with Some Attempt to Apply Them to the Interpretation of National Life and Character (1920, reprinted 1973)
– Outline of Psychology (1923)
– An Outline of Abnormal Psychology (1926)
– Character and the Conduct of Life (1927)
– Modern Materialism and Emergent Evolution (1929)
– Energies of Men (1932)
– The Riddle of Life (1938)
All these books are now available from Cosmo