Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War: -1919 [Paperback]

W. (Wilfred) Trotter (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 8, 2009

Originally published in 1919. This volume from the Cornell University Library's print collections was scanned on an APT BookScan and converted to JPG 2000 format by Kirtas Technologies. All titles scanned cover to cover and pages may include marks notations and other marginalia present in the original volume.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 274 pages
• Publisher: Cornell University Library (July 8, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1112202226
• ISBN-13: 978-1112202223
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,742,027 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Penetrating study of social and individual psychology, June 24, 2007

By 

B. Braun (San Francisco) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Instincts Of The Herd In Peace And War (Paperback)

The writing in this book is a bit dated and arch, yet Trotter's analysis is extremely insightful. Indeed it is somewhat shocking to realize how little psychology has advanced since this time (1908 and 1915) and the time of William James. Trotter's basic argument is that being a social species marks us collectively and especially individually with strong psychological characteristics. We respond instinctively and readily to group suggestions and are thus easily trained to suppress the most basic instincts (survival, sex) in the service of the group. Parallels can easily be drawn to other social species, including wolves, dogs, and bees, who are enthusiastic servants of their group as well as recipients of group communication and training, even while other species such as cats, are much less social and lack many of these instincts.

Indeed what we regard as morals are the implanted instinctive or trained promptings of group service, which necessarily conflict with selfish instincts, and thus set up the mental conflicts that are the bread and butter of psychotherapy. "Normal" people are fully adapted to this regime, submerging their selves into the larger group and thus are ready to go off to war and other group activities. Trotter is rather biting in his analysis of war (WWI was to come as he presciently wrote in 1908, and was underway as he wrote in 1915). He also identifies religion as the natural consequence of this social instinct, which progressively hypostasizes the imaginary emblem and enforcer of the social order, until it is both all-powerful and psychologically internalized.

Trotter's take on the then-new Freudian corpus is especially interesting, taking him seriously, but also identifying Freud's remarkable excesses of assigning all causes to sex and all scientific objectivity to himself. Trotter explains that while Freud's school is exceedingly interested in the causes of individual resistance to communal indoctrination, it is remarkably uninterested both in the sources of this indoctrination and in our natural suggestibility to it. Thus this book and this thread of thought is an important complement to whatever is left of psychoanalysis. It is somewhat depressing to realize that perhaps the principal current inheritor of Trotter's tradition and insights is the advertising industry.

Lastly, Trotter indulges in long mid-war and post-war analyses of German instincts and character, contrasting the militaristic wolf-like follower/leader system of the German nation with the more advanced bee-like, collegial, bottom-up integration of countries like Britain, which is virtually allergic to strong leaders and external aggression. This section would be comically jingoistic were it not that his analysis became realized to an unimaginable degree in the "Führer prinzip" fifteen years later. Sadly, his prescription for post-war treatment of Germany is to "give it a good whipping", which may have done more to reinforce the psychology he writes about than any other treatment.

3 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Smug and agonisingly badly-written - evolution of groups - Germany and England, December 7, 2010

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Rerevisionist (Manchester, England) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Instincts Of The Herd In Peace And War. -- (Paperback)

Wilfred Trotter was a surgeon (born in the same year as Bertrand Russell) who, coming up to 40, wrote about the 'herd instinct'. A few years later, these essays were incorporated into this book, published in 1916, before the USA came into the war. The title of course reflects the war. There was a second edition in 1919.

His essays may have been suggested by Gustave le Bon; but le Bon was enormously influenced by the French Revolution as it appears in conventional history, and usually regarded crowds as irrational and easily swayed, So this book is not just a nationalistic version in the way Sargant (British) ripped off an American author on 'brainwashing' and Korea. Trotter mentions Freud, then rather new, possibly because Freud was medically qualified too, distinguishing him (and other psychoanalysts) from ordinary medically-untrained psychologists. Trotter's writing style is agonisingly plodding, I'd guess as a gentlemanly badge - I'm sure he could easily have written in a more sprightly manner. He reminds me a bit of Dalrymple, writing today, an expert wanting to step into a more general field.

Trotter thinks 'herds' should be expected to have 'instincts' for evolutionary reasons. 'Herd' is perhaps an attempt to translate the Latin grex, from which 'gregarious' was coined - it's not meant in a pejorative sense. Trotter thinks one-celled creatures were limited evolutionarily; evolution into multicellular creatures allows evolution fresh scope. (He doesn't attempt to explain how organs developed, though). Trotter then extends this into herds, which have further scope - though it's not exactly evolution, since a herd doesn't reproduce itself. Some of his evidence comes from animals - not the vast range as deployed by Dawkins, but more domestic dogs, cats, bees, sheep, horses - and also, especially, wolves. (E.g. solitary herbivores could not exist, if they spent most of their time watching for predators). Some evidence is from human beings - mostly English and Germans. He does NOT discuss bringing up children, which surely is a good reason to develop groups - maybe he thought it's unmanly? Much of this is derived from Karl Pearson (who for decades has provoked shrieks of 'eugenics'). Trotter is unobservantly nationalistic: 'The nation, if the term be used to describe every organization under a completely independent, supreme government, must be regarded as the smallest unit on which natural selection now unrestrictedly acts'.

Interesting idea, but hard to develop. As regards people, Trotter regards self-preservation, nutrition, and sex as 'obvious instincts' but then adds gregariousness. There's obviously a problem with ingrained, but wrong, beliefs, so he includes 'suggestibility' as a factor. And he distinguishes 'stable minded' or 'socialized' people, typically military or religious types, who believe and do what they've been told, from the 'feeling' type who because of what they've experienced may not to.

Trotter, following Freud, regards the unconscious as a squalid, animal-like thing, which seems a bit unfair; if someone e.g. works hard through cold weather, and then makes him/herself comfortable in an animal way by warming up before a fire and eating - why should that be 'primitive'?

Trotter also doesn't seem to realise (this is from Leibnitz) that an unconscious is necessary, just as memory is, or you'd spend all your time just thinking the same thoughts over again.

He's also irrationally fierce on 'irrationality': 'He will have strong views upon military and naval strategy, the principles of taxation, the use of alcohol and vaccination, the treatment of influenza, the prevention of hydrophobia, upon municipal trading, the teaching of Greek, upon what is permissible in print, satisfactory in literature, and hopeful in science. The bulk of such opinions must necessarily be without rational basis, since many of them are concerned with problems admitted by the expert to be still unsolved, while as to the rest it is clear that the training and experience of no average man can qualify him to have any opinion upon them at all. The rational method adequately used would have told him that on the great majority of these questions there could be for him but one attitude - that of suspended judgment.'

He has a solution to irrationality: 'The solution would seem rather to lie in seeing to it that suggestion always acts on the side of reason; if rationality were once to become really respectable, if we feared the entertaining of an unverifiable opinion with the warmth with which we fear using the wrong implement at the dinner table, if the thought of holding a prejudice disgusted us as does a foul disease, then the dangers of man's suggestibility would be turned into advantages.'

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ENGLISH VS GERMANS. Much of this book is on the difference between Germans and English (not British - the word barely appears). No doubt the readers liked it... England tends to be taken off guard by foreigners. Trotter regards wolves as highly organised, and thinks they take mad vicious risks when they're in pack mode - he doesn't see them as animals needing to eat. So the Germans are 'lupine' - and the fall of the Roman Empire, as taught in England, illustrates this. He says Germans (or Prussians) are nasty and punishing to their underlings; he doesn't seem to factor in such facts as English trenches being far worse than Germans - trench foot was commonplace; deserters were shot, and so on. He doesn't consider the geography of Germany as a relatively exposed vaguely-defined land area. He mentions Germany as having brilliantly won a series of small wars, without mentioning that Britain had done more of the same. He doesn't even mention, in the second edition (1919), that Britain didn't win on its own.

So all this is conventional and disappointing. And by Trotter's own criteria, Trotter had no right to any of these views!

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There are a couple of famous bits -

MEETING SOMEONE NEW: 'When, therefore, we find ourselves entertaining an opinion about the basis of which there is a quality of feeling which tells us that to inquire into it would be absurd, obviously unnecessary, unprofitable, undesirable, bad form, or wicked, we may know that that opinion is a non-rational one, and probably, therefore, founded upon inadequate evidence'

THE DOG SNIFF TEST, quoted somewhere in Aldous Huxley: 'When one hears or takes part in these elaborate evolutions, gingerly proffering one after another of one's marks of identity, one's views on the weather, on fresh air and draughts, on the Government and on uric acid, watching intently for the first low hint of a growl, which will show one belongs to the wrong pack and must withdraw, it is impossible not to be reminded of the similar manoeuvres of the dog, and to be thankful that Nature has provided us with a less direct, though perhaps a more tedious, code.'

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I'd intended to quote some more examples of Trotter's writing style, but on second thoughts they're simply too long. But take it from me - it's an endurance test. Scriptwriters who wanting a boring post-Edwardian interminable sermon-like speech, while the hero and heroine plan something exciting, might copy chunks of it.

This is a smug non-urgent book, by an author with no idea of the destructiveness and harm likely to result from war. It's quite sickening in that sense, in fact. However it is not aggressively nationalistic or warlike. I doubt if it sold more than a few tens of thousands.