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Individual Consciousness and Collective Mind

1939; University of Chicago Press; Volume: 44; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1086/218172

1537-5390

Maurice Halbwachs,

Interdisciplinary Studies: Technology, Society, and Humanities

A serious facult in classical, in associationist, and in physiological psychologies is that they have been limited to the study of the idolated man. Even when man is artificially separated from society, he retains its imprint, particularly with respect to his intellectual processes. Actually, however, in our consciousness there exist both matter imagined or perceived and social forms or patterns. Psychology will therefore be either the psychology of the individual as a member of the species or collective psychology. The collective thought is not a metaphysical entity to be sought in a metaphysical world but exists only in individual consciousness and represents the interacting states of consciousness of a number of individuals comprising the group. Thus two parts of collective psychology emerge: the general study of the characteristics and modes of functioning of group thought, differing in content according to the group; and the particular collective psychologies of subgroups, the nation, family, class, etc. The field of sociology is established by distinguishing between thoughts and sentiments, on the one hand, and their concrete, exterior, manifestations (techniques), on the other; between the psychological and the physical aspects of institutions. Study of the latter type of phenomena (the domain of sociology) is necessary because it is the characteristic trait of collective representations to manifest themselves in material form. Sociology views social phenomena through the frame of reference of collective psychology. Even in demographic studies populations are regarded in terms of states of collective consciousness. The collective mind gives the human consciousness access to all that has been achieved in the way of attitudes and mental dispositions in diverse social groups.