The cure of self-consciousness / by James Alexander.

  • James Alexander
Date:
1915
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The cure of self-consciousness / by James Alexander. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    32/176 page 12
    § 9. FEAR OF CROWDS. By fear of crowds we mean fear of people in the mass. This fear is quite distinct from that of fear of an audience: there the fear springs from the knowledge that a man has a part to play with everyone watching all his movements, and taking in everything in connexion with him. In the fear of the crowd, there is no such knowledge for the relation of the self-conscious person to the crowd is often purely imaginary. The fear of the crowd can be looked at from two points of view—the active and the passive. In the former real grounds for fear often exist; in the latter the grounds exist solely in the imagination. Looked at from the active point of view you have the crowd as hostile. Of this again there are two aspects, (1) Where you have done something to raise the anger of the crowd against you, and (2) where you have done nothing to cause offence to the crowd. Under (1) you have occasions such as great national crises. The people versus the aristocrats at the time of the French Revolu- tion supplies an example. The attack of employees on an employer or his head officials during a great strike 1s another instance. Under (2) you have the attacks made on innocent people by gangs of hooligans or roughs, or where a crowd mistakes you for some other person against whom they have grounds for anger or resentment. Both (1) and (2) excite real, terrifying fear, in the great majority of cases; but from the point of view of self-consciousness they are not nearly so important as those cases where the fear of the crowd springs from imagination. Looked at from the passive point of view, there are several situations in life where the self-conscious person fears the crowd, 7.e., any collection of people, in small groups or large bodies. Some of the commonest of these situations are, entering a public meeting or assembly— church, concert-room, theatre, a large shop or store;
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