Page:The Source and Aim of Human Progress.djvu/27

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the effects of social suggestibility. In other words, social suggestibility is directly proportional to the uniformity of the social aggregate. Individuality is in inverse relation to the social mass. The conditions of normal and abnormal suggestibility, such as Fixation of the Attention, Limitation of Activity, Suppression of Variations, Monotony, Contraction of the Field of Social and Individual Consciousness, and inhibition of non-conforming ideas, ideals, and beliefs, leading to a weakening and paralysis of the critical consciousness, tend to the laying bare of the suggestible subconscious with its consequent deleterious effects. The main principles of social psychology, outlined in my "Psychology of Suggestion" were adopted by Prof. Ross in his "Social Psychology":

"In the normal state" Professor Ross writes "suggestion should be as indirect as possible in order to catch the inhibitory, waking self 'off its guard.' In the abnormal state no circumspection is needed; the controlling, inhibitory, waking consciousness is more or less dormant, the subwaking reflex consciousness is exposed, and our suggestions are more effective the more direct they are." Ross then quotes our general law of suggestibility formulated in The Psychology of Suggestion; "Suggestion (suggestibility) varies as the amount of disaggregation and inversely as the unification of consciousness."

"The primary self is the self with personality and will. .  .  . It alone embodies the results of reflection, and it alone holds life true to a personal ideal. It is the captain of the ship.  .  .   . If now this primary self is overthrown or put to sleep, the subwaking self becomes the master of the ship. This (subconscious) self has little reason, will, or conscience.  .  .  . It is imitative, servile, credulous, swung hither and thither by all sorts of incoming suggestions. The life it prompts cannot be stable, self consistent, integrated. It is low on the scale of personality, and a situation that commits to its hands the helm of the individual life is fraught with disaster." From this standpoint Ross discusses social suggestibility, the crowd, and the mob mind, worked out in my work on the psychology and pathology of the individual and society.

Ross further realizes the import in the domain of social psychology of the factors and conditions of normal and abnormal suggestibility as developed in my "Psychology of Suggestion." Thus he writes: "Sidis goes further in declaring 'If anything gives us a strong sense of our individuality, it is surely our voluntary movements. We