PSYCHOLOGIST

Gustave Le Bon

1841 - 1931

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Charles-Marie Gustave Le Bon (7 May 1841 – 13 December 1931) was a leading French polymath whose areas of interest included anthropology, psychology, sociology, medicine, invention, and physics. He is best known for his 1895 work The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind, which is considered one of the seminal works of crowd psychology. A native of Nogent-le-Rotrou, Le Bon qualified as a doctor of medicine at the University of Paris in 1866. He opted against the formal practice of medicine as a physician, instead beginning his writing career the same year of his graduation. Read more on Wikipedia

His biography is available in different languages on Wikipedia. Gustave Le Bon is the 15th most popular psychologist, the 246th most popular biography from France (down from 220th in 2019) and the 2nd most popular French Psychologist.

Gustave le bon is most famous for his theory of crowd psychology. He believed that crowds are composed of three types of people: the intelligent, the semi-intelligent, and the imbeciles. The intelligent and semi-intelligent people are able to think for themselves and form their own opinions, but the imbeciles do not have the mental capacity to think for themselves and instead follow the opinions of the intelligent and semi-intelligent people.

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Among PSYCHOLOGISTS

Among psychologists, Gustave Le Bon ranks 15 out of 235. Before him are Jacques Lacan, Viktor Frankl, Erik Erikson, John Dewey, William James, and Carl Rogers. After him are Albert Bandura, Anna Freud, Kurt Lewin, Jordan Peterson, John B. Watson, and Daniel Kahneman.

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Contemporaries

Among people born in 1841, Gustave Le Bon ranks 4. Before him are Edward VII, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Antonín Dvořák. After him are Berthe Morisot, Nicholas I of Montenegro, Georges Clemenceau, Maria Sophie of Bavaria, Itō Hirobumi, Otto Wagner, Emil Theodor Kocher, and Frédéric Bazille. Among people deceased in 1931, Gustave Le Bon ranks 5. Before him are Thomas Edison, Khalil Gibran, Albert A. Michelson, and Otto Wallach. After him are Anna Pavlova, Louise, Princess Royal, Hussein bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca, Omar Mukhtar, Arthur Schnitzler, Lili Elbe, and Bhagat Singh.

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In France

Among people born in France, Gustave Le Bon ranks 246 out of 6,770. Before him are Nicéphore Niépce (1765), Georges Seurat (1859), Bernard Arnault (1949), Léon Foucault (1819), Vilfredo Pareto (1848), and George Sand (1804). After him are Berthe Morisot (1841), Roger Martin du Gard (1881), Alfred Dreyfus (1859), Camille Claudel (1864), Henri Moissan (1852), and Georges Cuvier (1769).

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Among PSYCHOLOGISTS In France

Among psychologists born in France, Gustave Le Bon ranks 2. Before him are Jacques Lacan (1901). After him are Alfred Binet (1857), Princess Marie Bonaparte (1882), Pierre Janet (1859), Théodule-Armand Ribot (1839), Émile Coué (1857), Henri Wallon (1879), Françoise Dolto (1908), Jacques-Alain Miller (1944), Jean Laplanche (1924), and Boris Cyrulnik (1937).

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