esponds sympathetically toward B and C implies the
existence in A of an attitude of receptivity and suggestibility toward
the sentiments and attitudes of B and C. Where A, B, and C are mutually
sympathetic, the inhibitions which, under ordinary circumstances, serve
to preserve the isolation and self-consciousness of individuals are
relaxed or completely broken down. Under these circumstances each
individual, in so far as he may be said to reflect, in his own
consciousness and in his emotional reactions, the sentiments and
emotions of all the others, tends at the same time to modify the
sentiments and attitudes of those others. The effect is to produce a
heightened, intensified, and relatively impersonal state of
consciousness in which all seem to share, but which is, at the same
time, relatively independent of each.

The development of this so-called "group-consciousness" represents a
certain amount of loss of self-control on the part of the individual.
Such control as the individual loses over himself is thus automatically
transferred to the group as a whole or to the leader.

What is meant by _rapport_ in the group may be illustrated by a somewhat
similar phenomenon which occurs in hypnosis. In this case a relation is
established between the experimenter and his subject such that the
subject responds automatically to every suggestion of the experimenter
but is apparently oblivious of suggestions coming from other persons
whose existence he does not perceive or ignores. This is the condition
called "isolated rapport."[305]

In the case of the crowd this mutual and exclusive responsiveness of
each member of the crowd to the suggestions emanating from the other
members produces here also a kind of mental isolation which is
accompanied by an inhibition of the stimuli and suggestions that control
the behavior of individuals under the conditions of ordinary life. Under
these conditions impulses long repressed in the individual may find an
expression in the crowd. It is this, no doubt, which accounts for those
so-called criminal and atavistic tendencies of crowds, of which Le Bon
and Sighele speak.[306]

The organization of the crowd is only finally effected when the
attention of the individuals who compose it becomes focused upon some
particular object or some particular objective. This object thus fixed
in the focus of the attention of the group tends to assume the character
of a _collective representation_.[307] It be