The Behavior of Crowds

What then is the secret of this impersonal view of the social? Why do we think of ourselves socially in the same impersonal or external way that we think of others? There is an interesting parallel here in the behavior of certain types of mental pathology. There are neurotics who commonly feel that certain aspects of their behavior are really not of their own authorship, but come to them as the result of influences acting from without. It was such phenomena in part that led psychologists of a generation ago to construct the theory of "multiple personality.