About The Domain of Ideologies | Forward

PART I Mass Groups and Intellectual Groups
The Paradox | The Political Groups | The Left Wing and Intellectualism | The Masses and Emotional Suggestibility | Fear of the Group | Political Collectivism | Political Individualism | The "Mass Rationality" Assumption

PART II Ideological Structure and Development
The Ideological Field | Definition of Ideology | Cognitive Assumptions | The Process of Assumptions | The Absolute Assumption | Identification | Development and Repression | Conclusion

Bibliography | Index

Reviews: Universum (Number 3, 20 March 1949)

1947 Edition Dust Jacket
One of the most important contributions to the development of a scientific treatment of man's social and political consciousness. The author begins by objectively classifying the various ideologies. This is followed by a step-by-step analysis of each ideological grouping - copiously evidenced by many actual examples of ideological thinking. The analysis, reveals inter alia, certain dynamic relations - hitherto unsuspected - between ideologies, and gives some hint of the unconscious mechanisms which underlie ideological and group behaviour. Part I ends by showing that a certain very important assumption - widely held by scientists and thinkers - concerning the mental evolution of man, is not supported by the facts. Part II starts with a definition of the scope and nature of ideology and makes a thorough analysis of the mental processes and structure underlying ideological phenomena. The book concludes with a detailed account, in terms of these basic mental processes, of the ideological growth of the individual from birth to maturity.

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THE SOCIAL SCIENCE ASSOCIATION is a group of people who - irrespective of sex, colour, race, creed or class - have in common the promotion of this object: To support wherever possible the extension, development and application of scientific method to contemporary social and political problems. The S.S.A. therefore aims at advancing human understanding of human nature as the prerequisite of a rational, peaceful and scientific control of human society.

Title Page
The Domain of Ideologies:
A Study of the Development and Structure of Ideologies
by Harold Walsby
Published in collaboration with the SOCIAL SCIENCE ASSOCIATION
by William Maclellan, Hope Street, Glasgow. First impression August 1947.

Indicia
Printed by The Riverside Press LTD., Thwickenham, Middlesex.

Dedication
To F. S. JOHNSON

George Walford on The Domain of Ideologies (unpublished letter, 13 February 1993)
"The D of I was written in 1947, and this has to be allowed for when reading it; the amount of attention paid to Nazism now seems less justified than it did two years after the war, Freud no longer possesses the stature he did then, and other things have changed - you will probably be more alive to them than I am. One of the bigger changes since Walsby's time is a shift in the conception of the primal level - he did not see it quite as Expedient - and association of fascism and Nazism with the second level rather than this first one."

This new electronic edition of The Domain of Ideologies is the first since its original printing in 1947. The current edition has made every effort to preserve not only the content but also the 'tone' of the original. However, in addition to minor changes in format, there have been some compromises negotiated between the English of mid-20th Century England and the English of the United States in the early 21st Century. A bibliography, an index index and critical reviews of the book have been added.