From mass psychology to media studies: Interview with Jaap van Ginneken on his Kurt Baschwitz biography

Abstract

In this interview with Jaap van Ginneken we are looking at the (dis)appearance of ‘mass psychology’: a small and short-lived discipline shaped by figures such as Gustave Le Bon, Gabriel Tarde, and Sigmund Freud. For most of his life, Dutch academic van Ginneken has both utilised mass psychology’s methods and written its history. His latest contribution is the biography of the German-Dutch Kurt Baschwitz (1886-1968), who can be considered The Netherlands’ most influential mass psychologist (Kurt Baschwitz, A Pioneer of Communication Studies and Social Psychology, Amsterdam University Press, 2018).