ABSTRACT
Crowd psychology emerges in the late nineteenth century precisely to address the problem of contagious mimesis that already preoccupied Plato, and it does so via the model of hypnotic suggestion. Nietzsche was indeed in good company when it came to promoting a view of the unconscious based on physio-psychological reflexes that are automatic, mimetic, and, as he says, inaugurate a ‘phase of modesty of consciousness’. The simple fact of watching someone grab something or facially express an emotion, Rizzolatti and his team argue, causes mirror neurons to discharge or ‘fire’ as if we ourselves were performing that gesture or expression, generating an unconscious tendency to mimic it. Physio-psychological observations, Nietzsche is quite explicit about inscribing the physiological reflex of imitation in psychological theories of hypnotic suggestions, opening up a genealogy of the mimetic unconscious that is as past-oriented as it is future-oriented.
