... the adaptive nature of cognitive processes. Behaviour-therapy techniques have been applied with some success to such disturbances as enuresis (bed-wetting), tics, phobias, stuttering, obsessive-compulsive behaviour, drug addiction, neurotic behaviours of normal persons, and some psychotic conditions. It has also been used in training the mentally retarded. Collective Behaviour Much of collective behaviour is dramatic, unpredictable and frightening, so the early theories and many contemporary popular views are more evaluative than analytic. The French social psychologist Gustave Le Bon identified the crowd and revolutionary movements with the excesses of the French Revolution; the U.S. psychologist Boris Sidis was impressed with the resemblance of crowd behaviour to mental disorder. Many of these early theories depicted collective behaviour returned to an earlier stage of development. Freud retained this emphasis in viewing crowd behaviour and many other forms of collective behaviour as regressions to an earlier stage of childhood development; he explained, for example, ...

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