Mobbing is a word not previously used in this context in the English language. It was used by the late Konrad Lorenz, an ethologist, in describing animal group behavior. He termed the attacks from a group of smaller animals threatening a single larger animal "mobbing" (Lorenz, 1991). Later, a Swedish physician who happened to become interested in what children could do to each other between their class hours, borrowed this terminology from Lorenz and called the very destructive behavior in small groups of children directed against (most often) a single child, "mobbing" (Heinemann, 1972). The present research on this type of child behavior has been carried out over the past 20 years, one of the most prominent researchers being the Norwegian Dan Olweus (e. g. 1993).

Following this tradition, I borrowed the word mobbing in the early eighties, when I found a similar kind of behavior at work places. I deliberately did not choose the English term "bullying", used by English and Australian researchers (in the USA, the term "mobbing" is also used), as very much of this disastrous communication certainly does not have the characteristics of "bullying", but quite often is carried out in a very sensitive manner, still having highly stigmatizing effects. The connotation of bullying is physical aggression and threat. In fact, bullying at school is strongly characterized by such physically aggressive acts. In contrast, physical violence is very seldom found in mobbing behavior at work. Rather, mobbing at work places is characterized by much more sophisticated behaviors such as, for example, socially isolating the victim. I suggest keeping the word bullying for activities between children and teenagers at school and reserving the word mobbing for adult behavior at workplaces. Other expressions found in the literature are harassment or psychological terror.

Regarding mobbing at work places, a first publication in 1976 referred to "the harassed worker" (Brodsky, 1976). In that book, for the first time, typical cases of (what I later called) mobbing can be studied. Nevertheless, Brodsky was not directly interested in analyzing just these cases as they were presented along with cases of work place accidents, physiological stress and exhaustion by long work hours, monotonous work tasks, etc. This book focused on the hard life of the simple worker and his situation, nowadays known by stress research. Because of it´s socio-medical engagement and a poor discrimination between ever so different stress situations at work places, the book, written under the influence of the social and political left wing climate of the late sixties and early seventies, had no influence at all on society. The Swedish research in the early eighties came about without knowledge of Brodskys work. The reason was instead a new work environment law in Sweden from 1976 and a national research fund, offering great possibilities to enter into new research areas within industrial psychology.

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