The Psychology of Totalitarianism

“This is an amazing book . . . [Desmet is] one of the true geniuses I’ve spoken to . . . This book has really changed my view on a lot.”--Tucker Carlson “[Desmet] is waking a lot of people up to the dangerous place we are now with a brilliant distillation of how we ended up here.”--Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. The world continues to exist in the grips of mass formation--a dangerous, collective type of hypnosis--as we bear witness to loneliness, free-floating anxiety, and fear giving way to censorship, loss of privacy, and surrendered freedoms. It is all spurred by a singular, focused crisis narrative that forbids dissident views and relies on destructive groupthink. Desmet’s work on mass formation theory was brought to the world’s attention on Totalitarianism is not a coincidence and does not form in a vacuum. It arises from a collective psychosis that has followed a predictable script throughout history, its formation gaining strength and speed with each generation--from the Jacobins to the Nazis and Stalinists--as technology advances. Governments, mass media, and other mechanized forces use fear, loneliness, and isolation to demoralize populations and exert control, persuading large groups of people to act against their own interests, always with destructive results. In , world-renowned Professor of Clinical Psychology Mattias Desmet deconstructs the societal conditions that allow this collective psychosis to take hold. By looking at our current situation and identifying the phenomenon of “mass formation”--a type of collective hypnosis--he clearly illustrates how close we are to surrendering to totalitarian regimes. With detailed analyses, examples, and results from years of research, Desmet lays out the steps that lead toward mass formation, including: loneliness and lack of social connections and bonds lack of meaning --unsatisfying “bullsh*t jobs” that don’t offer purpose anxiety and discontent that arise from loneliness and lack of meaning frustration and aggression from anxiety a consistent narrative from government officials, mass media, etc., that exploits and channels frustration and anxiety In addition to clear psychological analysis--and building on Hannah Arendt’s essential work on totalitarianism, “We can honor the right to freedom of expression and the right to self-determination without feeling threatened by each other,” Desmet writes. “But there is a point where we must stop losing ourselves in the crowd to experience meaning and connection . That is the point where the winter of totalitarianism gives way to a spring of life.” “One of the most important books I’ve ever read.”--Ivor Cummins, ...

Autorentext

Mattias Desmet is recognized as the world’s leading expert on the theory of mass formation as it applies to the COVID-19 pandemic. He is a professor of clinical psychology in the Department of Psychology and Educational Sciences at Ghent University (Belgium) and a practicing psychoanalytic psychotherapist. His work has been discussed widely in the media, including on The Joe Rogan Experience and in Forbes, The New York Post, Salon.com, and Fox News, among hundreds of other outlets. His interviews have been viewed by millions of people around the world. His previous books include The Pursuit of Objectivity in Psychology and Lacan’s Logic of Subjectivity: A Walk on the Graph of Desire. Desmet is the author of over one hundred peer-reviewed academic papers. In 2018 he received the Evidence-Based Psychoanalytic Case Study Prize of the Association for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, and in 2019 he received the Wim Trijsburg Prize of the Dutch Association of Psychotherapy.