Mass Psychology

An outbreak of vocal tics that is remarkable similar to the case in LeRoy in Western New York,  has been recorded at two schools in Massachusetts.  While the Massachusetts Department of Public Health publicly denies that anything unusual took place, an analysis of Freedom of Information documents reveals that the health department covered up the episode.  Their own medical records review (which was never released to the public) ruled out all possible causes but one:  mass hysteria.  The Department's final report on the outbreak conspicuously left out the review's findings.  Public health departments need to be more open and transparent in their investigations of cases of mass psychogenic illness.

SAŽETAK: Rad predstavlja svojevrstan osvrt na otuđenost u socijalnom kontekstu života u patološkoj "normalnoj stvarnosti", čijim integralnim pripadnicima afirmirane mainstream grupacije nameću vlastite kriterije normalnosti, primjenom znanstvenog pozitivizma, arbitrarno uspostavlje-nih vrijednosnih sudova i oboružani religioznom, političkom i obrazovnom aparaturom. U tu svrhu možemo tvrditi da se sredstva biraju pomno i pro-računato, a shodno tome, utemeljuju se u institucionaliziranoj i političkoj formi s ciljem generiranja poslušne, produktivne i povodljive zajednice de-subjektiviranih subjekata podložnih kontroli i autodestruktivizmu. Psihoa-naliza predstavlja plodno tlo za refleksiju o psihologiji mase, struktural-noj osnovi i instrumentaciji interpersonalnog povezivanja. Psihoanalitički koncepti koje ću prezentirati namijenjeni su razotkrivanju eksplicitnih teh-nika implicitnih političkih agendi. Budući da su implikacije reakcionarnih masa poduprtih ideološkim zamagljivanjem pogubne u suvremenom svije-tu, konzekventno dovode do gubitka klasne svijesti i angažiraju se u svr-hu kapitaliziranja i ignorantnosti stanovništva. Nametanje lažnog putom nevidljivih posredujućih instanci vodi apsurdu, stoga je svaka struktura, koja arbitrarno apelira na tzv. etablirane smjernice ponašanja, djelova-nja i bivanja, ipso facto fatalna jer nije u mogućnosti racionalizirati svoje namjere i prisilno korigira one izvan poretka, ne verificirajući kredibilitet uvjerenja niti kada je poredak izvan pravca. Budući da se filozofija na-lazi izvan problema na koji se referira, kritičkim razmišljanjem možemo modificirati dosadašnje kriterije da bismo uvidjeli opasnost adaptiranja poremećenom društvu.

Das Prinzip der Karnevalisierung nach Michail Bachtin hat grundsätzlich eine egalitäre Struktur: Im Karneval wird der König zum Narren und der Narr zum König. Alle tanzen und feiern gleichermaßen nebeneinander, im Suff, im Rausch sind alle gleich. Der König kann seine Macht abgeben und sich unter die Bevölkerung mischen. Hierarchien werden abgebaut, das Mächtige ins Lächerliche gezogen. Das Prinzip der verkehrten Welt kann jedoch, in andere Bereiche gebracht, zur Gefahr werden. Politik und Medien können durch die Aneignung dieses Prinzips Gegner ausschalten und diffamieren, das Schlechte als das Gute ausgeben, das Unzumutbare als das Notwendige und das Autoritäre als das Schützende. Solcherlei passiert gerade und ein Akteur wird von Medien und Politik zur Legitimation des "Guten" (und Delegitimation des "Schlechten") hinzugezogen: Die Wissenschaft.

In the online era, it is easy to direct vitriol, without a second thought of the consequences for the recipient, via the depersonalised screen at strangers, friends and particularly those who do not share our opinions or worldview.  Reminiscent of the two minutes hate from George Orwell(Eric Blair)'s 1984, a public pariah is easy to find and shame in the virtual world.

A recent example would be that of Walter Palmer, the Minnesota dentist who found himself at the centre of a public shaming scandal after he illegally shot 'Cecil The Lion', whom his trackers lured from a game sanctuary, on a big game hunting trip in Zimbabwe. 

This unfortunate man found himself taking the brunt of public outrage, both online via social media, and in person with equivalent angry mobs calling for his extradition and baying for his blood.

If you have a social media account, you could not have escaped this 'scandal'. After witnessing this (quite frankly) repetitive and virulent spectacle,  I found myself  deciding to read this book by Jon Ronson, as its title felt quite poignant, in the hope of understanding further the phenomenon of mob mentality and its effects on its unfortunate victims. ...

http://www.whenthenewsstops.org/2015/08/so-youve-been-publicly-shamed-by-jon.html

Cet article est consacré à la « multitude », un terme clé aujourd’hui dans les interprétations opéraïste et populiste de Machiavel. À travers l’étude du lexique des auteurs appartenant à la tradition aristotélicienne et thomiste, cet article met en évidence l’ambiguïté substantielle de ce terme et de ce sujet collectif. L’analyse que Machiavel consacre en particulier à la multitude en tant que composante « désordonnée » du corps politique, révèle des analogies avec la réflexion contemporaine de Pietro Pomponazzi (De incantationibus). Du point de vue de l’histoire des
sciences sociales, l’hypothèse développée est que la découverte de la dimension psychique de la multitude au début du XVIe siècle constitue un tournant épistémique qui permet de repenser la chronologie de la foule comme objet d’étude et de gouvernement.

I have discussed the work of public relations guru Edward Bernays before. I specifically focused on his 1928 book "Propaganda", in which he laid out his initial ideas in the formation of public attitudes, facilitated by a technocratic elite of manipulation experts. It was in this work that Bernays coined the term "public relations", which drove the perception of his profession away from the negative connotations of the word "propaganda", and its associations with the German effort in the First World War.

He laid out the complex and overlapping relationship between psychology, democracy and corporations, in the vein of a manifesto.

His earlier work of 1923, "Crystallizing Public Opinion", was an attempt to give the field of public relations a more scientific credence. The first word of the title could be associated with a process usually affiliated with chemistry and the older, more arcane art of alchemy.  It is in this mystical style that Bernays engaged in his treatise.

The publication of the book was preceded by Walter Lippman's heavy tome of 1922, "Public Opinion", released the year before. Bernays and Lippmann served together on the U.S. Committee on Public Information.  Bernays is reported in Stuart Evan's introduction to have wanted to condense and refine Lippman's criticism of functional democracy more comprehensively, and in a more condensed format fit for wider public consumption.

Bernays' work appears to have taken the work of Gustave Le Bon as a source of inspiration, and while many other writers and thinkers are referenced throughout the book, sadly there is no attribution or citing of Le Bon's work on mass psychology.

Bernays' prowess as a social engineer is now well known since his death in 1995, largely thanks to popular exposure of his work in Adam Curtis' four part documentary series of 2002 "The Century Of Self". This notoriety was not always so. It was his hidden hand that was behind putting public spin on such events as a coup in Guatemala in 1954, at the behest of the United Fruit Company, as well as his infamous "torches of freedom" publicity stunt of 1929, normalising the social acceptance of women smokers at the behest of the American Tobacco Company. He also played a huge part in popularising the work of his double uncle Sigmund Freud on the North American continent, selling the ideas of Freudian psychoanalysis like a brand. It was not until a time towards the end of his life when the American public became aware of his influence on shaping many aspects of their lives, and even today he is not exactly a household name. One might say that this is the first rule of a good publicist though; the public should be aware of your client or product, not the person with all the power who is selling the idea to you from behind the scenes.

Bernays and his techniques of crystallizing public opinion have now become the embodiment of a system of governance that prescribes its sanctioned reality onto the mass mind. At no point in history has this idea become more pronounced or relevant than now. ...

http://www.whenthenewsstops.org/2017/01/crystallizing-public-opinion-by-edward.html

Gustav Le Bon's key 1895 text on mass psychology has long been cited as an important work in terms of shaping sociology in the early twentieth century.  His thesis has contributed to studies of the effects of media on public opinion, and in helping to shape the attitudes of public relations gurus such as Freud's nephew Edward Bernays.

Whilst the Le Bon's study is mostly disparaging of "psychological crowds", and the ease with which they can be apparently motivated by simplistic images, maxims and concepts, it cannot escape the readers notice that his observations are largely based on generalisations themselves.  The lack of empirical data to back up his assertions, however compelling, leads to the assumption that "The Crowd" is largely a book designed for consumption by the very thing it criticises, the popular masses.

Even with this paradox in mind, the book still provides some cohesive insight into the psychology of populism and mass appeal, arguably a major driver of society that is still so very prevalent today. The difficulty of attaining empirical data on the unconscious workings of large groupings of people is a major factor to bear in mind, and a consideration to concede to when criticising Le Bon's methodology.

"The substitution of the unconscious actions of crowds for the conscious activity of individuals is one of the principal characteristics of the present age."

The author's intention could be theorised as one of populist appeal, hence the generalised aspects of his observation, or an attempt at a form of autonomous warning, attesting to the dangers of allowing oneself and one's rationality to be drawn into the numbing effects of the horde. To either of these considerations I cannot give a definitive answer beyond the realm of speculation.  On the note of speculation, upon reading of this book, one can certainly reach a tentative conclusion that is through the mass permeation of the speculative, that pack mentality within a crowd rapidly spreads.

http://www.whenthenewsstops.org/2017/01/the-crowd-study-of-popular-mind-by.html

There are innumerable slanders against Joseph Stalin, the Soviet leader, under whose leadership Soviet Union achieved unparalleled industrial, economic, scientific, and technological development in very short historical time, and was able to defeat the largest and most advanced military invasion of Nazi Germany. Western capitalists and imperialists, and countless millions of brainwashed and disinformed sheeple under their economic, political, and mass psychological control, hate him even more than they hate Marx or Lenin, because of his great practical accomplishments, like the ones cited above. However, none of the slanders comes even close to the absurdity of the following episode attributed to him.

“Stalin once ripped all the feathers off a live chicken as a lesson to his followers. He then set the chicken on the floor a short distance away. The chicken was bloodied and suffering immensely, yet, when Stalin began to toss bits of wheat toward the chicken it followed him around. He said to his followers “This is how you govern stupid people, they will follow you no matter how much pain you cause them, as long as you throw them a little worthless treat once in a while”.

There is absolutely no evidence or proof of that story. Stalin died in 1953. This story was fabricated by an anti-Stalinist Soviet/Kyrgyz author Chingiz Aitmatov in the mid-1980s, when socialism was being massively betrayed in the Soviet union and anti-Stalinism was being promoted officially. By his own admission, Chingiz Aitmatov was mixing fantasies, myths, and facts in his writings. There is no other source for this story.

A new edition of Political Ponerology, by Andrew M. Łobaczewski, edited by Harrison Koehli, is now available on Amazon. This strange and provocative book argues that totalitarianism is the result of the extension of psychopathology from a group of psychopaths to the entire body politic, including its political and economic systems. Political Ponerology is essential reading for concerned thinkers and all sufferers of past and present totalitarianism. It is especially crucial today, when totalitarianism has once again emerged, this time in the West, where it is affecting nearly every aspect of life, including especially the life of the mind. When I first encountered Political Ponerology, I had been struggling to understand just how totalitarian leftism had effectively taken over the United States of America. Ever since my encounters with the rabid social justice warriors as a professor at New York University--recounted in my book Springtime for Snowflakes--I began to note, with no little alarm, the totalitarian character of the contemporary Left. Then the emergence of "woke" ideology and its metastasis from academia into the entire social body set me on a mission to understand the rise of totalitarianism-because I believed, and still do, that "wokism" is totalitarian. Far from being "liberal" in the classical sense, woke ideology is akin to the Jacobinism that fueled the communist revolutions in Russia, China, and elsewhere. It aims to tear down the established order in its entirety, and to remake the world in its image of utopia.

Written in French exile, this text by Siegfried Kracauer from December 1936 outlines a research project that the German-Jewish intellectual undertook with funding from the Institute for Social Research. The work outlined here would be a study of totalitarian propaganda in Germany and Italy through sustained comparison with communist and democratic countries, especially the Soviet Union and the United States. Appearing in English translation for the first time, this document from Kracauer's estate is crucial for a full understanding of his career as a sociologist, cultural critic, film theorist, and philosopher, demonstrating the global scope of his engagement with cinema, mass culture, and modernity.

I have received xenophobia and ethno-majoritarianism in the same nationalist legacy that ignites solidarities for collective subversion. Here, I explore my experiential heritage of Assamese nationalism via some personal sketches, involving people I have met and grown close to in different walks of life. I employ a psychoanalytical lens to contemplate the symbolic underpinnings of sublime patriotic imageries and therapeutically express the traumatic effects of hating Bangladeshi immigrants. Each section opens with a popular song that was freshly reimagined during the 2019 anti-Citizenship Amendment Act protests. First, I argue that Bangladeshis, as signifiers of death, kill the Assamese subjectivity while staging a cause to become Assamese in the first place. Their presence represents our inability to recoup Assam’s many losses, inducing melancholic helplessness in the ethnos. Second, I illustrate how middle-class households internalise certain immigrants as domestic helps, appropriating their emotional and material labour in private to claim hegemony in public politics. Third, I demonstrate why Assam is doomed to extinguish its revolutions before they happen. Our nationalism is stuck in a pre-oedipal mess, too infantile to be anything but fearful of whatever seems like a threat to the motherland. Finally, I end on the future anterior that nurses the present with the assurance of uniting with the homeland despite all odds. That our citizenship robs immigrants of theirs, then erecting a mirror showing our own reflections as impossible citizens, is what I wish to portray here.

Beginning with Freud's treatment of identification as an ambivalent process, we explore identification's polarization between narcissistic idealization and melancholic division. While narcissistic identification can be seen as a strategy adopted by the ego to avoid the educational development of its drives and to maintain itself either in whole or in part in an infantile state, melancholic identification activates a tension between the ego-ideal and the real ego at the expense of the latter. After discussing the ambivalence of identification, we review Freud's discussion of mass formations as group identifications, arguing that the work of facilitating a productive sublimation of the drives cannot be reduced to a strengthening of the artificial masses represented by social institutions such as the church and the educational system. Instead, the difference between mass formations allowing for collective sublimation and those suffering from narcissistic or melancholic blockages must be found in the productive qualities of the mass itself. In closing, we outline a few ways in which we might begin to understand the political contribution of masses to the maturation of human drives.

Die Monographie zeichnet den Entwurf des „Kriegshysterikers“ im Spannungsverhältnis von Massenpsychologie, militärpsychiatrischer Kriegshysterieforschung und Repräsentationstechniken zur Zeit des Ersten Weltkriegs nach. In der ätiologischen Interpretation der massenhaften Erscheinungsweise dieser ‚Krankheit‘ erstellten die deutschen Militärärzte – je nach medizinischer Schulrichtung – unterschiedliche Erklärungsmuster: Diese reichten von psychogenen und hereditären Mustern bis zu der Auffassung, die Symptome seien kriegsbedingt beziehungsweise Zeichen degenerativen Kulturverfalls. Die „Kriegshysterie“ wurde als Zeichen für männliche Schwäche gesehen. Sie stellte für die Militärmediziner und die Militär- und Sanitätsamtführung ein wissenschaftliches und kulturelles Rätsel dar, das die Rationalitäts-, Ordnungs- und Männlichkeitsformen des Heeres in Frage stellte.

Die Studie untersucht militärärztliche Wissensstrategien und -techniken, die zur Diagnostizierung beziehungsweise Fabrikation „kriegshysterischer“ Symptome eingesetzt wurden. Dabei umfasste die Repräsentation der „Kriegshysterie“ zwischen 1914 und 1920 unterschiedliche Medialitäten – einerseits Schriften wie Monographien, Fachzeitschriftenartikel sowie Patientenakten und andererseits visuelle Medien wie die wissenschaftliche Photographie und medizinische Kinematographie. Die Analyse folgt diesen Fragen: Inwiefern prägten die jeweiligen Erkenntnisinstrumente und Medien den Darstellungsmodus „kriegshysterischer“ Krankheitsbilder und deren Deutung? Mithilfe welcher Argumentations- und Visualisierungsstrategien wurde die vermeintlich erfolgreiche Heilung der angeblich effeminierten „Hysteriker“ in Szene gesetzt? Wie wurden die Symptome – etwa in den wissenschaftlichen Filmen – zunächst abgebildet, transformiert und dann wieder abgestellt? Und: Inwiefern blieben sie dennoch widerständig?

Neben zeitgenössischen militärmedizinischen Texten und Photographien fokussiert die Studie auf deutsches, britisches und französisches Filmmaterial von 1917/18, einen nach dem Krieg eingesetzten technischen Hysterie-Heilapparat und ausblickend eine Fernsehserie von 2002. Die Studie verknüpft Fragen aus Militärmedizin, Technik- und Mediengeschichte, Kultur- und Wissenschaftsgeschichte sowie Geschlechterforschung.

ABSTRACT

Most revolutions against capitalism have occurred in ‘backward’ and Third World societies, and they have divided and disarrayed Marxisms in the West. One key reason, this paper argues, is intellectual. When, long ago, Marxists surrendered to the bourgeois challenge to Marx – neoclassical economics – developing, in place of Marx’s critical political economy, a ‘Marxist economics’, they lost touch with Marx’s analysis of capitalism as contradictory value production. That analysis could illuminate how capitalism’s contradictions drive its imperialist expansionism and how and why resistance to it must, equally necessarily, take national forms. As a result, major currents of Marxism in the West either have paid attention to imperialism and anti-imperialist resistance but without Marx’s analysis of capitalism as contradictory value production or have insisted that their (mistaken) conception of Marx’s analysis implies that capitalism has no necessary connection with imperialism. Neither tradition can actually develop Marxism to comprehend the actual historical record of revolutions since Marx’s time. Neither can inform new mobilisations against capitalism, whether in or outside its homelands. It is high time we return to Marx’s analysis of capitalism as value production and develop it.

Comment by Fazal Rahman

In this article, Ms. Radhika Desai, an academic at the University of Manitoba in Canada, has tried to analyze the situation of Marxism, capitalism, and imperialism in the West and Third World countries, mostly from theoretical perspectives. Her critical assessments of some of the positions of some influential Marxist scholars, like Paul Sweezy, Paul Baran, and Earnest Mandel, etc., point out their consistency as well as conflicts with Marx’s political economy. However, many Marxists had already done that in more detail and depth. She claims that Western Marxists have deviated from Marx’s theory of value and have linked with neoclassical economics, which has led to the demise of the potentials for socialist revolutions. She also claims that they have disconnected capitalism from imperialism, which also has led to that situation. Both these claims are not true. She has selected some positions of a few Western Marxists to support her claims, but excluded many others that contradict them, for example impeccable Marxist writings of Michael Parenti, Victor Perlo, and James Petras. Numerous American and other Western Marxist writers fully understand and support Marx’s theory of value, and have built their politico-economic analyses on that basis. They also have not disconnected capitalism from imperialism and updated the various contemporary phenomena of imperialism on the basis of Lenin’s formulation of imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism. Ms. Desai’s article is academically scholarly, but has great factual and logical flaws, like these. She seems to be nitpicking and hair-splitting, as well as greatly exaggerating the importance of her proposed solutions to the problems of weaknesses of the left and Marxists in the West, as well as their alleged flaws. The real causes of such great problems in the West are entirely different than Ms. Desai’s theoretical hair-splitting and nitpicking in this article. These are both of subjective and objective nature, for example incredibly effective brainwashing, dumbing, and numbing of the overwhelming majorities of the population-including the working classes-; creation of capitalist and imperialist forms of human nature, under centuries of developing and developed capitalism and imperialism; ignorance of and disinformation about socialism, capitalism, and imperialism, and absence of class consciousness; weakening and decadence of mass character structure; ever-increasing domination of money and capital over the mass mental apparatus; reduction and elimination of critical thinking in the mass mental apparatus; disunity and widespread eclecticism in the leftists and Marxists, whose socialism-oriented ideology has contradictions with their mass psychology, which, under the political economy and culture of capitalism and imperialism, contains variable forms and degrees of capitalism and imperialism; immense economic, military, intelligence, police, political, judicial, and cultural powers of the ruling capitalist and imperialist classes, which, in spite of internal divisions and conflicts, are very class conscious and united against any threats to the system of their politico-economic domination and powers.

End of comment

The current debate on shared or collective emotions has seen a rediscovery of Max Scheler. In this debate, Scheler's work is mostly read independent from its historic context. In particular, the influence of crowd psychology on Scheler's thought has not been taken into consideration, despite Scheler's explicit references to Le Bon's (1895) The Crowd. In this paper, I show that Scheler's understanding of emotional contagion is deeply indebted to Le Bon's mass psychology. Against this background, I critically discuss Scheler's distinction of emotional contagion (Gefühlsansteckung) and feeling-with-one-another (Miteinanderfühlen). This leads to the conclusion that this distinction, at least in the formulation provided by Scheler, hinders rather than enhances research on emotional sharing.

This article explores the influence of psychological language and discourses on the contemporary view of nationalism, an issue that has only begun to be studied in recent years (García-García, 2013; Sluga, 2006). On this occasion, the author focuses on two currents or schools that contributed decisively to the new view of nationalism after the Great War: first, degenerationist medicine and psychiatry, highly accepted in the European social and political debate since the late 19th century; second, and no less penetrating, the crowd or mass psychology of Taine, Tarde, Sighele, and, above all, Gustave Le Bon. After the Great War, as we shall see, nationalism was often represented as a form of degeneration, or a barbarous and cruel regression to a prior stage of development, embodied by the masses. This discourse and rhetoric was to condition the area of study for generations. In fact, the voices of medicine, psychiatry and mass psychology have not disappeared from the debate and continue to directly and indirectly influence the academic and popular comprehension of nationalism

Η παρούσα εργασία ασχολήθηκε με τη χρήση της αφίσας ως μέσο άσκησης προπαγάνδας στην πολιτική ιδεολογία του 20ου αιώνα στην Ευρώπη και τις Η.Π.Α. Αρχικά επιχειρήθηκε μια σύντομη ιστορική προσέγγιση στις συνθήκες δημιουργίας της αφίσας με αναφορές στους πρώτους σχεδιαστές καθώς και στη μετεξέλιξή της από διαφημιστικό σε προπαγανδιστικό εργαλείο. Στη συνέχεια η προσέγγιση εστίασε όχι στα στιλιστικά χαρακτηριστικά των αφισών αλλά σε μια προσπάθειας ερμηνείας της επιτυχημένης διαδικασίας πρόσληψης του προπαγανδιστικού μηνύματος. Για τον λόγο αυτό επιλέχθηκε η αποσαφήνιση όρων όπως η επικοινωνία, η ιδεολογία, η προπαγάνδα, το συλλογικό ασυνείδητο και η ψυχολογία της μάζας, καθώς και η εφαρμογή τους στο μοντέλο επικοινωνίας, υπογραμμίζοντας τη σημασία και το ρόλο της αφίσας σ’ αυτή τη διαδικασία. Μια σύντομη ανασκόπηση βασικών ιστορικών φαινομένων του 20ου αιώνα με αναγωγή στην συνύπαρξη της πολιτικής ιδεολογίας και της αφίσας επιβεβαιώνει τους παραπάνω ισχυρισμούς που συνοψίζονται περιληπτικά και στο κεφάλαιο των συμπερασμάτων. Τέλος παρατίθεται η βιβλιογραφία καθώς και ο κατάλογος των εικόνων που συνοδεύουν το κείμενο.         

Λέξει κλειδιά: λιθογραφία, αφίσα, προπαγάνδα, ιδεολογία, επικοινωνία, συλλογικό ασυνείδητο, ψυχολογία της μάζας.


Aristotle University Thessaloniki - Coursework - Winter semester 2021

This essay examines the concept and the discourse of collective memory in view of interpreting the novel function with which it has been endowed in recent decades and the problematic character of its interpretation. To this end, it focuses on the recent book by Manuel Cruz, "On the Difficulty of Living Together: Memory, Politics, and History", which examines the contemporary functions that collective memory has assumed in recent decades and takes into account interpretations of it elaborated in a number of seminal works that have set the framework for contemporary ways of understanding it. My investigation engages critical analysis of the psychological approach to collective memory that Cruz adopts, which, in interpreting recent public preoccupation with collective memory as an expression of trauma occasioned by the Holocaust and other horrific twentieth-century events, assumes that analogous psychic mechanisms govern forms of remembrance in the public sphere and memory in personal and small-group interaction. By taking into account alternate possibilities of interpretation, suggested above all by the public function of the mass media, I seek to widen the scope of inquiry to scrutinize in a broader perspective the contemporary role of collective memory and its political significance in the public realm.

SAŽETAK: Rad predstavlja svojevrstan osvrt na otuđenost u socijalnom kontekstu života u patološkoj "normalnoj stvarnosti", čijim integralnim pripadnicima afirmirane mainstream grupacije nameću vlastite kriterije normalnosti, primjenom znanstvenog pozitivizma, arbitrarno uspostavlje-nih vrijednosnih sudova i oboružani religioznom, političkom i obrazovnom aparaturom. U tu svrhu možemo tvrditi da se sredstva biraju pomno i pro-računato, a shodno tome, utemeljuju se u institucionaliziranoj i političkoj formi s ciljem generiranja poslušne, produktivne i povodljive zajednice de-subjektiviranih subjekata podložnih kontroli i autodestruktivizmu. Psihoa-naliza predstavlja plodno tlo za refleksiju o psihologiji mase, struktural-noj osnovi i instrumentaciji interpersonalnog povezivanja. Psihoanalitički koncepti koje ću prezentirati namijenjeni su razotkrivanju eksplicitnih teh-nika implicitnih političkih agendi. Budući da su implikacije reakcionarnih masa poduprtih ideološkim zamagljivanjem pogubne u suvremenom svije-tu, konzekventno dovode do gubitka klasne svijesti i angažiraju se u svr-hu kapitaliziranja i ignorantnosti stanovništva. Nametanje lažnog putom nevidljivih posredujućih instanci vodi apsurdu, stoga je svaka struktura, koja arbitrarno apelira na tzv. etablirane smjernice ponašanja, djelova-nja i bivanja, ipso facto fatalna jer nije u mogućnosti racionalizirati svoje namjere i prisilno korigira one izvan poretka, ne verificirajući kredibilitet uvjerenja niti kada je poredak izvan pravca. Budući da se filozofija na-lazi izvan problema na koji se referira, kritičkim razmišljanjem možemo modificirati dosadašnje kriterije da bismo uvidjeli opasnost adaptiranja poremećenom društvu.

Wer wäre so naiv, zu glauben, dass sich die Gesamtheit der Vergangenheit von Generation zu Generation erhält? Dass eine Art vererblicher und erinnernder Mechanik das reproduzieren würde, was in den Augen der Lebenden gewesen ist? Jean Duvignaud, La genèse des passions dans la vie sociale Wenn man sich mit einem Werk wie jenem von Jean Duvignaud auseinandersetzt, ist man zunächst dazu geneigt, das zu identifizieren, was seinen einzigartigen Charakter auszeichnet; jedoch wird man mit der Zeit von der Unermesslichkeit der Aufgabe zurückgehalten. Wie soll man schließlich die Einzigartigkeit eines Werkes wiedergeben, das sich von der Anthropologie bis zur Literatur spannt, wobei es die Theaterkritik durchzieht? Wie kann man folglich zum Essentiellen kommen und sich am besten dem annähern, was dazu in der Lage ist, die unterschiedlichen Register der Schrift von Jean Duvignaud zusammenzustellen? Es gibt darin gewiss eine Beziehung zwischen Theater und Gesellschaft in ihrer Bedeutung von Dualität: zugleich eine literarische Schöpfung, die dazu angetan ist, die großen menschlichen Dramen und Theatralisierungen des sozialen Lebens in Erinnerung zu rufen, aufgefasst als Prozess der Institutionalisierung. Dieser Bereich jedoch bleibt noch zu groß und verlangt eingegrenzt zu werden. Man kann gleichfalls versuchen, in seinen Schriften das zu erschließen, worauf er besonders beharrt; das, was ihm maßgeblich scheint und folglich einige Wiederholungen rechtfertigt. Zum Beispiel kann man annehmen, dass der Anti-Utilitarismus von Jean * Corbin Stéphane, Représentation et création du corps social chez Jean Duvignaud: Variations sur une citation de Marcel Mauss, in: Anamnèse 2014-Nr. 9/Mana Hors-Série: Jean Duvignaud, S. 59-77.

From a Mass Psychology perspective, bear markets are nothing but buying opportunities as they will spawn the next bull market.  When you hear these nutcases posing as experts stating that the financial world is going to collapse, ignore the noise and focus on the facts. In almost every instance, these chaps are only predicting their demise.  History indicates that markets trend upwards for much longer periods then they trend downwards.  Additionally had an investor purchased top rated companies when the masses were dumping their stock during the so-called crash phase, they would have made a fortune over the years. To be fair one does not jump in as soon as the masses start to sell or buy as soon as the masses turn bullish.

Tesi di fondo del libro che il lettore ha tra le mani è che: a) il politico coincide con la costruzione del popolo, costruzione che consiste nel fissarne i confini e nell’identificarli a un nome, ‘punto nodale’ di una catena di domande insoddisfatte; b) non ha più senso allora chiedersi se un certo movimento politico sia o non sia populistico, poiché il politico è il populismo. Ciò significa che la politica – a dispetto di quanto noi oggi tendiamo a pensare – è una faccenda di capi, di leader, di prìncipi.

(Dall’Introduzione di Davide Tarizzo)

Most revolutions against capitalism have occurred in ‘backward’ and Third World societies, and they have divided and disarrayed Marxisms in the West. One key reason, this paper argues, is intellectual. When, long ago, Marxists surrendered to the bourgeois challenge to Marx – neoclassical economics – developing, in place of Marx’s critical political economy, a ‘Marxist economics’, they lost touch with Marx’s analysis of capitalism as contradictory value production. That analysis could illuminate how capitalism’s contradictions drive its imperialist expansionism and how and why resistance to it must, equally necessarily, take national forms. As a result, major currents of Marxism in the West either have paid attention to imperialism and anti-imperialist resistance but without Marx’s analysis of capitalism as contradictory value production or have insisted that their (mistaken) conception of Marx’s analysis implies that capitalism has no necessary connection with imperialism. Neither tradition can actually develop Marxism to comprehend the actual historical record of revolutions since Marx’s time. Neither can inform new mobilisations against capitalism, whether in or outside its homelands. It is high time we return to Marx’s analysis of capitalism as value production and develop it.

Ao levar em conta a sua importância tanto metapsicológica quanto social, este artigo traça um itinerário das noções de narcisismo e melancolia no escopo de "Psicologia das Massas e Análise do Eu". Neste sentido, ao promover uma reconstituição do caminho que se inicia em "Introdução ao Narcisismo" e "Luto e Melancolia" até a reaparição desses conceitos no texto sobre a psicologia das massas, pretende lançar luz sobre os processos de idealização, identificação e introjeção que, de acordo com Freud, ladrilham uma continuidade entre sujeito e sociedade. Conclusivamente, aponta possíveis conexões entre a cisão do Eu, a servidão melancólica e as tentativas de reaver um narcisismo mediante a imersão nas massas hodiernas.

RESUMO: Originalmente concebida no espaço clínico, a psicanálise não tardou a ser usada também para investigar a sociedade e a cultura, o que trouxe novos desafios e impasses metodológicos. É nesse contexto que o presente trabalho visa compreender, de maneira introdutória, alguns dos aspectos metodológicos concernentes a uma pesquisa psicanalítica de fenômenos socioculturais, privilegiando o referencial teórico da psicanálise freudiana e seu entendimento sobre psicologia das massas. Mediante uma articulação de discussões sobre pesquisa teórica em psicanálise, pesquisa psicanalítica de fenômenos socioculturais e psicologia das massas freudiana, o presente estudo advoga uma indissociabilidade entre epistemologia e metodologia psicanalíticas, o que permite entender a dupla função de conceitos como os de transferência, elaboração e identificação para o ofício do pesquisador em psicanálise. Em termos conclusivos, o estudo argumenta que a psicologia das massas freudiana é um importante referencial teórico e metodológico para pesquisas correntes e vindouras, por apontar uma relação de continuidade e tensão entre o individual e o social, construindo um espectro onde o pesquisador não pode se eximir da relação direta e implicada com seu objeto de pesquisa, dando voz e vez a ele. Palavras-chave: pesquisa em psicanálise; pesquisa teórica em psicanálise; psicologia das massas. ABSTRACT: Originally conceived as a clinical technique, psychoanalysis was soon applied to social and cultural research, which brought new challenges and methodological dillemas. Thus, the present work aims to understand, within the limits of an article, some of the methodological aspects concerning a psychoanalytic research of sociocultural phenomena, privileging the theoretical reference of Freudian psychoanalysis and its particular comprehension of mass psychology. Through the articulation of discussions on theoretical research in psychoanalysis, psychoanalytic research on sociocultural phenomena and the freudian mass psychology, this study advocates an inseparability between psychoanalytic epistemology and methodology, which allows the comprehension of the dual function of concepts such as transference, elaboration and identification for the responsibilities of the researcher in psychoanalysis. In conclusive terms, the study claims that Freudian mass psychology is an important theoretical and methodological reference for current and future research, since it points to a continuity and tension-fueled relation between the individual and the social, building a spectrum where the researcher cannot decline the direct and implied relationship with its research object.

Racist and other forms of police brutality in the US are mostly being treated and responded to in fragmentation and abstraction from their structural causal connections to overall social, cultural, mass psychological, and politico-economic reality, which constitutes a fundamental intellectual and conceptual error.  In reality, violent police is a product of a violent society, which, in its turn, is a product of a violent politico-economic system, that is, the extremist militarist capitalism and imperialism.  Externally, this is manifested in constant wars and mass slaughters of people in the weaker Third World countries that are no match for the military and economic superpower. Internally, this violence is exercised in extremist forms against the blacks, who have been, historically, the victims of the worst forms of the most brutal injustices and exploitation, in prolonged slavery, and later subjected to numerous other forms of discrimination and inequality.  Other racial and other minorities also have suffered, and continue to suffer, the disastrous consequences of discriminatory injustices and inequalities.  Both external and internal violences have a large component of racism and are transformed into extremist forms against the others.  These and innumerable other disastrous problems are ultimately rooted in their essence, that is, the political economy of extremist forms of advanced technocratic capitalism and imperialism.  Single issue approaches to the solutions of these problems are doomed to failure.  These can, at best, produce minor cosmetic reforms.  For effective comprehensive solutions, these problems need to be understood and analyzed in their mutual relations and interactions, as well as to their essence.  No radical changes are possible without radical transformation of the essence, as, if the essence remains the same, the appearance will also remain the same, only assuming different forms.  Even though, theoretically and dialectically, radical transformations in most or all the appearances can bring about radical changes in the essence, in practical terms, in the areas of social reality, this is next to impossible.  Only the social revolutions can bring about radical changes in the essence, which are then manifested in radical changes in the appearances and forms.

The subject of the article is a mass psychology of B.P. Vysheslavtsev. This is a socio-philosophical conception, which created by Vysheslavtsev through the synthesizing of German classical philosophy, neo-Kantianism, Russian religious philosophy and analytical psychology. He developed the mass psychology in close collaboration with C.G. Jung by his direct order. The mass psychology, despite the heterogeneity of its foundations, became an organic continuation of analytical psychology. Moreover, there is reason to suppose that Vysheslavtsev's socio-philosophical and religious ideas influenced all of Jung’s later work. The main method used was a comparative analysis of the ideas of Vysheslavtsev and Jung, as well as a critical interpretation of the original sources, including unpublished archival materials — letters and manuscripts. The novelty lies in the fact that previously the mass psychology of Vysheslavtsev eluded the attention of researchers. This is primarily due to the inaccessibility of sources on this issue, since some of them are either not published and stored in archives, including the Bakhmeteff Archive (Columbia University in the City of New York) and C.G. Jung Papers Collection (ETH Zurich University Archive), or was published in rare foreign journals and not translated into Russian. At the same time, without these sources it is difficult to understand not only the evolution of Vysheslavtsev’s views, but also the logic and reasons for the development of Jung’s ideas from the 1940s to his death. Thus, this article is intended to partially replenish these gaps in the history of Russian and European philosophy and psychology.

Предметом исследования данной статьи является созданная на основе синтеза немецкой классической философии, неокантианства, русской религиозной философии и аналитической психологии социально-философская концепция Б.П. Вышеславцева, названная им "массовая психология". Данная концепция разрабатывалась в тесном взаимодействии с К.Г. Юнгом, в том числе, по его непосредственному заказу. Массовая психология Вышеславцева, несмотря на разнородность её основ, стала органичным продолжением аналитической психологии. Более того, есть основания полагать, что социально-философские и религиозные идеи Вышеславцева оказали влияние на всё позднее творчество Юнга. В качестве основного метода использовался компаративный анализ идей Вышеславцева и Юнга, а также критическая интерпретация первоисточников, включая неопубликованные архивные материалы - письма и рукописи. Новизна заключается в том, что ранее массовая психология Вышеславцева ускользала от внимания исследователей. Обусловлено это, в первую очередь, труднодоступностью источников по данной проблеме, так как часть из них либо не опубликована и хранится в архивах, в том числе в Бахметьевском архиве Колумбийского университета (Нью-Йорк) и Архиве Юнга (Цюрих), либо была опубликована в редких иностранных изданиях и не переведена на русский язык. Вместе с тем, без данных источников трудно понять не только эволюцию взглядов Вышеславцева, итогом которой стал труд "Кризис индустриальной культуры", но также логику и причины развития представлений Юнга начиная с 1940-х годов и заканчивая его смертью. Тем самым, данная статья призвана отчасти восполнить указанные лакуны в истории русской и европейской философии и психологии.