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Carl Jung believed the greatest threat to civilization is not famine, plague, or earthquakes — it is our inability to face the forces inside our own minds. The most dangerous form of that failure, this lecture from Academy of Ideas argues, is mass psychosis: a whole society losing touch with reality at once. From the witch hunts of early Europe to twentieth-century totalitarianism, it shows that epidemics of madness are real — and that those caught inside them cannot see their own delusion. Drawing on Jung, Arieti, and Meerloo, it explains how a flood of fear and a weak sense of self can drive an entire people into a shared nightmare. Dostoevsky’s warning runs through it all: it was not you who ate the idea — it was the idea that ate you.
Full Video Transcript
All one’s neighbors are in the grip of some uncontrolled and uncontrollable fear.
In lunatic asylums, it is a well-known fact that patients are far more dangerous when suffering from fear than when moved by rage or hatred.
According to the psychologist Carl Jung, the greatest threat to civilization lies not with the forces of nature nor with any physical disease,
but with our inability to deal with the forces of our own psyche.
we are our own worst enemies or as the latin proverb puts it man is a wolf to man in civilization
in transition jung states that this proverb is a sad yet eternal truism and our wolf-like
tendencies come most prominently into play at those times of history when mental illness
becomes the norm rather than the exception in a society a situation which jung termed a psychic
epidemic indeed it is becoming ever more obvious he writes that it is not famine not earthquakes
not microbes not cancer but man himself who is man’s greatest danger to man for the simple reason
that there is no adequate protection against psychic epidemics which are infinitely more
devastating than the worst of natural catastrophes in this video we are going to explore the most
dangerous of all psychic epidemics, the mass psychosis. A mass psychosis is an epidemic of
madness, and it occurs when a large portion of society loses touch with reality and descends
into delusions. Such a phenomenon is not a thing of fiction. Two examples of mass psychoses are
the American and European witch hunts of the 16th and 17th centuries, and the rise of totalitarianism
in the 20th century. During the witch hunts, thousands of individuals, mostly women, were
killed not for any crimes they committed, but because they became the scapegoats of societies
gone mad. In some Swiss villages, writes Francis Hill, there were scarcely any women left alive
after the frenzy had finally burned itself out. The totalitarian experiments of the 20th century
are a more recent, and a more deadly, example of a mass psychosis.
In countries such as the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, North Korea, China, and Cambodia,
it was a collective detachment from reality and a descent into delusions and paranoia
that permitted the rise of the all-powerful totalitarian governments that destroyed the
lives of hundreds of millions.
The totalitarian systems of the 20th century represent a kind of collective psychosis,
the medical doctor Joost Meerloo, whether gradually or suddenly, reason and common human decency are
no longer possible in such a system. There is only a pervasive atmosphere of terror and a projection
of the enemy imagined to be in our midst. Thus society turns on itself, urged on by the ruling
authorities. When a mass psychosis occurs, the results are devastating. Jung studied this
phenomenon thoroughly and wrote that the individuals who make up the infected society
become morally and spiritually inferior. They sink unconsciously to an inferior intellectual level.
They become more unreasonable, irresponsible, emotional, erratic, and unreliable. And worst of
all, crimes the individual alone could never stand are freely committed by the group smitten by
madness. What makes matters worse is that those suffering from a mass psychosis are unaware of
what is occurring. For just as an individual gone mad cannot step out of his mind to observe the
errors in his ways, so too there is no Archimedean point from which those living through a mass
psychosis can observe their collective madness. Or as Jung writes concerning the psychic epidemic
that swept through Germany under Hitler’s rule, the phenomenon we have witnessed in Germany was
nothing less than an outbreak of epidemic insanity. No one knew what was happening to him,
least of all the Germans, who allowed themselves to be driven to the slaughterhouse by their
leading psychopaths, like hypnotized sheep. But what gives rise to a mass psychosis?
And what makes a society susceptible to this devastating phenomenon? For an answer,
we must begin at the basics. We must explain what is meant by a psychosis, and what leads
an individual into a state of madness. With this information we can then examine how this process
plays out on a mass scale. A psychosis can be defined as a detachment from reality or the loss
of an adaptive relationship to reality. In place of thoughts and beliefs that conform to the facts
of the world, the psychotic becomes overrun by delusions, which are false beliefs considered
to be true despite the existence of evidence that proves the contrary. Delusion, writes Juiced
Mirlou can be defined as the loss of an independent, verifiable reality, with the consequent relapse
into a more primitive stage of awareness. Delusions can take many forms. Some psychotics
develop delusions of paranoia and believe they are constantly being followed, tracked,
and observed. Others, such as catatonic schizophrenics, develop delusions about their
ability to alter the state of the universe merely with the movement of their body, and so remain
constricted in statue-like poses. But while delusions are false in the sense of not conforming
to the facts of the external world, they are considered true to the psychotic and so influence
how they interact with the world and with other people. Or as Jung writes,
If a man imagined that I was his archenemy and killed me, I should be dead on account of mere
imagination. Imaginary conditions do exist, and they may be just as real and just as harmful or
dangerous as physical conditions. I even believe that psychic disturbances are far more dangerous
than epidemics of physical disease or earthquakes. While a descent into the delusions of a psychosis
has many triggers such as an excessive use of drugs or alcohol, brain injuries or other illnesses,
these physical causes will not concern us here. Our concern is with psychological,
or what are called psychogenic triggers, as these are what usually lead to the mass psychosis.
The most prevalent psychogenic cause of a psychosis is a flood of negative emotions,
such as fear or anxiety, that drives an individual into a state of panic.
When in a state of panic, one naturally seeks relief, as it is too mentally and
physically draining to subsist in this hyper-emotional state for a prolonged period of
time. To escape the fear and anxiety of the panic state, a positive or negative reaction can take
place and the positive reaction takes the following form a greater effort is called forth
writes jung the individual will show more strength and willpower and will try to overcome the
obstacle or the cause of misery through physical intellectual and moral effort if the strength of
one individual is not sufficient he will seek the help of others if such an ultimate attempt
fails or if an individual is too weak from the start to show fight then a negative reaction
takes place. At the extreme, the negative reaction is a psychotic break. A psychotic
break is not a descent into a state of greater disorder, as many believe, but a reordering
of one’s experiential world which blends fact and fiction, or delusions and reality,
in a way that helps end the feelings of panic. Silvano Arrietty, one of the 20th century’s
foremost authorities on schizophrenia, explains the psychogenic steps that lead to madness.
Firstly, there is the phase of panic, when the individual starts to perceive things in
a different way, is frightened on account of it, appears confused, and does not know
how to explain the strange things that are happening.
The next step is what Arrietty calls a phase of psychotic insight, whereby an individual
succeeds in putting things together by devising a pathological way of seeing reality, which
allows him to explain his abnormal experiences.
The phenomenon is called insight because the patient finally sees meaning and relations
in his experiences.
But the insight is psychotic because it is based on delusions, not on adaptive and life-promoting
ways of relating to whatever threats precipitated the panic.
The delusions, in other words, allow the panic-stricken individual to escape from the flood of negative
emotions but at the cost of losing touch with reality.
And for this reason, Arrietty says that a psychotic break can be viewed as an abnormal
way of dealing with an extreme state of anxiety.
The American psychologist Alexander Lowen echoes this sentiment.
Two factors are important in the dynamics of a psychotic break, he writes.
One is an ego that is weak or insecure.
The other factor is a flood of feeling that cannot be integrated by the ego.
When it is understood that a flood of negative emotions, in conjunction with a weak and insecure
sense of self, can trigger a descent into madness, it becomes clear how a mass psychosis
can occur.
A population first needs to be induced into a state of intense fear or anxiety by threats
real, imagined, or fabricated.
And once in a state of panic, the door is open for either the positive or negative reaction
to unfold.
If a society is composed of self-reliant, resilient, and inwardly strong individuals,
a positive reaction can take place.
But if it is composed of mainly weak, insecure, and helpless individuals, a descent into the
delusions of a mass psychosis becomes a real possibility.
Great stress, in other words, can bring out the best in an individual or society at large.
But it can also bring out the worst.
Or as the psychologist Anthony Storr writes about the potential for a mass psychosis,
It is only if we accept the existence of a latent paranoid potential lurking in the recesses
of the normal mind that we can explain the mass delusions which led to the persecution
of witches and the Nazi slaughter of Jews.
Vast numbers of ordinary men and women held beliefs about witches and Jews which, if they
had been expressed by one or two individuals instead of by whole communities, would have
been dismissed as paranoid delusions.
There are extremely primitive, irrational mental forces at work in the minds of all
of us, which are usually overlaid and controlled by reason, but which find overt expression
in the behavior of those whom we call mentally ill, and which also manifest themselves in
the behavior of normal people when under threat or other forms of stress.
In the next video of the series we will explore how certain ideas, or what the Russian author
Fyodor Dostoevsky called demons, can induce a societal wide flood of negative emotions
and therefore pave the way for a mass psychosis.
Ideas, as we will learn, are so powerful that at times they can possess us, consume us,
or even destroy us.
Those who control the flow of information in a society and the ideas we accept as true
or false, exert a great power over the course of civilization.
It was not you who ate the idea, wrote Dostoevsky, but the idea that ate you.
Or as Jung echoes, once upon a time men were possessed by devils, now they are not less
obsessed by ideas.
Source: Academy of Ideas