Controlled Mass Psychosis as a Form of People Management – Psychological Analysis

Controlled Mass Psychosis as a Form of People Management

Mass psychosis is defined as an epidemic of insanity that occurs when a large part of society loses touch with reality and falls into error.
The witch hunt that took place in America and Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries, in which tens of thousands of people, mostly women, were burned at the stake, is a classic example of mass psychosis. The rise of totalitarianism in the 20th century is also an example of mass psychosis.

When a society “goes wild”, the results are always devastating. The people who make up the affected society become morally and spiritually defective, unintelligent, irresponsible, emotional, unstable and unreliable. Worst of all, a psychotic mob will commit atrocities that no single person in the group would normally ever imagine.
The psychogenic steps leading to insanity include the panic phase, where the person is frightened and confused by events they cannot explain, and the psychotic insight phase, where the person explains their abnormal perception of the world by inventing an illogical but magical way of perceiving the world. a vision of reality that eases the panic and gives meaning to the experience.
Menticide is a term that means “mind killing”. It is a way to control the masses by systematically destroying the human spirit and freedom of thought. It is a system by which the ruling elite imposes their delusional worldview on society. Society is set up for mental murder due to the deliberate sowing of fear and social exclusion.

The masses have never hungered for the truth. They turn away from evidence they do not like, preferring to deify misleading information if this information seduces them. Whoever can supply them with illusions easily becomes their master; whoever tries to destroy their illusions always becomes their victim

Gustave Le Bon, a French social psychologist

This is a quote attributed to Gustave Le Bon, a French social psychologist known for his studies of the crowd. His book Crowds: A Study of the Folk Mind 2 delves deeply into the characteristics of human crowds and how, when they gather in groups, people tend to abandon conscious deliberation in favor of the unconscious actions of the crowd. Similarly, the psychologist Carl Jung once stated that

Not hunger, not earthquakes, not microbes, not cancer, but man himself represents the greatest danger to man for the simple reason that there is no adequate protection against psychic epidemics, which are infinitely more destructive than the worst of natural disasters.

What causes mass psychosis?

To understand how you can drive an entire society insane, you must first understand what drives any particular person crazy. With the exception of drug or alcohol abuse and brain injury, psychosis is usually caused by psychogenic factors, that is, influences that originate in the mind.

One of the most common psychogenic factors that can cause psychosis is a flood of negative emotions, such as fear or anxiety, that sends the person into a state of panic. When you are in a panic, the natural inclination is to seek relief. A mentally resilient person can adapt by facing their fear and eventually overcoming it.

Another coping mechanism, the psychotic break, is not chaos, but rather a reordering of the experiential world in such a way as to mix fact and fiction, reality and illusion, in such a way that a sense of control is restored and panic arises. ends. The psychogenic steps leading to insanity can be summarized as follows:

Panic phase – here a person begins to perceive the world around him differently and because of this he gets scared. There is a perceived threat, be it real, fabricated or imagined. Confusion grows as they cannot find a way to rationally explain the strange phenomena going on around them.
The phase of psychotic insight – here a person manages to explain his abnormal perception of the world, inventing an illogical, but magical way of seeing reality. The term “insight” is used because magical thinking allows a person to break out of a panic and find meaning again. However, this insight is psychotic because it is based on delusions.
Just as a psychologically weak and vulnerable person can be driven into madness, large groups of weak and vulnerable people can be driven into madness and magical thinking.

Totalitarianism is a society built on delusions

The modern phenomenon of total centralized state power combined with the destruction of individual human rights: in a total state there are those who are in power, and there are objectified masses, victims.

There are two classes in a totalitarian society: the rulers and the ruled, and both groups undergo a pathological transformation. Rulers are elevated to a godlike status where they can do nothing wrong – a point of view that easily leads to corruption and unethical behavior – while subordinates are turned into dependent subjects, resulting in psychological regression.

Joost Meerloo, author of Mind Stealing, compares the reactions of citizens living in totalitarian states to those of schizophrenics. Both rulers and subordinates get sick. Both live in a delusional fog, as the whole society and its rules are supported by delusional thinking.

Only deceived people regress to a childlike state of complete submission, and only a deceived ruling class will believe that they have the knowledge and wisdom to control society from the top down. And only a delusional person will believe that a power-hungry elite ruling a psychically regressive society will lead to anything but mass suffering and financial ruin.

The mass psychosis that is called totalitarianism begins within the ruling class, because people in this class are easily carried away by illusions that increase their power. And there is no delusion greater than the delusion that they can and must – moreover, they are destined – to control and dominate everyone else.

Whether totalitarian thinking takes the form of fascism or technocracy, the ruling elite, succumbing to their own megalomaniacs, then begin to indoctrinate the masses with their own twisted worldview. All that is needed to reorganize society is the manipulation of collective feelings.

Isolation is a means of causing mass psychosis

Aside from the onslaught of fear-mongering and false propaganda, isolation is the main tool for inciting psychosis. When you are deprived of regular social interactions and discussions, you become more prone to delusions for a number of reasons:

1. You lose contact with the corrective forces of positive examples, role models of rational thought and behavior. Not everyone is deceived by the brainwashing efforts of the ruling elite, and these people can help others free themselves from their delusions. When you are in isolation, the power of these people drops a lot.
2. Like animals, human behavior is much easier to manipulate when a person is in isolation. Animal studies have shown that conditioned reflexes are most easily developed in a quiet, secluded laboratory with a minimum of stimuli to distract from indoctrination.

If you want to tame a wild animal, you must isolate the animal and patiently repeat a certain stimulus until the desired response is received. In the same way, people can be controlled. Lonely, bewildered and battered by waves of terror, a society isolated from each other falls into madness as rational thinking is erased and replaced by magical thinking.

When a society is firmly gripped by mass psychosis, totalitarians can take the last decisive step: they can offer a way out; return to order. The price is your freedom. You must give the rulers control over all aspects of your life, because if they are not given full control, they will not be able to create the order that everyone is craving.

However, this order is pathological, devoid of any humanity. It eliminates the spontaneity that brings joy and creativity to life, requiring strict submission and blind obedience.

And despite the promise of security, a totalitarian society is inherently fearful. It was built on fear and supported by it. Thus, giving up freedom for security and a sense of order will only lead to more of the same fear and anxiety that allowed the totalitarians to gain control in the first place.

How to reverse mass psychosis?

Can totalitarianism be prevented? And can the effects of mass psychosis be reversed? Yes, but just as the mental approach is multifaceted, the solution must be the same. To help bring sanity back to a crazy world, you first need to focus on yourself and live in a way that inspires others to follow. As Jung noted:

“It is not for nothing that our age calls out to a redeeming personality, to one who can free himself from the clutches of collective psychosis and save at least his own soul, who kindles a beacon of hope for others, proclaiming that there is at least one person who has managed to free himself from fatal identity with the group psyche.”

Then you need to share and spread the truth – the counter-narrative of the propaganda – as far and wide as possible. Since the truth is always stronger than lies, the success of propaganda depends on the censorship of the truth. Another tactic is to use humor and ridicule to delegitimize the ruling elite.

The strategy proposed by Václav Havel, a political dissident who became president of Czechoslovakia, is called “parallel structures.” A parallel structure is any business, organization, technology, movement or creative pursuit that fits into a totalitarian society but is morally outside of it.

Once enough parallel structures are created, a parallel culture is born that functions as a sanctuary of sanity in a totalitarian world. Havel explains this strategy in his book The Power of the Powerless.

Last but not least, to prevent sinking into totalitarian madness, sensible and rational action must be taken by as many people as possible. The totalitarian elite does not sit back, idly, hoping and wanting to increase their power and control. No. They are actively taking steps to strengthen their position. To defend against them, the would-be ruled must be just as active and determined in their retaliatory assault on freedom.

All of this can be extremely challenging as the people around you succumb to collective psychosis. But as Thomas Paine once said:

“Tyranny is like hell, it is not easy to conquer, but we have a consolation: the harder the struggle, the more glorious the triumph”