Terror and collective neurosis

mlw

Active Member
Jul 22, 2010
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Stockholm, Sweden
What psychodynamic causes lie behind the recent Norwegian terror attack? I contend that the Western world suffers from a collective neurosis, and this attack represents a psychotic episode, as it were. All late manifestations of culture suffer from some form of pathology. When the Westerners arrived in Tahiti, the inhabitants were completely hedged in by taboo restrictions. The whole population suffered from a collective compulsive neurosis. The Christian faith came as a great relief for them. This is typical for primitive civilization. The Aztec, for instance, were all bloodthirsty madmen.

All civilizations end up neurotic. King Arthur suffers because the Kingdom is ailing. In the fairytale this is always the rule. The king is old, shrivelled-up, and ill, or he is married to a mad queen. The kingdom can only be made whole again if the king is replaced by a young king, representing a new guiding idea. It is the same rule today. The king is old and sick, and the "ideal citizens" who are happy with the situation, are really quite mad. They are all chockingly neurotic, and they are possessed by very weird conscious ideas, today characterized by relativism and welfarism.

The question remains why our civilization suffers from this particular "matriarchal" mental disease. Marie-Louise von Franz argues that the crux of Western consciousness is the total disregard of the dark side of the feminine principle, the darkness of the Earth-Mother, in fairytales portrayed as the witch Baba Yaga, for instance. The repression of dark nature creates an inability to accept suffering as an integral part of life, and it also makes us deny the inner darkness of our own nature. She says:

"This pronounced lack of a feminine personification of the unconscious has therefore been compensated by the radical materialism which has gradually taken hold of the Christian tradition. One could say that practically no religion began with such a highly one-sided spiritual accent and has landed - if you think of Communism as the end form of Christian theology - in such an absolutely one-sided materialistic aspect. The swing from one to the other is one of the most striking phenomena we know of in the history of religion; it is due to the fact that from the beginning there was an unawareness, an unbalanced attitude towards the problem of the feminine goddess and therefore of matter, because the feminine Godhead in all religions is always projected into and linked up with the concept of matter" (von Franz, Alchemy, 1980, p.212).

I contend that consciousness should not rule supreme, but we must remain in tune with our heart, and with our instincts. For instance, we mustn't take upon our shoulders the moral burden of God, assuming responsibility for all the brown-skinned people in the world. In fact, it is better to remain unconscious of their sufferings than to do everything to sustain them, following UN:s "Humanity Maximization Principle", which leads to nothing good. People today tend to program themselves with the abstract values of consciousness and forget to listen to their heart. They think they are empathic, but they are only slavishly following an ideological algorithm programmed into their head. It has nothing to do with empathy.

There is another form of consciousness, a "dark" consciousness, which leads us to withdraw into a smaller world. To care for our cat - that's empathic - because it is in tune with instinct. It is a lesson for psychoanalysis to learn, that not every problem can be solved by realization, realization, and yet more realization. Sometimes repression provides the solution, to become comfortably unconscious. The following is the mantra of our age: science, science, and yet more science - technology, technology, and yet more technology - welfare, welfare, and yet more welfare - medicine, medicine, and yet more medicine - economic expansion, economic expansion, and yet more economic expansion - globalization, globalization, and yet more globalization - multiculturalism, multiculturalism, and yet more multiculturalism. The collective identification with the conscious values has now reached such proportions that the Western civilization can be said to suffer from neurosis. This explains the sudden outbreak of psychotic destructivity, as in the recent Norwegian mass-murder (July 22, 2011, Oslo and Utöya). Norway is at the pinnacle of Western civilization, its richest and most beautiful country. It is symptomatic that the devil (as the revolting unconscious) should strike back and have his revenge at this very place. He made his deadly counterattack at a social democratic political camp where youths were busy programming themselves with the above mantra. Although I condemn this horrible crime, I am also saying that it is merely symptomatic.

This form of murderous destructivity is well-known in historical culture. Human sacrifice has been an institution in cultures all over the globe, and still occurs in some areas. In Scandinavia we discontinued this cultic practice only 1,000 years ago. In the theology of ancient religion, it is necessary to furnish the gods with lifeblood, so that they, in turn, can contribute to the well-being and continuance of society and culture. It's a giving and taking. So the murderer is affected by an archaic religious concept that has its roots in the unconscious. This tallies with the analysis that his actions can be likened to a psychotic episode. A neurotic culture gives rise to murderous eruptions from the unconscious, in groups or individuals.

Thoughtways that are affected by a revolting unconscious are archaic and have archetypal dimensions. They are always contaminated with unconscious vulgarity and instinctuality, such as aggression. The theme of blood sacrifice is notorious. Accordingly, the perpetrator is also a member of a freemason lodge and entertains notions of himself as a crusader, a Knights Templar.

The problem is that in all these archaic eruptions lies a kernel of truth, but collective consciousness refuses to give heed to the unconscious. The result is only that the unconscious complex becomes even more archaic and aggressive, the more repressed it is. For instance, our instincts tell us that we should promote our own genetic kind and our own culture. All species have such instincts, without which no progress could have occurred. But we program our heads with multicultural dogmas and allow massive immigration of quite alien ethnicities and cultures. If we repress our negative feelings and refuse to discuss the problem, and refrain from grappling with it in civilized terms, then the unconscious will erupt with its archaic "understanding" of the problem. This is what we see in this case.

Mats Winther
 
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The collective neurosis depends on an identification with conscious values (political correctness) to the detriment of natural feelings, the dark aspects of our nature, on lines of von Franz, above. The latter contents become repressed. People who give expression to them are maligned and defamed. An individual who remains identified with the collective (and hence is an ideal citizen, as it were) is neurotic to an equal degree as the societal collective.

The unconscious contains archaic complexes, primitive ideas, that sometimes surface in dreams. We can speak of these as "archetypal", i.e., they are "bigger than life" in some sense. An archetype is an unconscious complex of collective nature, laden with emotion, able to "hypnotize" the masses, as in collective crazes, such as the Nazi rallies in the thirties. When society, through the ruling ideology, represses the unconscious, the result is that dangerous archetypes can constellate. This can occur when contents belonging to our human nature are repressed and contained within the unconscious, and not allowed room to live. These contents contain energy which will activate (energize) the archetype, and the subject starts fantazising about knights in armour fighting the Islamic hordes, etc. This typically occurs, for instance, if the ruling ideology represses people's feelings for their nation and ethnicity.

We have to listen to the unconscious and our dark nature, even though the content is disagreable according to the ruling conscious mores. This is called "integration of the unconscious" and is essential to mental health as it allows us to remain relatively integrated and whole as human beings. During the Victorian era women weren't expected to have any sexual feelings, according to the ruling ideal. They repressed their sexuality to the extent that it erupted in violent neurosis, called hysteria. Whole collectives of people become neurotic when they aren't allowed to have their natural feelings.

Mats Winther
http://home7.swipnet.se/~w-73784/
 
I wrote all this yesterday. It is immensely important to understand these mechanisms, if you don't want more school shootings in the US. Stop dismissing people who make an effort to understand things.
/Mats
 
Albert Ellis, founder of Gestalt Therapy, theorized that all individuals are nuerotic and the only differences are related to the degree of the nuerosis. If that is accepted as a given, then nuerosis is part and parcel of the human condition. The danger occurs in individuals when an extreme nuerotic condition morphs into psychosis which then results in homicidal behavior.
It is arguable whether or not a psychotic condition can be mapped onto a collective. Those who believe it can, point to The Third Reich as a prime example.
 
This form of murderous destructivity is well-known in historical culture. Human sacrifice has been an institution in cultures all over the globe, and still occurs in some areas. In Scandinavia we discontinued this cultic practice only 1,000 years ago. In the theology of ancient religion, it is necessary to furnish the gods with lifeblood, so that they, in turn, can contribute to the well-being and continuance of society and culture. It's a giving and taking. So the murderer is affected by an archaic religious concept that has its roots in the unconscious. This tallies with the analysis that his actions can be likened to a psychotic episode. A neurotic culture gives rise to murderous eruptions from the unconscious, in groups or individuals..........................

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What psychodynamic causes lie behind the recent Norwegian terror attack?
I contend that the Western world suffers from a collective neurosis,

I am not working in the field of psychology or sociology or anything like that, but I am working on the subject since 1991, when I discovered, that I am affected by a some sort of a collective disorder of the civilized society.
I discovered that 3 years after a suicidal crisis, when I felt much better than ever in my 43 years of life before.
The trigger for the suicidal crisis was the sudden suicide of my youngest brother in Dec. 1987.
In May, 1992, on the "symbolic" date of May 8th, the "Day of Capitulation", also my other brother suicided. And then, after these two suicides, I felt fear, similar thing could happen also to me. So I began to eagerly look for origins of mental disorder and suicide.
Very soon I found books with information to a collective neurosis in the civilized society, but I could not find any institutions working on HEALING this disorder. In 1992 I started a project to inform people / the public about this disorder, which I called the "Collective Civilization Neurosis" (in German: Kollektive Zivilisations-Neurose) and about the way of natural basic / holistic healing by Self-Development (German: Selbst-Entwicklung).

I had found out very soon, that the Collective Civilization Neurosis is mainly a disorder of the development of consciousness, lack of development of the "higher / true self", which should be done in the age of puberty, in order to develop to a true adult, who can do all things true adults should be abele to do. In particular, overcome fear and not suppress it and not "run away".
Only a true adult is able to maintain good relations to other people and grow up his children ALSO to true adults.

This know-how we civilized people have lost in the process of civilization, which began abt. 10.000 years ago - depending on what we consider as the beginning of "Civilization".


All civilizations end up neurotic. King Arthur suffers because the Kingdom is ailing. In the fairytale this is always the rule. The king is old, shrivelled-up, and ill, or he is married to a mad queen. The kingdom can only be made whole again if the king is replaced by a young king, representing a new guiding idea. It is the same rule today. The king is old and sick, and the "ideal citizens" who are happy with the situation, are really quite mad. They are all chockingly neurotic, and they are possessed by very weird conscious ideas, today characterized by relativism and welfarism.

I am aware of the symbolic contents of fairytales, legends, bible stories and similar ones. But very few people in the civilized society understand those symbols / contents. The dont even see or know, that there is also a "hidden" symbolic meaning in those stories. Only the "higher self" in people can naturally see / understand the - important, helpful - symbolic contents, which also originate in the "higher self", in the "godly consciousness". The mother tongue of the higher self is SYMBOLIC.


Back to the Collective Neurosis:
The problem is, all the people affected in the - western - civilized society are victims of alienation. They are divided from many things which belong to the life of a true adult. And if the affected people would complete their puberty also with the mental / spiritual aspect and would transform from "lower self" / "ego" to their "higher / true self", everything would HEAL.
The higher self IS the healing energy / power. We may call it the power of love or life force energy or the "Christ Consciousness". Its all the same. There ist only the one universal energy in the universe. "consciousness energy".

Potentially, everyone is already "child of God". The "higher self", the godly consciousness, is in the human from the beginning. But in the childhood it does not RULE yet. but the EGO rules. That has to be changed by decision and by really doing in the puberty. In order to become true adults, they must clean their (sub-)consciousness from old suppressions, unify and IDENTIFY with the higher self.

Time runs short:
The 2nd world war or the time 1933-1945 had been called a "Collective Psychosis". And the origin of it was the Collective Civilization Neurosis.
After 1945 the Collective Civilization Neurosis was aware to some people, but this knowledge did not lead to measures of collective healing. As a result, again and furthermore the civilized society suppressed thoughts and feelings, which are ENERGIES, and again a potential for another Collective Psychosis was collected.
Looking at things happen in the civilized society, I see the faster growing danger of a Collective Psychosis.

The big majority of all our politicians, scientists and other "leaders" everywhere CANNOT SEE this development, because it grows in their subconsciousness! They do not understand, what happens. They do not know, what they are doing.

Mankind is facing a very big challenge: To get aware of the Collective Civilization Neurosis, to heal it and to make sure for all future, that it cannot occur again.
 
Indeed, modern people are divided against themselves because of a one-sided self-ideal, too much idealized, conceptual, and programmatic. Instinctual atrophy and the loss of contact with the symbolic realm of the spirit (the unconscious) has dire consequences. It seems you have drawn largely the correct conclusions. My latest article discusses the force of Thanatos, responsible for diverse destructivity, like warfare, but also self-destructivity in human beings. Thanatos is continuing to build up in the collective unconscious. I am fearful of the consequences. My Thanatos article is here:
Thanatos - the death drive

Mats Winther
 
The only way for the world to return to harmony is the enhancement of consciousness by the assimilation of the darkness of human nature, and to begin to understand our collective shadow. By the integration of dark nature, we can do what is good in the long perspective. An all-encompassing goodness, on the other hand, has evil consequences. We must connect with our instinctual nature and our heart. Our good deeds should be rooted in our heart instead of in an ideology that has been programmed into our heads, and which intellectually defines what is good. Such goodness isn't rooted in nature, and therefore has long-term evil consequences.

We must go along with nature. Everything becomes much easier, and things will run smoothly. Always listen to your heart, but don't stop thinking for that matter. Such thinking permeates Eastern traditional philosophy. It also coincides with the Taoist thinker Chuang-tsu. We must go along both with inner and outer nature, and not try to build airy-fairy castles of ideology and thought. In this way we can follow Tao, by going along with the flow. The feminine principle of Yin can come to expression. The one-sided standpoint of Yang, characteristic of Western civilization, leads to the same fate as befell Icarus.

Obviously, goodness is not a substance. But this archaic substantive thinking is what makes people give money to charity, because money is viewed as a substantial good. But this won't contribute to the solution of the alarming pace at which species become extinct. It won't solve the financial crisis, the expansion of Islamism, peak oil, bullying at schools and workplaces, etc., etc. It doesn't work that way. What helps is the advancement of consciousness. The more people who undertake the arduous journey of individuation, the better will the world approximate a balanced state. Inner balance coincides with outer balance. Integration of the shadow is essential. We can only fight evil by advancement in individuation, not by doing good deeds. Many debaters today hold that the aid to developing countries has contributed nothing to the development of Third World countries. It has done equally much damage than good, perhaps even worsening things.

It is very, very typical. This is "doing good" on a massive scale, in the form of thousand of billions of dollars. But it has led to nothing, only to passivation. The population expands rapidly in the Third World. The rain forest is cut down. People join guerrillas and fundamentalist groups, and commit mass rapes. These are the same people that we have supported, even nurtured like babies. Now the majority of them want to come to Europe and America.

Our patriarchal rectilinear solar consciousness must adopt the older god Seth as his son, as Horus adopts Seth in Egyptian mythology. This amounts to an integration of matriarchal thoughtways, that is, to accept death as a precondition of life, view time as circular rather than merely linear, tolerate suffering as a natural condition of life. Our modern consciousness is very scientific and advanced. But it is becoming more and more evident that we are unable to cope with the challenges of life. People are neurotic, the earth's resources are being depleted. The moonlight consciousness is a necessary complement to sunlight consciousness. But the dark aspects of Mother Nature must be tolerated, unlike in the the airy-fairy New Age spirituality. The Magna Mater in the history of religion is ambivalent, representing both death and life, suffering and enjoyment.

People are very false and hypocritical today. They pretend to be good citizens, but they are really very mean. They are politically correct multiculturalists and cultural relativists, but behind the smiling mask they are very nasty. It is a sign of collective neurosis. This divided and hypocritical character is a consequence of the lack of integration of the collective shadow.

Mats Winther
[Homepage]
 
We must go along with nature. Everything becomes much easier, and things will run smoothly. Always listen to your heart, but don't stop thinking for that matter. Such thinking permeates Eastern traditional philosophy. It also coincides with the Taoist thinker Chuang-tsu. We must go along both with inner and outer nature, and not try to build airy-fairy castles of ideology and thought. In this way we can follow Tao, by going along with the flow. The feminine principle of Yin can come to expression. The one-sided standpoint of Yang, characteristic of Western civilization, leads to the same fate as befell Icarus.



Mats Winther
[Homepage]

We already are going along with nature. It is human nature to emphasize outer nature, as you put it. Outer nature is nothing more then 'desire', that is rooted in instinct, but is manifest as a result of reflexive thought. It is animal nature to emphasize inner nature, which is rooted in pure instinct, as animals do not reflexively 'think', despite some humans' attempts to credit animals with having human-like thought processes. I posit that things do not always run smoothly say, in chimp culture; nor, do they run smoothly say, in human culture.
The pursuit of the ongoing balance of inner nature and outer nature is, in itself an ideology and fairy tale, a desire which stems from reflexive thinking. To live is to be, to some degree, out of balance, whether animal or human. And this fits right in with true Taoism! Yin/Yang, Heaven/Earth, Good/Evil, Nothingness/Being............in that the polarity of opposites aforementioned, define each other. These polarities exist as connected polar opposites with the balance shifting from one to the other, but never to be in infinite equilibrium! If these polarities ever are, ALL would be negated.
 
The only way for the world to return to harmony is the enhancement of consciousness by the assimilation of the darkness of human nature, and to begin to understand our collective shadow. By the integration of dark nature, we can do what is good in the long perspective. An all-encompassing goodness, on the other hand, has evil consequences. We must connect with our instinctual nature and our heart. Our good deeds should be rooted in our heart instead of in an ideology that has been programmed into our heads, and which intellectually defines what is good. Such goodness isn't rooted in nature, and therefore has long-term evil consequences.

We must go along with nature. Everything becomes much easier, and things will run smoothly. Always listen to your heart, but don't stop thinking for that matter. Such thinking permeates Eastern traditional philosophy. It also coincides with the Taoist thinker Chuang-tsu. We must go along both with inner and outer nature, and not try to build airy-fairy castles of ideology and thought. In this way we can follow Tao, by going along with the flow. The feminine principle of Yin can come to expression. The one-sided standpoint of Yang, characteristic of Western civilization, leads to the same fate as befell Icarus.

Obviously, goodness is not a substance. But this archaic substantive thinking is what makes people give money to charity, because money is viewed as a substantial good. But this won't contribute to the solution of the alarming pace at which species become extinct. It won't solve the financial crisis, the expansion of Islamism, peak oil, bullying at schools and workplaces, etc., etc. It doesn't work that way. What helps is the advancement of consciousness. The more people who undertake the arduous journey of individuation, the better will the world approximate a balanced state. Inner balance coincides with outer balance. Integration of the shadow is essential. We can only fight evil by advancement in individuation, not by doing good deeds. Many debaters today hold that the aid to developing countries has contributed nothing to the development of Third World countries. It has done equally much damage than good, perhaps even worsening things.

It is very, very typical. This is "doing good" on a massive scale, in the form of thousand of billions of dollars. But it has led to nothing, only to passivation. The population expands rapidly in the Third World. The rain forest is cut down. People join guerrillas and fundamentalist groups, and commit mass rapes. These are the same people that we have supported, even nurtured like babies. Now the majority of them want to come to Europe and America.

Our patriarchal rectilinear solar consciousness must adopt the older god Seth as his son, as Horus adopts Seth in Egyptian mythology. This amounts to an integration of matriarchal thoughtways, that is, to accept death as a precondition of life, view time as circular rather than merely linear, tolerate suffering as a natural condition of life. Our modern consciousness is very scientific and advanced. But it is becoming more and more evident that we are unable to cope with the challenges of life. People are neurotic, the earth's resources are being depleted. The moonlight consciousness is a necessary complement to sunlight consciousness. But the dark aspects of Mother Nature must be tolerated, unlike in the the airy-fairy New Age spirituality. The Magna Mater in the history of religion is ambivalent, representing both death and life, suffering and enjoyment.

People are very false and hypocritical today. They pretend to be good citizens, but they are really very mean. They are politically correct multiculturalists and cultural relativists, but behind the smiling mask they are very nasty. It is a sign of collective neurosis. This divided and hypocritical character is a consequence of the lack of integration of the collective shadow.

Mats Winther
[Homepage]
Thank you for your work, Mats.

I watch from my window the Great Egrets every day. They are some of the loveliest creatures on this beautiful blue-green orb.

However, what do they do all day? They eat live creatures that live in the muddy shallows of my lake which my window overlooks. They are graceful, elegant, beautiful creatures in every move they make. They gracefully land. They clean their feathers constantly, preening when they are not eating to keep their beauty sparkling before others. They gracefully fly off when they've had enough food, and just before the sun sets, they gracefully wing their way to nests in tall trees nearby. They are a work of art. But they chase the Heron away in order to keep the other birds away from their favorite cuisine. I haven't seen a disputation between them and the odd flock of Black Guillemots (so beautiful) that visited us for nearly 2 months (when they ought to be north of the Arctic Circle). Could be they're each eating two different types of lake reptiles.

My point is, all life that is threatened responds in one way or another to overcome adverse or predatory species. The little fish and crustaceans just make up for it by having hundreds of thousands of eggs hatching where conditions are right. The heron finds another lake or pond nearby. Humans are no different. When someone bombs our WTC with our own airplanes, we respond with enough force to make certain they do not repeat the episode.

There's nothing to hang one's head about that. And it does not make a creature or a human less to ensure predators do not eat our childrens' liver in the next generation by allowing murderous jihaders to spawn nearby.
 
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I love nature, too. The relation to nature is essential, I think. In the glade outside my window, a roe deer with a white face keeps returning for a time of rest. He has been there since he was a kid. Now he is almost grown-up, a handsome buck with antlers. It is necessary to keep contact with nature, and remain among the growing things, to keep our feeling rooted in nature. I don't know how it goes when people spend more and more time away from nature. I think that many would rather spend time on Facebook than go hiking or fishing, or cultivating the garden. I fear the consequence is atrophic instinct and alienation from nature.

If we love our beautiful earth, and if we love democratic freedom, then we we would want coming generations to inherit what our generation has enjoyed. But today, species become extinct at a rate 1000 times the normal, and the rate is increasing rapidly. We allow mass immigration of ethnicities that have no understanding of democracy and nature, highly unsuitable for the continuation of our legacy. Now Mali is threatened by famine. But nobody mentions that the average woman gives birth to 6.35 children. In Niger it's 7.52. Humanity must expand at all costs, nature and other creatures suffer, the rain forest is cut down. Nothing matters except the expansion of humanity, both in terms of number and material well-being.

This mad expansive ideology must be abandoned. Let's listen to Mother Nature. She is cruel, it's true, but we must get used to the idea of people suffering. Everything we love faces destruction just because we have a fixation on the expansion of humanity. It seems we are extremely cruel to nature and other beings today, yet extremely concerned about every brown-skinned human in all parts of the world. At the same time we commit mass murder of fish and throw many of them back in the sea. Dolphins and albatrosses are killed, too. Sharks have their top fin cut off, and are then thrown back to a slow death. Our cruelty against nature is immense, but we pretend to be such caring people. But in our caring for our fellow humans everywhere on earth, we only aggravate the cruelty against Mother Nature. So there is a split in our nature. On the one hand we are extremely humane, from another perspective we are extremely inhumane. There is no better word than neurosis to designate this split condition. Neurosis is ubiquitous, today.

Mats Winther
 
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