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The author of the idea calls it mass formation and mass hypnosis. Others have added mass psychosis. He began promoting the concept in Europe to many enthusiastic media, intellectuals, scientists, and physicians. Then it took off in America, where “mass hypnosis” has become a buzzword among critics of COVID-19 policies and practices.
Many thoughtful people who listened to him felt, at long last, they had a label to put on their fellow citizens who were acting zombie-like, soulless, and compliant in response to draconian pandemic measures and all the lies they were being told. Some of the most dedicated reformers in the truth-in-science and freedom movement embraced his ideas. To many, it was a relief to be able to label it — mass formation or mass hypnosis — and to think that there was good science or psychology to bolster the diagnosis.
Now the author of the concept, European psychoanalyst Mattias Desmet, has written a book, The Psychology of Totalitarianism.1 I’m a psychiatrist and, like Desmet, I’m a psychotherapist; but early in my career, I rejected joining one of Freud’s psychoanalytic institutes for special training. I did that for many reasons. First, it was apparent to me that psychoanalysis was an unscientific cult that demanded conformity to a number of very bizarre theories that degraded the human spirit. Second, the training itself required an incredible degree of daily submissiveness to authority. Trainees, many of them already psychiatrists, had to pay to lie on a couch for an hour five days a week while a “training psychoanalyst” would very occasionally make incisive remarks that were supposed to get to their unconscious mind. Third, it smacked of victim-blaming — a subject I will address further that is key to Desmet’s dogma.
Reading an advance copy of the Psychology of Totalitarian in July 2022 confirmed my fears that Desmet’s concepts lay in the general arena of an intellectual hoax, a nasty use of speculative psychoanalysis to dismiss serious researchers investigating the origins of COVID-19, and a purposeful cover-up of the elites and the globalists responsible for the worst outcomes inflicted on humanity during the pandemic.
There was no reason to invent or apply a new concept like mass formation to explain the misery, apathy, and docility, seen in the general population and even among our colleagues. Individual doctors had, and continue to have, many good reasons to feel helpless, marginalized, and overwhelmed. Physicians who so much as voice doubt about the dominant views on COVID-19 are continuing to lose their teaching appointments, their clinical positions, their board certifications, and even their medical licenses. They continue to be censored and removed from Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter for simply disagreeing with the CDC, FDA, NIH, or even the media like ABC or CNN. Very few in the medical community dare to refuse vaccinations for themselves or their patients.
