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It seems that nothing is more difficult for the average man to bear than the feeling of not being identified with a larger group. (Erich Fromm, 1941, p. 208)
If you, like me, are pondering over the sources and causes of the existential threats to democracy in the United States of America today and are wondering how those in support of the current destructive populist movement called Trumpism are seeing reality so differently from the way others do, then Michael J. Diamond's book Ruptures in the American Psyche: Containing Destructive Populism in Perilous Times is a book I highly recommend. Diamond's central theme throughout this book is that by viewing the current populist movement from a psychoanalytic lens (in conjunction with interdisciplinary perspectives), one can greatly enhance and deepen one's awareness and understanding of what is occurring in this country. A psychoanalytic perspective may also be helpful in finding a path out of this dangerous predicament and into a more hopeful future.
To attempt to understand today's polarized and heated sociopolitical environment from a more rational, Enlightenment point of view will miss the deeper, unconscious factors that are playing out in this national crisis. It is these unconscious aspects that Diamond examines and explores, and it is these darker, more shadowy forces that shed light on our current circumstances. In fact, the epigraph of this book is the opening two lines of Theodore Roethke's poem, “In a Dark Time”:
In a dark time, the eye begins to see,I meet my shadow in the deepening shade.
Diamond points to the importance of acknowledging and coming to know our shadow sides in order to transcend our current situation. This has always been a focus of individual psychoanalysis in the consulting room. Diamond is pointing to the importance of giving more attention to this shadowy side at the larger level of the group. This shadowy side can, if not attended to, lead to regression. More specifically, Diamond explores