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Christopher Bollas's new book is a manifesto, a social critique, and a challenge to thinking, sentient beings. His aim is to analyze group psychologies and the psychodynamics of culture, in order to provide insight into the contemporary political climate of divisiveness and hatred. He seeks to add a discussion of societal mental health issues to the current geopolitical discourse because the denial of psychological factors at the national and international levels “is a lobotomy that imperils us all” (p. xxvii).
Bollas is interested in the ways in which psychological “axioms” constitute a mentality that defines a group and are represented in literature and other cultural forms of expression (xxi). These axioms, or patterns of belief, become “structuralized” within the mind and influence group behavior (p. xx). Internalized axioms form a kind of collective unconscious that drives the behavior of groups and nations.
Not all axioms are oppressive. In examining the cultural and political history of the West, Bollas juxtaposes the drive for war and destruction (or Thanatos, though he does not use the term) against a more libidinal striving: the quest for meaning. A collective search for meaning bound social groups together for centuries. Even those who were oppressed by poverty and social inequality identified with the ideology that life was imbued with meaning (p. xxvi). When religious beliefs gave way to more