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The ability of cultures to wage mass murder depends on two fundamental factors: (1) a willingness of the population to accept such behavior as legitimate and (2) the normalizing of mass murder as essential national policy. Each of these factors in turn depends on the capacity of groups to internalize the belief structure necessary for action and to reach consensus on the methods necessary to implement beliefs. Psychoanalytic group theory brings us at least a step closer to understanding how this process works; it is simply not enough to argue that, in the case of Nazi Germany it was Hitler's decision or the party's “madness,” or, with September 11th, that it was bin Laden's charisma alone. Each instance of mass murder—the murder of European Jews, the deaths of thousands of innocents in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon—a group-willed set of beliefs was essential for carrying out these policies. Masses of individuals, organized into collectives or groups, needed to hold these ends not as just rational calculation but as willed belief. Group phantasy articulates the perception; the very existence of individuals, their bodies, demands annihilation, extermination, purification. In Germany, Jews and gypsies constitute this hated, impure Other; for the al Qaeda network, despised otherness appears as the Americans, Western values, the pleasures of the body. Where can we turn in group psychology theory for light that illuminates the causality behind these actions?
Claudio Neri, an Italian psychoanalyst and a professor of Group Psychology at the University of Rome, offers provocative insights. Neri draws inspiration from Didier Anzieu, a French psychoanalyst and theorist of group behavior. Anzieu uses concepts like group illusion and the group as a container; he introduces the concept of the Skin Ego, which I will return to in a moment. Neri elaborates the idea that illusions tie groups together. And the group itself acts as a container f