THE TOTALITARIAN STATE OF MIND

This special edition of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy draws on three public events organized by the Psychoanalytic Forum of the British Psychoanalytic Society on the topic of Totalitarian States of Mind. The aim of these events was to explore the human factors that contribute to the development of oppressive states and societies and how this links with oppressive and destructive states of mind. The way in which certain mental processes manifest and get supported within various social contexts to produce totalitarian systems raises significant questions.

The term totalitarian means ‘relating to a polity’, that is, an organized society or state that permits no rival loyalties or parties. Totalitarianism includes the notion of oppressive, one-party politics that exist and are maintained through tyrannous and dictatorial means. Totalitarianism thrives on a belief system that offers omnipotence and projection of hated aspects of the self and one's allies onto another group. This definition in itself already resonates with psychoanalytic ideas on pathological organizations of the personality and destructive narcissism and the destructive and despotic nature of these states of mind if they remain unchallenged and inaccessible to reason or judgement.

The publication of these essays is a contribution to the discourse concerning the development of totalitarianism and offers an understanding of intrapsychic and unconscious elements within the individual's personality that also take into account sociological and historical perspectives. All the contributors explicitly or implicitly recognize that totalitarianism is a phenomenon that has as its characteristics the quality of universality in human history. For this reason all four authors consider aspects of totalitarianism in the social domain, but also explore in what way the understanding of individual mental functioning from a psychoanalytic perspective can further the understanding of this phenomenon.