Trauma and the Fascist State of Mind: The Emptying of the Self and the Road to Perdition

ABSTRACT

The article looks at trauma and the inability to mourn a massive social trauma and humiliation as the underlying unconscious dynamic that leads to the destruction of meaning within the individual and within a traumatized society. The loss of social meaning and the inability to make reparation through mourning often leads to an alternative “magic restitution” and to a new delusional social meaning offered by fascism and the fascist state of mind. The article uses Bion’s theory of the container-contained’ to look at the democratic state of mind, as well as the “minus container” created by the fascist state of mind that opens the gates to an accelerating deterioration of the mind and society.

KEYWORDS:

• Fascist state of mind
• trauma
• annihilation anxiety
• inability to mourn
• social meaning
• the enemy within

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ In his paper “Thoughts at the time of war and death” Freud refers to the attitude of “primeval” man toward his enemies as very different from that of civilized man. He writes that the ‘“Savages” – Australians, Bushmen, Tierra del Fuegas – are far from being remorseless murderers; “when they return victorious from the war-path they may not set foot in their villages or touch their wives till they have atoned for the murders they committed in war by penances which are often long and tedious” (Freud, 1915, p. 295).

² Paul von Hindenburg was the President of Germany at the time.

³ Alpha function is the hypothetical function of the mind that transforms raw data and raw emotions into meaningful entities that can be stored in the mind and can combine with other meaningful entities to create a functioning mind. Bion chose the term “alpha function” as it had no previous meaning so that it would not be confused with other terms.

⁴ Maybe envy can explain why many popular leaders have been outsiders – Alexander, Napoleon, Stalin, Hitler – and perhaps appealed to big parts of the population that experienced themselves as marginalized.

⁵ Earl Hopper saw Incohesion: Aggregation/Massification (for short I: A/M) as the 4th Basic Assumption to complement Bion’s three basic assumptions.

⁶ One notable example of genuine mourning was attempted in the “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” in South Africa as well as in inter-communal groups in many troubled and traumatized countries like Cyprus, Israel, Northern Ireland, and other traumatized countries.

⁷ Pathological organizations are seemingly “organised” states of mind that act as a defense against the realities of both the paranoid and the depressive positions. They create an illusion of an organized and stable state of mind that relies on the avoidance of reality and on creating an alternative reality as a retreat from pain and chaos. The violence involved in this process is hidden and denied. (See John Steiner’s book Psychic Retreats.)

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Christina Wieland

Christina Wieland, Ph.D., is a psychoanalyst in private practice and a member of the British Psychoanalytical Society. She is a Visiting Fellow of the University of Essex where she teaches psychoanalytic theory at the Psycho-Social and Psychoanalytic Department. She has published several articles and book chapters and is the author of two books – The Undead Mother: Psychoanalytic Explorations of Masculinity, Femininity and Matricide and The Fascist State of Mind and the Manufacturing of Masculinity.