The third decade of the twenty-first century of the Christian Era is not the first time in recorded human history people have feared that the end of the world was nigh. In the Olivet Discourse of the New Testament, written in Greek at the end of the first century of the Christian Era, Jesus spoke of wars, earthquakes, false prophets, persecution, and cosmic signs preceding his return (Matthew 24, Mark 13, Luke 21). The Book of the Revelation of St. John provided apocalyptic visions of trials and tribulations, the rise of evil powers, Jesus Christ’s return, the creation of a new heaven and new earth, the final battle between God and Satan, the defeat of Satan, and the Last Judgment (Revelation 21–22). In the years leading to 1,000 of the Christian Era a millennial panic gripped medieval Europe. During the bubonic plague or Second Pandemic of 1347-1353, which Europeans called the Black Death, people believed that the Last Judgment had arrived. In 1910 people around the world feared that Halley’s Comet would strike the Earth and end all life on it. In 2012 there was a global fear of “the Maya Apocalypse,” a misinterpretation of the ancient Maya Long Count calendar that led many people to believe the world would end on December 21 of that year (the winter solstice).
Unlike the previous prophecies and fears of the end of the world, the likelihood of the end of our species is all too real. Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency has drafted a plan to end its own ability to fight climate change (see here). There has been a series of scholarly books entitled The End of the World (see here). The Doomsday Clock stands at 89 seconds to Midnight, the closest to a global catastrophe it has been since its inception in 1947. Our species faces imminent extinction from global warming, environmental catastrophe, or nuclear war. An international movement named Extinction Rebellion is desperately trying to stop our slide toward self-extinction, but it is somewhat like the proverbial finger plugged into the hole in the dyke by the Little Dutch Boy (see here).
On Friday, September 5, 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order renaming the U.S. Department of Defense the Department of War. If his order is implemented he will have reversed the creation of the National Military Establishment by the U.S. Congress, which was signed into law by President Harry Truman in 1947, and which the Congress renamed the Department of Defense in 1949. One might speculate as to why Trump, who graduated from a military academy at the age of eighteen but never served in any armed force, and who believes he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize, needs to see himself as a warrior and his country as a war-making power. The president of the United States, in any event, does not have the constitutional authority to rename a government department. Renaming a cabinet-level department requires an Act of the U.S. Congress. However, Trump’s incredible hold on the Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives and in the U.S. Senate could mean that the U.S. would soon become the only country in the world with a War Department. No one could tell what war Trump had in mind. Trump had threatened North Korea with nuclear war during his first term in office. On the day of his executive order renaming the Pentagon The New York Times revealed that Trump had sent a top secret Navy SEAL team to North Korea in 2019 with orders to install a listening device that would intercept Kim Jong-un’s secret telephone conversations. Coming out of the water on the North Korean coast, the Navy SEALs had encountered a boat full of Korean civilians and had killed them before retreating without installing the device.
This website attempts to explain how and why we have come to this terrible pass. It is my belief that without the insights of psychoanalysis, both on the individual and on the collective level, we can neither answer these questions nor save ourselves from an unprecedented catastrophe. What has become of our species and of our civilization — and why? Why are we divided into nations or pseudo-species which can make war on one another and bring about the death of tens of millions of people as was the case in the Great War of 1914-1918 and in the Second World War of 1939-1945, and as we see on a smaller scale in the international and civil wars in Russia, Ukraine, Gaza, Iran, Israel, Ethiopia, Sudan, Mexico, Myanmar, Yemen, Somalia, Congo, Burkina Faso, Mali, and Haiti, to name but a few.
Applied psychoanalysis uses the insights of psychoanalysis to study the wonders of human creation, including literature, art, science, music, architecture, films, and urban civilization, as well as the horrors of human destruction, including war, genocide, environmental pollution, and the annihilation of other species. This website is about the interdisciplinary research fields of psychohistory, psychobiography, political psychology, psychogeography, and psychoanthropology, among others. Here you will find my books, articles, and blogs on the psychoanalytic interpretation of history, politics, geography, literature, music and other aspects of human behavior and endeavor. From time to time you will find new pages here about subjects such as the tragic mass murders in Norway and France, the Scottish referendum, U.S.-Israeli relations, Iran’s nuclear ambitions, the Arab-Israeli conflict, or U.S. President Donald Trump and his followers, perhaps the greatest threat to the existence and well being of our species.
Any comments or suggestions from you will be appreciated.
Thank you for visiting my website.
Avner Falk, Ph.D. Clinical Psychologist Jerusalem, Israel
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I am informed you wrote a psychoanalytic paper on Trump and Netanyahu, and would be most interested in having a copy. I was acquainted with both during their formative years. I was raised in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, and being the same age as Netanyahu, I was acquainted with him and he probably attended at least one of my large birthday parties. My parents divorced when I was a 12 years of age, and I was sent to the same boarding school, New York Military Academy, that Trump was attending. Although he was several years ahead of me, I knew him reasonably well for an underclassman, and saw the beginnings of his transformation into what we see these days.
In his youth, Netanyahu seemed unpopular and a loner with inappropriate affect. Trump, on the other hand, was quite nice, polite, well-behaved, and my several conversations with him showed him to be a good listener and his responses were appropriate. Trump did seem to moderately yearn attention, starting at about age 17, but it did not then seem pathological or that unusual for a teen. I was present at Donald’s first lesson on political crowd manipulation in 1963 (taught by a refugee from the early years of Nazi Germany, having witnessed it there), a lesson he uses to this day.
I may be seen the Trump’s graduation yearbook, The Shrapnel – 1964. The best photo of me is with the Coin & Stamp Club. Donald and I were both sargeants in 1963, and there is a full page photo of me in that yearbook, but that book is a rarity. In the 1963 and 1962 yearbooks, note my Elkins Park address is shown in the back pages as being nearby Netanyahu’s childhood address in Elkins Park.
My acquaintanceship with both Trump and Netanyahu during their formative years may put me in a unique observational position. By the way, I took sufficient coursework in psychology during undergraduate and graduate school to qualify for a California Community College Teaching Credentials in Psychology (and several other academic departments). [My focus in graduate school was chemistry, particularly biophysics genetics. I taught college chemistry for some years before going into the more lucrative field of patent law.]
Many thanks and
Best regards,
Robert Schlesinger
econophysicalmodelling@gmail.com
Dear Robert Schlesinger,
Thank you very much for your very informative and moving comment.
You can find my study “Donny and Bibi” in The More Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 40 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Warn Anew, Edited by Bandy X. Lee, World Mental Health Coalition, New York, 2024.
Kindest regards,
Avner
Hallo Avner, Deine Fans in aller Welt warten gespannt auf Deine Analyse von Netanjahus Vorgehen in Gaza.
Lass uns nicht mehr lange warten bitte! Und habe einen schönen Sommer!
Eckhard Siepmann. Berlin-Kreuzberg
Thank you for this lifelong work! As a retired clinical psychiatrist/self-taught psychoanalyst/recovered alcoholic/ and author of the free online e-book, “Stress R Us”, available as a PDF at stressrus.wordpress.com, I only wish that your considerable insight were directed at a larger frame to include human overpopulation and our contribution to worldwide climate collapse. Those of us who cast the net so widely are few and far between and would surely appreciate the input from your fine mind, especially from the psychoanalytic perspective. Thanks, again, for your devotion to your profession and wonderful website.
A friend on Facebook mentioned that you discuss Moritz Steinschneider (1916-1907) as the person who may have been the first scholar to have used the phrase antisemitism. I looked Steinschneider up on Wikipedia and there is no mention of his being the first (or even one of the first) to use the phrase. I would like some clarification. I also looked you up on Wikipedia and your work seems to align with the CliosPsyche group in New York to some extent. Do you have any contact with them? I am not an M.D., not a psychiatrist, not a Ph.D. in psychology and not a psychoanalyst. My Ph.D. is in comparative historical sociology (CHS) from the University of Toronto (1979) and two of my teachers were Professor Irving Zeitlin and Professor Lewis Samuel Feuer. (Ironically, they did not get along at all!) Zeitlin’s book on The Jews is a sort of updating in a semi-popular manner of Max Weber’s approach to Ancient Judaism. Irv and I have had wonderful, heated discussions on many topics. For example, he thinks Tanakh should not include Job whereas I feel Job is a wonderful text. But I am not Jewish. Feuer was not liked by my generation, but I attended his lectures regularly since he was extremely well-versed in sociological theory. Thorstein Veblen would (sort of) walk into the room when he lectured on him (etc.)! I was open minded to him after reading his book on Spinoza. Feuer, L. S. [1958] 1966. Spinoza and the Rise of Liberalism. Boston: Beacon. (I go to Unitarian-Universalist services from time to time, so I am proud that Beacon published his work.). I taught the sociology of religion and comparative religious studies for about 40 years (as well as many other subjects). I hope to be 75 this year and have been retired for 9 years, enough time to learn how ignorant I am!
Moritz Steinschneider lived from 1816 to 1907. I never said he was the first to use the term antisemitism. As far as I know the term Antisemitismus was first used by Wilhelm Marr (1819-1904) in 1879. I know the group behind Clio’s Psyche. It is run by Paul Elovitz of Ramapo College (see https://cliospsyche.org/. Thank you for your comment.
Brilliant! However, you have not had the honor of practicing psychiatry/psychotherapy with over 25K patients over a 42 yr career, which I have. You were spot on and the only psychoanalyst I’ve seen who correctly diagnosed Our Mad King Donald as having a “Borderline Personality Disorder”. Very few psychiatrists/psychologists understand this condition or its early development. Donald’s is a classic case, which not even his courageous and insightful psychologist niece, Mary Trump, has diagnosed. The hallmark developmental trauma in my extensive study of BPD is typically abandonment by the mother at a very early age, particularly 2yo. Donald’s mother nearly died hemorrhaging after the birth of Little Donny’s younger brother, when Donny was 2 yo. At this vulnerable age, the child blames himself for the abandonment (she spent an extended period in the hospital and convalescing at home while Donny was turned over to a nanny) and may well, as in Donny’s case, develop a lifelong self-loathing, such as that seen so clearly in DJT’s constant “projection” of his self-hatred onto others, and his extreme “rejection sensitivity” couched as preoccupation with “loyalty”. I wrote an extensive psychoanalysis of DJT for the proprietary website academia.edu, and will send you a should you choose to send me your email at gmiklashek435@gmail.com. Thanks, again, for this brilliant work!
Thanks. Your comments are very astute. My e-mail address is on my website (see https://www.avnerfalk.net/contact/). BTW, I have a full-length MS on DJT and his followers and if you can think of a publisher kindly let me know.
Shalom Avner, I haven’t had the time time to read any of your articles but I will. Hope everything is good with you. CECILIA, from Aventura, Florida
Avner,
I find your insights about Trump powerful and convincing, but with one caveat. You pay very little attention to the father. It is my strong impression that Fred Trump shares a lot with the Koch Brothers’ father and also with Netanyahu’s dad: all were extreme right wing ideologists, filled with rage transmuted into politics and in the case of Koch Sr. and Trump Sr. also very wealthy. It is my strong sense that boys faced with tyrannical fathers have two choices: get out (I believe there was another Koch brother who did just that) or through fear of being unloved, unacceptable to the father, potentially punished by him, and/or fear of losing a good inheritance in the cases of the bros. Koch and Trump, the boy overidentifies with the father in a forced effort to assure him the son feels no animosity–let along murderous rage–toward him.
There has to be castration anxiety wrapped up in all this. In Trump, the unconscious, unrecognized fear of castration takes the form of turning passive into active. His assaults on his primary season candidates (Lyin’ Ted, Little Marco, Low Energy Jeb, etc.) are moves to cut off the masculinity of the rival. He does the same with anyone who criticizes him. Thus in a very odd way for someone supposedly out of childhood, he takes all criticism as castration threat and responds massively with counter-castration moves. For the most part, Twitter seems to be his knife. Not for nothing do we commonly use the phrase “cutting remarks” for those that turn defense into offense.
This can all be seen as part and parcel of Trump’s uncertain masculinity. Elizabeth Warren last summer called him a “toxic stew of hatred and insecurity.” Among its other meanings, castration anxiety is surely a major fear underlying typical male insecurity. Consider the pathetically emphatic machismo of Trump as exhibitionist, of the Koch Brothers as control freaks who seem to want to transform the US into a medieval kingdom with them on top, and of Netanyahu’s adolescent bravado in sticking his finger in the eyes of Barack Obama and most of the world reflecting his solipsistic, narcissistic, megalomaniacal take on Jews’ role and entitlements in history. It seems to me that that is one of the fundamental reasons Netanyahu tolerates the Haredi extremists, because in his heart of hearts, Netanyahu, plus or minus the God meme that motivates at least the theology of the Haredim, is as loony and intolerant, narrow and sadistic, and frightened of unspecific damage to himself, as they. It seems to me that the ultimate implication of his hatred and scorn is that he unwittingly turns them back upon himself and Israel. I have been saying for years that Arabs can never destroy Israel but that Jews can. And Netanyahu seems to be the enabler of that project.
Correspondingly, I imagine that Trump is all along sowing the seeds of his own destruction. We hope to heaven he does not pull the US and the world down with him.
One of the subtexts of Trump’s Make America Great Again (one of Hitler’s slogans was Make Germany Great Again) is of course Make America White Again, but at another level, the message is Make American Masculine Again. Trump’s swaggering, his contempt for women, his bullying everyone who does not kiss his ring, his favoring macho fantasies over reality and denying there is anything for him to learn on any subject at all, including the security of the United States, speak pathetically to the insecure male’s desperate effort to present himself to others and to himself as a “man’s man.” As he lacks the inner core to be certain of anything in himself, he feels compelled, through repetition compulsion, to keep having another psychic drink hoping he’ll finally feel sated but he cannot, as the doubt and self-contempt are life long tenants in his sick brain and hate-filled heart.
As you know this man should be in long-term treatment and possibly hospitalized for a tragic insistence on a tortuously feigned superiority. To whom? Most likely ol’ Fred.
Very recently, through inner work on myself, I’ve made some discoveries new and fascinating to me. One is that fetishism in Freud’s terms melds with it in Marx’s terms in that money and possessions become penis-substituting fetishes as well as what Marx makes of them. The problematic penis is forgone (adolescent and Trump boasting of size and exploits notwithstanding) in favor of its substitutes (my fortune/car/house/fan base is bigger than yours). All four sons—Kochs, Trump, Netanyahu—castrate everything in sight, including our planet in the Ks’ case and T’s climate change denial–and everyone in sight in a pathetic attempt to ward off the unconsciously always live fear that Dad will do the Deed, and to identify with that feared part of dad, turning passive terror into active sadistic rage.
You reveal so much of value about Trump’s mother and his ties to her. I am adding the likely father ties too.
I don’t understand Netanyahu’s comments as exonerating Hitler, by any means. It seems to me, however, that there is a wide resistance against attributing an active role to the Mufti in his sympathy and support, at least in ideological terms, to the “final solution”, which seems to be an indisputable historical fact. How determinant the Mufti was for the industrialization of mass murder seems to me to be beyond the point. What matters, at least to Netanyahu, is pointing out the fact that the Palestinian leadership comes from an ideological background that advocates a religiously motivated extermination of the Jews – not just in Palestine, but worldwide. From the first chapter of “Nazis, Islamists, and the Making of the Modern Middle East” (2014), by B. Rubin & W. Schwanitz: “And so, in June 1941, four special Arab guests visited the prototype for future death camps. Their interest had a very practical purpose. One day, they planned to create their own Station Z’s in the Middle East near Tunis, Baghdad, and Jericho to eliminate all the Jews in the region … In a January 1941 letter that Amin al-Husain…sent …Adolf Hitler [he] asked Hitler to help Arabs solve the Jewish question in their lands the way it was being done in Germany…During the war, Germany fomented a jihad to encourage Muslims to fight by their side. … The grand mufti later wrote that many Arabs proclaimed, ‘Thank goodness, al-Hajj Muhammad Hitler has come.’ … The alliance between these two forces was logical. Al-Husaini’s 1936-39 Palestinian Arab rebellion received weapons from Berlin and money from Rome. In 1937, he urged Muslims to kill all the Jews living in Muslim lands, calling them ‘scum and germs’. … When Hitler first told Heydrich to find a ‘final solution’, the dictator had included expelling the Jews as an option. Already, the regime estimated, it had let about 500’000 Jews leave Germany legally during seven years of Nazi rule. Yet if the remaining Jews could only go to Palestine, and since ending that immigration was al-Husaini’s top priority, emigration or expulsion would sabotage the German-Arab alliance. Given the combination of strategic situation and Hitler’s personal views, choosing to kill the Jews and gain the Arab and Muslim assets necessary for his war was an easy decision … The grand mufti, Eichmann’s aide recalled, was very impressed, so taken with this blueprint for genocide that al-Husaini asked Eichmann to send an expert – probably Dieter Wisliceny – to Jerusalem to be his own personal adviser for setting up death camps and gas chambers once Germany won the war and he was in power” (pp. 2-9). And some lines by Bernard Lewis on the matter: http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com.ar/2015/10/bernard-lewis-implies-mufti-sought.html#.Viu_wvmrTcs
Greetings, and take care!
ich schäme mich, dass sie so viele hinternisse in den weg gelegt bekommen
Dear Avner,
I hope this mail finds you in good health and spirit.
As part of “Images in Psychotherapy” new corner of “Sichot,” I am planning to wright about Max Eitingon.
I saw in your website that Agnon’s wife was psychoanalysed for ten years by Eitingon.
I do know that Agnon and Eitingon were in some relationship, as Agnon dedicated a short story, entitled “Another Prayer-Shawl,” in Eitingon’s memorial book published in 1950 by Israel Psycho-Analytical Society, to Eitingon’s memory, wrighting as a moto (in Hebrew) “for the soul of R’ Mordechai Eitingon Halevi of Blessed Memory.”
Can you give me some details or references regarding Eitingon’s relationships with Agnon?
Also, I read in your website that you wrote a psycho-biography on Agnon. Where can I find it?
With all best wishes,
Jacob Margolin
I reviewed your book on the psycho-analytic view Israeli Palestinian relationship. Its an interesting book. I hope someday we can talk to each other face to face.
Je crois utile de préciser que la policier abattue était une jeune fille martiniquaise noire de 26 ans qui a d’ailleurs été enterrée à La Martinique.
Il serait donc intéressant d’élargir cette analyse à la question suivante: grosso modo,
D’un côté nous avons une femme noire originaire de la Martinique, et des hommes arabo musulmans originaires d’Algérie qui s’engagent dans la police c.-à-d. au service des concitoyens, de la sécurité et de la République, cela jusqu’à y “offrir” leur vie, comme un “sacrifice”.
D’un autre côté nous avons un jeune noir originaire du Mali et deux jeunes arabo-musulmans originaire d’Algérie – donc plus ou moins le même genre de personnes – mais qui s’engagent dans la voie complètement inverse d’agression à ces valeurs républicaines et qui finissent par “détruire” leur vie comme un “suicide”.
Nous avons compris que les “assassins” ont un back ground d’enfance terrible qui les a poussés sur “la voie du mal” , mais je me pose la question: “quels ont été les moteurs qui ont poussé ceux qui allaient devenir des “héros” à choisir “la voie du bien” ?
Comme si la tuerie de Charlie constituait le point de rencontre/déflagration de ces deux démarches opposées.
un autre aspect
Le 9 . I . 2010 monsieur JF Copé s’est entretenu chez monsieur Ardisson avec une jeune “femme en niqab”
http://www.agoravox.tv/actualites/politique/article/cope-face-a-une-femme-en-niqab-24827
Manifestement cette jeune femme avait un gros problème psychologique: sa mère qui avait vécu en Algérien avait eu des jumelles qui n’avaient pas été reconnues par leur père. De retour en France ces trois femmes suivaient un islam rigoriste dans l’attente du retour du père…
Dans les “talk show”, en générale, sont présents des journalistes, des artistes, des politiciens, des religieux, mais rarement ou jamais des psychiatres/psychanalystes.
Cette jeune femme traînait une profonde souffrance et, sans affecter ses aspirations spirituelles, elle aurait sans doute été aidée par une psychanalyse pour pouvoir se débarrasser de ses problèmes concernant l’absence si pas le refus de son père.
Il y a urgent besoin d’ Analyse et Psychanalyse sans en arriver aux conclusions de madame de Rabutin-Chantal :”tout comprendre ce serait tout pardonner”…
Aujourd’hui nous somme confrontés aux questions:
– pour quelle raison nos enfants se convertissent-ils à l’islam?
– pour quelle raison vont-ils commettre des atrocités?
L’article ci-dessous donne des éléments (parmi tant d’autres qui tous apportent un éclairage ) de réponse: il faut essayer de comprendre l’attraction vers le sado-masochisme
– l’assassinat du pilote enfermé dans une cage et brûlé vif reflète la (sub)conscience de ses bourreaux d’être eux-mêmes prisonniers dans une cage , émotionnellement et mentalement à cause de la débilitation d’avoir grandi dans une “culture honte-honneur”
– nombreux sont les convertis dans un environnement d’enfermement en prison
– nombreux terroristes n’ont pas d’empathie, sentiment que l’enfant acquiert dans les premier jours de sa vie au travers de sa relation avec sa mère
– au cœur du terrorisme islamique se situe le “drame maternel” ensemble avec le sado-masochisme et la culture honte-honneur
– dans la culture arabo-musulmane le lien mère-enfant n’est pas sevrable – ceci empêche l’accès à la maturité
– le père lui aussi dans la culture de honte-honneur a expérimenté d’être objet d’honneur, non pas un individu de plein droit
– la culture arabe a besoin de dépasser le versement de sang pour nettoyer l’honneur pour pouvoir sortir du marasme de la honte, au travers d’une éducation dès les premiers jours de l’existence…
Il y a aussi la très profonde différence de mentalité entre “nous” et “eux”. Au départ ils sont fascinés par notre civilisation qu’ils ne connaissent pas mais pendant qu’ils la découvrent progressivement ils se rendent compte de ne pas pouvoir l’accepter ou la rejoindre ce qui cause une frustration qui porte au refus violent – voyez mon livre “Des raisns trop verts ou les déconvenues des migrants.” (amazon)
Dear Avner,
Thank you for your thoughtful article on Iran
It took me some time to read it – busy with Freud seminars I am giving at a psychotherapy course.
I finally finished to read it.
It is a long and thorough article in which you deal very convincingly with issues that are of fundamental importance in the Iran issue, Ahmedinedjad’s personality , and – to my mind – in the whole Middle East – Arabs, and Jews as well.
Narcissism, more specifically malignant narcissism apparently is the “maladie du siècle”, just as Hysteria was in Freud’s beginning.
I am sure that you have the right point of view about the ME problems.
I think also that this problem is more widespread and affects a large part of human people: Narcissism, feelings of humiliation are the common token here as well as in South America, for instance – not to speak in the far Orient.
From Freud we learned that the hatred for the other is older than love.
From a Kleinian point of view many of our foes and also brothers live in a narcissistic state of mind, which is definable as belonging to the Paranoid-Schizoid position, and to be able to develop to the Depressive position, in which separation from the other , acknowledgement of the existence of the Other (with rights and humanity) implies in the loss of exclusiveness, omnipotence, these are “assets” which are very difficult to accept relinquishing and mourn them.
Rosenfeld brought to our knowledge a situation in which the narcissism becomes destructive – in opposition to what Freud devised as the libidinal narcissism, and in this destructive narcissism, a kind of internal “mafia” takes command of one’s emotional life, turning him/her impervious to any kind of acknowledgement of need and help – which are felt as HUMILIATING – as well as erases the existence of the Other.
So, the deed itself is not the cause of humiliation, but it is the apprehension of it by the subject, what he/her projects into the deed is what transforms it into a “positive” or “negative” act, what seems to be in accord with Klein’s concept of Projective Identification.
Or in other words, the “thing in itself” has no autonomous significance, but becomes significant once one “injects” (projects) into it libidinal (good) or destructive (bad) meanings.
It goes along also with the modification in Freud’s views about the etiology of Hysteria, when he understood that “the trauma” is not the event in itself, but the “memory” of it, and he casted the phrase “Hysterics suffer from memories”.
I would also think of Bion in relation to what we see happening around us. Bion wrote about Arrogance, which he saw as a characteristic of some psychotic patients as a result of a psychological catastrophe, leadind the subject to develop a psycotic part (grater or lesser) in his personality.
I feel that some of our neighbours as well as some of our brothers seem sometimes to border psychotic states of mind – or at least seem to have inside themselves large portions of their personalities that function in a psychotic level.
One could even think of them as living in what Bion called a Hallucinosis state of mind, what he described in his book Transformations, and from him I quote:
(i) Hallucination is seen as a method of achieving independence which the patient considers to be superior to psycho-analysis.
(ii) Its failure, in so far as it is seen as a failure, is attributed to the rivalry, envy and thieving propensities of the analyst.
(iii) Rivalry, envy, greed, thieving, together with his sense of being blameless, deserve consideration as invariants under hallucinosis.
(iv) The concept of hallucinosis needs to be widened to fit a number of configurations which are at present not recognized as being the same.
(v) Transformation, in rigid motion or projection, must be seen to have hallucinosis as one of its media.
(iv) The rules of transformation in hallucinosis must be established through clinical observation. I have no doubt that they exist and can be delineated by observation of the operation envy, greed, rivalry, “moral” and scientific superiority in hallucinosis. I offer the following suggestions provisionally as an example of such “rules”.
A. If an object is “top” it dictates “action”; it is superior in all respects to all other objects and is self-sufficient and independent of them.
B. Objects that can occupy such a position include (a) Father, (b) Mother, (c) Analyst, (d) Aim, object or ambition, (e) Interpretation, (f) Ideas, whether moral or scientific.
C. The only relationship between two objects is that of superior to inferior.
D. To receive is better than to give.
If we translate it to the field of the relations that Arafat, and friends and some of our neighbours have towards us, the constant feeling of being victims, their wish to “put right” things that they feel “offended them”, their “honour quest” that allows them to kill a daughter if she did “some wrong” , for instance – to my mind this state of mind
can fit exactly to Bion’s description of a psychotic (part) of any personality.
Is there any “cure” for that?
I honestly am very pessimistic.
Best,
Eliahu
Avner Shalom Rav,
Regretfully there is no wonder that the German authorities and many German people are doing all in their possibilities to refrain from cooperating in the struggle to reveal the truth of the past Nazi regime. This still 69 years after the end of the second world war. Today there are many–many German people who present themselves as matured in the “68 generation”. Some of them still say today that the vast majority of the population in Germany didn’t know anything about the scale of the war crimes/atrocities. This argument I heard personally recently from a person who was a professor at the TU in Munich (now retired). I wish to admit that I was nearly shocked to hear this argument 69 years after the war. I heard it before several times, but I thought maybe no one thinks this way today in 2014, and from a person who present himself belonging to the 68 generation. When I tried to bring up many arguments proving from documents / historical researches /films (including Leni Riefenstahl’s), this person still argued very seriously, holding strongly to the basic convictions / arguments. What amazed me during the discussions that most of the other persons present remained “neutral,” namely did not take part in the discussion, in which case maybe they were agreeable to the said argument; surely I did not receive their support to my arguments. The same Person is very very critical towards Israel saying that Israel should consider more and more concessions, etc. But this issue belongs to a total different “disk.”
I wish you Avner full success in all your undertakings.
Tsvi
This German documentary film https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqkY-JIKPM8 discusses the hostility to Jews in present-day Germany
Good luck with your quest Avner. I wish you every success and I look forward to reading your book when you get the information you need to write it.
The piece on Barack and Bibi is nicely done, Avner. You know how much I appreciate and learn from this kind of analysis. Kol ha’kovod.
Very informative and interesting analysis. It’s thought provoking. Thank you Avner
What is very pitty in our world (with all sophisticated devices) that the personal´s moods influences the life of normal people and that the internationals organisations don´t work as they should (overwieving the global situation, give the remandations, make open discussions with all parties in conflict)
I can’t argue with the psychology you’ve presented of the two men but Bibi’s first concern must be the well-being of Israel and not the displeasure of America. He must do what needs to be done for his country. There is no “partner for peace” as the Palestinians have clearly demonstrated. Jerusalem is our capital and will remain so. The Palestinians must learn that we will not give in to their ridiculous demands and that our country will protect itself against all attacks.
Strangely, all Israeli pm’s were “high-level destructive narcissistic leader who becomes gratified by defeating his rivals and feeling superior to them”. Weren’t they?
Also, has not Barak been Bibi’s rival and opponent for long times?
Please contact me by e-mail. Thanks.
Bravo, Avner, for the site! It works well and is very interesting!
Excellent introduction!
Concise and precise.
WOW!
Très bel essai. On en reparlera pour la forme.
Amitiés
Jacques
ישר כוח! מזל טוב, חג שמח ושנה טובה
צ’רלי גרינבאום
Naturally well-written…. Could there be some illustration for subliminal purpose?
Your new site is lovely…..continued success and thank you for keeping us enlightened! DRB
Congratulations on your website…
Psychology is certainly one of the sources we need the more in order to understand the human aspects of history, geography, and human beings!
kindest regards
Jourdon
Scotland has voted 55% to 45% to stay in the U.K. which seems to show a degree of political maturity. In such a complex phenomenon as secession and separation from the “mother country” there are both conscious and unconscious motives, real and rational reasons, fantastic and irrational drives, individual and group needs, leader’s and followers’ psychology. The conscious and “rational” motives such as economics, ethnicity , ideology or religion are of course important, but each of them has its unconscious and irrational aspects as well. Identity, both individual and group, is a very complex phenomenon about which entire books have been written.
Hi, Avner.
Question: do you see all such nation separations – not only Scotland- as subconsciously deriving from the same reason?
The US also separated from Britain. Uruguay ( where i am from) separated from Argentina. Etc. In most cases it seems that either economics, ethnicity , ideology or religion, in short, identity, are the compelling reasons. Is all desire for individuation an indication of a subconscious desire to separate form a mother entity?
Shana Tova
Gisele
There are many conscious and realistic reasons for wanting to separate from England, the economic ones being only part of them. However, some economists say Scotland will be worse off if it goes its own way. I am naturally referring to the unconscious motives, both on the individual and on the large-group level. Consciously, Great Britain may not be the same as the Great Mother for many Scots; unconsciously, it may be.
The question of why now is very important, of course, but there have been many movements for Scottish independence before (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_independence). And let us not forget that Alex Salmond began his campaign for Scottish independence from Great Britain many years ago. Now is the peak of his decades-long effort, the high point of his entire political life. He fully identifies himself with Scotland.
Am not clear about this, Avner: “Could there be a psychological connection between the wish of the Scottish nationalists to separate and individuate from England and their internal mother image and the wish to separate from Great Britain and create a separate identity?” Isn’t the separation from the one also the separation from the other? And anyway, why now? Why not earlier in the past 300 years. There is a speculation that abundant oil off Scotland could make the country prosperous.
Etc.