Mattias Desmet

The world is in the grips of mass formation--a dangerous, collective type of hypnosis--as we bear witness to loneliness, free-floating anxiety, and fear giving way to censorship, loss of privacy, and surrendered freedoms. It is all spurred by a singular, focused crisis narrative that forbids dissident views and relies on destructive groupthink. Desmet's work on mass formation theory was brought to the world's attention on The Joe Rogan Experience and in major alternative news outlets around the globe. Read this book to get beyond the sound bites! "[Desmet] is waking a lot of people up to the dangerous place we are now with a brilliant distillation of how we ended up here."--Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Totalitarianism is not a coincidence and does not form in a vacuum. It arises from a collective psychosis that has followed a predictable script throughout history, its formation gaining strength and speed with each generation--from the Jacobins to the Nazis and Stalinists--as technology advances. Governments, mass media, and other mechanized forces use fear, loneliness, and isolation to demoralize populations and exert control, persuading large groups of people to act against their own interests, always with destructive results. In The Psychology of Totalitarianism, world-renowned Professor of Clinical Psychology Mattias Desmet deconstructs the societal conditions that allow this collective psychosis to take hold. By looking at our current situation and identifying the phenomenon of "mass formation"--a type of collective hypnosis--he clearly illustrates how close we are to surrendering to totalitarian regimes. With detailed analyses, examples, and results from years of research, Desmet lays out the steps that lead toward mass formation, including: An overall sense of loneliness and lack of social connections and bonds A lack of meaning--unsatisfying "bullsh*t jobs" that don't offer purpose Free-floating anxiety and discontent that arise from loneliness and lack of meaning Manifestation of frustration and aggression from anxiety Emergence of a consistent narrative from government officials, mass media, etc., that exploits and channels frustration and anxiety In addition to clear psychological analysis--and building on Hannah Arendt's essential work on totalitarianism, The Origins of Totalitarianism--Desmet offers a sharp critique of the cultural "groupthink" that existed prior to the pandemic and advanced during the COVID crisis. He cautions against the dangers of our current societal landscape, media consumption, and reliance on manipulative technologies and then offers simple solutions--both individual and collective--to prevent the willing sacrifice of our freedoms. "We can honor the right to freedom of expression and the right to self-determination without feeling threatened by each other," Desmet writes. "But there is a point where we must stop losing ourselves in the crowd to experience meaning and connection. That is the point where the winter of totalitarianism gives way to a spring of life." "Desmet has an . . . important take on everything that's happening in the world right now."--Aubrey Marcus, podcast host "Mattias Desmet's [theory of mass formation] is great. . . . Once I started to look for it, I saw it everywhere. . . . And I felt really motivated, musically."--Eric Clapton

The Psychology of Totalitarianism

A Walk on the Graph of Desire

Lacan's Logic of Subjectivity

The world is in the grips of mass formation—a dangerous, collective type of hypnosis—as we bear witness to loneliness, free-floating anxiety, and fear giving way to censorship, loss of privacy, and surrendered freedoms. It is all spurred by a singular, focused crisis narrative that forbids dissident views and relies on destructive groupthink. Desmet’s work on mass formation theory was brought to the world’s attention on The Joe Rogan Experience and in major alternative news outlets around the globe. Read this book to get beyond the sound bites! Totalitarianism is not a coincidence and does not form in a vacuum. It arises from a collective psychosis that has followed a predictable script throughout history, its formation gaining strength and speed with each generation—from the Jacobins to the Nazis and Stalinists—as technology advances. Governments, mass media, and other mechanized forces use fear, loneliness, and isolation to demoralize populations and exert control, persuading large groups of people to act against their own interests, always with destructive results. In The Psychology of Totalitarianism, world-renowned Professor of Clinical Psychology Mattias Desmet deconstructs the societal conditions that allow this collective psychosis to take hold. By looking at our current situation and identifying the phenomenon of “mass formation”—a type of collective hypnosis—he clearly illustrates how close we are to surrendering to totalitarian regimes. With detailed analyses, examples, and results from years of research, Desmet lays out the steps that lead toward mass formation, including: An overall sense of loneliness and lack of social connections and bonds A lack of meaning—unsatisfying “bullsh*t jobs” that don’t offer purpose Free-floating anxiety and discontent that arise from loneliness and lack of meaning Manifestation of frustration and aggression from anxiety Emergence of a consistent narrative from government officials, mass media, etc., that exploits and channels frustration and anxiety In addition to clear psychological analysis—and building on Hannah Arendt’s essential work on totalitarianism, The Origins of Totalitarianism—Desmet offers a sharp critique of the cultural “groupthink” that existed prior to the pandemic and advanced during the COVID crisis. He cautions against the dangers of our current societal landscape, media consumption, and reliance on manipulative technologies and then offers simple solutions—both individual and collective—to prevent the willing sacrifice of our freedoms. “We can honor the right to freedom of expression and the right to self-determination without feeling threatened by each other,” Desmet writes. “But there is a point where we must stop losing ourselves in the crowd to experience meaning and connection. That is the point where the winter of totalitarianism gives way to a spring of life.” “Desmet has an . . . important take on everything that’s happening in the world right now.”—Aubrey Marcus, podcast host “[Desmet] is waking a lot of people up to the dangerous place we are now with a brilliant distillation of how we ended up here.”—Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

For about a decade, academic psychology finds itself in a crisis. Replication of the vast majority of research findings fails, the field is plagued by a bewildering methodological sloppiness and several cases of outright fraud surfaced. This book argues that one of the major causes of the crisis in psychology often goes unnoticed and is situated at the level of measurement methods. While the method sections of myriads of research papers claim that the validity of the measurement instruments used is ?acceptable?, ?good? or even ?excellent?, every thorough analysis of validity and reliability of nomothetic measurement procedures leads up to profound skepticism. At first sight, the use of numbers gave psychology an aura of sophistication and exactness, but on a closer examination, it rather puts psychology at risk to become a pseudo-science. The author illustrates in a very tangible way that a variety of factors not-intended-to-be-measured impacts on measurement outcome and that this renders most types of statistical inference ineffective. He concludes that a reorientation towards single case research, a re-appraisal of narrative and qualitative description and a measurement paradigm centred on quantification of formal characteristics of language might attune psychological methods better to the complex and dynamic nature of its objects and contribute to a true overcoming of the replicability crisis.

Mattias Desmet

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