COLLECTIVE DELUSIONS/SHARED PSYCHOSIS
Richard Koenigsberg
Abstract: On the one hand, one may say that if certain forms of behavior occur with great frequency in history—however bizarre, weird or destructive they may be—these forms of behavior are normal simply because they occur frequently. Or one may view recurring episodes of warfare, genocide and mass-murder as profound forms of collective psychopathology

Perhaps “madness” is a central characteristic of the domain of politics. 200,000,000+ million deaths in the 20th century as a result of warfare and genocide. Psychosis at the heart of historical process.

SOCIETAL DELUSIONS

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV, 2000, cited in the “Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy”) defines a delusion as a

false belief based on incorrect inference about external reality that is firmly sustained despite what almost everybody else believes and despite what constitutes incontrovertible and obvious proof or evidence to the contrary. The belief is not one ordinarily accepted by other members of the person’s culture or subculture.

Delusions are beliefs “held with great conviction in spite of little empirical support.” A delusion is a “false belief based on incorrect inferences about external reality that is firmly sustained.” A person is deluded when he hold a particular belief with a “degree of firmness utterly unwarranted by the evidence at hand.”

Hitler and the Nazis embraced a delusion about the Jews and Jewish power, believing Jews were acting to destroy the German people and civilized world; asserting Jews were equivalent to bacteria or viruses; claiming that “international Jewry” stood behind Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin--who were acting to unite these leaders and their nations in a conspiracy to cause Germany to disintegrate.

Hitler and the Nazis created a collective delusion that came to define the "reality" in which Germans lived, 1933-1945. War was waged to destroy the delusion of the omnipotence of Germany. When Hitler died, the delusion disappeared ("gone like a cool breeze"--Chuck Berry).

The term “delusion” usually refers to a clinical syndrome associated with paranoid schizophrenia.

What are we to say, then, about a delusion that comes to dominate an entire society?

I was at a conference where the great historian, Jeffrey Herf and I, had presented. We were rapping in the back of the auditorium after we spoke. He was happy to hear that agreed with his hypothesis that the Nazis' perception of Jews--the danger they represented to Germany--represented a collective delusion.

I said, "So you could say that the Nazis were psychotic." Suddenly, he walked away. Even the best historians flee from the truth.