I used to call my project AWAKENING FROM THE NIGHTMARE OF HISTORY. I've been researching and writing about this project for quite a while--and sharing my findings with many of you (please scroll down for photos). 

The nightmare I was studying, however, was within events of the past.

Political nightmares are no longer "history;" not simply events from the past. It seems that today we are living within a collective nightmare: A dream that possesses and oppresses many Americans--from which it is difficult to awaken.

We are surrounded by this nightmare.  We feel it each morning if we read "the News." The so-called "reality principle" (how archaic this concept  seems) has the feeling of a pervasive nightmare.

For many years, I've worked on the project of bringing psychology to bear upon political reality. I've now founded the CONSORTIUM/THINK-TANK FOR THE STUDY OF VIOLENT POLITICAL EXTREMISM--to deepen and work with others on this project.

 My idea from the beginning has been to "make conscious the unconscious in social reality:" to uncover and reveal the shared fantasies that generate political forms of violence (war, genocide and terrorism).

Psychoanalysis, for so many years, has been "locked within the box" of the clinical situation. Clear and necessary boundaries for those practicing the "impossible profession." Psychopathology was conceived as the psychopathology of individuals.

Now it's clear an entire society can be taken over--possessed--by psychopathology. In the face of this reality, we need the courage to bring our work to bear upon what is happening outside the box.

I'm in the process of bringing people together through the CONSORTIUM/THINK-TANK FOR THE STUDY OF VIOLENT POLITICAL EXTREMISM. By this I mean the analysis--not only of terrorism (the political violence of "the other"), not only of warfare and genocide, but the political violence pervasive within our own society: our beloved America which--sadly--no longer seems lovable.

Let the work begin.

Richard Koenigsberg