ABANDONING OUR IDENTIFICATION WITH OBJECTS CONCEIVED AS OMNIPOTENT:
AWAKENING FROM THE NIGHTMARE OF HISTORY
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The primary task of an ideology is to promote devotion to and survival of ideas held by the group. How does it happen that an idea can become such a powerful dimension of the society (and psyche) that people are willing to kill and die for it? People attach to ‘sacred objects’ conceived as more significant than the self.

Collective forms of violence are generated based on a perception of ‘enemies’ imagined to be acting to destroy a sacred object that constitutes the foundation of one’s society. Enemies represent that which is separate from the self. They challenge and negate the group’s fantasy of omnipotence.

People kill and die in the name of defending their fantasy of omnipotence. The psychoanalysis of culture seeks to interrogate ideas and ideals that generate collective forms of violence. We become capable of doing so at the moment we begin to abandon our own identification with ideologies conceived as omnipotent.