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Richard Koenigsberg presents a method for studying the language of political leaders to reveal the fantasies that generate destructive forms of societal behavior like war and genocide. Focusing on Hitler, Koenigsberg presents a method for identifying shared fantasies that are the source of collective forms of destruction and self-destruction.
Hitler conceived Jews as the source of a “disease within the body of the people. Calling himself the “Robert Koch of Germany,” he claimed that Germany possessed an immune system that automatically destroyed alien or not-self cells. Jews were conceived as bacteria, virus and parasites—cells whose continued presence within the German organism would lead to its death. The Final Solution was a struggle to destroy Jewish pathogens—in order to save the life of the German nation.
Koenigsberg examines the case of Donald Trump, who similarly asserted that the presence of a certain class of people within the body politic would lead to national destruction. Trump identified “Mexican rapists” as the primal danger, requiring a “wall” to prevent these alien cells from entering the body politic.
the 20th century as a result of war and genocide. Why have psychiatrists failed to developed a concept of collective psychopathology? This two-hour presentation and dialogue will demonstrate how psychiatrists, psychologists and social scientists can embark on the “psychoanalysis of external reality” to interpret collective dreaming--the “nightmare of history.”
BIO
Richard Koenigsberg, Ph.D. is a psychologist and historian, leading authority on Hitler, Nazism and the First World War. Hitler’s Ideology: A Study in Psychoanalytic Society was hailed as an “instant classic” and the “best critical analysis in English of Hitler’s thought.” His influential, Nations have the Right to Kill: Hitler, the Holocaust and War, reveals a sacrificial dynamic at the heart of warfare. Widely reviewed, commentary and reflections appear here.
He is Founder and Director of LIBRARY OF SOCIAL SCIENCE, a scholarly publishing and marketing firm. With Orion Anderson he developed the renowned Ideologies of War, Genocide and Terror Website, which features publications by the most prominent scholars on these topics. His papers have appeared in The American Imago, The Psychoanalytic Review, and Journal for the Psychoanalysis of Culture and Society. His online publications are here.
He has lectured widely throughout the United States and Canada, often Keynote Speaker at conferences. He presented a Workshop at the Church Center of the United Nations at the invitation of Ambassador Anthony DeLuca. Koenigsberg and Orion Anderson developed the The Library of Social Science Newsletter as a vehicle for disseminating ideas on collective forms of violence to scholars, professionals, students and the general public—throughout the world. A long-time reader—head of a Scholarly Press—wrote to Koenigsberg recently saying he is “one of the most important thinkers in the world today.”
THE INTERNATIONAL NEUROPSYCHOANALYSIS SOCIETY was founded in London, in July 2000, to promote interdisciplinary work between the fields of psychoanalysis and neuroscience. The Society was founded to provide a forum for clinicians and scientists who think it is important for psychoanalysts and neuroscientists to speak together, to educate each other, and to work together, because we are studying the same thing.
JOIN THE SOCIETY: To join the Society or to renew your membership, please click here.
NPSA: Neuropsychoanalysis - Bridging psychoanalysis and the neurosciences
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Please click here to meet the Neuropsychoanalysis Foundation’s staff.
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