Nations constitute the fantasy of a body politic that never dies. Our actual bodies are in the process of decay. But countries “lives on.” Academics bind themselves to this “never ending realm:” the symbolic order that seems to exist separately from the existence of individuals. If there is no separation between the self and one’s immortal nation, then no one ever dies.

Totalitarianism: the psychopathology
identification, refusal or inability to conceive of a self in separation from society; of a self that does not exist in a symbiotic tie to the nation.

“Symbiosis” is not an “infantile phase of development,” rather It’s the ground of our being the fantasy we are connected to something “out there” (and cell phones represent the apotheosis of merger of self with society).

Hitler:

Our Nation is not just an idea in which you have no part; you yourself support the nation; to it you belong; you cannot separate yourself from it; your life is bound up with the life of your whole people; the nation is not merely the root of your strength, it is the root of your very life.

Nazism, an extreme form of nationalism, belief that there is no separation between one’s country and oneself. Difficult conceiving of existence in the absence of a fantasy of being bound to our nation (today's preoccupation with "trump" is a contemporary example...journalists in a state of psychotic identification, in absolute submission to Trump's fantasy.

Nationalism imagines we are part of a “dual unity:” no separation between self and the omnipotent system to which we are bound, a selfobject,  Selfnation.” Nationalism constitutes a psychosomatic system. Countries experienced as if embedded within the self.

Nations are the fantasy of a body politic that never dies. Our actual bodies are in the process of decay. But countries lives on.” Academics especially bind themselves to the “never ending realm:” the "symbolic order" that seems to exist separately from individual existence. If there is no separation between the self and one’s immortal nation, then one never dies.

After one’s own body has ceased to exist, the nation “lives on.” We relocate our actual bodies into a body politic. Individual bodies fuse with the body of the sovereign. Self-expansion and self-negation are one and the same.

“Obedience” is a psychosomatic phenomenon. Inability to resist the will of the sovereign. Symbiosis as the bedrock of politics: one’s own body fused with the body politic. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.

“Oppression” is the negative experience of being bound to this omnipotent body. What oppresses is attachment: the refusal to abandon the fantasy of omnipotence: wish to be bound eternally to the sovereign.

Rebellion gets one nowhere because oppression is based on attachment. What is the nature of liberation? Can a body--the self within the body--exist in separation from the body politic?