Reading Adorno on Fascism in the Age of Trump

A New School roundtable

In an era marked by the rise of a paradoxically international right-wing populism, and in the midst of ethno-nationalist tumult in the United States, this roundtable reflects on the legacy and contemporary utility of “Freudian Theory and the Pattern of Fascist Propaganda.” Might Freud and other psychoanalytic theorists still have something ...
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Adorno’s Freud in the Age of Trump

Part 1

Let us recall Freud's fundamental thesis in Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego. In this text, Freud presents a general proposition about the process of constitution of collective identities. It is enunciated as follows: "such a primary mass is an amount (Anzahl) of individuals who have placed a single ...
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The Psychopathology of the US Elections

Why Elias Canetti’s Crowds and Power is Relevant Today

When it was published in 1960, Elias Canetti’s Crowds and Power did not achieve the acclaim enjoyed by his novel Die Blendung (1935), his dramas Die Hochzeit (1932), Die Komödie der Eitelkeit (1950) and Die Befriesteten (1964) and, later, the many volumes of aphorisms and the three volumes of his ...
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The Psychopathology of the US Elections

The Politics of Incorporation

The limits of populism in a psychoanalytic perspective

In recent decades, contemporary political philosophy has pathologized the psychological processes involved in politics. Emphasizing rational action, political philosophy has deemed affect, the political imaginary, and dynamics of identification and incorporation negatively, as potential spaces of distortion or social regression. One of the major consequences of this perspective is to reduce ...
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The Politics of Incorporation

Evil is Not a Psychiatric Illness

A reflection on Dr. Steven Reisner’s message

Since the earliest days of Trump’s candidacy, media has been glutted with op-eds suggesting he is unfit for the role of presidency because he is “mentally ill,” with doctors and psychiatrists intentionally violating the Goldwater Rule by attempting to diagnose the new president without having had any clinical contact. At ...
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Evil is Not a Psychiatric Illness

The Insanity of Narcissism

Exploring Narcissism in Today’s Politics

Mental health practitioners generally agree, since the Goldwater days, that it is not appropriate to offer psychoanalytic diagnoses of public figures we’ve never actually interviewed or treated. However, many of us, myself included, are chomping at the bit these days. It’s especially tempting for me, since I’ve been writing and ...
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The Insanity of Narcissism

What is Politicized Psychoanalysis?

Trump Problems and the Neoliberal Normal in Psychoanalysis

When I ask my students to tell me what comes to mind when they hear the term neoliberalism they say: the rich get richer and the poor get poorer; the outsourcing of labor to the global south; gender and sexual compliance in public assistance and welfare programs; the systematic oppression ...
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The Political Psychology of the President

Freud Not Orwell on Trump and his Lying

Throughout it all, Trump has acted in his grand style as the head of his yet-to-be-relinquished business where he did not report to any board of directors. Alternatively, he followed suit as that celebrity television personality who played himself as that sole decision-maker of his private business. He has been ...
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When Politics Invades the Personal

A New Mandate for Psychoanalysis in the Trump Era

James arrives at his session, bleary-eyed, having stayed up very late to hear the results of the 2016 presidential election. He doesn’t speak, but instead begins playing a recording of Judy Collins singing. As the song ends, he quietly repeats the refrain: The weight of the world, too heavy to lift ...
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