Totalitarianism has never been radically examined from the perspective of a disease of civilization, a collective delusional pathology in the realm of psychopathology, with the ramifications that follow. This is what Ariane Bilheran proposes in this psychological and philosophical essay on total power in politics.
She demonstrates that totalitarianism is a paranoiac system in which perverse, sadistic, transgressive, and psychopathic pathologies are glorified. Survival of such a system depends onfoundational lie maintained in secrecy, the indoctrination of the masses into ideology, and the deliberate disorientation of individuals and groups — leading to traumatic shock, pleasure for some, and horror for others.
The book emphasizes the pathological alliance between paranoia and perversion, used to sever human bonds and destroy subjectivity, as well as the bodies of individuals, reduced to the status of instruments, objects, inert and interchangeable commodities, or worse, waste to be eliminated. Anyone is susceptible to being swept up in the delusional contagion, the mechanisms of which are explained here in detail.
Through this profound journey into the madness of power that contaminates the masses, the author also delves into genuine spiritual experiences that arose from within the inferno, as manifestations of a human cry that encounters freedom at the very heart of despair.
