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‘Mario Draghi study group’, 2001. Venti anni dopo, sarà un finanziere a scortarci attraverso la pandemia nella matrix digitale e allucinogena? (2022)
Verso una Terza Repubblica cyber-psichedelica?
Società “malate”? ‘Contro la paura’ di Pino Arlacchi (2022)
“Tutte le societa’ sono malate, ma alcune sono piu’ malate delle altre” – Robert Edgerton
If political psychology becomes epidemiology (2020)
As the great doctor Rudolf Virchow used to say “politics is medicine on a large scale”.
‘Structures of Capital’: Centre d’étude des problèmes humains, CEPH (2022)
“Coutrot was probably the first French businessman to perceive the possible use of psychology and sociology in business.”
“This was the spirit in which he created the Centre d’Etude des Problèmes Humains, CEPH, in association with the writer Aldous Huxley, the archeologist Robert Francillon, and the economist Georges Guillaume. Hyacinthe Dubreuil, Jean Ullmo, Alfred Sauvy (who coined the expression ‘Third World’), Teilhard de Chardin (a close friend of Coutrot’s), Tchakotine, and others participated in the CEPH meetings, which included eight commissions: economic humanism, applied psychology, rational and humane limitation of inequality, propaganda, industrial decentralization, psychobiology, history and analysis of Marxism.”
“Open to psychology, even psychiatry and sociology, the new managers wanted to take into account the human factor and analyse the motivations buried deep inside managers, at the very heart of the spirit of capitalism.”
“Social psychology techniques, and industrial psychology imported from the U.S. Thus, a mixed discourse can be seen to be forming in which the words and expressions borrowed from the spiritualist and personalist vocabulary (community, person, man, liberty, dialogue) are blended with terms used for technical efficiency and psychoanalysis. The switch to human relations and the social sciences by the heirs of Social Catholicism.”
“A new generation of psychosociologists followed the importing of group techniques… Most received, after their university studies, a complementary education in the United States from the “masters” of American social psychology, in particular Carl Rogers.”
Moruzzi: fisiologia della vita vegetativa vs. di relazione (2022)
Con la pandemia 2020 e i cambiamenti seguiti a questa si e’ verificata una generalizzata riduzione della vita di relazione e un’attenzione molto piu’ accentuata per tutto cio’ che riguarda gli aspetti della vita vegetativa, per esempio anche rispetto alle funzioni del nervo vago.
Huxley’s introduction to the Bhagavad-Gita (2022)
“Man possesses a double nature, a phenomenal ego and an eternal Self, which is the inner man, the spirit, the spark of divinity within the soul.”
“The evil, folly and ignorance which constitute the thing we call our personality and provent us from becoming aware of the spark of divinity illuminating the inner man.”
“The invention of the steam engine produced a revolution, not merely in industrial techniques, but also and much more significantly in philosophy. … External circumstances came to be regarded as more important than states of mind about external circumstances, and the end of human life was held to be action, with contemplation as a means to that end.”
“The solution… must be be sought in the domain, not of philosophy, but of psychology.”
“The Gita, where the psychological facts are linked up with general cosmology.”
“It is only to a mind purified from egotism that intuition of the Divine Ground can come.”
“There will never be enduring peace unless and until human beings come to accept a philosophy of life more adequate to the cosmic and psychological facts than the insane idolatries of nationalism and the advertising man’s apocalyptic-faith in Progress towards a mechanized New Jerusalem.”
Charles Reade, the Medico-Psychological Association, and “conspiracy theory” (2021)
“The theory of Dr. Sankey – the President concluded – as to the manner in which these injuries to the chest occurred in asylums deserved our careful attention. It was at least more plausible that the conspiracy theory of Mr. Charles Reade, and the precautionary measure suggested by Dr. Sankey of using a padded waistcoat in recent cases of mania with general paralysis – in which mental condition nearly all these cases under discussion were – seemed to him of practical value.”
“The only wonder is that in public asylums – Dr. Tuke added – considering the savage nature of some of the half-educated victims of mental disease, and the liberty which the non-restraint system allows them, accidents do not more frequently happen; that within the last few years several superintendents, and many attendants, have been seriously hurt, would show there are two sides to this question. The fact is that in the refractory wards of our public asylums the attendants, too few in number, carry their lives in their hands. The remedy is to increase their number, and add to the surveillance over them.”
Eugen Bleuler and the influence of the Enlightenment (2021)
“A liberal revival movement, under the influence of the French Revolution, began in Switzerland too.”
“The Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler coined several terms such as ‘schizophrenia’, ‘schizoid’, ‘autism’, depth psychology and what Sigmund Freud called “Bleuler’s happily chosen term ‘ambivalence’.”
“He had little interest in the Church and religion. Both Eugen and Hedwig Bleuler didn’t usually go to Church, and there were no prayers said in the family. Both lived under the influence of the Enlightenment: one should live in this world, seek beauty and help others. Eugen Bleuler was critical of the time when theologians rather dogmatically imparted religious education, and children had to learn off the catechism by rote and without any understanding of it.”
Lady Ida Darwin and the ‘Cambridge Association for the Care of the Feeble-Minded’ (2021)
“In 1912 the Association, jointly with Cambridge University Eugenics Society, held a meeting in the Guildhall, where Ellen Pinsent read a paper on ‘Mental Defect and its Social Dangers’.”
“Since its formation in 1914 the Central Association for Mental Welfare has on numerous occasion drawn public attention to the social problem presented by mental deficiency and to the grave consequences and serious cost entailed by the presence of mental defectives in the community.”
“My first audience.” Freud and the genesis of ‘The Interpretation of Dreams’ (2021)
“An audience that had greeted, debated, and discussed Freud’s theoretical construction of psychoanalytic psychology, often before he published the results.”
‘Lenin è stato un fallimento? Un dibattito’. ‘Lenin, il distruttore’, Sorokin 1924 (2021)
“Non basta avere il desiderio di curare una malattia o immaginare una macchina meravigliosa per essere un buon medico o un abile ingegnere. Lo stesso si può dire per gli statisti. Anche un pazzo può avere un profondo desiderio di essere il Salvatore dell’umanità“.
“Lenin dal momento del suo ritorno in Russia nel 1917 era all’ultimo stadio della paralisi progressiva [neuro-sifilide, ndr]”.
“La psicologia e il comportamento di Lenin sono abbastanza comprensibili su basi patologiche. Mezzo matto e malato”.
“Qualsiasi psicologo, psichiatra o comportamentista serio lo sa molto bene. Solo un popolo ignorante e ingenuo da un lato, e individui di tipo pazzo, antisociale e inferiore (che sono molto numerosi tra gli estremisti di destra e di sinistra, i radicali e i “super idealisti”) dall’altro, vengono ingannati da queste “bellissime reazioni al discorso”; per loro solo Lenin è “il salvatore dell’umanità”, “il liberatore dell’umanità”, “il grande riformatore”, “il nuovo Gesù Cristo”, e così via”.
“Non ho alcun desiderio di convincerli perché hanno bisogno meno di essere convinti che curati”.
I “vivaci umori reattivi” e il “delirio di grandezza” di Emanuele Severino (2021)
“Una cosa che vorrei dire a Colletti e’ il senso di questa parola ‘follia’, che poi usa tanto Marx. Quando tu usi la parola follia e’ come se tu dessi del cretino a qualcuno, quando tu parli della follia… adesso mi ascolti in silenzio fino a che io ho finito.
Per te quando si dice follia e’ un equivalente di diminutio psicologica. Non e’ cosi’ per me.
Quando io parlo di follia dell’Occidente… anche Marx aveva molto rispetto per il capitalismo e diceva che era una follia. Allora quando noi per esempio diciamo che Lucifero e’ qualche cosa di assolutamente negativo e di folle perche’ va addirittura contro Dio, intendiamo dire che sia una specie di stupido, di cretino, di poveruomo? Mentre quando tu dai del folle nelle tue critiche, introduci – tu e altri – questa caratteristica psicologicamente negativa.”
‘World Revolutionary Elites’, MIT 1965 – book covers (2021)
Contents of such volume and the two book covers of the hardback 1965 and paperback 1966 editions are presented. The importance and “rediscovery” of such book in PsyPolitics is motivated by the extraordinary concordance with some of the themes present in today’s transforming global politics, currently in mass and digital media, as well as in formulations independently developed over the past three years.
‘Russian Psychiatry – Its Historical and Ideological Background’, Zilboorg 1942 (2021)
“Alcoholism in Tsarist Russia was as typical and chronic a disease as was Tsardom itself.”
“Since the Soviet Revolution, psychiatry has become a branch of public health when it is not a field of laboratory research. What is known here as “mental hygiene” has become the chief field of Russian psychiatric endeavor.”
“The whole working population is brought into the orbit of psychological supervision and educational efforts.”
“A system for ‘the protection of neuropsychic health.’ Sanatoria for borderline cases and for neuroses have been organized.”
“Social hygiene and prophylaxis are the guiding principles.”
The “prodigious transfer.” From outside to inside, anti-politics (2020)
Psychiatrization of politics and Globalist Revolution
A new global psychiatric power? ‘CNN Talk Show’ – 1/13 (2021)
For Dr. Frances, who was claiming that we should discuss politics instead of psychiatry, language was moving from political to psychological metaphorical, while for Dr. Lee language was moving directly from political to literal technical psychological language and concepts, used to discuss a political theme. Both psychiatrists were moving, despite specific content discussed, language to the psychological sphere, metaphorically for Dr. Frances, literally for Dr. Lee.
While opposing each other on a political theme, the net movement of the two debating psychiatrists is from political to psychological language.
‘World Revolutionary Elites’, MIT 1965 (2021)
“Parallel with these events is the perfecting of conditioning procedures, with or without the aid of drugs and hypnosis. The abolition of privacy – already well along in our day – is placing potent instruments of control in the hands of elites who may see an opportunity to consolidate their position by policing the population medically” – Harold Lasswell
“What benefit does Russia derive from this Institute?” Tsar Nicholas II on the Psycho-Neurological Institute (2021)
The last Emperor of Russia and Vladimir Bekhterev’s Psycho-Neurological Institute revolutionaries.
Un anno di PsyPolitics (2021)
Un rovesciamento del mito della caverna di Platone: anziche’ essere liberati dalla prigionia dei sensi e delle percezioni veicolate attraverso la cultura, la societa’, la storia, ovvero attraverso l’ego psicoanalitico, i cittadini trasformati in pazienti vengono sempre piu’ isolati tra loro, distanziati, fatti operare attraverso il digitale ovvero a distanza, e vengono cosi’ infilati in una caverna di isolamento digitale, virtuale e tra non molto allucinogena.
Sia ‘cibernetica’ che ‘psichedelico’ sono espressioni con una chiara origine politica.
Fino a che punto un capitalismo che si cinesizza puo’ vedere la convergenza teorica di ‘comunismo acido’ e ‘completamente automatizzato’ da una parte e di ‘cypsy capitalism’ o ‘capitalismo cyber-psichedelico’ dall’altra?
E’ possibile capire la caotica politica contemporanea attraverso lo studio della storia della psichiatria e delle psicodiscipline?
PsyPolitics intende continuare nell’analisi dei prepotenti fenomeni politici oggi in corso.
‘Geo’, ‘bio’ e ‘psico’ politica (2021)
Il primo uso a cui si puo’ risalire del termine psicopolitica fu del giurista tedesco esperto di diritto internazionale Heinrich Rogge in “La psicopolitica e il problema del leader“ (Psychopolitik und Führerproblem, 1925).
La prominenza di Rogge e’ testimoniata anche dalle recensioni che almeno dal 1934 al 1937 i suoi scritti su Hitler e sulla prospettiva della pace in Europa ottennero sulla rivista Foreign Affairs, dello statunitense Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).
Ambrogio Lorenzetti e l’Allegoria del Buon Governo di Siena 1338-1339 (2021)
Gli anni in cui l’affresco venne commissionato e realizzato erano anche gli anni in cui si stava diffondendo la peste nera.
L’Allegoria del Buon Governo “si basa sul concetto della divisione dei poteri tra il “Governo”, raffigurato attraverso un vecchio saggio vestito dei colori di Siena (bianco e nero), e la “Giustizia” dotata della simbolica bilancia. I due protagonisti dell’ amministrazione dello Stato agiscono sullo stesso piano, pur lavorando in ambiti diversi.”
The Lancet’s Editor-in-Chief: “We will be transformed into biopolitical citizens” (2021)
Horton, while clearly and unmistakably espousing a globalist and technocratic view, at the same time introduces themes from an author such as Foucault – who worked largely on topics related to psychology and psychiatry – and even appears to criticize the dangers of technocracy at the end of his book. The risk of recuperation – of Foucauldian themes and tools radically challenging the rising ‘biomedical’ as well as ‘psy’ global power – into mainstream globalist and technocratic discourse is definitely present, in my view, in Horton’s latest book.
La psicologizzazione della politica (2019)
Perche’ sta avvenendo questa psicologizzazione o psichiatrizzazione della politica?
E quali sono le funzioni di questa psicologizzazione e di questa psichiatrizzazione della politica?
‘Psychologie’, ‘politique’. Encyclopédie, 1751-1765 (2021)
“PSYCHOLOGY, the doctrine of the soul is only a part of Pneumatology or the doctrine of spirits, which is itself only a part of Metaphysics.”
“POLITICS, Political philosophy is that which teaches men to behave with prudence, either at the head of a state or at the head of a family.”
Origins of the cyber-psychedelic subculture (2021)
In this article, two covers are presented from conferences proceedings sponsored by the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation, about Cybernetics – 1953 Macy Conferences – and Neuropharmacology – 1955 Neuropharmacological Conferences, in which U.S. neurophysiologist and behavioural scientist Ralph Waldo Gerard proposed the term ‘psychotomimetic’.
‘Pneumadelic’? Osmond, 1957: “my own preference being ‘psychelytic’, or ‘psychedelic’ ” /3 (2021)
“There is one golden rule that should be applied in working with model psychoses. One should start with oneself.”
“Our psychotomimetics resemble the hypothetical endotoxin that Carl Jung called toxin-X and that we have called M (mescalinelike) substance.”
Osmond views raise an interesting paradox of experience over logos: if in order to discuss rationally about such substances one has to use them and if using them disorganizes the psyche, would it ever be in fact possible to discuss rationally about them? Or the move to use them implies – a priori – an abandonment of human rationality?
‘Freud of the Rings’ (2021)
“In her book The Secret Ring: Freud’s Inner Circle and the Politics of Psychoanalysis, Phyllis Grosskurth explains that around 1912, Freud’s primary disciple and intellectual heir, Carl Jung, split with his mentor and began outlining his own theories which deviated from Freud’s work.
Freud, hoping to keep a grip on the emerging field of study, brought together six prominent students and created a “Secret Committee” to propagate and defend his work against Jungian psychoanalysis. To seal the deal, Freud gifted each committee member a signet ring with a Greek or Roman god from antiquity taken from his collection.
He later gifted other rings to friends and students, in total handing out about 20 of the signets during his life.”
Karl Gustav Jung, the grandfather (2021)
“C.G. had a difficult relationship with his father but felt a strong rapport with his grandfather Karl Gustav Jung, even though he died before C.G.’s birth.”
‘Pneumadelic’? Osmond, 1957: “my own preference being ‘psychelytic’, or ‘psychedelic’ ” /2 (2021)
“No account of model psychoses would be complete that did not relate those that are induced chemically to those induced by other means, such as the reduced or specialized environments described by Heron, Bexton, and Hebb and by Lilly. These specialized environments have been used since antiquity.”
“The substances in question can be used to develop very high degrees of that mysterious yet vital quality – empathy.”
“I believe that these agents have a part to play in our survival as a species.”
‘Pneumadelic’? Osmond, 1957: “my own preference being ‘psychelytic’, or ‘psychedelic’ ” (2021)
The broader political meaning of these substances was stated by Osmond from the very birth of the word ‘psychedelic’.
‘Psychelytic’ would appear to be in line with a Gnostic worldview – as presented by Eric Voegelin – requiring the dissolution or disintegration of the psyche. However, instead of psychedelic, for the pneuma to be revealed or manifested a more appropriate term could be ‘pneumadelic’.
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