When politics is constructed for the public as a psychiatric spectacle.
Category Archives: Law
The cyber-psychedelic transformation of capitalism and the economics of ego death [slides] (2026)
Originally presented at the Capitalism and Mental Health Workshop, Birkbeck, University of London, Bloomsbury, 15 January 2026
Trump: “a President should take a cognitive test”, “they say it’s unconstitutional” (2024)
Trump on Biden: “We have this man negotiating nuclear weapons with Putin and with President Xi and he has no idea what’s going on”.
Putin vs. Biden, February 8th: spectacle and psyspeak (2024)
Putin’s “paranoia” and Biden’s “memory”. Two extracts from Putin’s interview and Biden’s press conference, both aired on the evening of February 8th 2024 on American media outlets.
St. Matthew 5:22, “Whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire” (2022)
“But I say unto you, That whosoever
is angry with his brother without a cause
shall be in danger of judgment : and
whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca,
shall be in danger of the council : but
whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be
in danger of hell fire.”
Roots of Polish psychiatry (2022)
“The roots of Freemasonry, one of the most important cultural and social phenomena of modern times, are clearly European, but the origins of this fraternal organization are as obscure as they are legendary.”
“There has been very little or no research so far into the impact of the Masonic ideas of tolerance, freedom, equality and brotherhood on the development of psychiatry. The degree of this influence was certainly different from one country to another.”
“Polish Freemasonry was reborn in 1920, with an important role played by three psychiatrists: Rafał Radziwiłłowicz, Witold Łuniewski and Jan Mazurkiewicz, who were Grand Masters of the Grand National Lodge of Poland.”
“Freemason psychiatrists headed the Polish Psychiatric Association throughout the entire inter-war period: Chodźko in 1920–23 and 1928–30, and Mazurkiewicz in 1923–28 and 1930–47. Radziwiłłowicz was the General Secretary of the Association between 1920 and 1928, and he was also the founder of Rocznik Psychiatryczny (Psychiatric Annual), the journal published by the Association.”
‘The Last King of America’ and proto-psychiatry (2022)
“Though the incapacity of the King had been discussed in Parliament […] the British Constitution (was) not merely shaken, it (was) dissolved, and the reign (was) given to every revolutionary projector, who may seek to raise himself hereafter upon the ruins of his country,” and the situation makes “the sovereign a slave of his servants.”
“The two accounts” – Jain and Sarin concluded – “preserved in the same set of documents by Arthur Cole, regarding events in Coorg in 1809 and London in 1810, highlight the tension between madness and a sense of political order. The account in the Madras Courier emphasizes that the paramount power of the Regent cannot, and should not, be restricted by any other process, parliamentary or medical, as it was absolute, even though the King was insane. The suggestion that there should be parliamentary oversight was tantamount to treason.”
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.”
“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.”
‘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.
The “prodigious transfer.” From outside to inside, anti-politics (2020)
Psychiatrization of politics and Globalist Revolution
‘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
‘Life in a Technocracy’, 1933: a soviet of technicians… in America? /11 (2021)
“As a last measure the energy certificate” – a measure reminding of today’s Chinese ‘social credit’ – “could be cancelled. This punishment should prove efficacious in most cases. When an individual proved obstinately recalcitrant for obscure reasons, the psychiatrists would attempt to unravel the trouble. In no case should real punishment, such as solitary confinement or labor forced by physical threats, be necessary.” “On first thought, tyranny, due to the human tendency to get drunk with power, would seem to be a grave menace to the technocracy. Our present constitution is so preoccupied with guarding against this menace that executive action is greatly hampered. In fact, action would be nearly impossible if every legal requirement were conscientiously fulfilled. In a technocracy there would be no statutory checks on tyranny.”
About the psychologization of constitutional law via ’25th Amendment’ or ‘Articolo 3’ (2021)
We the Crazy?
Were the Vietnam war American generals mentally ill? Jervis on power and madness (2021)
“To attribute the behavior of generals or of the imperialists to a sort of monstrous irrationality commonly accepted as normal means not allowing oneself to consider that the logic of war, or of the bomb, or of hunger, is not the result of particular psychological processes, but of a social system which is neither mad nor irrational and simply defends with maximum coherence some vested interests.”