Polis Archives - Page 2 of 4

‘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

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.”

“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.

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

‘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.