The Psychology of Totalitarianism

Written by Mattias Desmet

Narrated by Dan Crue

We bear witness to loneliness, free-floating anxiety, and fear giving way to censorship, loss of privacy, and surrendered freedoms. It is all spurred by a singular, focused crisis narrative that forbids dissident views and relies on destructive groupthink. Totalitarianism is not a coincidence and does not form in a vacuum. It arises from a collective psychosis that has followed a predictable script throughout history, its formation gaining strength and speed with each generation?from the Jacobins to the Nazis and Stalinists?as technology advances. Governments, mass media, and other mechanized forces use fear, loneliness, and isolation to demoralize populations and exert control, persuading large groups of people to act against their own interests, always with destructive results. In The Psychology of Totalitarianism, world-renowned Professor of Clinical Psychology Mattias Desmet deconstructs the societal conditions that allow this collective psychosis to take hold. By looking at our current situation and identifying the phenomenon of “mass formation”?a type of collective hypnosis?he clearly illustrates how close we are to surrendering to totalitarian regimes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dreamscape Media Audio
• Release date: Jun 16, 2022
• ISBN: 9781666609394

Mattias Desmet

Mattias Desmet is a professor of clinical psychology in the Department of Psychology and Educational Sciences at Ghent University and a practicing psychoanalytic psychotherapist. In 2018, he received the Evidence-Based Psychoanalytic Case Study Prize of the Association for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, and in 2019, he received the Wim Trijsburg Prize of the Dutch Association of Psychotherapy.

Reviews for The Psychology of Totalitarianism

[Scott · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Brilliant book and narration. The increasingly uneducated opponents of freedom are unaware that all knowledge can never be known by man, hence their conviction of the invincibility of human rationality. Human rationality, as the educated grasp, is flawed and incomplete.

[Bimini Cunningham · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I’ve been waiting for someone to articulate my thoughts and feelings about the global mass formation phenomenon of the pandemic. This book does exactly that.

[heardfam2006 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I thought the mass formation explanation was very informative and helped me really understand what had happened to society during the pandemic. I think in some way the mass formation (or something similar to it) happened when Donald Trump was elected. I have never seen seemingly rational people lose their mind in that way before. The one criticism I could offer against Desmet's theory and how it related the the COVID-19 pandemic is that almost all the leaders of the West who were locking their societies down didn't seem to actually believe in the cause they were espousing. This is evidenced by the multiple occasions that these leaders were found having gatherings and parties with other "elites" and no one was wearing a mask, etc. It was a fiction they were telling others to keep them in fear and in line.

[G A McKee · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I suspect many would have listened to this audiobook as a result of the fame of the author. The name of Dr Mattias Desmet is synonymous with the theory of “mass formation psychosis” that saw whole populations living in fear of an allegedly novel coronavirus that originated in Wuhan, China. This fear appeared to be deliberately manufactured by government and big media, and resulted in unprecedented mandatory lockdowns, mandatory injections and mandatory mask wearing. Dr Desmet has been a popular influencer via interviews on YouTube. His name became more well known after the Jo Rogan interview of Dr Robert Malone who referred to Desmet’s mass-formation-psychosis theory to explain the phenomenon of people’s compliance with extreme government measures purportedly to “control the spread” of the Wuhan virus. Whatever the case may be, Desmet’s theory gave comfort to those who were or are a little skeptical about the WHO-let pandemic hysteria resulting in totalitarianism, for better or worse. This audiobook needs to be listened to twice in order to retain and remember the authors complex thinking in the field of epistemology &!the philosophy of science. Desmet as an expert in psychology and statistics, has been courageous attempting to understand how people can end up like sheep being controlled by a barrage of government propaganda & ideology to bring about mass control and compliance with loss freedoms on a wartime scale. One could be excused for believing that the “global war on terrorism” has run its course for using fear to enact mass-control edicts & laws, and so the new form of terrorism for this purpose now comes from nature in the form of an invisible and unverifiable coronavirus. Desmet draws on a range of philosophers in order to write this book on the causes of totalitarianism that is commonly associated with Hitler & Stalin. Hannah Arendt, Foucault, and in science, Max Plank and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle are referred to in the authors struggle to determine whether the phenomenon of totalitarianism arises through conspiracy at the top or organically - as in for example chaos theory. Whatever, the nature of and causes of totalitarianism is a complex subject and this book is for serious intellectuals grappling with the nature of reality and the everlasting search for truth and meaning in a world that at times (such as during the COVID mania) does not make a great deal of sense to an independent thinker.

[zane southgate · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This needs to be part ofgrade 9 or 10 social class in school.

[Brian Willcutts · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Worth reading but he got some important dynamics wrong. The causes of this mass behavior are not as complicated as he hypothesizes.

[JoelHFX · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A must read for everyone who has become exasperated with the madness enveloping today's public discourse.

[Camille Macres · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book is a masterpiece. A must-read/listen to for anyone who wants to step out of the right/left divide and find a pathway towards freedom from the tyrannical forces looming from all directions.

[JAPanter · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Spot on! Masterful explanation of science psychology and religion. Will be a required read.

[Donna Balzer · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

WOW! Truth!! Very informative. This was an eye opener. Looks like the plandemic wizards took a page or two from this book

[Dr Maua Faleauto BA LLB PhD · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I am very grateful for the well spoken wisdom of the author and the fine voice of the reader. I was surprised at the conclusion that those individual differences between us all are valuable because therein lie the seeds of creativity and our portal into wisdom beyond ourselves, beyond our rational comprehension.

Dr Maua Faleauto 06.51am 10 August 2022 [e-mail]

[Stefan · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is the most important book written on our time. Whether you like how it is written is irrelevant. This book is not for pleasure. In a few years you will be begging for this information.

[daryl · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Fantastic book with a pragmatic view and all conquering view we are all diverse human beings
With so much potential to lift ourselves above the rational views of science because ultimately it has limitations