Dr Ariane Bilheran, clinical psychologist, talks to Dr Reiner Füllmich, and Dr Viviane Fischer, about the psychology of totalitarianism: [242]
Dr Reiner Füllmich: Three basic questions we’re going to talk about:
Why do people engage in the collective delusion?
Why do some people not join, regardless of education or status?
The totalitarian system uses harrassment as a method to establish itself. The ultimate tool of the pathological paranoids. What is harrassment? The intention to harm.
Dr Viviane Fischer: Why do people engage in the collective delusion?
Dr Bilheran: I’m going to talk form the point of view of moral and politic philosophy, and of psychopathology, which means the study of individual and collective psychological processes that are the reasons we are where we are today.
First, I totally agree with the analysis of Prof Desmet that you have interviewed. We are in a totalitarian drift, because totalitarianism aims to have a total domination over individual’s lives, especially up to total domination of the individual’s intimate life.
To make a long story short, totalitarianism works on ideology, which means, on a creation of a false belief narrative that substituted itself to reality and that we are asked to adhere to. Ideology is neither more nor less than a delusion because the narrative does not match the reality based on experience. A delusion in psychopathology is the creation of a new reality in a narrative to replace the existing reality. And we are, therefore, in a collective delusion.
To understand how it works, we must rely on the fact that the totalitarian regime is based on mental pathologies. Mental pathologies create totalitarian regimes.
The mental pathologies that are taking power in a totalitarian regime are psychosis paranoia, which I will come back to later, perversion, and psychopathy.
Paranoia is certainly the one that is going to interest us the most because paranoia works under delusion of persecution. In paranoia [pathology], it means to designate an enemy that can be both external or internal, for the case that is concerning us, the enemy at the beginning, is a virus, which is in itself insane because we are constituted of viruses. It means, in the context of paranoia to harass while justifying harassment to eliminate the designated enemy by the persecution. Within the persecution delusion of paranoia, an enemy is designated that can be at the beginning, a person or for instance, a virus, but now, it slips, it evolves from the virus to the unvaccinated people, and it becomes justified to harass this enemy according to the paranoiac delusion because (the enemy) is supposedly the one persecuting.
For everyone to fall into the delusion, we must be convinced. Paranoia in psychiatry is called a “reasoning madness”. It appears as reason but it is false. But, there are two issues.
First, it is a delusion of interpretation, that means, it is a reasoning founded on interpretations,
the second issue is that it does not follow the rules of logic, and,
the third issue, it is not in relation with the reality of experience.
To establish itself and survive, the totalitarian regime needs an identified enemy that can legitimatise its existence. And because this regime is not legitimate, the presence of this enemy justifies the setting of exceptional measures, of confiscation of rights, and it goes through harassment to justify staying in power.
How does harassment work? Harassment is the method of a totalitarian regime.
What is harassment? The exertion of pressure on individuals to maintain a state of terror. Harassment will use manipulation based on terror and empathy. Empathy, for example: “if you do not wear your mask, you are going to kill your grandmother”. Terror and empathy. Manipulation by emotions. Two emotions that are manipulated.
The goal of harassment is to obtain something from individuals that they would not have given if they had not been harassed.
To do an effective harassment job, it is necessary to use repeated trauma over time. A trauma is a threat to the person’s integrity and a threat of death. The message that was sent to the population in 2020 was: “we are all going to die”.
Harassment also uses the feeling of guilt and seduction of populations, but also blackmailing, intimidation, and threats. And finally, it is an abuse of power because it is always a person that has power over others that can harass.
Another thing that is used in harassment, that we have seen, is what we called a “loyalty conflict”, that is, to force people to choose between difficult or impossible choices; for example, between our health and our work.
Harassment is the masterpiece of paranoid psychosis. It is very important to know and it includes the intention to harm the other. Harming the other is seen as necessary in a name of a delusional and unreachable ideal, for example, the eradication of the virus, which is impossible.
And in paranoid psychosis, that is the delusion of a totalitarian system, we demand therefore, the sacrifice of some citizens. It means, the individual is no longer considered as a being in its own right, with their dignity and integrity, but as a means to reach a goal. So, if we need to sacrifice him/her because we think it is justified, we will sacrifice him/her.
Dr Fischer: Does it mean that this complete illogical dynamic, going to extremes, harassing the unvaccinated, giving them a guilt trip, or pointing to them as the cause of the pain the others have to live through, or limiting what they can do. This is all necessary to make it work. If it wasn’t so extreme, it wouldn’t have the same effect, right?
Dr Bilheran: In fact, in paranoia delusion, there are themes, and there is one, the “delusional hypocondria”. Hypocondria is when we believe we are sick, but in reality we are not. It is necessary to find a culprit to feel the discomfort or the impression of this disease.
Dr Füllmich: Does that mean that the message “there is a dangerous virus out there”, if it were relayed to us in a calm way, it wouldn’t work? Do we need harassment, driven down our throats, to be threatened? Does it work only because they are doing it in a harassment manner?
Dr Bilheran: It is very important to create anguish. It is fundamental because it is going to damage the bonds of trust between people. Paranoia is the mistrust of all against all.
Dr Fischer: Is this something that could happen out of an instinct? For example, politicians say: “we’re going to drive the population in this direction” so is it done like that just because “I feel it is done like that”, or because someone has put a lot of thought into social engineering to get this exact message to get people into that corner? Do you think it is a script rolled out to put people into a state of delusion?
Dr Füllmich: We think there is a carefully planned agenda behind this.
Dr Bilheran: Paranoia is a conception of the world that concerns many of those passionated with power and abusers of power. Therefore, it is linked to plots, that means, those who plot are the paranoid individuals in power. It is a conception of the world, in which the group of individuals in power with this paranoid conception, feeling continuously persecuted, they need to persecute others to stay in power. So that implies the intention to harm and implies something that lasts over time. There is a responsibility.
Dr Füllmich: That is very interesting. As far as I can understand, this seems to mean that in our social systems those people who rise up the ranks and end up in political power, in particular, suffer from paranoia. Is it true that if they don’t defend themselves they loose their power, and therefore they’re willing to push this agenda to remain in power?
Dr Bilheran: My point of view is that paranoid psychosis (that is, a delusion of persecution, “others want to harm me”), is triggered by real guilts. As soon as we probably access power without a complete clean record and we want to keep it, and that we are guilty of some misdeeds, we are going to feel more and more persecuted, and then, we will persecute more and more other people.
Dr Füllmich: Is it correct that
(1) there is a well-planned agenda behind all of this?
(2) those who are carrying out this agenda, the politicians who are in power, are paranoid enough to push the agenda, because if they don’t push it, they’re going to loose power?
Dr Bilheran: Answering the second question, they have an anguish related to the fact that they are not legitimate to be in power, in relation to the acts already committed and that could be discovered by us, the people.
Then, there is the Trans-humanist agenda. This agenda has never detached from Nazism. It is the same conception of the world.
It is complicated … on one side we have that the paranoia that carries the ideology, that means, it carries the message, the wrong belief: “we are persecuted”, “there is an external or internal threat”.
Just a reminder: it was the same conception for the typhus epidemic that justified the persecution of Jews by the Nazism.
But it is not only the paranoia, the paranoia is the ideology, the delusion, strategy agenda, planning, and persecution. That is the paranoia.
But we also have, as said earlier, perversion. That means, some pervert profiles that will get richer, as an example, and always benefit from crisis. And they also participate to the totalitarian system.
Can some people be both paranoid and pervert? Some pervert aspects exist in paranoia. There are some bridges.
What interests us, is that there is a contagion of delusion. That is, you can’t simply say that there are just a few paranoid profiles. There is something contagious.
Do paranoids believe in their delusion? Yes. But they have the intention to harm regarding penal responsibility. They believe in their delusion, but they justify the use of harassment, of the sacrifice of individuals for supposedly fighting the enemy.
Is there a legal base in psychopathology that can be recognised by the court of law?
I have talked in 2010 with some law teachers of Penal Rights about this question.
How could we characterise the penal responsibility?
The intention … the intention of harming integrity. The paranoid is aware of that. He [theparanoid] justifies that it is for the good of the people, the good of the other that mistreats him/her. He is aware of mistreating and harassing.
Dr Füllmich: Is this the kind of intent, even though driven by paranoia, is it still intent that is valid in a criminal sense, from the point of view of the law? Or is it “excused”, as they say here in Germany.
Dr Bilheran: It is all the dilemma between psychology and the law. If we talk about psychosis because it is about a delusion. So normally, the penal responsibility should be exempted. If the person is psychotic, therefore, delusional, he/she is exempt of penal responsibility. But my point of view, that was solicited as expert at the time, is that concerning this psychosis in particular, there is the intention to harm personally. After that, it is going to be justified, but the person knows very well what he/she is doing regarding the damages to the other, simply the paranoid person will justify that it was normal to hurt the integrity of the other.
Thus, in this crisis, in particular, we see some links of interest and collusion. Can we deduct that there is a clear and conscious intention to harm?
Dr Bilheran: But, what is justified? We hear well: “it is not a big deal if some are dying, it is the sacrifice for the common good”.
Exactly, it is contagious to the rest of society.
Dr Fischer: Some of the people driving this whole panic, pandemic, I don’t think that, for instance, Prof Drosden, is in full delusion of what’s going on. In some cases he is saying “oh, the virus is not so terrible”. It seems that when he mentions some aspects, “it is dangerous”, and then another, “it’s not so dangerous”. He is able to see that there’s no horrible pandemic situation, but still he’s pulling the strings of people, saying the right things at the right moment, in order to push on with the agenda, delivering the pretext for the next lockdown, etc.
Dr Bilheran: In reality, we are dealing with a delusional paranoia, of delusional hypocondriac type. That certainly has been launched by paranoid profiles in their conception of the world. But first, their conception of the world is [tothink] that they are persecuted by us, that is, some great billionaires who just by the fact of having great fortunes are guilty towards humanity that is, for the most part, in great poverty. So the paranoid delusion for them is that persecution is coming from us. [“wearethepersecutors”] and what will happen next, is to target a part of the population, and then, the whole population, as the enemy.
But there are many other profiles. Some people are very cynical. Some perverts are pulling the strings for their interest without believing at all on the ideology.
Totalitarianism is the reign of corruption and the reign of mediocre people. We have to say it.
Dr Füllmich: That’s a very, very, good point. Because we have learnt through talking to the experts, that it is because he [Drosten] has good reason to protect himself, because his reputation has been badly damaged. As a professor, he has to write his rehabilitation thesis, which he hasn’t done. That’s why two scientists took close look at his academic background, and found that there are very serious questions as to whether or not he has actually written a doctoral dissertation. Maybe he is not even a real doctor. In this context, he has some kind of paranoia because he is just a mediocre scientist, that would drive him to do what he’s doing: following the orders of those who are pulling the strings, because he’s protecting himself.
Dr Bilheran: In fact, paranoid delusion is contagious, and therefore, what is going to happen, is that many people are going to regress psychologically and they can become pervert (as an example). That means that in a normal time, they would never have done what they do, but they do during a totalitarian time, because it is allowed, (and they are also subjected to deep anguish). It is a bit complicated, but there are many small-time bosses popping up, some people who have to get a revenge against the system that are going to take power, some frustrations, .... Clearly, some people that are going to reveal themselves as perverts, while in another context, they would not have been.
The totalitarian regime persecutes real experts; it does not want them. They do not want people who speak the truth.
Dr Fischer: What’s the deal with the people who are questioning the whole situation? How come they have not fallen into the delusion? Why do some people not join, regardless of education or status? We’ve seen that it does not depend on whether you’re a professor, or a lawyer, or whatever, to be able to see what’s going on. What’s the common denominator of this people? Why do they not fall for this thing?
Dr Bilheran: I have several hypotheses. The first one is that they are autonomous profiles able to isolate themselves from groups. It implies that in their psychological development they have internalised some kind of autonomy, that is, the capacity to respect the laws, even if in the external world it doesn’t work anymore; even if in the external world everything is transgression (which is the case with totalitarianism), the person has acquired an internal autonomy in his/her psychological development. For this hypothesis, there are individuals that have really integrated the fundamental prohibitions of civilisation in particular, the prohibition of murder.
Dr Füllmich: So they have an “inner compass”. They know their direction because, regardless of what the group says, they can still distinguish good and evil.
Dr Bilheran: Yes, I’m going to address that because it is connected to the truth. I found five points about the people that do not submit to the delusion:
First, capacity of isolation and autonomy. Every time I will talk about the opposite corresponding to totalitarianism. The proposition of totalitarianism is “the individual is nothing, let us all stick together, the collective body is everything”.
Second, there are profiles that have internalised, accepted in their psychological development, our finitude. What is our finitude? I am not everything, either on a spatial nor temporal plan. I do not have all the rights, and I am going to die. The 2nd point is very important. From a psychological point of view, life is a loss, that means, we are progressing in time, so at some point, we are getting close to our death. We cannot get everything, get all the powers, that means, we are beings with limitation. For example, in this second point, we are aware of the time running, and we are aware that we cannot take all the space. For totalitarianism time does not exist. It functions in static and circular way. And totalitarianism aims to spatial expansion.
Dr Fischer: Maybe we know what to do, in function of the others. In fact, it is basic law. You can live your rights and freedoms, but not interfering with others.
How does someone know where their limits start and end? Could we say it is an understanding of the relativity regarding the entire system, of one’s own relativity?
Absolutely, of one own finitude (the state of having limits or bounds).
Dr Füllmich: Does that mean that people who resort to totalitarianism, because of the fact that they are afraid of someone discovering their won mediocrity, they resort to fantasies of omnipotence, and want to live forever? Is that the reason why these people are looking to totalitarianism, to escape from other finding their mediocrity? Do they have to flee to grandiose dreams and believe in life forever, without time limits?
Dr Bilheran: Absolutely. In trans-humanism, there is the delusion of immortality.
Dr Füllmich: That explains everything, yes.
Third point: a capacity to clarify the places and have a grounding in the truth. The grounding in the truth, means the capacity to make the difference between the truth and the lie. It goes together with the moral capacity. From a psychological point of view, it goes together. The capacity of distinguishing good and evil. We cannot have any justice if we do not seek the truth. On the contrary, totalitarianism is the reign of lies, arbitrary, and injustice.
Fourth point: the psychological capacity for a person to overcome trauma. It may come from previous experience. And at the same time, a capacity of distancing oneself from the discourses that are added to the trauma, because totalitarianism traumatises people, but it says “that is not a big deal, it is for your own good”.
And the fifth point, is the grounding in reality. The less people have been educated the more they will be connected to the reality of experience, less they will be in the discourse but more in experience, less manipulable they are. To be clear, let me take an example: if we tell you that we have a great thesis claiming that it is absolutely good to water plants with gasoline, someone simply in the reality of experience knows well that it is not good. He does not know how to explain it, but he just knows it is not good. That is what we call in psychology “the principle of reality”.
Dr Füllmich: What we have here is those people who do not fall victim to this false narrative, to this type of paranoia, they are the ones who are anchored in reality, who can tell the lies from the truth, and who have a built-in sense as to what is good and what is evil. That is what it boils down to. Of course, it is more complicated in these five aspects that you just mentioned. You have to be anchored in reality, able to understand your limitations, “we all are going to die some day”, and you have to be able to tell good from bad. If you don’t have these capacities, then it is easier for you to fall victim to these paranoid stories that they are trying to tell us.
And the higher the education, the more distant you are. It probably requires a higher moral sense. Someone who has a high level of education should have higher moral values, don’t you think so?
Dr Bilheran: Yes, good morals, life experiences, a relation to the truth.
It can come from family background, and personal experience.
For example, people that have already experienced some totalitarian type situation in some companies, or in their family, and they get out of it, and they had experienced much trauma in relation to that. They are much better immunised than others from what is happening today. I see it with my patients. As the magnificent Vera Sharav, whom I adore.
Dr Bilheran: What is the promise and its function? We need to understand that totalitarianism is functioning on populations. That is because with totalitarianism a promise is made, which will not be kept, of course. The promise made to the population is the total care of the suffering of their existence and the return to a lost paradise.
Dr Füllmich: That’s a very child-like belief.
Dr Bilheran: Absolutely, and therefore, it is a temptation for the majority to fall back into the arms of mom, and not take one’s own responsibility.
Dr Fischer: Very interesting food for thought.
Dr Füllmich: This was great. This was an extension of what Professor Desmet has told us. It fits right there. It’s perfect. It gives us an even big and clear picture of what is behind all of this. I’m very grateful for you taking this time.