Psychological Undercurrents of History gathers together salient works of scholarship which endeavor to interpret the madness and imagination of our past, from ancient religion, to the Holocaust, to Millennialism and Apocalypyic violence.
Eroticisms: Love, Sex, and Perversion explores the elusiveness of human sensuality. In an era of conflicting moral relativism, political correctness, validation of lifestyle choices, liberation, hedonism, and postmodern pansexualism, versus resurgent puritanism, conservatism, fundamentalism, and theological anti-sexualism, this fifth volume of Psychological Undercurrents of History penetrates current debates and delves into the past to grasp the viscous ambiguities of sexuality, and reassess the question of whether the erotic can be perverse.
Judaism and Genocide: Psychological Undercurrents of History Volume IV returns to the Holocaust and the analysis of anti-Semitism in a time when racial hatred, ethnic cleansing, and apocalyptic fantasy are resurgent. Why do people seek to exterminate other cultures and peoples? How can people inflict violent atrocity without feeling horror or compassion? The authors of this volume address these questions to understand the psychodynamics of hatred, mass violence, and the genocidal impulse, phenomena which thrive even today.
This work sheds light on the psychology of fundamentalism, with a particular focus on those who become extremists and fanatics. The contributors identify several factors: a radical dualism, a destructive inclination to interpret authoritative texts paranoid thinking, and an apocalyptic world view.
The attack on the World Trade Center in 2001, followed by similarly dreadful acts of terror, prompted a new interest in the field of the apocalyptic. There is a steady output of literature on the subject (also referred to as “the End Times.) This book analyzes this continuously published literature and opens up a new perspective on these views of the apocalypse. The thirteen essays in this volume focus on the dimensions, consequences and transformations of Apocalypticism. The authors explore the everyday relevance of the apocalyptic in contemporary society, culture, and politics, side by side with the various histories of apocalyptic ideas and movements. In particular, they seek to better understand the ways in which perceptions of the apocalypse diverge in the American, European, and Arab worlds. Leading experts in the field re-evaluate some of the traditional views on the apocalypse in light of recent political and cultural events, and, go beyond empirical facts to reconsider the potential of the apocalyptic. This last point is the focal point of the book.
Cults: In Too Deep From Jonestown to Scientology explores 20th and 21st Century cults and the 1960's American culture by which many of them were birthed. From Then Manson Family to The Ripper Crew to Scientology, Cults provides an in-depth look at America's religious and social cults, their nefarious leaders, and the millions of lives they have stolen.
Hans Juergen Wirth, a leading German psychoanalyst and editor of the journal Psychosozial, brings cultural breadth, historical perspective, and analytic astuteness to bear in considering the "collective trauma" of 9/11. His meditation, which brings into its compass the psychic structure of suicide bombers and the psycho-political causes and consequences of the Iraq war, is especially insightful in considering the psychological meaning of 9/11 for the world outside the U.S. In complementary forays into psyche and politics, Wirth explores the relationship of xenophobia and violence; the story of Jewish analysts who emigrated from Nazi Germany to the United States; the idea of man in psychoanalysis; and the family dynamics that sustain the AIDS phobia. These wonderfully illuminating essays, both cautionary and constructive, show how clinical experience with the unconscious processes of violence, traumatization, and destructiveness can be foundational to new political strategies for dealing with collective violence.
This edited volume examines the political, social, and cultural insecurities that the United States is faced with in the aftermath of its post-9/11 foreign policy and military ventures. The contributors critically detail the new strategies and ideologies of control, governance, and hegemony America has devised as a response to these new security threats. The essays explore three primary areas. First, they interrogate the responses to 9/11 that resulted in an attempt at geopolitical mastery by the United States. Second, they examine how the US response to 9/11 led to attempts to secure and control populations inside and outside the United States, resulting in situations that quickly started to escape its control, such as Abu Ghraib and Katrina. Lastly, the chapters investigate links between contemporary regimes of state control and recently recognized threats, arguing that the conduct of everyday life is increasingly conditioned by state-mobilized discourses of security. These discourses are, it is argued, ushering in a geopolitical future characterized by new insecurities and inevitable measures of biopolitical control and governance.