Return to the Mother-Country

The idea of the nation is sustained by an unconscious fantasy about the body. I interpret the meaning of nationalism by revealing the unconscious fantasy that is its source. Hitler articulated and acted out the central fantasy of nationalism: creation of an immortal body through elimination of the “enemy,” i. e., that which contradicts the fantasy of immortality. To awaken from the nightmare of history is to reveal the bodily fantasies from which nationalism and war are derived. In nationalism, the body politic takes the place of one’s own body.

Oppression derives from the experience of a massive body attached to the self. One is weighed down and diminished. The self is negated by this fantasy of an entire nation attached to the self. One is a “leaf on a tree.” This makes one feel connected to something larger than oneself (the symbiotic fantasy), but also makes one feel small and insignificant.
The volk is the double of the self: the king’s second body. Totalitarianism means everyone is contained within and constitutes the body politic. There is one Reich, one Fuhrer, and all human beings exist in a state of fusion with this body. There is no such thing as something separate from this body. The totalitarian fantasy is that nothing can exist separately from the omnipotent organism—it contains all of the people as cells of an enormous body. St. Paul’s fantasy of the church is where this fantasy begins: the foundation of Western culture.

It is the dream of immortality. To identify with a body politic is to escape from one’s own body, relocate the self into a new body, and crucify oneself with Christ (the body of the Church). Sacrifice means abandoning one’s frail body in the name of the immortal one with which one imagines one is fused. Nazism is based on this dream of an immortal body. Hitler, when people said that Germany was dead and done for: “That no one can, no one must say to me. For Germany must live.”

Germany is Hitler’s mother. No one can say to him that she will die. Therefore, whoever contradicts or negates this fantasy (that Germany is dying) must be destroyed. The Jew is the idea that the immortality of Germany is a fantasy. “Kill Jews” means sustain the fantasy.
The “parasite” is the fantasy of an object draining the life of the self. The parasite is the immortal object, Germany itself. What is parasitic is precisely the belief in immortality, attachment to the nation: that which causes one to sacrifice concrete existence with its pleasures in the name of sustaining the immortal organism. The parasite sucking one’s blood is Germany, the fantasy of an immortal German organism. The Jew becomes the parasite as a projection of the negative side of the Nazi’s attachment to Germany. The Jew is someone who does not embrace the dream. They consume but do not contribute to the body politic. They are “eating it up,” eating up the dream.
The Jews are going their own way, doing their own thing. The very absence of the bond to Germany means they are “getting away” (with something). Why does the soldier have to sacrifice his life and not the Jew? The Holocaust means "Death to the non-believer" and is proof of the reality of

Germany. The Jewish fantasy of omnipotence contradicts the German one. The Final Solution means there shall be no one who contradicts, negates the fantasy. The Final Solution is a demonstration of the omnipotence of Germany, showing it is futile to try to escape, evade the obligation to sacrifice one’s life.
People do not wish to look at the evil inherent in society. It happens all the time: destruction and self-destruction. Historians look at the narrative of conquest and destruction as if it possessed some real or practical meaning. The sound and the fury signify nothing. However, the human race sees war as a sign of its humanity, namely its capacity to rise above animals and to sacrifice their lives for a concept. For all the good it does them. The evolutionary biologists then call it, “instinctive aggression” and pretend it has some practical value, thereby negating the humanity of the species. The humanity of the species up to now precisely consists of doing useless and destructive things, such as building pyramids.

The sacrifice of concrete existence to omnipotent objects (the fantasy of immortality) is the source of oppression. One needs to feed these objects. The omnipotent object is the parasite that is draining one’s lifeblood. The parasite is the negative of the idealized object: fantasy of omnipotence in its destructive dimension, the nation now perceived as draining one’s life (the source of death). The Jew is the perception of the omnipotent object in its negative guise, but also another omnipotent object (immortality fantasy) that drains the life out of one’s own fantasy (a parasite).

The Jew is the deformed version of the idealized object: the fantasy of immortality perceived as the source of death and destruction. Jewish doubt or skepticism means that the fantasy is not real. The Jew does not believe in Germany. However, the Jew is also the belief in Germany, now experienced as a force of destruction. Perception of the fantasy (attachment to Germany as an omnipotent object) as a source of destruction is what destroys or disintegrates the wish to be attached to it.
The Nazis externalized the struggle for survival, “to be or not to be,” into the German nation. The Volk shall be a perfect, omnipotent body containing no weakness, no death, and no imperfection. This will be a body consisting of millions of Germans: an all-mighty, indestructible body. HUMAN BEINGS ARE MAD: they sacrifice their life for their mad ideas. Then they pretend they are rational: That’s the greatest madness of all.
The fundamental idea of Nazism is that of Germany as a body containing a disease: All else follows from this fantasy.
Hitler wishes to sacrifice the German people to the idea of the volk. He feeds the blood of the soldiers to this fantasy. The Jew symbolizes resistance to this fantasy, the deserters or traitors who “don’t believe:” LACK OF BELIEF IN GERMANY is why the Jew is a force of disintegration. The Germans are angry with Jews because they seem to negate the sacrifices; all of the suffering they have gone through. The Jew mocks the soldier in the First World War, who has gone “like sheep to the slaughter.” Now they also will have to be sacrificed. They will not be allowed to escape or evade this obligation.
The objective is my work is to reveal the unconscious fantasies sustaining Nazism, the Holocaust, genocide and war. I wish to show how these forms of culture or ideologies grow out of and express unconscious fantasy. This study of Hitler’s Body and the Body Politic exists to articulate and interpret the Nazi fantasy that led to genocide. The cultural narrative is not a random occurrence existing within culture but external to the human being. Human beings create these narratives and bring them into being as an expression of psychological need and desire.
Hitler’s genius consisted of putting forth his ideas in certain words and phrases that precisely embodied the national fantasy. Germans were obedient to Hitler because he articulated or expressed something that was inside of them. Hitler brought forth the shared fantasy and induced, seduced the German people to act upon it. In order for so much to have been done in the name of Hitler and his ideas, these ideas must have had a profound impact, exerted a profound hold on the German people.
Attachment to an omnipotent body politic is always ambivalent. It serves to deny death, but also oppresses Hitler’s actual life, since he is obligated to devote himself to the massive German project. He is crippled and paralyzed by his need to serve Germany. Everyone wants to believe that the role of conqueror possesses such glory, because they never have had to do it themselves, to bear the weight or pressure or responsibility. The attachment depletes, diminishes, and negates the self. There is no time left for one’s own life, no energy for concrete existence because the self is devoted to the quest for omnipotence in the object. This parasite drains the self.
My project is to reveal the unconscious fantasies that are the source of cultural and historical phenomenon. Ideologies play a role in the psychic economy and this is why they exist. The Nazis brought the death camps into being—performed the Final Solution as the articulation of a meaningful fantasy. They wished to do something and say something. What the Nazis did had a psychological meaning and performed a psychic function. Otherwise, what occurred would not have occurred.

The Nazis want to “save the nation.” This shared fantasy united them. Killing Jews has the purpose of saving German. My objective is to reveal the meaning of this fantasy—killing Jews would result in saving the nation. The shared belief system or fantasy unites the Germans and was the source of everything that occurred. An ideology “feels true” to the people who embrace it (and Hitler’s language was entirely tuned in to the fantasy). It seems logical, resonates with a cultural fantasy. Historical action is based on the cultural narrative or shared unconscious fantasy so it “has to happen in a certain way.”

Nazism is a solution to a particular complex of psychological problems. The ideology would not have been embraced had it not articulated a psychic need. The “truth” of the ideology lies in its capacity to resonate with a fantasy. “Events” that occur in the world follow as a function of the cultural narrative. The events are the ritual that confirms the reality or truth of the ideology.

Nazism existed to demonstrate that the state is omnipotent: capable of killing and getting people to die for it. The state controls the processes of life and death. If you fuse with the good nation, you can be immortal. If you separate from it, you are nothing, and you have to die. The Final Solution = what happens to you if you do not bind your life to the mother/country.

My study of Nazism reveals the irrational destructiveness that lies at the heart of the historical process. These activities have no rational purpose whatsoever, but are ritual activities designed to confirm a particular belief or fantasy. They are “full of sound and fury,” and the sound and fury has a purely psychological meaning. The destructiveness resonates with something deep within the human being. Human beings “get off” on these activities, they confirm a fundamental truth or reality. War and conflict have to happen somewhere.

To understand the historical process is to reveal why the events had to come about: why human beings created and brought them into being. There is a will to collective destructiveness, a purpose underlying what occurs. Events are not outside or apart from the human minds that bring the events into being.

Collective destructiveness is so common that we wish to say that it is “normal” rather than to acknowledge that the human neurosis is articulated through the historical process: that history itself is a form of psychopathology. To reach the end of history is to abandon the psychopathology of collective destructiveness, but also to recognize the “meaningless” of history. We need to abandon the idea that society has other than a human purpose.

Nazi genocide is the “foot in the door” in that Hitler carried the processes of collective destructiveness to a bizarre conclusion. He revealed the irrationality behind the entire process, its root in grotesque fantasies. He made a mockery of the very ideologies he was trying to defend. He proved that nationalism and war are sicknesses. He brought the idea of “killing the enemy” to its logical conclusion.

The Nazis acting out a strange, grotesque fantasy: It was fantastic, irrational, even psychotic, but the fantasy they acted out is not radically different from the fantasies that other groups have acted out throughout history. The problem of “banality” is that the ordinary and the psychotic go together when it comes to the political history of violence and war, etc. The psychotic is so ordinary that we are not willing to call it psychotic. This would mean that shared psychosis is the fundamental characteristic of the historical process.

All of this violence is undertaken, of course, in the name of “the nation” or “the people.” It is always justified as a moral, necessary action. “Evil” is always undertaken in the name of destroying evil. Action is undertaken in the name of “destroying the enemy.” Hitler carried out these ideas to an extent that they had never been carried out before.

We are unwilling to say that the grotesque actions undertaken by the Nazis grew out of the most ordinary political discourse, namely the idea of “love of country.” “We may be inhumane, but if we rescue Germany we have performed the greatest deed in the world,” Hitler said. Violence is undertaken in the name of the fantasy of “saving the people.” It’s such a virtuous, moralistic fantasy that we can say that all of the evil proceeds on the basis of the wish to “do good.”

People want to do good by destroying their idea of evil. As long as we “split things apart:” project goodness onto one group and evil onto another, then destructiveness will occur.
There is a “Disneyland” dimension to our capacity to accept as “normal” these highly pathological forms of political behavior. Everyone loves the “normal” destructiveness. Everyone likes to know that someone is willing to kill and die for something. It confirms our belief that there are gods, superordinate values beyond concrete existence. As long as someone is killing or dying for something, we feel there is “something to believe in.” Everyone must be killing and dying for something. This is what we believe in: the killing and dying for “something.”

To perceive the destructiveness in the “world taken for granted,” one must separate oneself from it. Just because activities occur, that does not mean they are real or “normal.” We must begin to consider the profound irrationality and destructiveness contained within the “normal” historical process, to recognize that collective destructiveness has nothing to do with anything real. History is the acting out of shared unconscious fantasies. To reveal the shared fantasies contained within the historical process is to awaken from the nightmare of history. The idea of “the nation” cannot be separated from the idea of collective destructiveness (sacrifice) that functions to confirm the reality of the nation.