CAN ENTIRE SOCIETIES BE INSANE?
Richard Koenigsberg
Abstract: On the one hand, one may say that if certain forms of behavior occur with great frequency in history—however bizarre, weird or destructive they may be—these forms of behavior may be considered normal simply because they occur frequently. Or one may view recurring episodes of warfare, genocide and mass-murder as profound forms of psychopathology

This leads to the conclusion that psychopathology is inherent within the historical process. Perhaps “madness” is a central characteristic of the domain of politics. Yet we shy away from saying this: that political history is the domain of madness.

SOCIETAL DELUSIONS

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV, 2000, cited in the “Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy”) defines a delusion as a

false belief based on incorrect inference about external reality that is firmly sustained despite what almost everybody else believes and despite what constitutes incontrovertible and obvious proof or evidence to the contrary. The belief is not one ordinarily accepted by other members of the person’s culture or subculture.

Delusions are beliefs “held with great conviction in spite of little empirical support.” A delusion is a “false belief based on incorrect inferences about external reality that is firmly sustained.” A person is deluded when he hold a particular belief with a “degree of firmness utterly unwarranted by the evidence at hand.”

Hitler and the Nazis embraced a delusion about the Jews and Jewish power, believing Jews were acting to destroy the German people and civilized world; asserting Jews were equivalent to bacteria or viruses; claiming that “international Jewry” stood behind Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin--who were acting to unite these leaders and their nations in a conspiracy to cause Germany to disintegrate.

The term “delusion” usually refers to a clinical syndrome associated with paranoid schizophrenia. What are we to say, then, about delusions that are widespread within a society? What can we say when a delusion comes to dominate an entire society?