The post I sent out earlier this morning was directed toward the current political situation. However, the ideas I presented grew out of a theory and methodology I've developed--and have been presenting for many years. Politic rhetoric does not correspond to "reality." Rather, political rhetoric articulates fantasies shared by a leader and his followers. How to uncover the shared fantasies that define a political culture? How to awaken from the Nightmare?

Hitler's Ideology: order through Amazon. by Richard Koenigsberg Presents an ingenious technique for identifying the psychological origins of political and social events.” —The Village Voice “The best critical analysis in English of Hitler's thought.” —Colin Day “Koenigsberg's genius has unlocked the secrets of a timeless drama.” —Journal of Psychoanalytic Anthropology

The Psychological Interpretation of Political Ideas: Methodology

Political ideas articulate psychological meanings. How to decipher the latent content of political rhetoric and texts? My method consists of identifying recurring images and figures of speech in the rhetoric and texts of political leaders--to reveal the phantasies that the political ideology seeks to express.

An ideology is comparable to a dream—that many people are having at once. The psychological study of ideology focuses—not on the idiosyncrasies of individuals—but upon how shared desires, anxieties and conflicts give rise to collective representations.

My method grows out of my research on Nazism, which began with Hitler’s Ideology (click previous link for information on ordering the eBook). Identifying recurring images and metaphors in Hitler’s rhetoric, I concluded that Nazi ideology externalized a coherent phantasy: the idea that the German nation was a real body (politic) suffering from a potentially fatal disease.

The Final Solution grew out of Hitler’s phantasy or perception of reality. Hitler and the Nazis sought to eliminate Jews—imagined to be the source of Germany’s disease—in order to prevent the death of the body politic. Hitler conveyed this phantasy to his closest colleagues, and eventually to the German people. A sufficient number of Germans embraced and enacted this phantasy—the source of the history the Nazis created.