I'm reading a terrific book, Martin Luther King, Jr. on Leadership. Leadership begins with a dream. "I have a dream." Mei Ha wants to know--what is my dream? My dream is to bring forth ideas that make it possible to psychoanalyze the external world: a theory, as well as a method. The dream is to "make conscious the unconscious on the stage of social reality; to "awaken from the nightmare of history."

How will we go about achieving this?

Richard Koenigsberg

Richard Koenigsberg received his Ph.D. in Social Psychology from the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research. He is Director of the Library of Social Science.

AWAKENING FROM THE NIGHTMARE
OF HISTORY: Psychological Interpretation
of War and Genocide

by Richard A. Koenigberg

Read the complete paper here.

I. The Psychological Interpretation of Culture

A psychological approach to the study of society seeks to identify the sources and meanings of its cultural formations. For any ideology or institution, I pose the question: “Why does it exist?” To understand an element of culture requires uncovering the psychic function that it provides or performs. An ideology or institution comes into being, is embraced and perpetuated insofar as it does something (psychologically) for individuals within that society.

Nations Have the Right to Kill: Hitler, the Holocaust and War

Nations Have the Right to Kill is now available at a special discount rate. For information on purchasing through Amazon, click here.

“Koenigsberg’s ideas cut trenchantly through conventional, rationalized notions about culture, the nation, and war, and enable us to see through the psychic machinations of human institutions in utterly new ways.”   —Ruth Stein, New York University, author of For Love of the Father