For many years, I've called my project AWAKENING FROM THE NIGHTMARE OF HISTORY. My focus has been on the First World War, the Holocaust, and the Second World War. My research and writing focused upon revealing the fantasies and desires that gave rise to these horrendous events. I've published books and papers on these topics.

I've been working on this project for many, many years. However, I began working with renewed passion when I was invited to participate in a panel (in 1988) at the International Society for Political Psychology--and was teamed up with a man rightly considered the "Father" of political psychology, Vamik Volkan (scroll down for photos).

The political nightmares I'd been studying were located in the past. They were "history." 

Recently, a new political nightmare has arisen in American society. It developed slowly and insidiously. But now, it is with us. We are immersed within this political nightmare; a collective dream that possesses us; that many people are experiencing at the same time.

It seems nearly impossible to awaken from this collective dream. We experience it whenever we turn on "the news." Once upon a time, we confidently spoke of "the reality principle." Now, we are not so sure. Reality has the quality of a dream.

My project from the beginning has been to "make conscious the unconscious in social reality:" to uncover and reveal the shared fantasies that generate political forms of violence (war, genocide and terrorism). Is it possible to analyze the nightmare in which we are currently immersed?

For so many years, psychoanalysis has been "locked within the box"--of clinical practice. This boundary was necessary for those practicing the "impossible profession." What's more, psychopathology was conceived as inherent within individuals.

It's suddenly clear that an entire society can be taken over--possessed--by psychopathology. In the face of this, we need the courage to bring our ideas to bear upon what is occurring outside the clinical situation.

Let the work begin.

Richard Koenigsberg