Lives of the Unconscious

Lives of the Unconscious

Podcast on Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy

Episode 23: On the Psychoanalysis of Conspiracy Theories

Lives of the Unconscious

Summary:
Conspiracy phantasma derive their power from affects, not from arguments. They cannot be understood by differentiating them from some supposedly reasonable normality – for normality may not be so reasonable after all – but only in the reflection of their affective cohesiveness.
In fact, they are a social psychological phenomenon of extraordinary proportions: and a case for depth psychology. In this episode we will hear more about the role conspiracy theories can play for the psyche and why they cannot be easily abandoned.

Support us on Patreon and get the scripts to the episodes: www.patreon.com/lives

Visit our website: www.psy-cast.org or our youtube-channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/LivesoftheUnconscious

Join our newsletter: Write a mail with the subject “Newsletter registration” to Lives@psy-cast.org

Donation via Paypal

Literature Recommendations:

  • Adorno, T. W. (1997). The Stars Down to Earth: The Los Angeles Times Astrology Column. Telos, 1974, 19, 13–90
  • Bion, W. (1970). Attention and Interpretation. London: Tavistock Publica-tions.
  • Green, R. & Douglas, K.M. (2018). Anxious attachment and belief in con-spiracy theories. Personality and Individual Differences. Volume 125, 15, 30-37
  • Blum, H. (1981). Object Inconstancy and Paranoid Conspiracy. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 29:789–813
  • Lantian, A. et al. (2017). »I Know Things They Don’t Know!« The Role of Need for Uniqueness in Belief in Conspiracy Theories. Social Psycholo-gy, 48, pp. 160-173. Hogrefe Publishing.
  • Rosenfeld, H. (1971). Contribution to the psychopathology of psychotic states: The importance of projective identification in the ego structure and the object relations of the psychotic patient. In: Doucet, P. & Lau-rin, C. (eds.): Problems of Psychosis. Amsterdam: Excerpta Medica

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. If you choose to provide your name and email address so we can contact you, we will save this information on our website for this purpose only and we will not share it with any third party.