Some Psychohistorical Thoughts About Conspiracy Theories

It may never be possible to explain why some people construct conspiracy theories and others don’t, not necessarily because the reasons are so obscure but because they are so many. People prone to conspiracy modes don’t comprise a distinct grouping, as common experiences often reveal the perfectly normal person we are sharing a cocktail or plane ride with suddenly rolling out a grassy-knoll scenario for the latest catastrophe. Or just as plausibly, the person who chronically suspects the FBI of nefarious deceitfulness is vindicated in the cases of the falsely accused Richard Jewel in the Atlanta Olympics bombing or of Wen Ho Lee in the Alamosa atomic secrets fiasco.

Conspiracy buffs never quite qualify as paranoids. The latter believe themselves to be targets of concerted machinations of some powerful organization—FBI, CIA, the United Nations, the telephone company, etc. The former believe certain prominent figures have been unjustly targeted by any of the above groups. This may be a minor distinction within one’s psychic economy—no more than the result of distancing and displacement—but it allows for a relatively adaptive and pain-free social discourse.

Yet while the media and other cultural forms further distance and legitimize these discourses, they enter the purview of psychohistory by aligning reality in terms of dangerous aggressors and delegated victims. Following this familiar pattern, they also adhere to a few less familiar rules.

In the supposedly accidental death of Princess Diana, for example, three kinds of responses prevail: 1) an overwhelming sense of loss, demonstrated by the initial outpouring of grief and mourning and the later construction of a permanent shrine; 2) a devaluing cynicism, which portrayed her as shallow, vain, ruthless, unfaithful, and mentally unbalanced; and 3) a conspiracy theory, targeting “people who did not want Diana and Dodi to be together,” as claimed by Dodi’s father, Mohamed Al Fayed, who has pressed lawsuits against

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the U.S. Federal Government for allegedly harboring secret documents.

As personages like Princess Diana and President Kennedy become fantasy figures through the media and group fantasy, they also become delegates for this threefold response: JFK was widely mourned, devalued for philandering and associating with the mob, and subjected to elaborate conspiracy scenarios; Martin Luther King, Jr., was mourned, accused of womanizing, and held, especially by his family, to be victim of a larger conspiracy; Robert Kennedy was mourned, accused of playing around, notably with Marilyn Monroe, and portrayed as victim of a larger conspiracy.

While these three conflicting versions compete for dominance, the historical person is kept alive as a fantasy figure in the collective psyche, preventing the work of mourning to accomplish closure and playing into sacrificial scenarios that release feelings of revenge or martyrdom.

On an individual level, to a greater or lesser degree, conspiracy theory emerges as the preferred psychic organizer by means of which the person interprets their experiences with the social environment. For some, one conspiracy is sufficient to perform whatever psychic work needed; for others, conspiracy thinking operates as the skeleton key to unlock almost any mysterious or threatening event. Dick Gregory told a Washington Post (October 9, 2000) reporter that not only were Martin Luther King, Jr., Robert Kennedy, and John Kennedy “taken out” by the “people who control the system,” but also John Kennedy, Jr., “because he was using his magazine to investigate the murders of his father and his uncle.”

This lateral movement leads to a second rule: what’s going on out there is secretly interconnected, and conspiracy theory provides the most authentic mode of interpretation for exposing the secrets. Once this worldview is granted, nuances and discriminations can be tolerated. True to form, Gregory believes that Princess Diana was killed, not, however, by the usual U.S. suspects, but by the “British royal family, which feared she would marry her [mixed-race] boyfriend.”

In classical psychoanalysis, the paranoid compensates for loss of a centered self and vital ties to reality by placing him/herself at the center of a vast, malevolent conspiracy. The conspiracy buff also buys into that construction of the world but enjoys a narcissistic triumph by using his/her superior mental powers to expose the malevolent forces. In both instances, conspiratorial thinking is symptomatic of the reality loss in severe trauma and psychosis, and both replace reality testing with projection.

Shifting from classical drive-defense theory briefly to object relations theory, one might discern a slight shift from psychopathology to primitive emotional development. Melanie Klein held that infants initially experience a paranoid-schizoid phase in which gratifying experiences (the mother’s good or nurturant breast) are not assimilated to frustrating ones (the bad or persecutory breast).

Supposedly for all of us, unbearable stresses and traumas may induce a regression to a paranoid level. Thus, when we attempt to interpret

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ostensible conspiracy phenomena, we need to stay in touch with any anxieties thereby aroused. We need to entertain ambivalence and to tolerate ambiguity in order to avoid the extremes of the know-nothing borderline (“Stuff happens”) and the all-knowing conspiracy expert (“Bad stuff happens, and I’ll explain why”). Early in 1998, Hillary Clinton thought she knew why bad things were happening to her husband and went on national television to cite a “vast right-wing conspiracy.” She wasn’t entirely wrong, for there were powerful people on the Right doing their best to discredit Clinton’s rule, but there were also Monica and Bill’s unruly libidos helping things along. With Clinton as liar and sex addict but also as victim, we need only mourn his departure to complete the threefold discourse with which this inquiry began. Loss engenders three basic options: 1) enshrinement, accompanied by mourning; 2) devaluation, often with manic features; and 3) conspiracy scenarios, with paranoid implications.

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