Our Virtual Psychohistory Forum Meeting on Paranoid Politics

Republican Joe McCarthy’s anti-communist paranoia prompted the brilliant historian (and former communist) Richard Hofstadter to coin the phrase “the paranoid style” in American politics in his 1964 essay in Harper’s Magazine and then published his book, The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays (1964). Our May 1^st presenter, Ken Fuchsman, likes to point out that by early 2021, the paranoid style had 24,900,000 hits on Google. This is in contrast to Freud’s 63,100,000 and psychohistory’s 421,000. The U.S. is currently in one of these periods of massive paranoia in politics.

Former President Trump’s disregard of the truth has renewed interest in what Hofstadter called politics of the “wildest fancies… the most paranoid suspicions” and “the most bizarre apocalyptic fantasies” (Radical Right, 2008, 99-100). Hofstadter and Fuchsman are not speaking of paranoia in the clinical sense but rather politically. The fact that so many millions of Republicans appear to believe that the recent election was stolen (67% according to Jonathan Easley, “Majority of Republicans say 2020 election was invalid: poll,” The Hill, February 25, 2021) is an indication of the deterioration of belief in trust and truth.

Ken Fuchsman did an excellent job of presenting and then handling the lengthy series of questions that followed, while Inna

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Rozentsvit did a fine job as the moderator. It is important to comment on the backgrounds of the 31 participants in the meeting. They came from Europe (Belarus, France 3, and Switzerland), India (2), Israel, Canada, and throughout the entire U.S. More U.S. participants were outside the Metropolitan New York area than within it, including people from Alaska and California. By occupation, therapists made up the largest number (I suspect most are psychoanalysts), and there were at least four historians. Clearly, the benefits of a virtual meeting are that we can involve so many more colleagues from around the world. The downside was a technical glitch delaying the meeting. Other general downsides are that we are not sitting close to each other, introducing ourselves, and verbally stating our questions based on the presentation paper that the presenter would eventually respond to (instead of having to work partly through the moderator middleman). It is also impossible to break up into separate lively one-on-one discussions before going to lunch together or our separate ways.

Some interesting points raised included that much of the radical right may not believe in democracy or even the republican form of government. Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy’s declaration that most Republicans in the House of Representatives seem to believe a Democrat victory in an election is automatically illegitimate was equally striking and a reflection of paranoid thinking. The loss of a sense of safety and trust in the democratic system was emphasized by a Midwestern psychoanalyst. An Ohio professor pointed out that there are many varied examples of conspiracy theories on the left and indicated that he would send these to the presenter.

Participants are looking forward to future virtual and in-person meetings.

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