The first part of our interview discusses totalitarianism and the psychological mechanisms it relies upon. The second part delves further and looks at the Mathias Desmet / Peter Breggin controversy. To understand the concept of totalitarianism, which is increasingly being discussed following the COVID-19 crisis and the various coercive measures that have been put in place, the logical step is to call on a real expert in the field.

The totalitarian drift since 2020 by Ariane Bilheran

We are rightly protesting against the totalitarian drift that has been explicitly visible since the spring of 2020. This civic, moral and spiritual protest is essential, because it expresses our concern to preserve the roots, in particular Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian, of our current civilization. If we define, in a laconic way, totalitarianism as the ambition of "total domination" (H. Arendt), with imperialist methods, including the monopoly of communication, the confisca

For Ariane Bilheran, clinical psychologist, author of Psychopathologie de la paranoïa (Psychopathology of Paranoia) and Psychopathologie de l'autorité (Psychopathology of Authority) (Dunod), our societies are sinking into totalitarianism.

"The first chimeric man-ape embryos have been created", announces Le Monde on April 15, 2021. Far from being concerned, the political-media system celebrates the monstrosities of transhumanism. Progress that advances and Novelty that innovates are now free. All moral barriers seem to fall almost systematically accused of referring to the "world of before" or to reaction. Is the collapse of society then the only way out to prevent "homo deus" from doing his worst?

All totalitarian islets create their own "newspeak", for example within companies that operate by terrorizing, harassing and persecuting their employees. All totalitarianism lives off the conquest of "ideological pretension" (Hannah Arendt) and the "rectification of thought" (Mao). To overcome these ideological levels, which are increasingly moving away from the search for truth and knowledge, and to persecute opponents, the instrumentalization of language is necessary.

Traditionally, and throughout humanity, there have been places where everyone could take refuge in a "neutral" zone of conflict, in protection, sheltered. With or without papers, with or without money, innocent or criminal, destitute, beggar, handicapped, old, whoever you are, whatever you have done, you could be welcomed and safe there.

This summer of 2021, I had the opportunity to visit France, a country I hadn't visited for several years. It was an opportunity for me to observe a serious deterioration in human relations and values, undoubtedly fertile ground for the ongoing paranoiac decompensation.

In the delusional hypochondria of paranoia, illness is everywhere, experienced as dangerous, mortal, the enemy of the living. The sick are opposed to the healthy, as the impure to the pure: the order is given to eliminate (and before that, to "evict" to use the words of Jean-Michel Blanquer, Minister of National Education in France, concerning unvaccinated children) the part of the social body designated as impure.

No great crime, no human tragedy has remained without witnesses. It is as if destiny, or the collective unconscious, assigns this role to certain privileged individuals, and grants them providential protection to accomplish their mission. This is true as much for the "great History" as for the intimate dramas of families and communities.

It is this very pretension to govern this bare life that has clearly emerged since the first quarter of 2020: restrictions on movement to the point of immobilization (lockdowns, isolation), the distance imposed between bodies ("social distancing"), the reduction of faces to the scopic impulse (the sole gaze), constrained breathing, etc.

"We have pushed logic so far in the liberation of human beings from the shackles of industrial exploitation that we have sent about ten million people to forced labor in the Arctic regions and the eastern forests, in conditions analogous to those of the galley slaves of antiquity. We have pushed logic so far that to settle a difference of opinion, we know only one argument: death."

The totalitarian regime aims at "total domination" (H. Arendt), that is to say, it interferes in the totality of social, private, and intimate spheres, even in the psyche of individuals.

Series in 3 episodes, published by L’Antipresse, n°286, 287 & 288 23 & 30 May 2021, 05 June 2021 - Translated by Thetranslationbridge.com Ariane Bilheran, normalienne (Ecole Normale Supérieure), philosopher, clinical psychologist, doctor in psychopathology, specialized in the study of manipulation, paranoia, perversion, harassment, and totalitarianism.

One of the most formidable weapons of the harassing powers is slander, that is to say the defamatory and mendacious attack ad personam against the messenger, so that his message is discredited, or even, so that he is designated as the person to be brought down, or "the bad person" whose message should absolutely not be listened to.

Since the beginning of this "pandemic", I had only written a brief article on "health totalitarianism", needing myself to see it clearly enough with hindsight to make a decision. Nevertheless, we can recognize, at a global level, with some nuances depending on the country, the mark of a delusional paranoiac contagion which shows its odious face more and more every day.

We could also say "the project is to save humanity, by killing humanity". Concretely, where I am in Colombia, the forced quarantine since the end of March is causing real hunger. No welfare, no income, no retirement, no social security, no unemployment. People are starving. Animals too. Really, is it the health of the people that we are concerned about?

Le harcèlement est le chef-d’œuvre du paranoïaque. Il est une attitude visant à conduire autrui à l’autodestruction...

Paranoiac delusion has the particularity of being contagious... In this context, the psychological mechanisms at work are notably the collusion between the melancholic core of the paranoiac and the traces of unresolved pathological mourning in the "paranoee". One of the most essential mysteries to be solved in the field of the human psyche lies in the delusional contagion of paranoia. In fact, the only delusion capable of operating by contagion is paranoiac delusion...

Harassment in the workplace is a delicate subject to deal with. Moreover, company management and, more generally, all the social actors concerned, seem helpless when accusations of harassment emerge. Most often, it is panic, giving rise to inertia or, on the contrary, to escalation.