“When the dictatorships have come to naught”

“When the dictatorships have come to naught, human society will have need of truths, and precisely unpopular truths.” Early psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich wrote these words in The Function of the Orgasm (1942), a book that still makes me squirm a little as it contains exactly such unpopular truths.

We like to believe we’re progressing. More information and technology. More ‘awareness.’

Yet even the briefest glance at the situation—global, political, financial, familial, personal—reveals ever-growing patterns of degradation, decay, and breakdown. Whether these systems are external—economic, education, law—or internal—mental health, addiction, disease—the statistics show that by any meaningful measure humanity is in steepening decline.

Countries still turn to populist leaders, dictators, autocrats, megalomaniacs, and would-be Kings of America in a desperate search for quick-fix solutions—or, at least, the heady buzz of feeling better about ourselves at someone else’s expense.

Beneath the surface, nothing fundamental has changed. We’re still driven by forces we barely understand, repeating patterns we did not consciously choose, and suffering consequences we insist on misdiagnosing as a means of avoiding responsibility.

If we’re ever to move beyond rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic, mistaking symptom management for root cause resolution, here are three lessons humanity badly needs to learn.

1. ‘Mental health’ is not the problem

We have become fluent in the language of mental health. If we use it often enough, it becomes as ubiquitous as margarine—and just as greasy. Anxiety. Depression. Addiction. Trauma. But this fluency hides a deeper ignorance.

What we call ‘mental health issues’ aren’t isolated problems arising in the present moment. They’re the visible outputs of processes that began long before we were aware—often long before we were born.

Inherited trauma, dysfunctional family constellations and stunted emotional landscapes shape us at a level far deeper than conscious thought. By the time symptoms appear, the underlying process has already been running for decades. We try to band-aid the outputs while ignoring the systemic inputs that continue to produce them.

Only a mentally unwell nation accepts—no, demands—a dictatorship. Reich, addressing the Nazis in Berlin in 1932, wrote: “It is ridiculous to contend that the psychopathic general was capable of oppressing seventy million people all by himself.” [1]

The term ‘mental health’ is itself a misnomer that reflects our ignorance. What appear as issues in the mind are merely outputs of problems rooted far deeper in our psyche, as well as our musculature, nervous system, and genitals.

Problems can only be solved at their source. We must think our way out of logic issues, feel our way out of emotional issues and direct our genital energy to resolve sexual ones.

2. The unconscious is in charge

When we accept that the problem lies deeper than the mind, we confront a place most of us avoid. Not because it’s inaccessible but because it’s uncomfortable: the unconscious.

Wilhelm Reich also wrote: “Your conscious action is only a drop on the surface of a sea of unconscious processes, of which you can know nothing—about which, indeed, you are afraid to know.” [2]

That fear deflects us from facing our own unconscious. In it, we find “the rejected, the unacknowledged, the unrecognised, the unknown and undeveloped elements of our existence.” [3]

Every unresolved issue is trapped by the same three factors: we’re afraid of it, ashamed of it, and unwilling or unable to take responsibility for it.

So, we build lives around avoidance. We distract, intellectualise, blame. Reach for our anaesthetic of choice—alcohol, porn, vaping, shopping; what we call ‘entertainment’ but largely consists of beautifully crafted moving images of people killing each other. The direction is excellent.

Meanwhile, off-screen, the collective unconscious—the sum total of the planet’s fear, shame, and irresponsibility—drives events at both macro- and microcosmic levels, ruling the lives of eight billion people while they bicker over ineffective and self-serving political ideals.

All dictatorships are built by harnessing the unrequited pain of the masses to their own ends. “The fascists were not conscious of their technique,” Reich writes [4].

But the unconscious does not disappear because we refuse to look at it. It expresses itself anyway—in relationships, in behaviours, in compulsions, in quiet dissatisfaction, the slow distancing and breakdown of families, communities, international relations.

No one ventures into the unconscious except by necessity. Yet if you don’t go into it, it will come out through you.

3. Responsibility, not blame

Even if we reach as far as the depths of the unconscious, it’s tempting to stop at diagnosis.

To say: “This came from my parents.” Or: “This is communal.” Or even: “This is not my fault.” All of which may be true. But this isn’t a truth that drives change. Reich (his italics):

“All dictators have built their power on the social irresponsibleness of masses of people.” [5]

The work is not about pointing the finger. It’s about taking responsibility for what lives within us, for recognising our participation—conscious or otherwise—in our own life.

That responsibility is difficult. It demands that we face what we would rather avoid—shame, grief, anger, confusion, loss. It asks us to sit inside what feels like chaos. It can feel like what psychiatrist R. D. Laing calls “a shambles” [6]—fragmented, disconnected, overwhelming.

This is not failure. It’s the starting point. A sign of progress.

Responsibility is the mechanism by which unconscious patterns become conscious—and therefore changeable. Without it, insight becomes another form of avoidance. This is called ‘emotional bypassing.’

Dictatorship down

Humanity does not lack knowledge. It lacks the insight that its fundamental issues are feeling problems, not thinking problems—and thus require a different toolset.

And because feeling problems require us to feel unprocessed pain, we lack the willingness to apply it where it matters most—within ourselves. We continue to look outward for solutions to problems that originate within. We continue to avoid the only place resolution lies.

While we do so, the dictatorships, the autocrats, the populist leaders and other loudmouths of the world stage will continue to appeal. When we turn inwards, their brash and angry voices fall silent. We reach a point where only the truth will serve.

The three lessons are simple, but not easy:

• The problem is deeper than we think
• The unconscious is not optional
• Responsibility is the price of change

Until these are learned—not intellectually, but experientially—we will remain, individually and collectively, caught in patterns that feel uncontrollable but are anything but. Then and only then will the dictatorships come to naught. Then and only then will the insanity end.

The path is clear. Whether we choose to take it is another matter entirely.

Photo by yasmin peyman on Unsplash

References

[1] Reich, Wilhelm; The Mass Psychology of Fascism (1932)

[2] Reich, Wilhelm; The Function of the Orgasm (1942)

[3] Knight-Jadczyk, Laura; Debugging the Universe (2001)

[4] Reich, Wilhelm; The Mass Psychology of Fascism (1932)

[5] Ibid.

[6] Laing, R. D.; The Politics of Experience (1967)