Psychic Contagion

How do We Survive in a World of 'Shared Psychosis'?

When I rapidly wrote and published in the summer of 2020, Profile of a Nation: Trump’s Mind, America’s Soul, I stated in it that Donald Trump “will likely refuse to concede the results, call the election a fraud, and refuse to leave office.”  This, of course, was not an individual diagnosis but an observation of how Trump related to the public: he knew he could get away with his Big Lie, having “entrained” his followers over years, and this is exactly what he sensed.

How was he able to read his audience?  Adolf Hitler was called a “seismograph of crowds.”  When higher faculties are impaired or not functioning properly, and there is extreme motivation to manipulate others to gain advantage, power, or even a veneer of “sanity”, then enormous energy and “skill” are devoted to deceiving others.  Vladimir Putin is another contemporary example of a “master” manipulator. It is important to recognize these over-compensations as symptoms and not as strength.

Mental health experts do not read the minds of people they have not examined but recognize patterns, and the more impaired the individual, the more predictable the person is.  Just as I warned that the Trump presidency would not end with an election and that he would return—as he has—I commented after the 2018 Helsinki Summit that Putin, with Donald Trump having elevated him to parity status with an American president (and, psychologically, even “superior”), would be emboldened for a greater show of force.  His aggrandizement through Trump, indeed, was a psychological precursor to his hubristic attack on Ukraine.

I have illustrated an “international Trump Contagion effect” before.  The same can be seen in diplomatic circles.

In October 2021, Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland had a very strange experience in meeting with her Russian counterpart, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, with whom she had had an amicable relationship for decades.  Even as the two countries’ relationship deteriorated, Nuland had always found him a reasonable person she could talk to.  This time, however, Ryabkov read Moscow’s official position from a piece of paper and refused to engage in a discussion, and Nuland returned to the U.S. shocked.

Outside the negotiating room, Russian diplomats were using increasingly belligerent language:

“We spit on Western sanctions.”

“Let me speak.  Otherwise, you will really hear what Russian Grad missiles are capable of.”

“F*ing morons!”

These are all quotes from people in high positions at the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Referring to Maria Zakharova, who became the Russian Ministry spokesperson in 2015, former foreign ministry official Boris Bondarev said: “Before her, diplomats behaved like diplomats, speaking in refined expressions.”  Bondarev would eventually resign in protest over the war.

With Zakharova’s arrival, foreign ministry briefings became a spectacle.  She yelled at reporters who asked her difficult questions and responded to criticism from other countries with insults.

In January 2022, over dinner in Geneva, Ryabkov from the foreign ministry met with U.S. officials, including First Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, who hoped to avert the invasion of Ukraine through eleventh-hour negotiations.

Bondarev said: “It was awful….  The Americans were like, ‘Let’s negotiate.’  And instead Ryabkov starts shouting, ‘We need Ukraine!  We won’t go anywhere without Ukraine!’”  Sherman’s jaw dropped.

According to Bondarev: “[Ryabkov] was always very polite and really nice to talk to.  And now he’s banging his fist on the table and talking nonsense.”

This change in diplomatic tone has changed in other countries, too: Japan’s representative for human rights at the United Nations, Hideaki Ueda, demanded that foreign colleagues “shut up” at a meeting.  Gavin Williamson used the same words against Russia when he was the U.K. defense secretary.  And Ukraine’s ambassador to Germany, Andriy Melnyk, last year referred to German Chancellor Olaf Scholz as an “offended liver sausage.”

Just as I detected, in January 2020, the sign of something greater going on than individual (rational) agreement or ordinary “emotional contagion” when Alan Dershowitz described his “perfect sex life”—much in the manner that Donald Trump described his “perfect phone call”— Trump Contagion has spread from national to international levels.

“Shared psychosis” is a psychosocial phenomenon that has been researched and described since the mid-nineteenth century, then called “folie communiqué,” or “contagious madness.”  It results from a person with severe mental symptoms holding an influential position, in a dyad (“folie à deux”), a family, a group, or a nation (“folie à millions”).  Having worked largely in public hospital and prison settings, where there are high concentrations of severe mental disturbances that go untreated, I have seen this phenomenon a good deal.

Shared psychosis can take the form of transmission to previously healthy individuals; mutual reinforcement of previously ill persons; activation of predisposed individuals; or latent “conversion” of previously resistant individuals.  When the psychosocial phenomenon is widespread—affecting not just a household but a nation or the world—then all four types are observed simultaneously.

When diplomats are engaging in belligerent language with one another in a way that they cannot carry out their duties of diplomacy, then something more irrational and destructive is occurring.  Gustave Le Bon illustrated the pathology of crowds.  Carl Jung warned against the menace of “psychic epidemics.”  Sigmund Freud explained the lurking, unconscious perils behind “civilization”.  And as Erich Fromm famously noted: “That millions of people share the same forms of mental pathology does not make these people sane.”

Anyone can give into shared psychosis, given enough exposure and pressure.  How do we guard against this?  We can prioritize our own mental health, through care of the self.  It is natural to feel exhausted when there is widespread contagion of symptoms, and therefore it is important to recognize that anxiety and exhaustion are a signal to ourselves to take time for renewal.  Pausing to honor the pain we feel for the world, widening our vision, and taking one step at a time can counter the trend of the dramatic, obtrusive, and apparent violence before our eyes.  This is the source of true strength.  Spiritual centering can happen in an hour a day, an afternoon a week, and a spontaneous “getaway” once in a while to devote to pure enjoyment while letting nothing intrude.  Taking the time to connect back with the universal, through the arts, meditation, or simply time spent with loved ones is essential.  Then universal human values, such as equality, justice, truth, compassion, and reverence and appreciation for life, will grow stronger, and shared psychosis lose its grip.