Conspiracies? The "Paranoid Style" Revisited, in Psychoanalytic Thought, History, and Political Life

Daniel Pick, PhD, reflects on psychoanalytic thought about paranoia and considers its relevance to the exploration of mass phenomena, past and present. He draws on past work by a range of writers, including Freud, Tausk, Erikson, Klein, and Bion. He also returns to the work of historians and philosophers, including Hofstadter and Arendt, whose work is useful for exploring conspiracy theory and 'the paranoid style.' The talk concludes by engaging with various contemporary explorations of the crisis of democracy, the AI revolution, and the so-called ‘deep state’.