This workshop will offer psychoanalytic perspectives on the allure of fascistic states of mind leading to widespread degradation of faith in liberal democracies. The speakers, who have been working as a study group, will highlight the unconscious dynamics both in individuals and the collective leading to large group regression. The latter destructive, populist-inspired autocratic movements are characterized by primitive defenses and wishful phantasies designed to avert primordial anxieties. The presenters will demonstrate how the loss of social meaning through cultural and economic shifts can lead to conspiratorial thinking, idealization of deceitful leaders,and cultism in which agitating leadership is able to harness fascistic mental states by creating fictitious enemies to be eradicated. The worldwide appeal of violent, malevolent states of mindwill be explored along with possible safeguards to tame the seductiveness of fascistic states. Following the presentations there will be a discussion between the panelists as well as with the audience.

Educational Objectives

This is workshop is intended to encourage curiosity, critical thinking, empathic ability and deeper understanding of destructive mental states, attraction to groupthink, regressed group behavior, and cultism.

The five objectives for CEs are that after attending this workshop:

1) Participants will be able to differentiate authoritarian from fascistic states of mind by describing the role played by the unconscious destructiveness and salvation inherent in the death drive.

2) Participants will be able to elaborate on the essence of fascism including its reliance on omnipotent leadership, simplistic ideologies, and the invention of an enemy.

3) Participants will be able to describe the role played by malignant leadership in fulfilling primitive unconscious group phantasies.

4) Participants will be able to describe how the loss of social meanings leads to annihilation anxieties and eventually to group regression and the use of fascism as a modern religion.

5) Participants will be able to describe the role of splitting, projection, and idealization in fascistic states of mind.

Licensed Professional — $125
Pre Licensed/Student — $753 CEs offered

Instructor Bios

Michael J. Diamond, Ph.D., FIPA is a Training and Supervising Analyst, Los Angeles Institute and Society for Psychoanalytic Studies. He has written extensively on psychoanalytic technique and the analytic mind; trauma, dissociation, and hypnotic states; masculinity, femininity, and gender theory; fathering and the paternal function; and psychoanalytic applications to large groups and socio-political regression. He has authored five books including most recently, Ruptures in the American Psyche: Containing Destructive Populism in Perilous Times (2022) and Masculinity and Its Discontents: The Male Psyche and the Inherent Tensions of Maturing Manhood (2021). He is in private practice in Los Angeles in addition to his teaching, supervising, and writing.

R.D. Hinshelwood is a Fellow of the British Psychoanalytical Society, and a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. He was Director of the Cassel Hospital and is now an Emeritus Professor in the University of Essex, UK. Bob has been a prolific writer. His wide-ranging works cover clinical and theoretical topics in psychoanalysis as well as the application of psychoanalytic thinking to the study of groups, organizations, and social sciences. He has written on Kleinian psychoanalysis, such as a Dictionary of Kleinian Thought (1989), Clinical Klein (1993), including the work of Wilfred Bion, W.R. Bion as Clinician. He has a long interestin the relevance of psychoanalysis to political thinking going back to his 1984 paper on Marxist ‘alienation’ and Kleinian ‘projective identification’ Currently Bob is in process of publishing a book titled Unconscious Politics.

Era A. Loewenstein, Ph.D. is an adult, adolescent, and child psychoanalyst. She is a Training and Supervising Analyst at the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis (SFCP) where she also serves on the faculty. Since the election of Donald Trump Era has been exploring fascistic states of mind. Among her recent publications are: Dystopian Narratives: Encounters with the Perverse Sadomasochistic Universe. (Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 2017). The Agitator and His Propaganda Machine: Donald Trump and the Road to American Fascism (Fort Da, 2018). The Allure of Fascism and “The Appointment in Samarra” (Fort Da, 2024). Era is the Editor of the Psychoanalytic Inquiry Issue: Perspectives on Populist and Fascistic States of Mind (February 2023). The Issue includes her Prologue, Epilogue, and her paper: In Dark Times:Psychoanalytic Praxis as a Form of Resistance to Fascist Propaganda.

Christina Wieland, D. psych psych is a psychoanalyst in private practice and Member of the British Psychoanalytical Society (BPAS). She has taught and lectured widely and has been a training supervisor in many psychoanalytic organisations in the UK. She is an Honorary Fellow at the University of Essex, UK, where she teaches on Bion. She has published numerous papers and given many talks on gender and society and the fascist state of mind. Articles include ‘The primitive container of fascism’ in Mintchev and Hinshelwood The Feeling of Uncertainty; and ‘Trauma and the fascist state of mind’ in Psychoanalytic Inquiry (vol 43, no 2, pp 84-95). She is the author of two books – The Undead Mother: Psychoanalytic Explorations of Masculinity, Femininity and Matricide (Karnac/Routledge); and The Fascist State of Mind and the Manufacturing of Masculinity (Routledge).

Harriet Wolfe, M.D. is President of the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA), Past President of the American Psychoanalytic Association, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine, and Training and Supervising Analyst at the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis. Her scholarly interests include clinical applications of psychoanalytic research (“Clinical discussion of Psychodynamic Therapy: a Meta-Analysis Testing Equivalence of Outcome” in: Outcome Research and the Future of Psychoanalysis: Clinicians and Researchers in Dialogue, 2020);Organizational processes (“Consultation to organizations” with W. Myerson et al, in: Textbook of Applied Psychoanalysis, 2018), female development (“Female leadership: Difficulties and gifts”, American Journal of Psychoanalysis, accepted 2020) and ethical aspects of therapeutic action.

Target Audience

This program is on an advanced level and meets the needs of all mental health professionals, including Psychiatrists,Psychologists, Social Workers, and Marriage and Family Therapists.  CE Credit is offered for licensed psychologists, social workers, and marriage and family therapists.