Political Paranoia: The Psychopolitics of Hatred

Paranoia is not an obscure mental state afflicting some individuals but a widespread condition of modern societies, say the authors of this engrossing book. Robins and Post describe the paranoid personality, explain why paranoia is part of human evolutionary history, and examine the conditions that must exist before the message of the paranoid takes root in a vulnerable population, leading to mass movements and genocidal violence.

Lightly bolstering commonsensical armchair analysis of history's despots and cultists, this cursory survey manages to tell a bit less than we may sense we already know about the pathological use of power. Of Robins's (Political Science/Tulane Univ.) and Post's (Psychiatry/George Washington Univ.) theme--``that paranoia is a characteristic mentality of the late twentieth century''--this review of destructive regimes leaves little doubt, if there ever was any. But primarily retailing the well-known behavior of the likes of Pol Pot and cult leader Jim Jones, it is weaker on the more vexing question of their success in leading, in the extreme cases, entire societies to severe self-mutilation. After summarizing some basic psychology about the ``need for enemies,'' the authors largely neglect much examination of the specific conditions that allowed these paranoid delusions to be writ so large--save to quickly observe, for example, that in the Middle East conspiratorial thinking is fostered by a history marked by actual conspiracies or that interwar Germany was in ``distress.'' By the chapter on Hitler, the tininess of the psychological analysis (the possible Jewish grandfather) relative to the magnitude of the events in question becomes obvious. When the French and Russian revolutions are principally cited for operating ``as if [they] were to produce a messiah or introduce a millennium'' (a condition the authors classify as a ``pairing group'' state), it seems that any contextual understanding of social movements or conflict has been overshadowed by the psychopolitical angle. And yet the banal truth of political paranoia's rampancy is not even fully enough represented here, as the diagnostic line drawn around the pathological--decontextualized even in an example as immediate as the militia movement--underplays the wider spectrum of irrationality, superstition, and resentment along which most mainstream politics reside as well. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Paranoia is an underlying theme in political life. While healthy suspicion is invaluable to leaders, extreme cases are disastrous for citizens and nations alike. Arguing that humans have a natural tendency toward paranoia based on the fear of strangers and the need for friends, Robins and Post (When Illness Strikes the Leader: The Dilemma of the Captive King, LJ 2/15/93) examine the role of paranoia in the political context. They first discuss the basic elements of the paranoid condition, then explore past paranoid episodes (Salem witch hunts,) paranoid societies (the Dobu society of New Guinea), and conspiracy thinking. Along the way, they examine the paranoid regimes of Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Joseph Stalin, and Adolf Hitler as well as those of Jim Jones, David Koresh, and Middle East terrorists. The result is a fine complement to Anton Neumayr's Dictators in the Mirror of Medicine: Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin (Medi-Ed Pr., 1995). Recommended for public and academic libraries.?Stephen L. Hupp, Univ. of Pittsburgh at Johnstown, Pa.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.