I have recently watched “The Nazis: A Warning from History”. This series of DVDs makes it perfectly clear that the Germany population were handmaidens of Hitler. Hitler and the civilian population had a symbiotic relationship that provides the embodiment of the Freudian theory of transference on both the individual and on the group level.

Freud was the first to focus upon the phenomenon of a patient’s inclination to transfer the feelings s/he had toward her parents as a child to the physician. The patient distorts the perception of the physician; s/he enlarges the figure up far out of reason and becomes dependent upon him. In this transference of feeling, which the patient had for his parents, to the physician the grown person displays all the characteristics of the child at heart, a child who distorts reality in order to relieve his helplessness and fears.

Freud saw these transference phenomena as the form of human suggestibility that makes the control over another, as displayed by hypnosis, as being possible. Hypnosis seems mysterious and mystifying to us only because we hide our slavish need for authority from our self. We live the big lie, which lay within this need to submit our self slavishly to another, because we want to think of our self as self-determined and independent in judgment and choice.

The predisposition to hypnosis is identical to that which gives rise to transference and it is characteristic of all sapiens. We could not function as adults if we retained this submissive attitude to our parents, however, this attitude of submissiveness, as noted by Ferenczi, is “The need to be subject to someone remains; only the part of the father is transferred to teachers, superiors, impressive personalities; the submissive loyalty to rulers that is so widespread is also a transference of this sort.”

Freud saw immediately that when caught up in groups wo/man became dependent children once again. They abandoned their individual egos for that of the leader; they identified with their leader and proceeded to function with him as their ideal. Freud identified man, not as a herd animal but as a horde (teeming crowd) animal that is led by a chief. Wo/man has an insatiable need for authority.

People have an insatiable need to be hypnotized by authority; they seek a magical protection as when they were infants protected by their mother. This is the force that acts to hold groups together, intertwined within a mutually constructed but often mindless interdependence. This mindless group think also builds a feeling of potency. The members feel a sense of unity within the grasp of their leadership.

What do the following entities have in common: fascism, capitalism, communism, political parties, and religions? They all have a common characteristic that can be called “group mind”.

What is striking is that members of these entities often undergo a major change in behavior just by being members of such entities. Under certain conditions individuals who become members of these groups behave differently than they would as individuals. These individuals acquire the characteristics of a ‘psychological group’.

What is the nature of the ‘group mind’, i.e. the mental changes such individuals undergo as a result of becoming a group?

A bond develops much like cells which constitute a living body—group mind is more of an unconscious than a conscious force—there are motives for action that elude conscious attention—distinctiveness and individuality become group behavior based upon unconscious motives—there develops a sentiment of invincible power, anonymous and irresponsible attitudes--repressions of unconscious forces under normal situations are ignored—conscience which results from social anxiety disappear.

Contagion sets in—hypnotic order becomes prevalent—individuals sacrifice personal interest for the group interest.

Suggestibility, of which contagion is a symptom, leads to the lose of conscious personality—the individual follows suggestions for actions totally contradictory to person conscience—hypnotic like fascination sets in—will and discernment vanishes—direction is taken from the leader in an hypnotic like manner—the conscious personality disappears.

“Moreover, by the mere fact that he forms part of an organized group, a man descends several rungs in the ladder of civilization.” Isolated, he may be a cultivated individual; in a crowd, he is a barbarian—a creature acting by instinct. “He possesses the spontaneity, the violence, the ferocity, and also the enthusiasm and heroism of primitive beings.”

There is a lowering of intellectual ability “pointing to its similarity with the mental life of primitive people and of children…A group is credulous and easily influenced”—the improbable seldom exists—they think in images—feelings are very simple and exaggerated—the group knows neither doubt nor uncertainty—extremes are prevalent, antipathy becomes hate and suspicion becomes certainty.

Force is king—force is respected and obeyed without question—kindness is weakness—tradition is triumphant—words have a magical power—supernatural powers are easily accepted—groups never thirst for truth, they demand illusions—the unreal receives precedence over the real—the group is an obedient herd—prestige is a source for domination, however it “is also dependent upon success, and is lost in the event of failure”.

‘Why are groups so blind and stupid?’ Freud asked; and he replied that mankind lived by self delusion. They “constantly give what is unreal precedence over what is real.” The real world is too frightening to behold; delusion changes this by making sapiens seem important. This explains the terrible sadism we see in group activity.

I do not wish to admit it but Hitler’s Germany resulted from normal humans acting like normal humans.

Quotes are from Freud and his book “Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego”. I discovered that Freud had turned to the Frenchman Gustave Le Bon for empirical data on group behavior.

Gustave Le Bon was a French social psychologist, sociologist, and amateur physicist. His work on crowd psychology became important in the first half of the twentieth century. Le Bon was one of the great popularizers of theories of the unconscious at a critical moment in the formation of new theories of sociology.


The Century of the Self
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2637635365191428174

You seem to have gotten a lot of insight from the TV program you watched. The problem with many such explanations of fascism and authority cults is that they reproduce the group-logic that leads individuals to feel powerless and submit in the way they describe and explain the phenomena. So you end up with what feels like a liberating study of fascism at a distance, but in effect works as fascist propaganda by promoting the idea that fascism is very natural, socially contagious, that humans actually merge into groups instead of this just being part of the individual psychosis, etc.

That last point is very important. If you read the last part of your post, you are referring to humans as "groups," instead of as individuals hypnotized by group-submission fantasy. Do you see how this in itself promotes such a fantasy as something achievable in reality? Actually, humans are never really capable of existing as anything other than individuals, but as a result of their ego's being shamed to the point of fleeing, they search for opportunities to get away with things they wouldn't be able to get away with in a context of individual responsibility and accountability. Submitting to authority and conforming to de-individualizing, shared characteristic defined as a collective identity, are two avenues for escaping the weight or burden of standing and acting as an individual.

The other reason these explanations of fascism have a propaganda effect is that they rarely provide or promote alternatives to fascism or techniques for building up strength as an individual. Individualism and freedom ideologies are well-established. The governmental form of "republic" for example is one that replaces centralized leadership with decentralized self-leadership of individuals in democratic dialogue with other self-leading individuals. Without such alternatives, critique of fascism can generate fear of fascism, which itself produces the child-like authoritarian submission that causes fascism in the first place.

This is the propaganda technique that I believe is most effective in maintaining the power of Hitler's image and the threat of fascism and holocaust up to today. Modern individuals can be brought to a high level of submission and support for authoritarian governance and economic control by convincing them that WWII era fascism was the result of economic crisis prior to the rise of fascism. Then, as a consequence of that fear, they repeat the same behavior of authoritarian submission, which revitalizes the fascism. Plus, the alternatives of individualism, freedom, republic, etc. are demonized as being aggressive ideologies of the strong against the weak, which further polarizes them in the direction of fascism because they fear the alternative to fascism as itself a form of fascism.

Once people are convinced that only fascism exists, it is inevitable, and their is no escape, i.e. that "resistance is futile," they have effectively been manipulated to deny the very possibility of freedom and individuality in their minds. Hence the deep need for alternatives that promote faith in freedom and strength in individuality.

No. We still have the power to be the rugged individualists you described in your OP, to influence the world around us. The modern economic system [and the many political, cultural, and other ideologies which are simply extensions of it] tries to make us believe otherwise because if everybody were to realize their power as individuals the system would not work. It needs to maintain a certain [steadily increasing] degree of conformity. As light in the tunnel put it: it needs to subordinate individuals to system-logic, which ultimately translates into a form of slavery.

I personally do not subject myself to this system. I am self employed, self sufficient, master of the technology i use [i.e. Linux user, backyard mechanic], and steadily influencing the world around me through my work.

QUOTE

Do you feel like a cipher in our culture?