{"id":256826,"date":"2023-05-10T21:56:06","date_gmt":"2023-05-10T19:56:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=256826"},"modified":"2023-05-10T21:56:16","modified_gmt":"2023-05-10T19:56:16","slug":"mass-formation-psychosis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=256826","title":{"rendered":"Mass Formation Psychosis"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From Climate Scepticism<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By\u00a0JOHN RIDGWAY<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\n

\u201cWe\u2019re all mad here. I\u2019m mad. You\u2019re mad.\u201dThe Cheshire Cat, Alice\u2019s Adventures in Wonderland<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

When I look around me nowadays, I find it hard to disagree with the Cheshire Cat \u2013 and I say that in full knowledge that he lived down a fictitious rabbit hole and his party trick was to spontaneously morph into a disembodied smile. That said, \u2018madness\u2019 is such a maddeningly ambiguous term that I feel obliged to clarify what it is exactly that I am agreeing with. It isn\u2019t that I believe that we are all suffering a mental illness, because that would be a mad thing to claim. What I mean instead is that we seem to live in a world where extremely foolish and irrational beliefs and actions seem to have become the new normal. Worse still, it seems that it is no longer possible to have two opposing, rational views on a given subject \u2013 instead there has to be one\u2019s own view, and that held by your mad opponent. And since one can assume that your mad opponent feels the same way about you, that means we\u2019re all mad here. I\u2019m mad. You\u2019re mad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the two great debates of our generation \u2014 climate change and covid-19 vaccination \u2014 such accusations and counter accusations of craziness have a strong tradition, heavily fuelled by acrimonious and largely fruitless internet exchanges. For the most part the accusations are born of frustration that the other guy just can\u2019t seem to grasp the obvious. More worryingly, however, some of these accusations have been elevated to the status of pseudoscience by a vocal coterie of academics who should know better. Take, for example, the climate change debate, in which the so-called denier\u2019s cognitive shortcomings and irrationality have been extensively analysed and pathologised by the psychology profession. It\u2019s an analysis that is supposed to be founded upon expertise in cognitive bias, and yet the psychologists\u2019 accusations of such biases are made in a manner that itself exhibits extreme cognitive bias<\/a>. Unfortunately, the profession has been allowed to get away with this to such an extent that the received wisdom is now that climate change \u2018denial\u2019 goes beyond simple foolishness and ill intent and strays into the territory normally occupied by the psychotic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A good example of such an accusation can be found in an article<\/a> written by Australian activist, Jeff Sparrow. In a rambling diatribe, he accuses sceptics of engaging in \u2018kettle logic\u2019, which is an irrational ability to simultaneously entertain two contradictory conspiracies, usually to avoid having to admit having been wrong. Of course, in an individual, such irrationality would be a sign of madness. Nevertheless, the accusation is made in all seriousness and is intended to apply to all climate change sceptics. Interestingly, however, the only evidence Sparrow offers for the existence of this mass pathology is the ability of sceptics to disagree with each other at conferences and their ability to form conditional arguments (along the lines of \u201aI don\u2019t believe x but even if I did there would still be y\u2018). I think you would have to be mad to find any of this convincing, but such accusations are seriously entertained by psychologists. Somehow they are able to misinterpret incoherent thinking within a group as being multiple cases of incoherent thinking within the individual. This is known as a \u2018category error\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But where it really gets interesting, as far as I am concerned, is when the boot is on the other foot and the accusations of psychosis are made by the sceptic. That\u2019s when the fun starts. That\u2019s when the psychologists really adopt the rampant pose and start clawing at the sceptic\u2019s throat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Enter the \u2018formerly\u2019 reputable\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The theory that seems to have severely rattled the psychologists\u2019 cage is the brainchild of Robert Malone MD, who chose to share his ideas with the world in a Joe Rogan podcast back in December 2021. Malone starts by asking \u201cWhat the heck happened to Germany in the 20s and 30s? Very intelligent, highly educated population, and they went barking mad.<\/em>\u201d He suggests that similar mass behaviour can be discerned in the response to the covid-19 epidemic. He dubs it \u2018Mass Formation Psychosis\u2019, and he explains it thus:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

When you have a society that has become decoupled from each other and has free-floating anxiety in a sense that things don\u2019t make sense, we can\u2019t understand it, and then their attention gets focused by a leader or series of events on one small point just like hypnosis, they literally become hypnotized and can be led anywhere.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The podcast went viral and the psychology profession went apoplectic. Typical of the negative response was that given in a New England Psychologist article<\/a> written by John Grohol Psy. D.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

If this doesn\u2019t sound particularly scientific or based in psychological science, you\u2019d be right. Malone isn\u2019t a psychologist and doesn\u2019t have any background or experience in psychology, human behavior, or psychiatric research. Instead, his description sounds like some sort of pop psychology mumbo-jumbo from someone who took Psychology 101 in college.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Grohol continues by doubling down on Malone\u2019s lack of required qualifications:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

None of his work touched upon psychology or psychological theory. Suddenly, however, Malone feels qualified to express his expertise about \u201cmass formation psychosis.\u201d He knows so little about the field, he basically invented a term (or repeated something he heard once somewhere), instead of using the already well-known and accepted terms, mass hysteria or mass psychogenic illness.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This all sounds rather damning, but before I go any further I think it would be worth my while to reflect upon one particular statement made by Grohol that he thinks gets to the heart of Malone\u2019s failure to understand the basics:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Anyone who suggests there\u2019s \u201cfree-floating anxiety\u201d that\u2019s \u201cjust like hypnosis\u201d has a very limited understanding of what these things mean. People just can\u2019t be hypnotized without their knowledge or consent \u2014 that\u2019s not at all how hypnosis works. And while anxiety is indeed a significant issue for many people, it doesn\u2019t \u201cfloat\u201d from person to person or otherwise become infectious.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

My qualifications to discuss psychology may be no better than Malone\u2019s, but I will venture to suggest that the above quote demonstrates, more than any other, just how seriously Grohol has failed to understand Malone\u2019s ideas. As a psychologist, surely Grohol knows that free-floating anxiety is a technical term, defined by the American Psychological Association as \u201ca diffuse, chronic sense of uneasiness and apprehension not directed toward any specific situation or object<\/em>.\u201d It is in that sense that it floats; it isn\u2019t anchored to anything specific. By saying that it is free-floating, Malone isn\u2019t suggesting that it is an anxiety that transmits from one individual to another; instead he is referring to a chronic and pervasive societal unease exhibited by a decoupled society. Furthermore, by virtue of its detachment from any specific and discernible cause, the unease can be readily co-opted by leaders with an agenda. The impression of hypnosis comes from the readiness by which the masses can be persuaded of the cause of the diffuse societal anxiety, and thereby led.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyone, such as I, who has been diagnosed with free-floating anxiety can attest to its irrational nature. The anxiety is intrinsic; it doesn\u2019t need a trigger or explanation. And yet there will always be plenty of environmental factors upon which it can be pinned \u2013 if you are so inclined. Malone obviously knows this and adds the insight that societies can exhibit traits that are akin to an individual\u2019s emotional states. But he doesn\u2019t offer the rationale for this comparison and so leaves himself open to accusations of mumbo-jumbo from the likes of Grohol. Grohol simply dismisses the concept of societal anxiety as a category error and further proof of Malone\u2019s incompetence. I think it is anything but, and I\u2019ll tell you why.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Enter the \u2018never has been\u2019 reputable\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to remind you at this point that some six months before Malone introduced the world to Mass Information Psychosis I had written an article<\/a> here at Climate Scepticism espousing a very similar theory. The starting point was to suggest that, at its essence, emotion is the name we give to a complex, autonomous, adaptive, self-monitoring system\u2019s cognition of its internal state. Our bodies are such a system and our central nervous system provides the self-monitoring. Emotion is what we experience as a result. Consequently, insofar as our decision-making relies upon an awareness of our internal state, we are doomed to rely upon emotion to make a decision. Furthermore, since societies are also complex, autonomous, adaptive, self-monitoring systems, they too will exhibit decision-making that is essentially emotion-based in the system theoretic sense, i.e. a society\u2019s pre-occupation with its internal state constitutes an essential element of its decision-making. A consequence of this is that, just as individuals can suffer neurotic and phobic anxieties in a literal sense, so can societies in a more abstract sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is not a category error, because in both cases we are dealing with the same class of object, i.e. a decision-making, complex, autonomous, adaptive, self-monitoring system. One can only start making a category error if one takes the analogy too far in believing an abstract concept such as  \u2018society\u2019 can actually experience emotion in the same sense as a conscious entity can. The term \u2018anxiety\u2019 is used in an abstract manner when applied to societies, as indeed are terms like \u2018panic\u2019, \u2018phobia\u2019, \u2018psychosis\u2019 and \u2018hypnosis\u2019. But there is a legitimacy to the use of this terminology that goes beyond metaphor. Despite his remark about \u201aliterally\u2018 becoming hypnotised, I believe that is what Malone is doing. He didn\u2019t use the \u2018already well-known and accepted terms, mass hysteria or mass psychogenic illness<\/em>\u2019 because they are quite different to what he was talking about. They are group behaviours that emerge when the emotional states of individuals interact and feedback upon themselves. They result in collective emotional behaviour and, as such, are psychological phenomena. That\u2019s not what I am talking about, and I don\u2019t believe it is what Malone is getting at either. As I put it:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

To be clear, I am not saying that societal decision-making is essentially emotional just because the decisions are being made by individuals who are acting emotionally. This may be true, but I am referring to a more profound sense in which society\u2019s decisions are emotionally driven. They are emotional in the sense that the cognition of the internal state of a complex, autonomous, adaptive, self-monitoring system (i.e. society) is the driving force.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Whilst there are similarities between my thoughts on the matter and Malone\u2019s, there are important differences. Firstly, I have chosen to focus upon the importance of internal monitoring as an essential component of emotional phenomena. In particular, I have pointed out that this can lead to phobic anxiety in the individual and, by analogy, to a legitimate concept of societal phobia. I speak, for example, of societies having panic attacks. Malone doesn\u2019t do this, preferring instead to reflect upon free-floating anxiety in the individual and suggesting the possibility of an analogous societal free-floating anxiety. The propensity for society to \u2018panic\u2019 is therefore replaced in Malone\u2019s version by a propensity for it to be persuaded to act in a tendentious manner, simply by offering it an after-the-fact rationalisation for its diffuse anxiety. This is a different emphasis to mine but, even so, it isn\u2019t a major divergence. In fact, both theories entertain the idea of diffuse societal anxiety, albeit with different causations (hyper-sensitivity to internal states in my theory, or a \u2018decoupled\u2019 society in Malone\u2019s). And both theories recognise a tendency for societies to rationalise such anxiety. As I said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Having established <\/em>[through hyper-sensitive self-monitoring] a self-inflicted sense of crisis we have compounded the error by then looking for external threats and causes of internal dysfunction that could possibly explain our extreme agitation.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Put another way, societies take their free-floating anxiety and anchor it to a causation. Furthermore, such anchorage can be easily facilitated by those with an agenda. Consequently:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

One has to wonder, if we didn\u2019t obsess so much over the ills of society, what appetite would remain for rebooting it to address climate change.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

We band of disreputable brothers<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a funny thing, but when Grohol and his fellow professionals looked at Malone\u2019s theory, all they could see was an unqualified charlatan attempting a psychological thesis without even understanding the basics of the subject. I, on the other hand, could see a kindred spirit, crossing disciplines in an effort to understand what seems on the face of it a quite incomprehensible phenomenon \u2013 why seemingly intelligent and sane people can be so easily swept up in an insane enterprise. I was not troubled by Malone\u2019s use of non-standard terminology; one would not find it in the cannon of psychology because, at its essence, his wasn\u2019t really a psychological thesis. It\u2019s a theory about control, and the decision-making of what is actually a complex, autonomous, adaptive, self-monitoring system. As such, his thinking, whether he appreciates it or not, benefits from a paradigm that can apply to more than one application area. Moreover, his is an attempt to explain how individuals may find themselves able to entertain personal suboptimal thinking simply in order to fit in with decision-making at the societal level and yet, at no stage, experience any cognitive dissonance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But let us not kid ourselves here. Malone\u2019s greatest sin was not to overreach himself by proposing an inchoate theory in an area outside of his expertise. It was that he chose to apply himself to finding an explanation for a phenomenon that the orthodoxy does not willingly accept exists. He sought to explain why there was so much eagerness to engage in an irrational project when, as far as the powers that be are concerned, the project is perfectly rational. To those who get to decide who is mad and who is not, he was looking for an explanation for a madness when part of that madness is to declare that only the mad would think an explanation were necessary. That\u2019s what made it so easy for Grohol to see the lack of academic grounding in Malone\u2019s arguments and yet fail to see the wisdom in his metaphor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Stephan Lewandowsky and John Cook developed their ideas regarding the alleged madness of conspiracy theorists, none of their fellow professionals thought to step forward and point out the category errors upon which they were based. Far from it, they received European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) funding to write them up in a handbook<\/a>. But when Malone only appears<\/em> to commit a category error, the whole world explodes in an orgy of indignant rebuttal. At the end of the day, however, this is the asymmetry we have to deal with. Any opposition to the authorized view will be automatically branded as irrational in a way that compliance never will. We\u2019re all mad here. I\u2019m mad. You\u2019re mad. But not everyone has keys to the asylum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alice wasn\u2019t too impressed with the Cheshire Cat\u2019s philosophy and objected to being called mad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201aHow do you know I\u2019m mad?\u2018 said Alice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201aYou must be,\u2018 said the Cat, `or you wouldn\u2019t have come here.\u2018<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think I know the feeling. Sometimes there is something irrationally futile about trying to make sense of the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cWe\u2019re all mad here. I\u2019m mad. You\u2019re mad.\u201dThe Cheshire Cat, Alice\u2019s Adventures in Wonderland<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121246920,"featured_media":256829,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_crdt_document":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[691818056,691818534,691818150,691819460,691819459],"class_list":{"0":"post-256826","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"hentry","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-climate-change","9":"tag-covid-19-vaccination","10":"tag-panic","11":"tag-phobia","12":"tag-robert-malone-md","14":"fallback-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/05545474ce54739be10aca66ae0b8103f.jpg?fit=1495%2C2015&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paxLW1-14Om","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":231586,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=231586","url_meta":{"origin":256826,"position":0},"title":"Westminster 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