Le système totalitaire : du dehors au dedans

The totalitarian system: from the outside to the inside Based on stories told by survivors and on studies in the social sciences, this article brings out the major characteristics of the totalitarian political system by stressing its aim of mass destruction and its destructive effect on society, the psyche, and the socius . It is maintained here that since the totalitarian system considers the human being and the social bonding process to be its enemies, the destruction of humanity, reflecting its internal logic, is its only project. Though the present article relates the organizers of the totalitarian system to the psychological functioning of the typical totalitarian tyrant, it is less concerned with the murderous madness of a single individual than with the willingness of his many associates to place themselves at his service. The article emphasizes the role of limitless and nameless terror in manipulating human distress and the archaic level of the psyche. This is seen in the arousal of certain humiliating individual and group processes and the organized regression of those who survive by using highly archaic and psychotic-like defense mechanisms. Revisiting the two major totalitarian societies of the 20th century, this study calls attention to those aspects of our current hypermodern age which, by successive slippages brought about through ideological governing by fear, could make us plunge again, from one day to the next, into unthinkable barbarity. The article calls for vigilance, which those who have learned from their experience of analytic groups can help shed light on.