After experiencing September 11 in New York, I started studying paranoia as a collective phenomenon. Paranoia can take hold of events directly because, unlike the rest of psychopathology, it is contagious. Once infected, the collective madness acquires an autonomous life. Its archetypal pattern consists on finding scapegoats and projecting the shadow onto them. As such it tends to repeat itself in very different epochs.
Paranoia relied on “spokesmen” but with modern mass communication and simplification, it can easily be multiplied privately at low cost.
I a time of collective fear because of the pandemic, things can go both ways. On the one hand, we tend to become more suspicious of “the others” and of official communication: this can foster the criculation of “voices” and of “fakes”.
On the other, real scientists become suddenly stars: thus they occupy the newspapers, the broadcasting time and even our imagination.

Psychological Wednesday is an initiative by:
Paul Attinello, Stefano Carpani and Bernhard von Guretzky

Meeting ID: 853 2018 5265
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85320185265?pwd=Tzk4OXRHK0tyamZMbHdhdk8rbThQZz09