Paranoia – Easy Instrument to Manipulate the Masses
Transcribed Conversation between Richard Lloyd Jones and Dr. Claudia Pacheco
Listen to full radio program here.
Rich: I’ve been following a lot, the uh, the dialogue that’s going on in the media, especially the American media around the Osama Bin Laden, ah, some would say, debacle, others would say the fact, whatever that is, there’s lots of um…information you can get about those kinds of things but I thought we might do something therapeutic today
Dr. Claudia: Ah
Rich: Because I feel inside…uh…the discourse about this…a…a…real anguish and we had an email from our good friend in the United States, I think on the Monday after the event, a good friend of ours, Bob Butler wrote saying he had been watching the celebration outside the White Sound and he feeling he didn’t say vaguely uncomfortable, quite uncomfortable but I had the feeling he didn’t understand why he felt uncomfortable…and as I’ve been looking through various, um., journalists writing about this, I’ve come across sort of a common theme which is, uh, it’s really good to kill the bad guy.
That um, Gerardo Rivera on the Fox Network said it was a major victory for the good guys over the bad guys. The past weekend in the NY Times, Maureen Dowd in an Op Ed piece…the title of her Op Ed piece was titled “Killing Evil Is Not Evil”. She talked about the need for revenge. The therapeutic value of celebrating the death of an evil man and I thought maybe we could just talk about that…for sure Osama bin Laden was no saint. But let’s try to analyze this deeper because I think there’s something in the psychoanalysis of society that could be useful for people.
Dr. Claudia: What I see right away reading these comments you’ve selected Richard is that the common denominator of paranoia. Paranoia. So, what is the technique of the United States government and many other governments and dictatorships and what we see in society…um… in this earth in this planet…
Leaders of society, they have the tendency to bring together their people…ah…using paranoid feelings. And, this is very sad and very negative because feeding paranoia is in one side easy… an easy…ah… um…instrument to manipulate the masses…but this is just for a short time.
So when people get afraid or when people get paranoid they are under a threat or they are instigated in their hatred, in their…hmm….projections, in their ideas…as they say here the evil is there outside – this is a danger.
Rich: Yeah
Dr. Claudia: So all this paranoid feelings – they bring people together – even people that were enemies for years or for lifelong like (word in Portuguese)
Rich: Animosity between them
Dr. Claudia: Yeah, so when people get paranoid they can even do alliances out of paranoia – you have seen this in countries – in the wars – during the wars – 1st world war – 2nd world war – and then you can see this very often also in smaller wars but paranoia is the basis of all conflicts.
But it’s also the basis of these alliances that can bring as Obama said since September 11th there was not this sense of unity in the United States.
Rich: Yes, This event with Osama brought back the sense of unity they hadn’t had
Dr. Claudia: And this is the sad part of the story
Rich: Yeah
Dr. Claudia: because Americans got together; democrats, republicans, 3rd party people because of one common denominator which is paranoia – so doing this there is this false sense of friendliness or unity but behind this there are severe fractions. There are just temporarily ah… hidden, covered up. As soon as this paranoid feeling fades away, the differences come back as they were coming. And not only the differences but also the true problems of American society, American economy, American differences, American sicknesses
Rich: Violence
Dr. Claudia: Needs
Rich: Poverty
Dr. Claudia: Poverty. The difference between poor and very rich people. So, there are so many many unresolved problems inside the United States. T his staggering… uh… national debt that cannot be resolved. So all this huge true enemies of the American people are hidden for a time…for a period.
Rich: Because of this focus the paranoia –
Dr: Claudia: They fabricate
Rich: Yeah, yeah
Dr: Claudia: So they fabricate an enemy – a national enemy of the US – just to deviate the idea of American people of treating and seeing and dealing with their own true problems.
