By Aaron Warner
“Mass delusional psychosis” is a term that almost broke the internet last week. Why?
Several of the world’s leading experts are speaking out against global mandates and the creep toward totalitarianism. Who are the experts? Dr. Mattias Desmet, a psychologist and professor from Ghent University in Belgium; Dr. Mark Macdonald is a clinical psychiatrist born and raised in Los Angeles where he is in practice; Dr. Robert Malone, educated at UC Davis and Harvard is credited as a co-founder of the new and experimental MRNA vaccine technology currently being used to treat SARS-COV2; Dr. Peter McCullough, a practicing academic physician at Baylor University is the world’s foremost published cardiologist with a curriculum vitae that would make most doctors blush; lawyer and environmental law professor Robert F. Kennedy Jr. from Massachussetts and son to former U.S. Attorney General Bobby Kennedy and nephew to the great deceased president John F. Kennedy; and Joe Rogan, comedian, actor and now host of the most listened-to podcast in America.
These leaders have reached their conclusions coming from widely different, authentically diverse backgrounds. Dr. Desmet arrived at his hypothesis and conclusion as one of the world’s foremost experts on the field of mass psychology research in Bulgaria. He is a clinical psychologist with a Masters Degree in Statistics, he is credited with the term “mass formation.” Politically, he seems to be a centrist of European influence.
Dr. McDonald’s psychiatric practice is in Los Angeles. He specializes in working with children. He recounts the events during an interview with Del Bigtree that led to his offering the term “mass delusional psychosis”. He is a Christian with no offered political views. However, I would say he’s conservative.
Dr. Malone has spent over forty years in the field of vaccines and virology having worked at the Jonas Salk Institute, part of the team contracted by the military to develop treatment for the Zika virus, and the chief medical officer at Alchem Laboratories, a pharmaceutical manufacturer in Florida. Politically, he appears to represent a centrist secular world view.
Dr. McCullough, originally from Buffalo, NY, holds degrees from Baylor University, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, and Washington University in Seattle, having published over 600 peer reviewed articles in his field and been either a member, president or founder of several medical review and/or advocacy groups. Politically, he represents a conservative Christian worldview.
Kennedy became a vaccine watchdog by dint of conscience having been persuaded by women in his neighborhood to investigate their potential harms. He has won several court cases against big pharmaceutical companies, though his passion is environmental law. Kennedy is a professor emeritus of environmental law at Pace Law School having been educated at Harvard, London School of Economics, the University of Virginia and Pace. Kennedy describes his politics as decidedly left of center having been a life-long Democrat concerned with the environment.
Lastly, Rogan, the unlikely catalyst of this group having grown his podcast to a whopping 11 million plus regular listeners, which dwarfs the listenership of mainstream media outlets such as Fox, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS and NBC. He is openly a left-of-center atheist and has voted almost exclusively Democrat.
How are these divergent world views seeing the same stunning problem? It began with Dr. Desmet noticing his town starting a “mass formation.” Around the same time Dr. McDonald in Los Angeles was observing what he labeled “mass delusional psychosis.” Doctors Malone and McCullough during their Joe Rogan interviews combined the terms to say “mass formation psychosis. Rogan’s listeners dutifully shared the information with their friends and shortly thereafter Google was scrambling to figure out what was happening. Within a few days the doctors and Mr. Kennedy were the most sought-after guests on the internet.
So what is “mass formation psychosis”? These experts agree on four distinct features.
- Free floating anxiety
- Free floating discontent/aggression
- Prolonged isolation
- Lack of sense making/meaning
Pronounced periods of isolation, such as lockdowns, are necessary to disrupt the sense of connection and community. Isolation is used in the extreme as a punishment for prisoners. This disruption of social bonds encourages the following.
Lack of sense making/meaning happens when information fails to be consistent and coherent.
“Fifteen days to flatten the curve” turning into two years. Doctors and nurses are heroes one year, jobless the next. Riots are called protests when done by BLM setting cities on fire, and protests are called insurrections when patriots storm the capitol building. White people with no history of racism are now white supremacists whether they like it or not.
Free floating anxiety arises when fears become excessive. These may be based in real or imagined threats, such as a virus or the climate. This anxiety is destructive by hyper-stimulating the fight or flight response and short circuiting executive function, a characteristic of serious mental illnesses like schizophrenia and borderline personality disorder.
Free floating discontent/aggression builds when the fear associated with the discontent find a target to aggress toward. Blacks are told to fear whites and vice versa, likewise Republicans and Democrats, the “woke” versus patriots, women against the patriarchy, the US and China. Aggression runs like a noisy engine in the background of society.
How do we know if we’re there? We can heed the expert’s warnings and simply look around. Have you ever seen so many anxious looks on people’s faces? Have you ever seen so many joyless children? Conversations have become either hurried or stultified. Younger generations seem almost out of touch with basic civility and reality, left instead to battle the urge to disconnect on a device or misconnect with socially awkward outbursts.
Media is saturated with constant messages of COVID cases and joblessness, or climate change, or racial issues, or political battles. The cycle of bad to worse builds in a crescendo of lonely, discontented, anxious and angry people looking for a savior who will offer some semblance of relief.
One day it’s Tony Fauci, the next it’s a vaccine, or reparations, or pronouns. As anxiety builds a critical mass forms around a common threat. To relieve their anxiety the hypnotized mass look to leaders, even unscrupulous and inconsistent ones, who offer a scapegoat. This is known as the Hedonic Treadmill. Who will it be? Racists, the unvaxxed, truck drivers, free thinkers?
The educated are oddly more likely to participate, which explains some of the challenge to reversing this trend. This is explained in this interview with doctors Mattias, Malone and McCullough. This same cohort was used in Jacobin France, Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russa.
Can we turn this around? Yes, but with great effort and courage. The doctors advise speaking up against things as we know are nonsensical. Vermonters did this by voting down mask mandates. Sharing articles and videos of experts pushing back against the fear mongering media narratives helps. Most importantly, offering friends and loved ones community, love, and strength against the creeping mind games.
You can’t rescue everyone from the illogical delusion, which is true of about 30% of people. To those 30%, you cannot change their views no matter what information you present against their safety net. `
Some will have to sacrifice personal comfort and even stare down job-loss or cancel culture to expose the web of lies that created the delusion. In doing so, you tell your friends and neighbors, not only does the emperor have no clothes, he is most definitely out of his right mind.