2023 Research Focus
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Belief and Misinformation in the Age of the Internet
Literally delusional ideation
is circulating from the psychotic fringes of the internet to the speech of powerful government officials. Public discourse cannot speak back to psychotic ideation. We need another approach.
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The Forum on Psychiatry and the Humanities has invited an international group of scholars to study and comment upon this phenomena. We invite comments and ideas.
For many people periods of heightened emotional intensity and desperation can lead to delusion ideation. Radical re-organizations of belief structures are experienced as self-evident truths. Memes of primitive affect circulate as powerfully disruptive contagions to the fabric of social life.
The social contract that holds individuals in realistic relationship to one another is tested by new forms of virtual community created by online experience. Virtual communities create delusional enemies.
What are the real features of the social world?
war, polarization, media bias, income disparity, climate change
What are the real emotions that disturb thought?
fear, despair, resentment, rage, alienation
How do they interact in delusion ideation?
Phenomenological psychiatry has relied on the paradox pointed out by Bleuler and Jaspers to emphasize disorders of self-experience in psychosis whereas analytical philosophy of delusion has focused on the psychological status of delusion, regarded as belief, certainty, or imagination. The empirical studies conducted during the past three decades – which were devoted to acting on delusion – focused on violent and safety-seeking behaviours. These studies have shown that these behavioural disorders are motivated by an emotional outburst (anger and/or fear) rather than by delusional content.
Florent Poupart, Manon Bouscail, Gesine Sturn, Adrien Bensoussan, Gael Galliot, Truci Goze. “Acting on delusion and delusional inconsequentiality: A review,” Comprehensive Psychiatry. Vol 106, 2021
Aliens lizards have been running world governments
How is the mind impacted by internet discourse?
“the Net is terrible at propaganda, but it’s wonderful at conspiracy." Esther Dyson Wired, 1997
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In the age of the internet, political discourse amplifies fear to shape perception
"Persuasive speech acts upon desire. Its aim is as much to capture mood and sentiment, as it is to reason logically. Although politicians are routinely maligned as ‘liars’ and deceivers, in reality they are not tasked with communicating facts but with shaping the public’s reception of facts. If truth undoubtedly matters, how so, how much and for whom is for politicians to persuade their audiences. Affective persuasion – enabling an audience to feel emotionally stimulated by an argument and not only assent to its logic – demands a skill that is nonetheless difficult to pin down. Getting citizens to know is one thing, getting them to want to know is quite another."
James Martin. “Capturing Desire: Rhetorical Strategies and the Affectivity of Discourse,” British Journal of Politics and International Relations, vol. 18, 1, 2015.
The tyrant's apparent omniscience and omnipotence are not primarily in service of suppressing rebellion, but of seducing potential followers into an addictive dependence on a protection racket.
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Karl Figlio, Barry Richard. The Containing Matrix of the Social