The Essential Being: Psychoanalytic Understanding of Totalitarianism

This book explores the concept of “pre-conceptual trauma”, drawing in particular on the pioneering research of Wilfred Bion. A comparison is established between two different groups of individuals: five well-known dictators and five famous creative individuals. The authors have defined “pre-conceptual traumas” as ubiquitous experiences that all human beings go through during the first years of their lives, when a temporary absence changes into a permanent presence, determining the outcome of what any individual might do or perform in the future. Pre-conceptual traumas split the mind into two dialectical and correlated states: the "traumatized" (conflictive or pathological), and the "non-traumatized" (developmental or normal).