Paranoia

The pioneering work of the Italian psychoanalyst analyzes paranoia not only as a clinical category, but above all as a disorder that can be collectively infected and which then becomes a social and cultural phenomenon with far-reaching destructive consequences. From this perspective, Zoja illuminates key moments in history, focusing on the totalitarian regimes of Hitler' s Germany and Stalin' s Soviet Union, the causes of both world wars, the Holocaust, and various types of genocide. It shows how paranoid leaders lose control of the power they have already gained, the collective unconscious becomes autonomous, and its effects can be catastrophic. He does not neglect the fundamental influence of mass media on society' s ability to self-critically question itself and make morally correct decisions.

Luigi Zoja (1943) is a leading Italian psychoanalyst, who previously lived and worked in New York, working at the C. G. Jung in Zurich, was president of the International Association of Analytical Psychology and taught at several universities in Italy and abroad. He currently runs his own practice in Milan. For his book Twilight of the Fathers (PROSTOR, 2005) he received the Italian literary award Premio Palmi and the American scientific award Gradiva Award. The psychological aspects of economic growth are discussed in the publication The History of Arrogance (PROSTOR, 2020). His works, whose central themes include addiction, fatherlessness, hatred, and paranoia in politics, are widely translated into foreign languages.